Photograph of a Seated Young Woman, 1880s

This sitter is dressed in a bodice and skirt with several distinct features that help date the photograph to the 1880s, probably the earlier part of the decade. Her bodice is constructed with both vertical and horizontal darts, and it buttons down the front with a turn-down collar. At her neck she wears an inner washable collar and a jabot that fans out across the upper bodice. One of the most interesting features of her appearance is her hairstyle with its curled bangs. Several photographs in Joan Severa’s Dressed for the Photographer show similar bodices and hairstyles dated to the early 1880s (Severa 1995: 392, 393, 396, 400).

Our sitter clearly wears a bustle style skirt, but it is difficult to date without a full-length view. In the 1870s, bustle silhouettes were created by draping the fabric across the front of the skirt, like an apron, and gathering it into the back. In 1878, Parisian couturiers slimmed down the silhouette by placing the bustle lower on the body, and pairing it with the long, narrow cuirass bodice. This silhouette lasted until 1882, when the high bustle returned to fashion with extreme dimensions achievable only with a substructure, also called a bustle.

The young woman in this photograph has a bustle that is not the full-blown style of the later 1880s, but neither is it the tightly-fitted skirt seen in fashion plates (see Fashion Plate 1880s, “cuirass bodice” from La Mode Illustrée as well as the Photograph of a Standing Woman, ca. 1880, URI 1954.25.23). While fashion plates illustrate idealized styles, photographs show how fashion was worn by average American women.

References

Joan Severa, Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840-1900. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995.