Late Victorian
Fashion
The Late Victorian age sees an even swifter change if ladies' fashion, especially of the silhouette. Industrialisation had picked up throughout Western Europe and North America and made a lot of people rich - who now wanted to show off.
It was still the ladies who had this task of showing off their husband's wealth while himself remained rather inconspicuous. Their impractical clothing emphasised the fact that they did not need to do productive work - not even in the household, which was run by the servants.
During the early 70s, they wore a steel contraption that made the skirt stand out behind - the bustle or tournure. Even everyday dresses had a train which was considered short if half a metre of it lay on the ground. Both the train and the whole skirt were decorated with so-called garniture (trimmings): Fringes, ruchings, flounces, tassels, lace, borders... until the 1890s, garniture and drapery was the playground of the designers' and seamstresses' imagination. This was also a part of the "conspicuous consumption" process: The amount of fabic and decoration on a dress was outrageously expensive.
Around 1875, the bustle suddenly vanished and was replaced by a narrow skirt with a long train. The bodices lengthened to lie tightly around the hips. At the height of this narrow fashion in 1880, the horizontal skirt draperies and tight bodices made the wearer appear as though she was bound like a mummy.
But soon fashion pulls into the opposite direction: The bustle returns. From 1882 until 1885 it grows in size, laden with draperies more artful than before, but somewhat more subtly trimmed. Garniture in general begins to shift upwards, to the bodice.
And again, a sharp turn into the opposite direction: Ladies soon tire of the bustle. It gradually diminishes in size until a new silhoutette emerges around 1888. Now the train-less skirts are almost devoid of drapery and trimmings and flare slightly towards the hem. The somewhat forward-leaning appearance, however, that had been created by the emphasis on the backside, not only remained fashionable, but was even emphasised more and more in the course of the 90s.
Early in the 1890s, fashion discovers sleeves as a new toy. Their upper half is puffed, while the lower is tight, or they gradually taper towards the wrist. They reach their maximum c. 1895 and diminish again towards 1900. As in the very early Victorian era, they were probably meant to make the waist appear smaller by contrast: Corsets were now laced tighter than ever before.
Skirts followed the flowing line of the newly developing Art Nouveau, falling into an elegant bell shape. Details, on the other hand, exhibit a taste for the bizarre and angular, e.g. pointy "Van Dyck" lace or bird's wings sticking up stiffly on the front of hats. Maybe it was an echo of another fashion, that of Gothic literature: "Dracular" was not the only representative of the classic horror genre that was created at that time.
Men's clothing was strictly reduced to black and white now. False shirt fronts and button-on cuffs became popular, simulating an expensive, crisp shirt beneath the waistcoat. The necktie had continually become smaller until only a narrow strip was left of it. By tieing it into a bow shape in front, the modern bowtie was developed.