The History of Clothing

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19th Century · Europe · 1800 - 1900

Bustle

A pad or frame of steel, horsehair, cane, or whalebone worn under a woman's skirt to thrust it out at the back, fashionable in the 1870s and again in the 1880s.

By Dan Schnau · Last updated

The bustle was "a pad or frame worn under a skirt puffing it out behind," in the definition of the Fashion Institute of Technology.1 Women wore it in the 1870s and 1880s, after the collapse of the crinoline.1,4 The Victoria and Albert Museum states that the bustle first appeared in the late 1860s as part of the crinolette, and that by the 1870s it had become a separate undergarment in its own right.3

House of Worth walking dress of about 1885 in navy and cream striped silk, with a fitted jacket bodice, lace jabot, and a skirt swept back over a bustle into a short train

Walking dress by the House of Worth, Paris, about 1885. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Origins and History

FIT, citing Kristina Haugland, traces the name to a small back pad of the early nineteenth century: "by the late 1820s it was called a bustle."1 Harper Franklin writes that in 1870 the circular or oval crinolines "collapsed into the so-called first bustle style," a softly draped protrusion at the back of the waist supported by horsehair-ruffled petticoats or crinolettes.4 The bustle faded after two to three years and returned in larger, horizontal forms from the early 1880s.1

Materials and Decoration

A V&A bustle of 1870–75 is built of four gathered rows of horsehair and linen fabric on horizontal and vertical steels, with hooks and ties to fasten it to the petticoat, waist, and hips.2 Others could be stuffed with horsehair, down, or straw.3 The "New Phantom" bustle made by Stapley and Smith of London in 1887–88 has steel wires on a pivot that folded when the wearer sat and sprang back when she rose.3

On This Site

Sources

  1. bustle — Fashion History Timeline, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2017, updated 2025 (definition, Haugland on the 1820s name, and Eicher on the 1870s and 1880s forms).
    Return to text (4 references)Reference 1 Reference 2 Reference 3 Reference 4
  2. Bustle, 1870–1875 (T.168-1937) — Victoria and Albert Museum, collection record via the museum's API (horsehair, linen, steels, hooks, and ties).Reference 1
  3. The New Phantom bustle, 1887–8 (T.131C-1919) — Victoria and Albert Museum, collection record via the museum's API (crinolette origin, separate undergarment, stuffing, and the pivoting steel wires).
    Return to text (3 references)Reference 1 Reference 2 Reference 3
  4. 1870–1879 — Harper Franklin, Fashion History Timeline, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2019, updated 2025 (the first bustle style of 1870 and its supports).
    Return to text (2 references)Reference 1 Reference 2