The important news for the would-be fashionable young lady of 1881 is that dresses are getting shorter:
It is a great pleasure to believe that the fashion for wearing short dresses, morning, noon and night, will not alter, and long trains show no signs of coming in again, and are not worn except on very special occasions, by elderly matrons, who prefer not to cut up a very handsome dress. Short skirts are wider and though equally tight in the front, the advent of the tournure has made the sides and back much wider and more graceful for slight figures, because not so tight and clinging.
Enter "the second bustle"! It's interesting in this context that "short" means "without a train", though skirts still trail on the floor.
The lighter-coloured furs seem to have slipped out of fashion this winter, and the taste leans to dark browns and black. The principal furs are—stone marten, seal, musquash, skunk, coney, opossum, black fox, and what is called Russian cat. These are all moderate in price, and our illustration, "On the Ice", will show how they are worn. The first figure wears a brown poke bonnet, a mantle of plush, trimmed with black fox, brown cashmere dress, brown velvet and fur muff, and a bunch of yellow crocuses. The central figure wears a skating costume of plum-coloured, with a fur or feather border. A wide lining of velvet on the tunic, which is caught up on one side.
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