ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

AND FASHION

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ith a Little Help from Hisigazine, 5 June 1977.

Fashions for the Seventies—" New York Times, 12 August

Dennita Sewell

BUSINESS CASUAL. See Casual Business Dress.

BUSTLE Exaggeration of the feminine posterior has->een a perix*tic theme in W7estern fashion for several hun-dred years. The pulled-back overskirts of late-seventeenthand early-eighteenth-century mantuas (loose-fittinggowns) emphasized this area, and pads or "cork rumps"sometimes supported the swagged-up styles of the late1770s and 1780s. Even early-nineteenth-century neo-classical dresses often featured a small back pad—a so-called artificial hump—to give the high-waisted line agraceful flow. As waists lowered and skirts widened, thepad was retained, and by the late 1820s it was called abustle. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century fullskirts were enhanced by a small bustle made of padding,whalebone, or even inflatable rubber. In the 1870s and1880s, however, both the skirt support and the silhouettecreated by the bustle became the focus of fashion.

In an age when men and women were considered tohave distinct social roles, the late nineteenth century as-sumed the natural forms of the two genders also diverged.One arbiter of etiquette and aesthetics, "Professor"Thomas E. Hill, explained that, in contrast to the broad-shouldered male, the female figure is characterized bynarrow, sloped shoulders but width across "the lower por-tion of the form." He stated that to avoid looking "mas-culine and unnatural," women's dresses should be tighton top while dressmakers are "permitted to arrange tuckand bow and flounce without stint below the waist."These enhanced derrieres proportionately lessenedwomen's small waists, produced by corseting. The ideathat women are naturally steatopygous or fat-buttockedis no more aberrant than the late-twentieth-century ideathat all women should have "buns of steel."

The bustle, also known as a tournure, pannier, ordress improver, could be made in a wide variety of ma-terials and shapes. Some types were full length, such assprung steel half hoopskirts called crinolettes and petti-coats with adjustable inset steels. Many bustles, however,were made to pad only the rump area, secured to thewearer by a buckled waistband. These could be simplerectangular- or crescent-shaped pads filled with horse-hair or other stuffing, but more intricate forms includeddown-filled devices and puffed or ruffled constructionsof crinoline or stiff fabric such as tampico hemp. WTovenwire mesh bustles were advertised as not only cooler thanpadding, but uncrushable, eliminating the need for

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furtive rearrangement after sitting. Other structures fea-tured several metal springs arranged vertically, placed alarge crescent-shaped spring horizontally below thewaist, or had projecting steel half hoops that adjusted withlacing and claimed to cleverly fold up when the wearersat down.

The material used to create bustles was seeminglyendless: M. V. Hughes in her memoir A London Child ofthe Seventies (Oxford University Press, p. 84) recalls thatan acquaintance used The Times newspaper to achieve hereffective bustle, saying, "I find its paper so good, far moresatisfactory than the Daily News." Petticoats, often withlayers of ruffles down the back, helped smooth the lineof the bustle pad and support bustled skirts.

By 1868, the fullness of women's skirts had movedto the back, and a bustle was needed to support fashion-able puffed overskirts and large sashes. The high back in-terest continued in the early 1870s as the bustle graduallyswelled in size. Although the back of the skirt remainedthe dominant feature, the silhouette slimmed down afterabout 1875, when the skirt and petticoats, drawn backlow and close to the figure and usually flowing into a longtrain, were often unsupported by a bustle. In the early1880s, the bustle returned in dramatic proportions, of-ten forming a shelflike protuberance at right angles tothe wearer's body. An examination of images of fashion-able women in extreme bustle dresses would lead an im-partial observer to conclude—as Bernard Rudofskyproposed in the 1940s—that skirts shaped in this pecu-liar way must contain a second pair of legs behind thewomen's normal ones.

The wardrobe of a woman of the time included achemise, drawers, corset, corset cover, stockings, and sev-eral petticoats, as well as a bustle. The bustle's size wasaccentuated by all the features of fashionable dresses, in-cluding tight sleeves, tight-fitting bodices with back tails,and elaborately constructed skirts with back poufs, swags,gathering, pleating, draperies, and asymmetrical effects.While a few called for reform of feminine dress for artis-tic and health reasons, most accepted women's convo-luted clothing as in accord with High Victorian taste,with its love of the ornate, ostentatious, and overdone. Afashionable woman, dressed in a horsehair or spring bus-tle, layers of undergarments, and rich, heavy fabricstrimmed with fringe, did present an upholstered effect,similar to an overstuffed sofa of the time, both expensive,decorative objects. In 1899, Thorstein Veblen's The The-ory of the Leisure Class introduced ideas, such as the con-ferring of status by "conspicuous consumption,"reflecting the bustle period's excesses. Yet to most con-temporaries, highly contrived feminine clothing was notseen as contradictory to the spirit of this "age ofprogress," but rather as a concomitant of civilization,showing commercial enterprise and mechanical ingenu-ity and firmly establishing the "civilized" division of thesexes. Throughout the period, although ridiculed, thebustle silhouette was widely accepted and worn by women

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BUSTLE

FASHION

Women wearing bustles. Bustles have been an element of Western fashion intermittently since the seventeenth century. Women'sdresses were form-fitting on top and created with a tuck and flounce in the back, below the waist, to avoid appearing masculine.© BETTMAN/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

from all classes, as well as by little girls with their shortskirts. As The Delineator noted in February 1886 (p. 99),some women did not wear a bustle pad, "except whensuch an adjunct if necessitated by a ceremonious toilette,"relying instead on a flounced petticoat to support thedrapery of simpler dresses.

After about 1887 the bustle reduced in size and skirtsbegan to slim. The skirts of the early 1890s featured someback fullness, but emphasis had shifted to flared skirt hemsand enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves, and bustle supportswere not as fashionable. With skirts fitting snugly to thehips and derriere in the late 1890s, however, some womenrelied on skirt supports to achieve a gracefully roundedhipline that set off a small waist. While not as extreme asexamples from the mid-1880s, the woven wire or quiltedhip pads worn beyond the turn of century show the tenac-ity of the full-hipped female ideal.

Despite some historians' view that bustle fashions weresurely the most hideous ever conceived, this very femi-nine silhouette has continued to fascinate. In the late 1930s,

Elsa Schiaparelli made playful homage to the bustle insome of her sleek evening dresses, while late-twentieth-century bustle interpretations by avant-garde designers,such as Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood, haveutilized the form with historically informed irony.

See also Mantua; Skirt Supports.

( BIBLIOGRAPHY "/^»Blumr SX£&*r~f>*ictorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazar

1861-1898. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1974.

Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women's Clothing in the Nine-teenth Century, London: Faber and Faber, 1937. Reprint,New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990.

Gernsheim, Alison. Fashion and Reality: 1840-1914. London:Faber and Faber, 1963. Reprint as Victorian and EdwardianFashion: A Photographic Survey. New York: Dover Publica-tions, Inc., 1981.

Hill, Thomas E. Never Give a Lady a Restive Horse. From Man-ual of Social and Business Forms: Selections. 1873. Also fromAlbum of Biography and Art. 1881. Reprint, Berkeley, Calif.:Diablo Press, 1967.

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