Dress

Unknown

1858–60 · silk · Costume Institute

Gargantuan sizes and swelled diameters enabled by crinolines in the late 1850s and 1860s resulted in some dresses of Crystal Palace simplification. Others dresses took the grandiose scale as an extravagant, flamboyant fate, providing eye-popping color and pattern. A colorful leaf motif combined with this silhouette makes for no wallflower, but rather the confident style of the Second Empire in France and the Civil War years in the United States.

Artist

Unknown

Date

1858–60

Medium

silk

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Dr. Gilman Sterling Currier, 1953