The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1870
"Jno. Bordley, Photographer, Settle" ca. 1870
(The bustle has arrived, and with it flounces, frills, fringes, braid, ribbons
and laces. This is quite a plain example from the decade.)
"Crinolines, I regret to say, were dead before my memory was alive, and [Grandmamma] wore a maize-coloured silk dress with many flounces of lace down the front of the skirt, from underneath which, as she walked, only the tips of her toes appeared. On her head was a bonnet with purple strings tied underneath her chin and according to the weather she wore a seal-skin jacket or an Indian shawl of many colours. Am I wrong in thinking that she held in her hand a chain with a hook or a clip at the end of it which prevented her skirt from trailing in the mud?
E.F. Benson, As We Were: A Victorian Peep-Show.
NEW - Cabinet photograph, no photographer's name, ca. 1872-1874
(This stylish young lady is turned out in an elegant, but not unduly exaggerated, version of the bustle dress of the 1870s. The front of the dress, with its apron overskirt and flounces down the skirt, was copied almost directly from the styles of the late 17th century.)
Journal Des Demoiselles, 1874
(Since most fashionable dress ornamentation was on the back and train of the
skirt, fashion plate artists often used to depict their subjects from behind.)
Peterson's Magazine, 1874
NEW - Peterson's Magazine, 1875
"Stewart & Co. - Melbourne"
- Cabinet photograph, ca. 1876
Journal des Demoiselles, 1876
"H.H. Winter, The Alexandra Rooms", ca. 1877 - 1880"
(From very wide fashions to extremely narrow ones in fifteen short years. In
the late 1870s the bustle went into a brief hiatus. This example could be from
any date in the late 1870s or the early 1880s. The skirt fits tightly over the
hips, while the "Elizabethan" collar and sleeves add a novel touch.)
Peterson's Magazine, 1878
"E.C. Waddington & Co. ... Elizabeth
Street, Melbourne". Cabinet photograph ca. 1879
(Another example of the narrow, sinuous line fashionable at the end of the decade.
The sitter wears the long, close-fitting "Jersy" or "curiass"
bodice which was popular at the time.)
