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VICTORIAN DRESSES FROM THE LATE 18TH CENTURY AND THE CALL FOR DRESS REFORM

Full-length brown striped dress hanging from a cabinet door.

Wedding dress of Louisa Combs Porter, married in September 1870. Two piece, brown with cream and rust stripes silk dress. The high neck and long hemline are characteristic of Victorian dresses of the late 1800s (1).

Back of Louisa Combs Porter’s wedding dress. Note the back bustle, characteristic of Victorian dresses of the late 1800s.

A black and white photograph of a woman wearing a full-length dress. She is outdoors, standing in the grass with foliage behind her.

Louisa Combs Porter wearing her wedding dress. Note the amount of fabric gathered into the back bustle and the way the dress is dragging along the ground (2).

Full-length white dress with blue highlights hanging from a cabinet door.

Wedding dress of Mary Hendry, married April 5, 1876. Blue gray taffeta dress with a high neck, back bustle, and a train that are characteristic of Victorian dresses from the late 1800s (3).

A scanned page from "The Woman's Journal: Boston, Saturday, November 15, 1902." All text, no images.

“A Protest Against Trails” article from The Woman’s Journal, November 16, 1902. View image within database by clicking here, seq 370 (4).

Historical illustration of a woman wearing a full-length dress, holding a hat in one hand and raising her other hand above her head.

Gibson Girl depicted in Ladies Home Journal, 1902, drawn by Charles Dana Gibson, an illustrator for many popular magazines (5).

The wedding dresses of Louisa Combs Porter, 1870, and Mary Hendry, 1876, are both highly characteristic of Victorian dresses from the late 1800s. The 1870 dress features a high neck, back bustle, and a long hemline that appears to be dragging along the ground as Porter wears the dress, all of which were common for this time period, especially this decade when additional layers of fabric most often were gathered into a bustle (6). The 1876 wedding dress incorporates even more fabric, including in the back where a crinolette could have possibly been used to fill out the layers, and a longer hemline in the form of a train that would have dragged behind Hendry as she wore it (7). These characteristics would have made the dress heavy, hard to move around in, and unsanitary as it trailed along the ground, a common complaint among women about trains that is clearly articulated in “A Protest Against Trails” from The Woman’s Journal, in which the detrimental effects of wearing a train are highlighted (8). Because of this, many women called for dress reform in the late 1800s and early 1900s to allow them greater access to being active members of society through the implementation of simple, healthy, and practical clothes (9). There were many motivations for such reform, including concerns about health, lack of beauty, and social and political inferiority implied through dress styles (10). Many argued that the large amounts of fabric and the undergarments that accompanied these dresses, such as corsets and crinolettes, were putting stress on women’s bodies that was unhealthy and that because it created an unnatural body shape, it was hindering women’s natural beauty (11). Others argued that the restriction of the dresses and undergarments led to women’s restriction from society, making it harder for them to work, get an education, or participate in politics (12). For these women, the choice to reform their dress was purposefully meant to increase their level of independence and freedoms within society (13). Those calling for reform were helped along by the emergence of the idea of the Gibson Girl, a depiction of a woman in advertising that was characterized by her beauty and her active role in the world (14). This concept ushered in new attitudes about what role women could have in society along with a clothing style to match that role (15). These new styles were known as the shirtwaist, a simple blouse and skirt that had less embellishment and fabric, and the rainy daisy skirt, which had a shorter hemline (16). Dress reformers sought to gain greater freedoms through their changed clothing styles, and the popularity of the shirtwaist and daisy skirt, and the social ideas that accompanied it, allowed an increased level of involvement in society for women.

1 Wedding dress, 1870, Fayetteville, AR, University of Arkansas Museum Collections.
2 Louisa Combs Porter in her wedding dress, Photograph, Fayetteville, AR, University of Arkansas Museum Collections.
3 Wedding dress, 1876, Fayetteville, AR, University of Arkansas Museum Collections.
4 Alice Stone Blackwell and H.B. Blackwell, “A Protest Against Trails,” The Woman’s Journal, November 16, 1902, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
5 Charles Dana Gibson, Gibson Girl, 1902, Illustration, Ladies Home Journal, in Daniel Delis Hill, As Seen in Vogue: A Century of American Fashion in Advertising, (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004), 23.
5 Lydia Edwards, How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 94, 100.
6 Ibid, 94.
7 Blackwell and Blackwell, “A Protest Against Trails.”
8 Patricia A Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art, (Ashland: Kent State University Press, 2015), 1, 3.
9 Ibid, 5-6.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid, 6.
12 Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, “Refashioning the New Woman: Women’s Dress, the Oriental Style, and the Construction of American Feminist Imagery in the 1910s,” Journal of Women’s History 27, no. 2 (2015), 16.
13 Hill, As Seen in Vogue, 23.
14 Ibid, 24.
15 Ibid.