Victorian fashion facts for kids
Victorian fashion refers to the various fashions and trends in British culture in the United Kingdom and the British Empire throughout the Victorian era, roughly 1830s to 1900s. The period saw many changes in fashion, including changes in clothing, architecture, literature, and visual arts.
In the early days of the fashion, female dresses were simple and pale. Modesty was a very important feature of Victorian Fashion, dresses that covered the arms and went right down to the ankles were favoured.
By 1907, clothing was increasingly factory-made and often sold in large, fixed price department stores. Custom sewing and home sewing were still significant, but on the decline. New machinery and materials developed clothing in many ways.
The introduction of the lock-stitch sewing machine in mid-century simplified home and boutique dressmaking. It made it easy to add trimmings which would be costly if done by hand. Lace machinery made lace at a fraction of the cost of the old hand-made lace. Inventors developed new, cheap, bright dyes like mauveine which replaced the old animal or vegetable dyes.
Images for kids
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1844 fashion plate depicting fashionable clothing for men and women, including illustrations of a glove and bonnets
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Picture of 1850s evening dress with a bertha neckline
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Engageants
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1837 dress
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1840s dress
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1850s dress
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1856 cage crinoline
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1860s cage crinoline
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1860s dress
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1870s dress
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1870s tournure
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A Victorian dandy pictured in the 1840s
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Emma Hill by Ford Madox Brown (1853), a woman wearing a later version of the poke bonnet
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Drawing of Victorian men 1870s
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Victoria's five daughters (Alice, Helena, Beatrice, Victoria and Louise), photographed wearing mourning black beneath a bust of their late father, Prince Albert (1862)
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"The proper length for little girls' skirts at various ages", from Harper's Bazaar, showing a 1900 idea of how the hemline should descend towards the ankle as a girl got older
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id-Victorian interior: Hide and Seek by James Tissot, c. 1877
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ress designed by Charles Frederick Worth for Elisabeth of Austria painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.
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[William Powell Frith]]'s painting of 1883 contrasts women's Aesthetic dress (left and right) with fashionable attire (center).
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ay dress, c. 1875 James Tissot painting.
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Whistler]]'s Portrait of Lady Meux, 1882
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Renoir]]'s portrait of Jeanne Samary in an evening gown, 1878
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ortrait by Alexander Melville of Queen Victoria, 1845
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An artistic interior: Dante Gabriel Rossetti reading to Theodore Watts-Dunton in the drawing room at No. 16 Cheyne Walk, 1882
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Men's swimwear: Cartoon from Punch by George du Maurier
