This week I've decided to skip back a century from the 1970s to the 1870s. What a contrast! The fashions of 1875 are ultra-feminine, trimmed (some would say over-trimmed) with ribbons, ruffles, lace and bows. Skirts trail on the ground—even on garments described as "walking dress"—and hair is piled high in curls and ringlets. (Fashionable ladies who didn't have sufficient hair of their own could buy "false hair", either sourced from poorer women or from animals.)
The models in this plate are wearing bustles, but 1875 marks the point when the "first bustle" period was coming to an end. Bodices are starting to become longer, and will soon become form-fitting "curiass" bodices. The effect is most pronounced on the figure on the far left.
Fig. I—Walking dress of Havana brown silk
Fig. II—House dress of green silk
Fig. III—House-dress of pale stone colored mohair
Fig. IV—Walking dress
Fig. V—House-dress
GENERAL REMARKS...
MANY LATE-PARIS DRESSES are made with but little or no trimming on the skirt; a deep basque or curiass waist, much trimmed serving for the ornament. But the ruffled and plaited over-skirts have taken such hold of the fancy of many of the fashionables, that they will be retained, though in a somewhat modified form during summer.
ALL THE SPRING DRESSES, as we have said, show a tendency to less trimming, though the inevitable over-skirt is mostly worn in some shape, but very clinging to the figure. For the house, some dresses with long, narrow trains, have been made. The waist has wide revers, is rather short waisted, and, in fact, looks very much like fashions that were worn just after the French Revolution, and before the empire style, with its mongrel classic fashion, was in vogue.
