wedding dress & bonnet & bustle

Summary

Bodice : Grey silk poplin, trimmed with white lace. High neck. Three quarter sleeves. Long pointed waist. Front fastening. Sleeves, neck and front trimmed with lace. Skirt : With draped panniers, bouffant at the back falling into a train with pleated edge. Skirt with pleated and lace frill. Lace frilled front panel with spray of orange blossom. Bustle : Separate bustle of cotton with twelve semi-circular steels, with additional laced cage at waist. Bonnet : Grey silk and cream lace trimmed with grey feathers. Fawn strings.

Display Label

At various points in history, women have worn padding which is specifically aimed at enlarging the rump area. Often this has been associated with a generally full skirt, but sometimes the focus has been extreme, as in the 1880s shelf-like bustle which protruded horizontally outwards from the waist and looked bizarrely artificial. A range of styles of bustles, skirt pads or "false rumps" were manufactured in the later eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century. The 1830s, 1870s and 1880s were the peak periods for these pads, but smaller ones were worn periodically during the 1890s and 1900s. Each time, advertisements and prints portrayed an exaggerated type of hourglass figure, with emphasis on the bottom balanced by similar stress on the bust and full gigot sleeves. Materials employed by the makers of these artificial aids were varied, including horsehair, buckram, covered cane and even metal wire or rubber.