A Victorian Lady's Guide to Fashion and Beauty by Mimi Matthews

Author:Mimi Matthews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Women
ISBN: 9781526705068
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-10-18T16:00:00+00:00

‘Some of the skirts are wide – very wide, according to our ideas. The most Parisian of cuts for an evening skirt at this moment demands fourteen breadths and fifteen seams; roughly speaking, the width around the hem measures about seven yards, but the cutting is so exquisite that it looks no whit wider when worn than an ordinary four-and-a-half-yard skirt.’

Evening dresses of the mid-1890s were made of rich velvets, silks, and satins in a variety of bright colours, including brilliant reds, emerald greens, magentas, violets, and yellows. Some evening dresses featured exquisite embroidery. Others were ornamented with lavish trimmings like jet or glass beads, braid, lace, rhinestones, jewels, sequins, and even iridescent steel spangles.

Sleeves reached their absolute largest in 1896. To the increasingly active woman, such bulk was insupportable. It is therefore somewhat unsurprising that, following the spring season of that year, both sleeves and skirts began to gradually shrink in size. Not only did skirts decrease in volume, they also began to grow shorter, with some as much as four inches off of the ground. Despite the rapidly reducing size of skirts and sleeves, the hourglass silhouette was still highly prized in women’s dress. Swiss belts and corselets continued to be a fashionable option for emphasizing the waist.

A caricature of the fashion for puffed sleeves. (Punch, Or the London Charivari, 1895)

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