Redingote style turns up over and over again in late Nineteenth Century fashion and this was especially true during the Mid-Bustle/Natural Form Era. From roughly 1877 through 1883, the fashion silhouette moved away from the earlier bustled style to a more slender, cylindrical silhouette. One interesting example of this redingote style can found in this dress:
Day Dress c. 1875-1880; Norsk Folkemuseum NF.1935-0014)
What especially makes this dress interesting is that the redingote incorporates the low demi-train characteristic this period. Also, from the photos, it appears that the redingote gives the appearance of having been cut from one piece of fabric thus giving it a princess-line appearance (albeit incomplete). At the same time, while the basque bodice and under-skirt appears to be separate pieces, this still give a very princess line effect. Without actually examining the dress in person, it’s difficult to say for sure but from what we can tell, it appears the redingote and the bodice are attached and most likely the bodice is a faux bodice, just nothing more than two front pieces. Here’s a closer view of the bodice:
Also the dress designer is unknown to us, it appears that they cleverly combined a number of style elements together in a well-blended manner. This period in fashion never fails to amaze us and is always a source of inspiration. 🙂
This has been in my planning file for a couple years, and I too would have loved to see how it all went together. In fact when I first saw it, I also thought it was a Princess dress. I had to look a lot closer to see it was actually a long bodice over a skirt. Its quite a visual facade.
Val
It’s an amazing optical illusion- it also had me fooled the first time I looked at the picture. 🙂