Description:
Woman's bustle made of steel and leather. This bustle is a great example of one owned and worn in the Connecticut River Valley's southern Vermont area of Brattleboro. By the late 1860s, fashionable skirt shapes changed to be more eliptical in shape. At the same time, skirt fabric started to be draped up in back, which formed the basis of the bustle style, a mass of volume at the lower back of women's dresses. Made of flexible steel wire and covered with cotton or linen (and sometimes reinforced with leather), bustles were smaller versions of wire hoop skirts, and could be worn in tandem with hoop skirts to achieve the fashionable silhouette. Into the 1870s, skirts became more fitted, and bustles sat lower or were eliminated, By the mid-1880s, the bustle had returned in full force, with a shelf-like projection characteristic to women's dress. By the early 1890s, the buslte had been reduced to a small pad, and eventually completely eliminated. During their heyday, bustles and hoop skirts were available either mail order or else to be purchased at general stores, including the Avery general store in Charlemont, Massachusetts.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2015.14.5 |
