Walking dress

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The waistline's descent in the 1830s to some two or more inches below the bust came in tandem with the greatest grandiloquence of the gigot sleeves and billowing bell-shaped skirt. The elegant dilations favored the illusion of the waist as minuscule in the midst of swelling forms. The belted waist became the sole measure in a massing of bulges and balloons.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art