Artistic Dress Movement
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and other artistic reformers objected to the elaborately trimmed confections of Victorian fashion with their unnatural silhouette based on a rigid corset and hoops as both ugly and dishonest. Their wives and models adopted a revival style based on romanticised medieval influences such as puffed juliette sleeves and trailing skirts. These were made in the soft colors of vegetable dyes, and were ornamented with hand embroidery in the art needlework style.
The style spread as an "anti-fashion" called Artistic dress in the 1860s in literary and artistic circles, died back in the 1870s, and reemerged as Aesthetic dress in the 1880s, where the emphasis was not so much on honesty and purity as sensuality and languor.
Read more about this topic: Victorian Dress Reform
Famous quotes containing the words artistic, dress and/or movement:
“The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, who follows blind instinct, strives to duplicate the reality of nature. The first one elevates art to its highest peak; the second one lowers it to its basest level.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Prostration is our natural position. A wormlike movement from a spot of sunlight to a spot of shade, and back, is the type of movement that is natural to men.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)