Quotes & Sayings About Victorian Fashion

Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous - in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture - that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it. — Paul Di Filippo

She wore a loose-fitting purple velvet Pre-Raphaelite gown, and her abundant dark-brown hair flowed down her back and shoulders to her waist. As she drew near, I noticed her warm brown eyes peeping at me beneath lush, un-plucked brows, her smiling red lips and smooth, un-powdered cheeks almost begging for kisses. She possessed a beauty much different from Daisy, more like a wildflower in the unspoiled earth than a prize-winning rose in a formal garden. However, her Pre-Raphaelite fashion might have been an affectation of a different kind, a bit closer to nature but a stylish imitation just the same. — Gary Inbinder

Every style seems completely appropriate to its epoch. We cannot imagine Madame de Pompadour, or the Empress Josephine, or the early Victorian lady in anything but the clothes she actually wore. Each represents completely the ideals of her time: elegant artificiality or post-Revolutionary morals, or the prudery of the rising middle class. — James Laver

She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe. — Jeannette Walls

Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"
that planted too stimulating an image
but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh. — Bill Bryson

I've admired historical clothes like Victorian gowns since I was a child, and it's what motivated me to go into fashion. — Olivier Theyskens

In the world of The Age of Innocence, a financial disaster or moral scandal would permanently exile a guest from the finest dinner tables. In contemporary New York, a mere change of fashion can eliminate a place setting; therefore, the need to maintain a rigidity not of morals, but of taste, seems all the more desperate. — Wendy Wasserstein

In a platonic and boring fashion, is it all right if I share your fire until me clothes dry out? I have a feeling if I fall asleep damp I'll wake up with some horrid Victorian disease. — Caitlin Kittredge

We men had a meeting a long time ago, and we all decided, 'It's trousers'. And that's what we've worn ever since. — Lisa Kleypas

All the carriages filed out in single file but in a fashion that seemed to mean that they were competing against each other. The only sound that could be heard for a while was the pounding of the horses' hooves and the squeal and groan of the wheels against the road. Their hooves kicked up dirt, creating a storm of dust.
Once the miniature storm and the sound of galloping horses subsided, I could only see one last person. He glared up at me and mouthed, "Next time." Christopher dug his boots into Dawn's muscled flank. She reared up and broke into a gallop through the sparse forest, heading for escape. The last trace of them was the particles of floating dust, bright like floating fire. — Erica Sehyun Song

She first peered into its fascinating cases of beetles and butterflies at the age of six, in the company of her father. She recalls her pity at each occupant pinned for display. It was no great leap to draw the same conclusion of ladies: similarly bound and trussed, pinned and contained, with the objective of being admired, in all their gaudy beauty. — Emmanuelle De Maupassant