A funny thing was happening in the 1870s. The expansive skirts that were all the rage in the 1860s were changing and–thanks in part to new inventions in fashion–women’s rears were bigger than ever.
Much like today, the fashionable silhouette shifts from year to year. For many years, a bell-shaped silhouette was popular, created by layers of petticoats, then horsehair crinolines, and later cage crinoline formed with wire. While the cage crinoline was able to create a domed silhouette without the burden of many layers of petticoats, like all women’s fashion from the Renaissance forward, it was mercilessly mocked.
Woman's Day Dress Ensemble, US, c.1870.
By 1870, dresses could go no wider, so the fashion silhouette shifted to favor the bustle or tournure which would be tied around the waist over the posterior to give an exaggerated silhouette and emphasize a small, corseted waist. The bustle’s design allowed for fabric to be tucked and pinned to create a long train-like effect, a reflection of the Gilded Age (1870s-1890s), which is one of exaggeration and opulence.
The bustle completely disappeared by 1905 as fashion changed once again. There was a growing emphasis on freedom of movement for upper-class women who were beginning to play sports and ride bicycles. Tight corseting, superfluous skirts, and bustle cages were not conducive to sitting astride a bike or much movement beyond casual strolling. Indeed, by the late 1870s, the fashion was to have a very tight dress accompanied by a large bustle, making it hard to even bend over or sit as lampooned in the “Veto” cartoon. The gentleman offers the lady a seat to which the tightly-clad woman responds, “I should like to, but my Dressmaker says I mustn't!”
Cartoon "Veto" by George du Maurier, published in Punch, satirizing the tight dress styles of the late 1870s.
Cotton mill in the 1830s. Women working in factories or employed in homes required more practical clothing.
Indeed during the 1870s, it would have been unseemly for a middle or upper-class woman to do something laborious or to exert themselves physically. The ideal woman of the time was fragile and immobile. Even normal household labor like clothes washing or cooking would have been done by working or lower-class paid laborers. The Gilded Age was an era of contradictions. There were materialistic excesses but also staggering levels of poverty. There were advancements in technology, but they benefited people unequally. This duality is shown often in women’s fashion, with wealthy women dressed as if they walked out of a Parisian fashion plate while working women had to forgo fashion for practicality and freedom of movement.
