My favorite thing about the decade of the 1890s is that short period in the middle of the decade when sleeves become truly absurdly huge. I mean, like sleeves the size of your head. It’s utterly charming and impractical and I love it. So, if I am going to draw an 1890s fashion paper doll, she is going to be the middle of the era.
By the 1890s, there’s a bunch of fashion magazines being published by home sewing pattern companies. The sewing machine has made this a super lucrative field. So, most of these pieces come from the Delineator Magazine which was published by the Butterick Company. One of the reasons I like the Delineator is that their fashion plates were all available for sale as patterns. So they aren’t a dress someone imagines, but one you know people could have actually made.
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The 1890s underwear is a combination with a corset over it. Combinations were a “combination” of pantaloons and a chemise. They went under corsets while on top of them a woman might wear a corset cover and slip or a slip that combined those two garments. V&A has a nice photo.
Lapis, our 1890s fashion paper doll, has two outfits. The first is an At Home Costume based on an illustration from 1896. You can see it on this page of the Delineator. In the 1800s, there’s also a lot of interesting things going on with women’s sporting clothing. Bicycles were super popular in the 1890s thanks to the new “safety bicycle”. There’s many different styles of women’s bicycle clothing from this period, but I chose a Turkish trousers ensemble which comes from the Delineator Magazine in 1894.
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Colors are actually pretty vivid in the 1890s. Thanks to chemical dyes, there’s a lot of richness. I was really struck as I poured through museum collections at the number of dark colored corsets I saw. While bright purple seems sort of scandalous, jewel tone corsets really do seem to be a thing from the decade like this purple one and this pink one.
Her At Home Costume I did in pinks and corals. The bicycle outfit I thought would be more practical in blues and browns. After all, it wouldn’t make sense in a world where laundry isn’t easy to be biking around in white or pale blue. I’m sure people did, but I mostly saw brown and blue in my examples.
Anyway, I had fun with this paper doll and I hope others enjoy her as well. If you have a few hours to kill, pouring through Delineator Magazine really is neat. I also want to thank my Patrons, because I don’t think I would have drawn this era if it hadn’t won a poll. I had a lot of fun doing it.