Fashion is and always has been an odd beast. From stilettos to padding, our silhouettes are rarely seen in their "natural" state. So what are we to do when fashion plates tells us we're somewhat lacking? One of my favorite solutions has been to add a little "oomph." Yes, ladies, I'm talking about padding out your rear. Although several satirists pointed out what was bad about the bustle, you've got to pad out your tail end to give that gown a little extra bump on the bum.  We’ll ignore when critics tell us we look ridiculous, much like the bustle wearing ladies ignored the artists at Punch.

As I used to work for the Kentucky Historical Society (KHS), based in Frankfort, Kentucky, USA, I was extremely lucky that I had the option to do some research on the garments in the museum collection.  Recently, there has been an initiative on the part of museum staff to inventory and photograph the collections for greater public access.  Luckily for historic costumers, they’ve been putting this all online for researchers to peruse at our leisure. 

 It was during this inventory period that the registrar and curators came across a few dresses that were bustled. As the resident seamstress, I offered to make some bustles based on pieces in the collection.   This gave me a reason to drool over the pretties, as well as update the museum’s records and provide several dressing aids for photographing the collections.  After perusing the records, I chose three different padded bustles to recreate for KHS’s use: 1978.4.74a, 1978.4.74b, and T191.  These were chosen for their different shapes, which would come in handy when dressing mannequins for photography.

When looking up “Bustle” in Google Patents, you'll find lots of plays on the same concept: padding out the rear.  While several of the bustle patents are markedly similar to one of the more complicated bustles in the museum’s collections, most of the patents are variations on encasing a filling in fabric.  The inventiveness of those patents seems to come from the fill like one by a Mr. Whitney (the best quality of natural sponge shredded with attention to the grain) or a combination with hip forms.  Most of the unique patents are for wire mesh bustles, or fabric wrapped wire tubes, ideas which were truly novel.  Padding, however, was not.

As mentioned in a post by the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising blog, women on limited budgets would have made bustles of pads or horsehair, or bought them locally and relatively cheaply.  These were the bustles that were most likely to be worn by rural women, especially in Kentucky.  This is not to say that there wasn’t a market for more expensive models, like the wire and fabric bustle in the Kentucky Historical Society’s museum collection (left), merely that in a state still dominated by farming and with a distinct economic gap, the frugal and fashionable woman had to search for different options. With this in mind, it wasn’t surprising to come across more padded bustles, rather than something like The Daisy  or the collapsible Langtry bustle (right).

During the two bustle periods, Kentucky was still reeling from the effects of the American Civil War, which had taken a toll on the border state. Farms, railways and courthouses had been destroyed during the conflict, and the American South was pretty much destitute in the aftermath. With the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), the South, including Kentucky, set to work rebuilding. The restoration of the railroads and heavy coal mining did bring new wealth into the state, but the vast majority of Kentucky’s residents remained outside of cities and were farmers, loyal to their home counties. This means that there was a large population of women in rural areas who, like almost all women, desired to be fashionable but didn’t have the spare change to buy more expensive articles of clothing.

Bustle 1978.4.74b

The first bustle I studied definitely lends credence to the theory of frugality.  At their most basic, it’s not as if bustles require much in the way of fabric. Really, all you need is two small pieces and some filling; attach some ties or hooks and you’ve created enough padding for the rump.  But if you don’t have unlimited resources to run to your local shop and pick up some yardage, you make do with what you have - in this case, polished cotton.

The fact that this bustle is made of polished cotton isn’t surprising. After all, if the dresses I’ve seen in the KHS collection are any indication, polished cotton was the facing of choice on dress hems and sleeves, even in Kentucky.  In fact, several of the dresses in the collection were faced in a similarly uninspiring brown. 

The interesting fact about this bustle, though, is how it was constructed.  For the modern home sewer, we’ve all been told to preplan our projects and make them symmetrical (excluding when fitting our asymmetrical bodies).  This bustle doesn’t appear to be either of those things!

A simple “U” shape, it’s also modestly sized at 8” (20cm) wide, 8” long, and 2” (5cm) thick.  At first glance, it looks as if the slight asymmetry of the piece could be the product of wear and storage.  It has seen some use: you can see the slight discoloration on the inner surface and there is a little hole, as if it had once been pinned and left for too long.  The asymmetry is obvious on closer inspection, though.  The main portion of the bustle was cut from one piece of fabric, not two.  Cut on a fold on one side, machine stitching starts roughly 4.5” (12cm) down the right side.  Turned to the inside when it was originally sewn, the rest of the seam is circular to create that “U” shape, but the fold has been darted to the inside to create a more curved effect at the top closure. There are three tacks (two extant, one long unpicked) to provide some additional structure to the bustle.  These tacks are not an example of fine hand stitching.  They are very basic, uneven examples of running stitches in a matching brown thread.  Two of the tacks are still holding, but the third is no longer holding together; instead, the thread has broken and is barely hanging onto the fabric.

 The bound closure is a little bit of everything thrown together.  It’s not the same color as the rest of the bustle; instead it is made from a similar type of cotton, dyed black.  While there is some final machine stitching at 13 stitches per inch (2mm stitch length), it has now faded from black to a blackish brown with age.  What’s strange is the slap dash hand stitching that has not been removed.  Originally, it looks as if the black binding was temporarily held to the bustle with brown thread like that used for the tufting, but had never been removed.  It’s just a plain whip stitch, but looks odd against the clean machine stitching.  The edges of the binding were finished with a whip stich in black, now faded.  There is one remaining eye sewn to the inner right of the bustle pad, but nothing on the left.  It looks as if wear broke down the threads. As this pieces is still in good condition for a museum piece, none of the major seams were unpicked, and I couldn’t see what the stuffing was made of, but it felt like loose cotton wadding.  Nothing stiff was poking out, so I can ascertain it wasn’t made of straw, and it didn’t feel bulky like it was filled with fabric scraps.

For an excellent example of how this sort of bustle pad would have been worn, there is an illustration in English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century.  The dress that is illustrated shows the bustle pad over a crinolinette and underskirt, in a similar “U” shape (335).  Dated to 1886, the author also mentions of the time period that almost every young woman, excluding the well to do, were now starting to earn their own living and had to be a little more frugal in their dressing (334).  This piece similarly fits the situation!

Bustle T191

The next bustle pad I examined is certainly what is mentioned by Cunnington as “a cresentic pad (340).” Shaped exactly like a crescent moon, this bustle pad appears unfinished.  Like the prior bustle, it’s made with a polished cotton, only in black.  Measuring 11” (28cm) wide and 8” (20cm) long, it’s only a scant 1.25” (32mm) high at the most padded and widest point.  As can be seen in the pictures, especially this one (left), the piece itself is unevenly cut.

Once again, this bustle isn’t one of the most finished pieces.  The outer edge of the pad is fraying, though it’s not frayed to the machine stitching roughly 0.25” (6mm) from the edge.  The outer edge was cut with plain scissors; there is no pinking to suggest that this was to be the finished edge.  This particular bustle also has ties at the edges, made somewhat surprisingly of a slender cut of woven material.  It has long since started to unravel along several parts of the tie. The ties are roughly 0.75” (19mm) wide (in areas of less wear) and around 13” (33cm) long, and are made of brown cotton. 

The inner edge of this bustle is far more interesting.  Like the previous bustle, this one made use of tucks to give it shape, but they were held in place by two metal dressmakers’ pins.  The temporary pinning gave the opportunity to see more of the bustle’s construction than if it had been finished.  Inside, the padding was concentrated over what would be the rear, with almost none of the loose cotton fill towards the ties.  The cotton fill itself wasn’t fully processed from what I could see.  It looked closer to cotton after it is first milled: slightly dirty and not nearly close to cotton ball white. 

Like the previous bustle, this one had tufting as well. Four tacks are still extant, with one having left evidence on the right.  These tufts are a little neater than the previous example, but there isn’t as much material to provide the puff to the rump. 

Perhaps this particular example would have been what Norah Waugh quoted from Myra’s Journal in her Corsets and Crinolines, “The most notable points with regard to costume are the graduation diminution in size of the tournure […] a cushion and the drapery of the tunic, with the steels in the skirt, are very often considered sufficient, and give all the effect that is needed (127).”

The inner edge of the bustle has been folded under and very loosely stitched together with a running stitch.  These stitches along the top are beginning to come undone (or, given the many years this bustle pad has been in storage, were coming undone several decades ago), but given the machine stitching attaching the ties and at the lower edge, it is not out of the realm of possibility that this upper edge was to be finished by machine. However, it is odd that the lower edge could easily have come undone with even minor wear, due to the lack of pinking or binding. 

Bustle 1978.4.74a

The third bustle I chose to study is listed as a brown rectangular bustle within the KHS museum collection. In addition to being completely unlike the other two in shape (and unlike many of the other bustles listed in the holdings of KHS as well), it’s also the most complete bustle of the three.  Like the other two, it’s made of uninspiring cotton.  You can see from the pictures that there is a slight sheen to the fabric.  It’s not as pronounced as I have seen with some glazed cottons, or even the black cotton bustle pad, but it still has a slight sheen.

This bustle pad is most similar to one discussed by Norah Waugh in The Cut of Women’s Clothes: 1600-1930.  The foundation skirts of the 1880s were supplemented by steel, of course, but also held aloft by what they call a mattress (a term that was synonymous for a bustle pad) of similar shape to this rectangular bustle.  The pad has become slightly irregular in shape with age and the unique form given to it by the stuffing, it measures 7” (17.8cm) by roughly 10” (25.4cm) , and is about 2” (5cm) high, a little larger in size than Waugh’s similarly shaped pad of 5” (12.7cm) by 8” (20cm) (p150).  Made for a slightly stouter woman, perhaps?

Construction-wise, this bustle pad is perhaps the most finished of the three, though it exhibits a lot of the curiosities of the previous two.  At first glance, the bustle appears to be cut from three pieces of cotton, machine stitched on three sides and folded in on the forth in much the same way as you would make a throw pillow.  Expecting that this was just a scrap on one side, I flipped it over and discovered it was made of four pieces of fabric! I wonder if the original just wasn’t long enough for the woman making it, but I certainly love the economy that these seamstresses used!

Looking at the photography, the “scrap” pieces that were used to equal out the sides of the pad are roughly 1.5” (38mm) without seam allowances.  They are placed at the lower edge of the pad, with the finishing seam at the bottom.  Folded in, the bottom seam was originally hand stitched into submission before everything was closed in by machine stitch.  The bustle pad also feels like it was filled with regular cotton wadding as well, this one more tightly stuffed than the others. Sewn at 15 stitches per inch (stitch length 1.7mm), these machine stitches were substantial and meant to be permanent; the basting stitch, however, only exists on the bottom right of the pad and was curiously the same thread used for tufting (middle). Strangely, the maker chose not to use the machine thread, but the basting thread does appear far more robust.  Like 1978.7.74b, this bustle was attached to other underthings with hooks, rather than a tie.  In this picture (right) you can see the hook, which is close to a modern size 11 and is very supportive. I assume the other side had another hook, but all that remains is some frayed black thread.

Recreating the Bustles

Now, the last thing that I was to do was to re-create the bustles within the collection.  Due to the fact that I was making them for the Society’s later use in mannequin dressing, I didn’t follow the example of the original seamstresses and use scraps.  Instead, I used washed, unbleached muslin for its stable and non-acid qualities.  The filling is polyester fiberfill, because it is relatively inert as well.  Because of the way that they were to be used, I also decided to use ties.  After all, these were to be used to pad out the historic costume collection for photograph purposes, and mannequins can be notoriously hard to dress. 

These bustles are not difficult to reconstruct, even when accounting for their idiosyncrasies. It is easy enough to jump into these projects, even without a pattern created beforehand.  Basically, all you need to make them is the basic measurements and a few inches to allow for stuffing and ties.  Based on the evidence of their production, I would gather that the women who made these didn’t really plan ahead for them either, and might have just cut straight into fabric.  That said, all three of the bustles fit relatively well over my smaller and curvy proportioned dress form, though the rectangular pad was nearly too big.  I’m afraid I don’t have the proper crinolinettes or petticoats for dressing my form, but with a little imagination you can see how the different bustle pads would have contributed to the shape of a dress.  Over all, these will be very handy indeed when dressing the museum’s mannequins for photography, and I am happy to have had the chance to make them. 

As you can see, it didn't matter the woman's social stature, the proper attention to proportion is a driving force in fashion. Extant museum examples tell us that all manner of women wanted to be as fashionable as possible, even if they couldn't afford something they might find in a shop, or could only afford the most basic model. If we wish to follow in their footsteps, we shouldn't be afraid to also follow their very economical and practical example.

Resources

Advertisement for the Daisy Bustle. New York Public Library

Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century: a Comprehensive Guide with 1,117 Illustrations. New York: Dover Publications, 1990.

Kentucky Historical Society.

Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum, Blog post, 11 Feb. 2011.

Scott, Charles H. Ventilated Bustle and Hip Form. C. H. Scott, assignee. Patent 723,495. 12 Mar. 1903.

Waugh, Norah, and Margaret Woodward. The Cut of Women's Clothes, 1600-1930. New York: Routledge/Theatre Arts, 1994.

Waugh, Norah. Corsets and Crinolines. New York: Routledge/Theatre Arts, 2004.

Whitney, F. M. Pad or Bustle. Patent 836,790. 27 Nov. 1906.