Purple Silk Cross-over Bodice, c. 1840

 

Purple silk dress, c.1840, from The Met.

 

Looking for 1850s dress inspiration, I stumbled upon this fun c.1840 silk dress with a surplice/cross-over style bodice. At first glance I took it for an early 1860s dress with relatively large coat sleeves, but from the side view, it's more clearly one of those fun shapes that appears post-1836-sleeve-collapse where the sleeve is gathered/shirred down close around the upper arm (and visually smoothed out here with a jockey) then balloons out again a little above the elbow, only to get tight again around the forearm.

In the close-up views, the fabric appears to be a satin; and I'm very intrigued by the small edging detail on the sleeve jockey: overlapping loops of perfectly color-matched satin-covered cording. I'm very curious about whether that was a manufactured-to-match trim, or actually pieced from the same fabric as the dress.