American

In addition to the enveloping application of pleats, gathers, and caterpillar fringe, this 1884 dress is defined by its “centaur” silhouette, created by the juxtaposition of tightly fitted bodice and shelf-like bustle. As Marcel Proust wrote in In Search of Lost Time, women were “either straightlaced to suffocation or else completely buried” in “the architecture of these fripperies.”

An 1882 article in The Decorator and Furnisher describes similar styles in home decor: “The Parisian tapissier [upholsterer] gathers up, crumples, and rumples plush, broche (brocaded) silks, lampas, satins, and scores of rich tissues that Lyon is continually turning out, with an art, a grace, an indescribable chic of the Parisian modistes and dressmakers.”