Whether you are working on a new steampunk ensemble,
writing a steamy 19
th century romance novel, or simply curious about
Victorian fashion just because; I hope this blog post can help you understand
the evolution of the female form and the birth of modern fashion better.
I put together this information to create my 1970’s
natural form dresses last year, and my research just sat on my computer doing
less than nothing. I know it was difficult for me to find adequate information
online about the fashion of this time period, despite how popular it is in the
costuming world. Therefore, I had to go to the library and research this stuff
the old fashioned way proving that, YES, libraries are still highly necessary!
Perhaps you stumbled upon this page in your quest,
and will find that it is just what you were looking for.
VICTORIAN FASHION TIMELINE
1840’s
 |
| 1940's Evening Dresses |
The ideal body shape during this decade included an
upside down triangle shaped-bodice forming from the shoulders down to the point
of the waistline, and a bell-shaped skirt exaggerated with layers upon layers
of petticoats. Low sloping shoulders were ideal, and evening gowns were often
off the shoulder to create this look. Waist lines were low and often brought to
a point to make the triangle effect. Day dress sleeves reached all the way to
the wrist and the fullness of the sleeve was brought lower to the elbow region.
1850’s
 |
| 1850's Evening Dresses |
The look for the bodices remains relatively the same as
the previous decade however, crinoline became the main way to create the highly
desired bell-shape. Although many people depicted crinoline to be like cages
for women and are representative of the lack of women’s rights during this
time, this is a misconception. In reality, crinoline was a god-save. Can you
imagine wearing four or more layers of cotton skirts on a hot summer day? It’s
terrible! You get all hot, sweaty, sticky, heavy, and you just want to die.
Crinoline allowed more air to circulate and the lightness made it a lot easier
to walk around.
1860’s
 |
| 1860's Evening Dresses |
In this decade, the ideal body shape was to have a flat
front of the skirt with elaborate intricacies flowing down the back of the
skirt. Who is responsible for this? Fredrick Worth.
In 1964, Fredrick Worth designed the bustle and train as
a way to do away with crinoline. He saw his bustle and train to be his greatest
achievement and boasted that he “dethroned the crinoline.” The bustle
originally was a pad filled with horse hair in the 60’s, but altered its design
in later decades.
Like most new women’s fashions, men mocked the new
fashion and made fun of how the train swept the streets for miles and people
would step on them all the time.
Bodices were formfitting and buttoned up the back.
1870’s
 |
| 1870's Day Dresses |
During the 1870’s the bustle began to disappear for a
while to give way to the “natural form” look. The ideal female form was form
fitting until just below the hips where the skirt stays flat in the front but
fans out in the back to create a folded peacock tail look.
By 1876, the bustle had completely disappeared out of
fashion. Instead, the skirt was tightly tied back by 3 or 4 ribbons on the
inside to make it completely flat in the front other than decorative trimmings,
then the back fabrics were layered and folded in complicated ways as it tumbled
in a waterfall-like way to the train on the ground. The train was intended to
convey the impression that the wearer kept a carriage, because you can’t sit in
a carriage easily while wearing a bustle. However, even women who were not of
the carriage class trailed their appendages on the street.
Evening and dinner dresses often had elbow sleeves
Ball dresses often had tiny sleeves and a neckline low in
the front but fairly high behind.
1877-1878 Ball dresses were often trimmed with trails of
flowers. Although sometimes they were artificial, it was more fashionable to
trim them with real flowers and put artificial ones in their hair-- the
opposite of what would seem practical. During this decade it became fashionable
to wear a velvet ribbon neckband with evening gowns.
In regards to fabrics, The Queen reported that “There is no such thing as a dress made
from a single material.” Advising people to “Take two materials, one of which
shall represent the principal and the other the accessory, and out of these
compose a costume, trimming the principal with the accessory and the accessory
with the principal.”
In the late 1870’s, undergarments were greatly reduced
due to the form of the female silhouette and they were now often colored or
white with colored ribbons on them. This was seen as fashionable but also very
risqué.
Tight lacing was the most severe during this period
because big skirts make the wait look small, but with the more vertical look,
women had to strive harder to achieve such extreme waists. In the late 1870’s
older married women had looser gowns for 5 o’clock tea so they could relax.
Tight lacing became a hot issue of debate in regards to women’s health.
Alison Gernsheim points out that although the rules of etiquette
books require women to wear gloves at all times, in most of the photographs
during this decade, gloves are rarely depicted.
1880’s
 |
| 1880's Evening Dresses |
Between 1882 and 1885, the bustle saw its revival, and
the vertical look started to turn overly-exaggerated and curvy. The new bustle
was called a tournure and sat lower than the original bustle and jutted out
horizontally.
The 1880s were similar to the 70’s in that the idea of
having the dresses plain above but fancy below still held true, but the
difference laid in the fact that the 70’s had soft curvy lines and the 80’s had
stiffer ones. In the late 1880’s, women’s styles were harder and more
aggressive- there were even styles modeled after military uniforms. Trains were
not worn in the daytime but were a separate attachment for evening dresses but
were shorter. One source said that in the 1880’s, silver and gold anklets were
often worn to show a distinction of elegance.
After 1882, most of the high-necked bodices were not as
long as they were in the 70’s and they differed in the fact that they buttoned
down the front instead of being laced up in the back. This was significant
because women could button up the bodice by themselves wear as before they
needed a servant to help them.
Sleeves were long, plain, and tight, and most of the
emphasis was on the skirt. The skirt usually had pleats for folds around the
thighs, or a “double fishwife” skirt that was caught up like an apron. The
underskirt was often kilted.
Wool became very popular in the 1880’s and it was seen as
a healthy fabric to wear.
1890’s
 |
| 1890's Day Dress |
Bodices were tightly tailored with long sleeves
with giant puffs at the shoulder. Crinoline and bustles disappeared forever,
and skirts created an A line silhouette like a bell. Corseting stayed
relatively the same, however. Suit dresses became popular for forward thinking women as well.
Informal day wear became popular which consisted of a
high-necked blouse tailored much like a man’s shirt. This was tucked into a
simple skirt. Sports clothes became fashionable and featured shorter skirts
revealing the ankles. Cycling dresses came into style which replaced skirts
with bloomers.
Uncorsetted tea gowns were popular to wear at the home
and were even reported to be worn outside the home towards the end of the
decade.
ADDITIONAL VICTORIAN AWESOMENESS
New Artificial
Dyes
Prior to 1856, all dies were made from natural products.
For instance- purple was made from murex shellfish and red was made from
cochineal beetles. It required 17,000 beetles to make a single ounce (one gram)
of dye. Therefore it was very expensive. Also, overtime the colors would fade.
In 1856, William Perkin discovered artificial dye by
accident. He was a 18 year old English chemistry student who was attempting to
make artificial quinine, a drug to treat malaria by using aniline, a substance
derived from old coal tar; however, the experiment failed and left him with a
dark oily sludge. He was about to throw it away until curiosity prompted him to
make a solution of it-- it became a rich purple. He then applied it to some silk
and discovered that not only did it act as a dye, but it didn’t fade as much
over time. Being that Mauvine (the dye he made) was made from coal tar which
was an abundant waste product from gas manufacturing, it was incredibly cheap
to produce.
In 1857, Perkin opened a dyework
on the Grand Union Canal in London and produced Mauvine. The color became very
fashionable in France after Empress Eugenie discovered that it matched her
eyes. In 1958, Queen Victoria wore the color to her daughter’s wedding and then
everybody had to wear it! Punch Magazine called it “The Mauve Measels”
He continued to experiment with making other colors and
apparently the color of the canal changed from week to week with each dye they
were testing. Meanwhile, other chemists in other countries began to open dye
works and produce other fashionable colors. It almost became a race to see who
could come up with the brightest colors from coal tar.
One fashionable dye was a vivid emerald green made from
arsenite of copper. However, after a young women wearing one of these dresses
in the early sixties came down with an illness from arsenic poisoning from the
dye in the dress, it fell out of fashion in Paris until a different type of
emerald dye was made. A physician testified that no less than 60 grams of 60
grams of arsenic came off from a single dress- enough to kill 30 people if
administered in doses.
It has been remarked that English women often didn’t have
a good sense for color combinations- they wanted the bright colors but didn’t
understand how to color coordinate!
The House of Worth
 |
| My Favorite Worth Dress |
Early Victorian dressmakers were mostly women who visited
the wealthy at their homes, took measurements and order from the customer. The
customer picked out the fabrics and styles from magazines and the dressmakers
made them. Dressmaking was seen as a craft, not an art. Charles Fredrick Worth
was an Englishman who moved to Paris who became “The Father of Haute Couture”
meaning the father of exclusive fashion.
In 1857, he opened The House of Worth (Maison Worth) at 7
Rue de la Paix, Paris.
Worth was inspired by the dresses in old paintings in
museums and unlike dressmakers before him, he saw himself as an artist rather
than a craftsman and expected customers to come to him. In order to make his
business appear more exclusive, he required every customer to visit with a
letter of introduction from a previous customer. French Writer Taine wrote what
happened when a lady visited Worth without a letter of introduction:
“Madame” he said, “by whom are you presented?” “I don’t
understand.” “I’m afraid you must be presented in order to be dressed by me.”
While some people found him to be rude, and scoffed at the way he acted, others
didn’t care how rude he was so long as he dressed them. According to Peter
Crisp, It was an advantage to Worth that he was a foreigner because he stood
outside the French class system and could behave in ways that would ordinarily
seem offensive.
The showrooms in the House of Worth featured mannequins
with mirrors strategically placed next to them so that customers could see
their own inferior dress next to Worth’s beautiful designs- guilting the
customers into buying more clothing. He also had a thickly curtained room lit
by gaslight so that customers could see how their gown looked in a ballroom
setting.
He pioneered clothing methods still used today. He made
patterns out of muslin or toile to drape over the client’s body, then customize
it to their shape. He also was the first to make seasonal clothing rather than
“one-off” garments.
In 1964, Fredrick Worth designed the bustle and train as
a way to do away with crinoline. He saw his bustle and train to be his greatest
achievement and boasted that he “dethroned the crinoline.”
The bustle originally was a pad filled with horse hair in
the 1860s, it then fell out of fashion in the 1870s when natural form was more
popular, then the bustle reappeared in the 1880’s as a “tournure”-- an
exaggerated bustle form made of hoops and it stuck out like a shelf.
 |
| Tournure and Undergarments |
Shopping
Now that the sewing machine was invented and there could
be a mass production of clothing- shopping became a leisure activity rather
than a chore for the very first time. This was the birth of the consumer
culture.
The first department stores that were opened were A.T.
Stewart’s in New York, Bainbridges in Newcastle, and Bon Marche in Paris.
Consumers could by a complete outfit with all the accessories at one location.
Unlike previous stores that kept items locked behind glass cases, clothes were
displayed openly. Also, because department stores could carry more stock, they
bought items in bulk and could get better deals from their suppliers and charge
cheaper prices. Customers also could return goods and get refunds.
Window Shopping became more popular. The glass pressing
machine was invented in 1827 and allowed for large panes of glass to be made to
display in store windows to tempt passers by with a new way of advertising.
Secondhand Clothes
When clothing became unfashionable for the rich to where
they would give them to their maids and servants. Because the clothes were too
fine for them to wear themselves, they sold them to secondhand shops where the
clothes were usually disassembled and turned into other pieces of clothing.
Stealing clothing from clothes lines was a common thing so that the poor could
get some money. In Oliver Twist, Fagin was a “Fence”, a receiver of stolen
goods who taught Oliver and the other boys to pickpocket men’s handkerchiefs to
be sold to the second hand shops and mills.
Jewelry
Jet was a black stone made from fossilized monkey puzzle
tress and used often for mourning jewelry.
Velvet ribbon- In the 1870’s it became popular to tie a
velvet ribbon around a woman’s neck and have the ribbon tails hang down the
back a little. This eventually evolved into the choker necklace.
Hair
Wearing false hair (chignons) was super popular and even
the normal. False hair pieces were made from the hair of prisoners, or from
poor and middleclass women who sold it, and even rumored to have come from the
ailing or corpses at hospitals.
Corset
Many writers and sources how Victorian women achieved a
18 or 17 inch waist. What Alison Gersheim and other scholars believe is that
this refers to the smallest circumference a corset can be achieved completely
laced tight but not around a person. Really, the corsets were left open several
inches larger than that, but it was a symbol of elegance and pride to be able
to purchase smaller corsets.
Sources
Crisp, Peter. A History of Fashion and Costume. Vol. 6.
Alison Gernsheim - Dover Publications - 1981
