3-085-981 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ladies' Pages: a stylish cloth gown, 1898. 'Many examples...were shown me in Lutetian ateliers, as well as that other forthcoming visitation of the flounced and trailing skirt with which we are to sweep up the Park dust later on. To be quite modish will then indeed involve some pains and penalties to us, if profit to our laundress and dressmaker. An adaptation of the first-mentioned mode is illustrated in this number, which retains the novelty but condones the ugliness at which I have been tilting my goosequill. The offending flounce, as joined on here, is less full and less wide, while the manner in which this lighter shade of cloth is brought up apron-fashion in front and continued on bodice gives a certain style lacking in many more pronounced examples of "the latest" skirt. Two shades of plum colour compose this dress, the lighter tone being heavily braided with dark narrow purple braid. A white tulle bow enlivens the neck, and on a grey straw toque white plumes are fastened with a large jewelled buckle, a garniture of plum-coloured miroir velvet twisting itself about the crown.' From "Illustrated London News", 1898.