Hello readers!
This was meant to be just an amusing post about my success in driving my little silver sports car while in garb and wearing a bustle--something I'd not yet tried before last week's Tea at the Sophia Coxe Mansion. However, while I was wandering around the Internet looking for bustle information I learned yet more amazing things about bustles.
So, this will be an amusing (I hope?) and educational post.
First, last week's Tea, and my drive with the bustle. Let me explain that it is about an hour and a half drive from my house to the venue for the Tea. I was wearing a two piece mid to late Victorian Polonaise ensemble with a hat that I finally got right only after I got home LOL! And the skirt of the slightly trained ensemble allowed for a bustle. So--of COURSE I wore one!
I was gratified to see that my ensemble engendered gasps of 'ooooh, a bustle!' From the others at the Tea as well as random people i met there.
My bustle is a modern one, just a pouffy pad, no wire, no cage. Having said this, I think you'll understand the reason that driving thus encumbered was really no big deal at all. The extra lumbar support actually was nice! Even though my car's seat's lumbar support is adjustable...
The bustle ties around the waist and also--weirdly--around the thighs. You have to be careful when donning the bustle that you don't tie this last too tightly or it will interfere with the crinoline and also with walking and sitting! I believe this lower strap is designed to keep the bustle from migrating from the center of one's body, where it belongs, so it's a good thing. However, should I wish to wear a bustle with a hoop I would have to figure out another way to secure the lower strap.
So, driving with a bustle? No problem!
The only thing I have yet to conquer is driving with a six bone hoop. I might have the guts to try that during The Oldest House's Christmas Tea--we shall see.
Those of you who are regular readers will possibly recall a piece I did a while back about the way in which skirt shapes and padding moved over the centuries, from the side panniers to the full skirt to the bustle, etc. This was somewhat simplified, because in each era there were smaller and more subtle changes that took place over a few years, not a few decades. But it was a start, and it introduced many, I think, to the idea that padding could move to create the 'look' of a particular silhouette.
So here is a more detailed description of bustles and skirt shapes. I've added details about sleeves and hats where I can: these changed, too, to balance the look of the skirt. So did bodices. But each of these items could itself be an object of study, and the subject of another entry, so I'm concentrating today on the skirt shape and how that was achieved.
After the Regency period, which had narrow skirts offered that odd tubular pad just below the BACK of the Empire waist, and which, if one were not careful, made the wearer look hunchbacked, we have the Romantic Period. This is post Regency and pre-Civil War in the U.S. from about 1830-1860. Some consider this part of the 'Early Victorian'. However, I prefer to keep 'Victorian' more closely to the period during which Queen Victoria was on the throne of England(1837-1901). Hence my dates.
The Romantic Period offered a slowly lowering waist line and 'gigot' sleeves. The waistline reached its natural spot, and then continued into a V shaped point below the waist, reminiscent of earlier fashions. Women were slow to return to the natural waist look, regardless of fashion dictates--probably because the Empire waist was so comfortable and flattering! The gigot sleeve, or leg o' mutton sleeve, which is very full at the top and then tapers to the wrist, was popular until about 1840, when slender sleeves came back and the armscyes lowered. (that was a new word for me this year, and i think it's pronounced ARMZ-eyes!) Think about that: tighter sleeves set in lower armscyes restricted the wearer's movement--and voilà we have the beginning of the small, demure gestures we associate with Victorian Womanhood.
Oh, and by the way, the leg o' mutton sleeve itself undergoes various permutations between 1825 to about 1840-45, with the fullness getting bigger and bigger and then moving down from the upper arm to the elbow and then the wrist and then finally just getting slimmer overall.
To complicate the sleeve picture during the Romantic Period, 'pelerines' became fashionable, which is a type of cape that spans the shoulders and the front and back for a few inches, and adds to the squared off top of the inverted triangle that was the Romantic torso shape.
Skirts in the Romantic period were bigger than they were in the Regency period--the tube became wider, often by the addition of panels, and the skirts were stiffened, generally with horsehair pieces sewn into the bottom part of the skirt.(Ehew!) Flounces, quilting and other things also served to move the skirt dimensions out. The hemlines inched up a little, too, possibly because it was just too hard to maneuver in all that ruffling and quilting and horsehair stuff and handle a train and a long dress front, too! By 1835 skirts were round and almost the bell shape we think of when we think of the Civil War era in the U.S.
So we have Colonial side panniers moving to the Regency tube shape just below the high waist in the back, then by the Romantic Era moving to a rounder skirt. Now in the Early Victorian Period that roundness will explode into bigger and bigger skirts held out by stiffened petticoats, numerous petticoats and finally bone-hooped and even metal cage contraptions below the skirts.
By 1860 the U.S. Civil War had begun and skirts were almost at their zenith for ridiculous roundness. But something had taken place in fashion history that would dramatically influence the silhouette, and the skirt, of ensembles in this period, and in the future. The sewing machine had been invented in the first half of the century, which meant garments could be altered and sewn with much greater ease.
By the end of the 1860's, the full, round skirts were beginning to have overskirts that were pinned up at the back, and the front of the silhouette became less rounded and more flattened. This was the harbinger of the Mid Victorian bustle, but in these early days, women still wore hooped skirts with drapes and frills and decoration in the back. These gave way to bustles or 'tournures,' and then the overskirt took off--the Polonaise I wore last Sunday was from this period. That ensemble had a very small train, just about six inches, but longer trains were fashionable in the mid 1870's, adding to the fripperies decorating the rear of a gown or dress: trains were often tiered, draped with bunting like pieces that themselves had tassels, bows and the like, and had extra frills wherever they could be added. The sewing machine is almost completely to blame for this craze of adding embellishments on every square inch of a gown or dress.
In architecture, this trend was mirrored by the Victorian style that added carved curlicues, dentelled pediments, arches, trellises, balustrades, towers, balconies and anything else one might imagine one could have on a house.
Ornamentation ruled!
The Late or High Victorian Period saw the silhouette change again. Not surprising, because dragging around a skirt and a half plus a train could not have been very handy or convenient. It's no wonder then that the back bustle and drapery disappeared by the 1880's and just the train was left. What bustles there were, were small pads that helped the train fall well. The silhouette was long and elegant and quite slim, not unlike the Regency look, except that the waistline now extended DOWN below the natural waist, nearly to the hips! This bodice was called a cuirasse bodice, and although it was lovely, only the really slender woman could wear it well. Therefore, by 1885 the bustle was back with a vengeance, as was the corset!
The Late/High Victorian Period now had very little drapery but a metal cage created a hard almost shelf-like protrusion at the back of the gown or dress, and the front of the skirt was flattened again.
Meanwhile, the sleeves, which had remained quite slender and fitted through all of this period, now began to blow up again, as the leg o'mutton style reared its head once more. These larger sleeves led to more accented shoulders, and a tailored and almost military style came into vogue. Not coincidentally, the glimmerings of Women's Emancipation were happening at this time, although more than two decades would pass in the U.S. before women were given the right to vote.
By the 1890's, the cage and shelf look deflated and softened. Women's skirts had folds and pleats and only a very small pad as a bustle by the middle of this decade; trains were still in vogue.
This ushered in La Belle Époque, which lasted until World War One.
During this period, the leg o'mutton sleeves remained and the skirt was wide at the base to balance the silhouette; corsets brought waistlines in more and more tightly, creating a true hourglass shape. In this period, the tailored look continued and even though today's women would undoubtedly find the large puffy sleeves and the flared skirts distinctly un-tailored, in the later 1890's military inspired trims and gored skirts provided a distinctly sharp look to the style. The Gibson Girl had her day in this period, with the ruffled and embroidered shirtwaist (blouse) paired with a full gored skirt. We still only used the small padded bustle, and that would continue until bustles completely fell out of fashion after the start of World War One.
The Edwardians would see the rise of the waistline again and the development of a 'soft corset' and then no corset at all. Before that, however, perhaps as a 'swan song' (pun intended) the corset enjoyed a last 'pouter pigeon' style in the first decade of the 20th century. In this time, a small bustle and long, full, trained skirt shaped like a trumpet was offset by blouses or dress tops with full puffy sleeves, and highlighted by a tiny waist. The waist was cinched so tightly that the hips were thrust back and the torso went forward. The corset of the day, the infamous S shaped corset, brought everything together in a rounded pendulous shape reminiscent of the breast of the pouter pigeon. Huge hats balanced this look, which thankfully only lasted a few years.
By 1910, the waistline was rising, skirts were slimming, and bustles were finally disappearing, giving way to the elegant, Classical line of Edwardian clothing.
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