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History of the 1800’s Costumes
The term "Victorian fashion" refers to fashion in clothing in the Victorian era, or the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). It is strictly used only with regard to the United Kingdom and its colonies, but is often used loosely to refer to Western fashions of the period. It may also refer to a supposedly unified style in clothing, home décor, manners, and morals, or a culture, said to be prevalent in the West during this period.
Methods of clothing production and distribution varied enormously over the course of Victoria's long reign.
In 1837, cloth was manufactured (in the mill towns of northern England, Scotland, and Ireland) but clothing was generally custom-made by seamstresses, milliners, tailors, hatters, glovers, corsetiers, and many other specialized tradespeople, who served a local clientele in small shops. Families who could not afford to patronize specialists, made their own clothing, or bought and modified used clothing.
By 1907, clothing was increasingly factory-made and sold in large, fixed price department stores. Custom sewing and home sewing were still significant, but on the decline.
New machinery and materials changed clothing in many ways.
The introduction of the lock-stitch sewing machine in mid-century simplified both home and boutique dressmaking, and enabled a fashion for lavish application of trim that would have been prohibitively time-consuming if done by hand. Lace machinery made lace at a fraction of the cost of the old, laborious methods.
New materials from far-flung British colonies gave rise to new types of clothing (such as rubber making gumboots and mackintoshes possible). Chemists developed new, cheap, bright dyes that displaced the old animal or vegetable dyes.
Women’s Clothing
Women's fashionable clothing began with a straight, Regency silhouette, bloomed into exaggerated skirts and sleeves, moved to small shoulders and even wider skirts supported by crinolines or hoops, and narrowed by way of the bustle to hobble skirts.
Charles Frederick Worth, the "father of haute couture" and the prototype of the fashion designer as the dictator of modes, was a London draper who relocated to Paris in the 1840s. His success led to the fall of Paris fashion houses as arbiters of style and the preferred clothiers for upper-class women in both Britain and US.
Reactions to the elaborate confections of French fashion led to various calls for reform on the grounds of both beauty (Artistic and Aesthetic dress) and health (dress reform). Arthur Lasenby Liberty challenged the dominance of French fashion when he showed English gowns in Paris at the end of the century.
Some people now look back on the Victorian era with wistful nostalgia. They imagine a dream world of lacy dresses, lavish balls, country house parties, and charming cottages surrounded by old-fashioned flowers (see, for example, the paintings of Thomas Kinkade). Historians would say that this is as much a distortion of the real history as the stereotypes emphasizing Victorian repression and prudery.
Fashion bloomers (skirted)
The original bloomers were an article of women's clothing invented by Elizabeth Smith Miller but popularized by Amelia Bloomer in the early 1850s (hence the name, a shortening of "Bloomer suit"). They were long baggy pants narrowing to a cuff at the ankles (worn below a skirt), intended to preserve Victorian decency while being less of a hindrance to women's activities than the long full skirts of the period (see Victorian dress reform). They were worn by a few women in the 1850s, but were widely ridiculed in the press, and failed to become commonly accepted (see 1850s in fashion). These early bloomers were partly an attempt to adapt young girls' short skirts and pantalettes to adult women's attire, and were partly influenced by middle-eastern clothing styles (or what was thought to be middle-eastern styles) — hence the name "Syrian costume".[1]
The word "bloomers" was sometimes used for the wearers of the garments, rather than the garments themselves.
In 1909, fashion designer Paul Poiret attempted to popularize harem pants worn below a long flaring tunic, but this attempted revival of fashion bloomers under another name, did not catch on.
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