An 1880s Bustle Gown, Intriguingly Unfinished

Susan reporting,

Here's another fascinating garment from the Fashion Unraveled exhibition currently at the Museum at FIT in New York through November 17, 2018 (The first I shared was this 18thc gentleman's waistcoat that was remade for a woman in the 1950s). As the Museum's notes explain, this exhibition isn't about perfectly preserved, pristine garments. Instead, it "highlights the aberrant beauty in flawed objects, giving precedence to garments that have been altered, left unfinished, or deconstructed."

As a fiction writer, I'd add one more to that list: garments that survive in such an interesting state that they beg to tell their story.

This white bustle gown from the 1880s is instantly intriguing. Even an untrained eye would see that there's something not quite right about it. Instead of the usual crisp, almost architectural lines characteristic of fashion of the period, this gown seems almost droopy. There's a reason for this, of course: it was never finished. The brown silk taffeta trim is only basted into place (the long white running stitches are quite visible), the raw-edged trim is still tentatively arranged in some places, and the gathers that arrange the bustle and overskirt are decidedly lopsided. The cream-colored wool was never steamed and pressed, leaving the seams soft and bulky, almost rumpled.

And yet this was clearly going to be a stylish gown, and likely a costly one, too. Even if a customer changed her mind in the middle of the process, why wasn't it remodeled to fit another wearer? Why wasn't all that brown taffeta and raw-edge, fringed trim removed to use in another way? Why was it simply abandoned in this tantalizing state?

No one today has the answers. But it could certainly inspire a wealth of fictional explanations, couldn't it?

Dress, c1880, USA. Museum at FIT.
Photographs ©2018 by Susan Holloway Scott.