Gilded Age Sights and Styles

 

Patterns for girls’ fashions of 1887 in Godey’s Lady’s Book or Godey’s Magazine 

The Latest Wrinkles in Society

Among the ridiculous sights of the hour are the little girls in short dresses whose parents are quite willing they should wear bustles. 

Liquor decanters now come in glass of a color to “match the liquor they are to contain,” absinthe, chartreuse, kümmel liqueur and all the rest. 

Brass teapots on a tripod are new, and as far as can be learned, are admirably adapted for upsetting and saturating the family table cloth.

Photograph stands or easels on “cattails” are having an extraordinary run. Introduced a year ago, they appear to have been neglected until now. There is a fashionable preference now for small photographs of the visiting-card size, but they are as good a cure for vanity as the large ones.

They make finger-bowl mats now of bolting cloth, hand-painted, and edged with lace, which, of course, one’s country cousins are warned never to use. 

Jeweled hairpins are fancy in Paris, and put in the hair hap-hazard, according to a correspondent, have a very charming effect at night. 

For all full-dress and ceremonious occasions this coming season, ladies will wear feathers in their hair, or on their head, in Mrs. J. Bull fashion.

In fall hats for women, masculine styles prevail, much to the disappointment of people who hoped the Tom-boy fashions and styles were dying out. Basques are a mass of the most elaborate and bewildering trimming or embroidery down the front, and we are told, as winter advances, will become more so.

Some new umbrella handles have in them a match box, but what is wanted more is a magnetic umbrella that will get it back to its owner when borrowed or purloined. 

A Swiss alarm clock produces at the hour for which it is set a rooster who crows loud and shrill enough to quickly awaken even the man who retired very late.—New York Mail, 1887

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