FASHION-PLATE FOR 1837. ATTRIBUTED TO "PHIZ."
FASHION PLATE FOR 1851. DRAWN BY JOHN LEECH.
LADIES' FASHIONS, 1854 (THE BLOOMER PERIOD).
Before we approach the "sixties," with their extraordinary revival of the hoop or crinoline fashion, we must remark on the extraordinary fashion-plate promulgated for the year 1854. What would the ladies say to such a tyrannical dictate of fashion to-day? It is inconceivable now; but many a fair dame and damsel seeing it in that year must inwardly have quaked with terror at the prospect of facing her beloved Adolphus in Bloomerian garb. Happily, the prophets proved false for once, and the fashion passed away, just as a year or two ago the threatened crinoline scare passed away with us. Crinoline had to run its course although not before it had been guilty of many enormities, as will be seen by the appended plate. The ladies' heads herein appear but as the apexes of pyramids; and the singular cut of the bodices and the rotundity of the young ladies' skirts appear to us, in this age, ludicrous.
CRINOLINE AT ITS ZENITH. 1865.