The Bustle in the Mid-1880s

Bustle dress ca 1885

Loretta reports:

A reader’s comment on my 1885 fashion post, regarding the weight of this type of fashion, sent me in search of more than my vague guess at weight and (in)convenience. While 19th C ladies wore numerous undergarments, I’m focusing on the bustle, since emphasis on the booty is one of the most striking features of the year’s fashions.


From C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington’s The History of Underclothes, I learned that “the name “bustle” was, in the 1880s, considered a little coarse. ‘Tournure’ or ‘dress improver’ was a more ladylike appendage to the lower back.”

The bustle, according to the Cunningtons, “as a separate article from the petticoat with back flouncing, began to return in 1883, in a short form for the walking dress and longer for the evening. By the next year it was either attached to the bodice or the petticoat, or it might be in the form of crescentic steels introduced into the back of the dress itself. By 1885 a horsehair pad, some six inches square and often called a ‘mattress’ was added; the American kind, of wire—‘which answers the purpose much better; was but one of many other varieties. Unlike that used in the 1870s, the bustle of the 1880’s produced a prominence almost at right angles so that it was popularly declared a tea-tray could be comfortably rested on it.”

This image shows the bustles sans accompanying undergarments.

The image at right, also from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gives a better idea of the underpinnings. The bustle is described as “Cotton twill, cotton-braid-covered-steel, and cotton-braid cord.”

1885 undergarments

Here is an 1885 cotton twill and wire bustle from about 1885. This bustle shows a slightly different approach, from about the same time. At the V&A is this bustle pad from France. The item appears in Eleri Lynn's Underwear: Fashion in Detail (2014) with this commentary: “By 1880 the bustle had all but disappeared, making a re-emergence around 1883. However, instead of the low drapery of the mid to late 1870s, the new style was sharp and angular, jutting out at right angles to the body. This square bustle pad is made from glazed calico trimmed with silk cord, and fastened with a waist tape. It is stuffed to a very solid shape with straw and would have been worn with several petticoats.” The book, which I recommend, also shows the steel bustle in closeup.

Given the images and the vast amounts of trimmings on the clothing itself, I’m now inclined to agree with the reader that this fashion would be rather heavy and awkward—for us. The ladies, I assume, would have been accustomed, and mightn't have thought of their clothing in that way.

Images: Woman’s 2-piece silk bustle dress, France, c. 1885, and Bustle and undergarments c 1885, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Costume and Textiles Department.

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. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

Winged Lions' Feet, Dolphins, & Horns-of-Plenty: Sofas for a New America, 1800-1830

Susan reporting,

Last month I visited the Ten Broeck Mansion, an elegant Federal-style house built in Albany, NY. Built in 1797-98 by General Abraham Ten Broeck and his wife, Elizabeth Van Rensselaer, the house sits high on a hill, overlooking the Hudson River. The mansion is currently the home of the Albany County Historical Association, and most of the rooms are shown decorated to reflect the tastes of the early 19thc owners. I will be writing more about the Ten Broeck Mansion in a future blog post, but today I wanted to feature some of the most interesting - at least to me! - pieces of furniture on display: the sofas. (As always, please click on the images to enlarge them.)

Today we think of a sofa (or couch, or sectional) as the most comfortable piece of furniture in most American homes, a large, soft, and often over-stuffed place for serious lounging. The term "couch-potato" is not to be taken lightly when thinking of modern American sofas.

In the 18thc, however, a sofa was still a rarity in most American homes. Instead most homes featured a variety of chairs that were moved around to suit a room's various purposes (dining, receiving visitors, playing cards), and then placed along the walls of the room when not in use. Lounging wasn't the primary goal. In fact, it probably wasn't even possible in most 18thc chairs.

By the early 19thc, however, American homes were grander and larger, and tastes were changing. The classically inspired French Directoire crossed the Atlantic and became American Directory or American Empire, as exemplified by the work of master American cabinet maker and furniture designer Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854.) The style was considered  to possess a particularly patriotic American flavor, incorporating classical design elements much as the American government was modeled on those of Rome and Greece. Acanthus leaves, rosettes, winged lions' paws, and dolphins are ancient motifs, while baskets of fruit, sheaves of wheat, and horns of plenty promised prosperity and abundance for the still-new country.

A sofa in the Directory style became the perfect centerpiece for American parlors, often as part of a matching suite of furnishings. Not only did the sofa display the owners' exquisite taste, but their pocketbook as well. Elaborately carved of imported woods like mahogany and luxuriously upholstered, often in silk, the large and lavish sofa was an expensive status piece.

Alas, tastes in decor are always changing, and what made an imposing statement two hundred years ago is simply too large and unwieldy for modern houses and apartments.  With their minimal cushions, these sofas also don't look up to the task of serious Netflix binge-watching, either.  But for pure craftsmanship and elegant design, I'll take one of these sofas over a sectional any day.

There are numerous sofas from this period on display in the Ten Broeck Mansion. I think I counted at least a half-dozen, each more imaginative than the last, and in beautiful condition. I'm featuring details of the carving from four of them here.

Many thanks to Karen Giordano, Albany County Historical Association, for her assistance with this post.

Top left: Sofa, c. 1800, carved mahogany. On loan from Gladys V. Clark.
Middle left & right: Sofas, c1810-1830, carved mahogany with upholstery. Both on loan from the Museum of the City of New York.
Bottom right: Sofa, c1810-1830, carved mahogany with upholstery. From bedroom furnished by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Photographs ©2018 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Breakfast Links: Week of July 30, 2018

Breakfast Links are served! Our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Jane Austen and the Prince Regent: the very first purchase of an Austen novel.
• Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy; or, the Private Companion of Young Married People, 1832, the first popular manual on birth control and the first book on the subject by a physician.
• Gentle Annie Etheridge: no dainty lady on the Civil War battlefields.
• From billets-doux to swiping right: how the language of dating and courtship has evolved.
• Stunningly beautiful example of Shingle Style Architecture: the 1878 Eustis Estate.
• Image: Scorched by the current heatwave, the landscape surrounding Blenheim Palace reveals the ghostly outlines of the 1705 formal gardens.
• Child stealing in Regency England.
• How romanticized photographs and accounts of St Kilda produced a distorted idea of an idyllic Scottish lifestyle on the islands.
• Making the historical personal: reflections on pregnancy and birth.
• Image: An Italian parasol with beaded mermaids, c1800.
• An afternoon in Great Bardfield.
• Can reading make you happier?
• For workers at the Du Pont power mills, the fear of accidental explosions was constant; 228 people were killed at the mills between 1802-1921.
• Image: The wife of an officer killed at Waterloo had his remains boiled, and one of his vertebrae made into this memento mori box.
• When Golden Girls actress Bea Arthur was a Bernice Frankel, US Marine, and served in World War II.
• The 18thc paintings that inspired the costumes in the 2006 movie Marie Antoinette.
• Louise de Lorraine-Vaudemont, 16thc Queen of France.
• Why some 1880s-1920s gravestones are shaped like tree trunks.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday Video: Dressing an 18thc English Gentleman

Susan reporting,

Here's another wonderful fashion history video from the Lady Lever Art Gallery and National Museums of Liverpool, and a companion to this video demonstrating how an 18thc elite woman dressed for her day.

This jaded gentleman is not so much dressing, as being dressed, languidly presenting himself to his valet. Personally, I want to share this video with every copy editor who has queried the word "fall" in relation to 18thc breeches. One picture (or video!) is worth a thousand words.

Thanks to costume historian Pauline Loven and director Nick Loven of Crow's Eye Productions for sharing their latest video with us.

If you received this video via email, you may be seeing an empty space or black box where the video should be. Please click here to view the video.

Fashions for August 1885

August 1885 fashions

Loretta reports:

C. Willett Cunnington, in English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteen Century, expresses no affection for the fashions of this period. “To appreciate the Bustle Era of the ‘80’s, now at its height, it is necessary to recognize that it was accepted as an alternative to the greater horror of the crinoline. The latter would have made the tailor-made walking dress and impossibility whereas with this excrescence behind progress forward was still possible.”

In introducing us to the 1880s, he writes, “The fashions of the ‘80’s were more remote than those of any other decade from modern standards of taste.” According to him, “The principle was strict, that beauty should make no passionate appeal. The epoch was, above all others, anti-anatomical.”

Not quite the way I see it, but every era has its own interpretation of fashion, and we need to put this fashion historian’s observations in the context of his time. The book was published in 1937.

Fashion plates are from the August 1885 issue of The London and Paris Ladies' Magazine of Fashion, which included back views of the dresses, as you see.

Fashion plate description

Fashion plate description cont'd

Reverse of fashions

Broché: woven with a raised figure; brocade
Crepon: a heavy crepe fabric with lengthwise crinkles
Surah: a soft, twilled silk or rayon fabric

I apologize for the small, blurry description images, and recommend you click on the links for better pictures.
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. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.