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Women's fashionable clothing began with a straight, Regency silhouette, bloomed into exaggerated skirts and sleeves, moved to small shoulders and even wider skirts supported by crinolines or hoops, and narrowed by way of the bustle to hobble skirts. Charles Frederick Worth, the "father of haute couture" and the prototype of the fashion designer as the dictator of modes, was a London draper who relocated to Paris in the 1840s. His success led to the fall of Paris fashion houses as arbiters of style and the preferred clothiers for upper-class women in both Britain and US. Reactions to the elaborate confections of French fashion led to various calls for reform on the grounds of both beauty (Artistic and Aesthetic dress) and health (dress reform). Arthur Lasenby Liberty challenged the dominance of French fashion when he showed English gowns in Paris at the end of the century.
New machinery and materials changed clothing in many ways. The introduction of the lock-stitch sewing machine in mid-century simplified both home and boutique dressmaking, and enabled a fashion for lavish application of trim that would have been prohibitively time-consuming if done by hand. Lace machinery made lace at a fraction of the cost of the old, laborious methods. New materials from far-flung British colonies gave rise to new types of clothing (such as rubber making gumboots and mackintoshes possible). Chemists developed new, cheap, bright dyes that displaced the old animal or vegetable dyes.
Methods of clothing production and distribution varied enormously over the course of Victoria's long reign. In 1837, cloth was manufactured (in the mill towns of northern England, Scotland, and Ireland) but clothing was generally custom-made by seamstresses, milliners, tailors, hatters, glovers, corsetiers, and many other specialized tradespeople, who served a local clientele in small shops. Families who could not afford to patronize specialists, made their own clothing, or bought and modified used clothing. By 1907, clothing was increasingly factory-made and sold in large, fixed price department stores. Custom sewing and home sewing were still significant, but on the decline.
VICTORIAN FASHION: Women
