Fashions for Sometime in 1896

Walking Dresses 1896

Loretta reports:

My searches online produced a wealth of 1890s fashion plates. Unfortunately, nobody ever saved the fashion descriptions. However, what turned up in the Met collections is, despite the lack of documentation, unexpectedly enlightening.There are descriptions, in French, which I leave you to translate. But what’s unusual about these images is that they appear to be colorized photographs: in other words, these aren’t the stylized images that portray anatomically impossible women’s bodies (please compare and contrast with images in my post of October 2016). I imagine some 19th century version of photoshopping went on, but at least these offer a much better sense of the clothing.

La Mode Pratique was a lovely magazine. If you’re interested in 1880s-1920s French fashion, you might want to look at this blog for samples of the pages. At the bottom of the page are links to more posts about the magazine.

Evening Dress 1896

Images courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dresses 1896

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.