Commode painted oak, walnut or fruitwoods, with carved decoration, typical of French provincial furniture. In the English-speaking world, "commode" passed into cabinet-makers' parlance in London by the mid-eighteenth century to describe chests of drawers with gracefully curved fronts, and sometimes with shaped sides as well, perceived as being in the "French" taste. Thomas Chippendale employed the term "French Commode Tables" to describe designs in "The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Director" (1753), and Ince and Mayhew illustrated a "Commode Chest of drawers", plate xliii, in their "Universal System of Household Furniture", 1759–62. John Gloag notes that "Commode" expanded to describe any piece of
Paris in the 18th century tight short trouser attached below the knee to silk stockings. The Revolutionaries and poor mocked the rich by calling themselves the "sans-culottes", those without culottes. With the Revolution and the disappearance of the aristocrats, men's clothing became less colorful and more sober, and women's clothing began to imitate the popular view of the clothing of ancient Rome and Greece, in keeping with the revolutionary ideals of the new French Republic. During most of the 18th century, the Parisian economy was based on thousands of small workshops, where skilled artisans produced products. The workshops were clustered in particular neighborhoods; furniture makers