Aesthetic Dress: Victorian Artistic Rebellion & Liberty’s Influence (1870s-1890s)

Not everyone approved of the tightly corseted extremes of fashion which were emerging in the second half of the nineteenth century. In artistic and literary circles, aesthetes such as artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, designer William Morris and writer Oscar Wilde reacted against what they saw as tasteless Victorian mass production, constraints on artistic and literary expression and the gaudy colours of dress that were produced using chemical aniline dyes.

Looking back to the simplicity and beauty of previous historical periods, they took their design influences from classical, medieval and Renaissance clothing, advocating loose flowing gowns coloured with natural dyes, favouring sage greens, amber golds, terracotta and salmon. For men, velvet fabrics, large collars and knee breeches were the dominant style. Natural motifs were favoured, one of their iconic symbols being the sunflower shown here.

Fig. 10.8. Aesthetic couple in a printed cotton fabric design drawn by Walter Crane, showing the artistic, historically inspired dress for women and breeches and jacket for men

It is easy to see why there would be a backlash against mainstream fashion. By the 1870s gowns were becoming greatly exaggerated. The over-embellishment of frills and ruffles, made possible by the availability of the sewing machine, was coupled with very tightly laced styles that encased the whole body from the neck to the knee, limiting freedom of movement.

Whilst the Aesthetic movement did encourage some dress reform, it was more for artistic purposes and the pure search for beauty than for health and the promotion of rational dress. To many it was seen as a fashionable fad, and its insistence on artistic ideals made it appear self-indulgent - making it easy to ridicule. Those in literary circles could get away with this eccentricity, and for the wives and models of writers and painters it suited their bohemian lifestyle. But for more ordinary people, the association of loose dresses with loose morals meant it was not a viable mainstream fashion. Its emphasis on quality and hand-crafted design over cheap, mass-produced goods also meant it was only really available to those who could afford it.

Interestingly enough, some Aesthetic dress, whilst maintaining the ‘look’ and ideals of the movement, was not as natural and free flowing as it first appeared. One particular example that can be seen in Hull Museums Collection uses the characteristic sage green velvet and yellow smocked centre front to hide a very structured and heavily boned bodice underneath, which would have been as tight and restrictive as any other contemporary mainstream fashionable dress.

Fig. 10.9. Advertisement for Liberty’s art fabrics from the Dictionary of Needlework, 1882, featuring illustrations of two Aesthetically clothed women

Whilst Aesthetic dress did continue, and is evident in the informal tea gown styles of the 1890s, popular in places such as Liberty’s of London, public opinion suggests the Aesthetic style was less on view in the 1880s than previously. The magazine Household Words of 1881 claimed that the age of Aesthetic dress had gone. Their typical dress style was described as being ‘attired in the winding-sheet style, in very sad colours, or in severely Greek Dresses, a scanty amount of material being employed, but so sculpturesque that three stitches, just enough to hold the draperies, made the dress’.

However, they had apparently now undergone a transformation, with the pale, natural colours being replaced by more vibrant alternatives, and plain fabrics replaced by rich velvets and brocades. The age of eccentric dress was claimed to have passed, and its availability to only those who could afford it was very aptly put: ‘The tragical airs are discovered only to be melodrama, and the sign manual of this period of the nineteenth century is costliness in dress’.