I Like Big Bustle and I Cannot Lie

 Look what I found! Oh Lawd, these dresses are to die for.  Of course, I didn't find them in person, I found them online.  If I actually found dresses like this in person, I'd probably poop myself right there, and then I'd faint. 

While the following dresses are, indeed, simply stunning, every time I see one I think of how hot they must have been in the summer.  No A/C, no electric fans. Just a bunch of heat and humidity and lots of undergarments and long sleeves. Think of all the boob sweat that must have accumulated in those undergarments, not to mention being unable to breathe while wearing one of these due to the corset needed for a woman to be able to fit in such a tiny  waistline.  I think maybe that's the reason I don't like the word "swoon", because the women who wore these dresses swooned a lot, but it was only because their rib cage and consequently their lungs were being strangled, all while drowning in boob sweat. 

But they are pretty, and if I was skinny enough to not have to wear a corset and if I could sit in the air conditioning, I'd totally like to have lived back when these dresses were popular. 

This bustle dress from the 1870s is just gawgeous! I totally have the body for a bustle dress, too.  Mostly because my butt's big enough that I probably wouldn't even need much of a bustle to make the back stick out like that.  

I have no idea how something this delicate has survived since 1870.  

This 1870s dress makes squeal - out loud, even.  How long did it take to make this sucker? And how many curse words were whispered very lady-like during it's creation?

The cream-colored dresses were a little too virginal, so I thought a saucier number was in order. And for 1870, this dress was saucy!  I'm pretty sure that if you wore this dress to a dance, it meant that you would have sex with your dance partner right there on the ballroom floor.

This one is from 1901 when it was still considered slutty to bare your ankles, but naked forearms were permitted.  Oh, those promiscuous Edwardians!

Are you dying to know where I found all these? Head over to The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can do a search for whatever your heart desires and then waste hours looking at all the pretty stuff.  But, you can also use it as a reference in case you're trying to date vintage clothing and accessories, or at least that's what I tell myself I'm doing when I spend too much time oohing and ahhing over the dresses. 

You can even swoon over one or two of them if you just absolutely have to. 

Be happy,

Rachel