And now we move on to the Mid 1890s when gigot (aka leg-of-mutton) sleeves began to come into its own as a major fashion trend. The gigot sleeve built on the “X” or wasp-waist dress silhouette that had slowly began to take hold in 1890 – 1891. As the decade progressed, the size of gigot sleeves increased to excessive proportions to the point of absurdity as satirized in this 1895 cartoon in Punch:

All joking aside, the gigot sleeve was a revival of an earlier style that was popular during the 1830s (yes, that which is old is new again! 😉 ) and as with its earlier incarnation, sleeve size ballooned to extreme size. Here are a couple views of the 1830s version:

Gigot sleeves could be quite large and complex to the point where special structures were needed to support them:

 

And now, we’ll see some examples as it applied to 1890s evening wear, first with a creation from Worth, circa 1895 – 1896:

The dress is constructed from an ivory colored silk that’s better illustrated below.

And for some detail:

And for another example from 1894:

 

From the above, we have a good representative example Mid-1890s evening dresses. Now, it must be noted that while evening and day dress sleeve styles tended to mirror each other, it was not so strict when it came to ball gowns and in the next we’ll look at this phenomenon further.

(To be continued…)

---