Dress

Unknown

ca. 1840 · cotton · Costume Institute

The extravagant silhouette of this day dress with bishop sleeves and pointed boned waist demonstrates the evolution from the nearly amorphous first cotton dresses of the century to the grandest crinoline-supported crystal palaces of the 1860s. It is a dress fit for a heroine in a novel by one of the Brontë sisters--shaped, expressive, tempestuous, and beguiling. And tightly, tightly corsetted on a summer's day.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 1840

Medium

cotton

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Richard Martin and Harold Koda, in honor of Cora Ginsburg, 1993