Dress

Charles Frederick Worth was the first creator of haute couture in history. For the first time, a dressmaker designed outfits and presented them, made up and worn by models, to his clients, in the first fashion shows in his salon. The clients chose an outfit, and this was then made to measure, with a label embroidered with the designer's name sewn inside as the signature on the finished work. From mid-nineteenth-century Paris this new fashion system spread throughout the West as haute couture established itself as the driving force of dress design.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the fashion dictated that these dresses should compress the woman's figure, severely narrowing the waist by means of a whalebone corset, and flare out the skirts to maximum width, supported by a new invention, the crinoline, whose structure of steel hoops held in place by ribbons substituted for the numerous petticoats previously worn under the skirt, which spread out around the lower body in a bell shape. Almost universally worn by women of all classes, the crinoline dress was the butt of jokes in the press, occasioned by the humorous or even dangerous situations it could cause, although at the same time it freed women from the considerable weight of a large number of petticoats.

Starting from a perfect circle, the quantity of material in the dresses gradually increased, this being gathered in a bustle at the back, as in the model shown here. The spectacular nature of women's dresses in this period, in fabrics of the most diverse colours and textures, with abundant ornamentation, was in marked contrast to the men's suits, always in dark colours, and discreet to the point of invisibility.

These dresses composed of two parts were often presented in two different versions, with the same skirt: the model for day wear, as we see in the picture, with a front-buttoning body and long sleeves, and the sleeveless model for evening wear, with a deep neckline.