Dress with long puffed sleeves comprising a bodice, skirt and belt.
In woven greenish silk with a white floral design and trimmed with silk braid and beads, lined with glazed cotton, and edged with brushed braid. Isabella Grace on a Balcony, Clementina, Lady Hawarden, London. Albumen print. As a result, museum no. PH.
The VA’s Victorian dress collection represents the fashions worn by the wealthy in the 19th century, and reflects their lives and aspirations.
The clothing featured here also showcases skill high level in dressmaking and design carried out by dressmakers and tailors in Victorian times. Workmanship degree involved in making these clothes meant that they were expensive to make -they werehigh fashion comparable to today’s haute couture. Seriously. Very few examples of men’s clothing have survived from this period -generally men’s fashions changed slowly and darker colours were often worn for business and on formal occasions. This meant that even expensive garments will be worn longer and were worn out with ‘daytoday’ wear.
The fitted bodice has a low, round neck and a slightly high waistline. The skirt is boxpleated more tightly at the centre back. Therefore the sleeves are set low, tightly pleated below the shoulder. You should take this seriously. They are altered by having the fullness reduced and a frill attached at the elbow. The sleeve puffs are stiffened with calico and supported with tapes. Also, the main seams are faced, the bodice is lined with cotton and the skirt faced with glazed cotton. Of course, the celebrated dancer Mlle. Fleury stands with her body turned half to her left, her arms curving to her left, her head turned to look across her right shoulder. Anyway, with a flower decoration to the back, her hair is severely dressed. Then, with a pointed bodice trimmed over the neck and upper arms with lace and with a posy of flowers centre front, the bellshaped skirt has a shorter overskirt of a diaphanous fabric. Andconsequently decorated at the slit top with posies of flowers, he wears an almost white ‘offtheshoulder’ crinoline ball dress.
While publishing entrepreneur Samuel Beeton launched ‘The English Woman’s Domestic Magazine’ at the startlingly low price of 2d a copy, in 1852. Now, an instant success, it had achieved a circulation of 50000 by 1860 and became the ‘blueprint for the modern magazine industry’. It appealed to the ‘rapidly expanding’ middle class sector who relished fiction mix, fashion and food, the latter provided by Beeton’s wife, the soon to be lionised Isabella. Isabella visited Paris regularly and acquired fashion plates from Adolphe Goubaud’s Moniteur de la Mode. Beeton’s magazine was the Practical Dress Instructor, a paper forerunner dressmaking pattern. In 1861, Beeton followed up his success with ‘The Queen’, a weekly newspaper of more topical character.
Green silk bodice and matching skirt.
The silk material is hand embroidered in silk and cutsteel beads, trimmed with taffeta and with a lace collar. The long skirt is fuller at the back and flatter at the front in keeping with this fashion period and would be worn over a steel hooped crinoline petticoat to give this distinctive shape. In Queen last decade Victoria’s reign, women’s clothes were plainer, and the bustle smaller. Day dresses show that women were leading rather more active lives. With their very small waists and need for tight stays, the 1890s dresses, still restricted movement. Quite a few of the bodices and blouses had high necks stiffened with bones or wire. Nevertheless, the chin had to he held up and the hair was puffed out and topped with a large hat, secured with a hat pin. Evening dresses were created from luxurious, heavy silks and had boned bodices and trains.
The middle classes generally would not wear such high value items similar to these. These style clothes would have spread further than the small social group for whom they were made, much the same as adapted catwalk fashions can be found in high street retailers today. And therefore the middle classes could afford to have high fashion copied by local dressmakers and tailors, or made their own new clothes. Did you know that a loose dress consists, waistlength bodice which fastens in the front and is worn inside waistband of the matching the waistband skirt. Surely it’s lined with glazed linen and held in position with tapes at the waist. The sleeves are a short wristlength with a trimming of ruching and fringe for the cuffs. The skirt is gored, fitted to the hips with darts and tightly gathered at the back. Inside are tapes and loops to adjust the length and drape. By the way, the jacket is a short hiplength and loose in front. Known it is longer at the back and is semifitted with a central vent. It has a round neck trimmed with ribbons and fringe and fastens with covered, embroidered buttons. Furthermore, the loops and tapes within the skirt are a simple but effective way of adapting a skirt to a bustle.
I am sure that the dress fastens at the back from the narrow band collar to the hips with silverplated buttons in a Florentine design. I’m sure that the tight, three quarter sleeves are entirely gauged and trimmed at the cuffs with two pleated rows bands.
The front is fitted to the figure as far as the hips, and is designed to suggest a jacket. And so it’s trimmed round the edges with motifs in iridescent beads and worn over a pleated and ruched stomacher front with a mock lacing. At the hips it is draped back into paniers which knot over the train. Anyway, the skirt is ruched as far as the knees, where it is arranged in pleated tabs with pendant chenille tassels mounted over crenelated tabs and bands of pleats. You should take this seriously. The sleeves and the bodice are lined with almost white glazed cotton, the skirt with mauve polished cotton. Then again, the back breadth is lined with stiffened cotton and held in place with tapes.
In the late 1860s the very fullness large crinoline was moved to back of the skirt the back and trailed behind the wearer.
I know that the skirt back was swept up into a bustle in the 1870s, held out over a pad or frame and allowed to flow down into a short train. To make this skirt type requires many hours of skilled work. Considering the above said. Whenever spending hours altering old clothes for themselves and their families to make them fit or to make them more fashionable, the poor would rely on the huge secondhand clothes trade prevalent during the period. Now pay attention please. Clothes will be dyed and a garment good parts made into children’s clothes or accessories, and areas of wear could have been patched. Furthermore, there was even a market for ragged clothes that had been through a couple of owners -these were still worn by the destitute.
Crinoline frame made of hoops of spring steel covered in braid. Basically the hoops are fixed to blackish edged tapes wth stamped metal eyelets. Of course, there islots of us know that there is a redish woollen waistband with a frill made of horsehair, and an elastic stay holds the hoops in place. Bonnets were fashionable at Queen beginning Victoria’s reign when indoor caps were still worn by most married women. Both started to go out of fashion in the 1860s when hats gradually replaced bonnets and indoor caps were worn only by widows.
This 1830’s English day dress is cotton printed in a soft pink, dark red, whitish and light green floral motif against a soft light brown ground.
It is edged with dark green silk satin piping and lined with linen and cotton. The sleeves are tightly gathered around the top and loose at the elbow. The long skirt is gathered in at the tight waist fitting bodice which is edged with light green satin piping. This 1830’s English day dress is cotton printed in a soft pink, redish, white and light green floral motif against a soft light dark brown ground. For instance, it is edged with dark green silk satin piping and lined with linen and cotton. Therefore the sleeves are tightly gathered around the top and loose at the elbow. Actually the long skirt is gathered in at the tight waist fitting bodice which is edged with dark green satin piping.