What Is Victorian Fashion?

Where did Victorian fashion come from?

Victorian fashion takes its name from Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, and it grew out of the 1830s silhouette of bell-shaped skirts, full sleeves and a near-natural waist. The high waist of Regency fashion had slipped down by degrees through the 1820s to reach that point.

Three developments then changed how clothes were made, coloured and designed:

• The sewing machine, in use from the mid-1850s and general by the mid-1860s, drove the mass production of clothes and expanded ready-to-wear.
• Synthetic dyes spread after William Henry Perkin patented aniline purple, later called mauve, in 1856. By the mid-to-late 1860s vivid, contrasting colours were firmly in fashion.
• Parisian couture rose with Charles Frederick Worth, an Englishman in Paris who opened his own house in 1858 and is often called the father of haute couture.

What are the defining pieces of Victorian fashion?

The defining pieces of Victorian fashion are the structures under women’s dresses (the corset, the cage crinoline and the bustle), the fitted bodice, and for men the frock coat, morning coat, lounge suit and silk top hat.

Women’s dress

• Corset. Corsets, or stays, shaped the bust, waist and hips. Early Victorian ones were usually hand-sewn cotton stiffened with busks and boning, often baleen (whalebone). Steel boning later let corsets press harder on the waist, which drew growing controversy over health.
• Crinoline. The word first meant a stiff cloth of woven horsehair and linen used for petticoats. From 1856 it also named the cage crinoline, a frame of steel hoops widening towards the hem.
• Bustle. Introduced as a separate undergarment in the 1870s and also called a dress-improver or tournure, the bustle held the skirt out behind the body, often over a long train.

Menswear

By the 1860s the black wool frock coat, with its waist seam and full skirt, was the coat for formal daywear, a role it kept until the turn of the century as the morning coat, cut away at the front, slowly replaced it. The rising alternative was the sack, or lounge, jacket: straight, loose and without a waist seam. Worn with a matching waistcoat and trousers, the lounge suit became the most common choice for working men by the 1890s and arguably formed the foundation of the modern three-piece suit.

Mourning dress

During Victoria’s reign, and particularly after Prince Albert died in 1861, correct mourning became an increasingly important sign of respectability. A widow’s full mourning lasted a year, in matt black fabrics, above all crêpe (often spelt crape), a crimped cloth often of worsted and silk; grey and subtle purples came later, in half-mourning.

How did Victorian fashion change over time?

Victorian fashion changed almost every decade, and the quickest dating clue is where the volume sits: in the sleeves and a bell-shaped skirt at the start, all round the hem around 1860, behind the body for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and in the upper sleeves in the 1890s.

Dress reform

By the 1890s dress reformers, concerned with maternity or general health, offered plain, unstructured corsets such as one stamped “RATIONAL” Style 444. Simpler skirts reflected the “New Woman” movement’s interest in physical freedom, and some avant-garde women gave up stays altogether. The period ended with Victoria’s reign in 1901, giving way to Edwardian fashion.

How do you wear Victorian fashion today without looking like a costume?

Take one Victorian idea at a time and wear it with modern hair, shoes and proportions. Costume comes from stacking period signals; one signal worn with plain trousers or jeans reads as a choice.

• The day bodice line. 1860s day bodices had long sleeves and high necklines; a blouse cut the same way, tucked into straight trousers, keeps the line.
• The 1890s sleeve. Put the volume in the upper sleeve and keep the forearm and hips narrow.
• Volume behind. Fullness at the back of a skirt or coat nods to the bustle.
• Menswear. A single-breasted waistcoat over an open-necked shirt, or a matching three-piece lounge suit, borrows the period without the frock coat.
• Colour. Mauve, the strong contrasts of the late 1860s, or matt black, which a Victorian would have read as mourning.
• The corset question. Victorian corsets were underwear. If you want the shape, wear a boned bodice over a plain shirt and keep everything else modern.

Where do you find authentic Victorian pieces?

Authentic Victorian clothing comes from the antique and vintage fashion trade: specialist antique costume and textile dealers, auction-house costume and textile sales, and antique fairs. Expect alterations. Victorians re-pleated skirts onto makeshift waistbands when the crinoline was abandoned in the late 1860s, and updated plain silks of the 1860s to 1880s with sections of contrasting velvet, so a changed piece is not necessarily a fake.

Buy originals mainly to keep and study. For wearing, go to independent makers: historical dressmakers, tailors and corsetiers who cut from period patterns can make a reproduction to your measurements, so ask which original their pattern follows. Designer pieces with Victorian details come last. Compare anything with dated examples in the V&A and Met online collections.

How do you tell a genuine Victorian garment from a reproduction?

Turn the garment inside out: a genuine piece shows the stitching, labels, fastenings and fibres of its decade, and anything later should look like an alteration.

• Stitching. Sewing machines came into use in the mid-1850s and were not general until the mid-1860s, so machine stitching in a piece sold as earlier than the mid-1850s suggests a later alteration. A chain stitch, the kind the earliest machines made, points to the 1850s or 1860s. Finishing, oversewing and trimmings stayed hand-stitched.
• The dress band. Look inside the bodice waist for a band printed or woven with a dressmaker’s name. The earliest date from the late 1860s, and makers’ labels never appear before the 1850s, so a missing label is normal.
• Zips. A zip means a later alteration or a reproduction: zips reached garments only in the 1930s and are rarely found before 1939.
• Fibres. Nylon, acrylic and polyester appear in British garments from the early 1950s, so a synthetic lining or thread means a 20th-century repair or a reproduction.
• Silk. Chemical finishes on silks from the 1890s, especially lining silks, caused splitting and shattering in dresses and petticoats of about 1890 to 1920. Such silk is too fragile to wear.
• Silhouette. The original cut should match a single decade, allowing for period alterations. A right-angled bustle means the 1880s. Huge upper sleeves mean the 1890s, unless they sit over an ankle-length skirt, which points to the 1830s.