Who needs specialist climbing gear when you've got formal frocks and heels?
The only protection they had was a length of rope that was tied around each of their waists. There were no harnesses, crampons or other modern safety equipment available to them at the time.
Late Victorian mountaineers, including a lady fully dressed and corseted, cross a crevasse in the Alps, 1900 (from Getty Images’ book “Decades of the 20th Century—1900s” by Nick Yapp, scanned by WeirdVintage)
Madame Yucca, the “Female Hercules” was a strong woman who worked as a circus performer mainly with Barnum and Bailey in 1880-1890. "Every feat on this illustration is actually performed at each exhibition,“ including lifting a live horse. (From This Fabulous Century: 1870s-1900s, scanned by weirdvintage)
During the Victorian era, fancy dress balls were one of the grandest and most fashionable ways for a society hostess to make her mark. These magnificent, costumed affairs were widely reported in 19th century newspapers, with a great deal of attention paid to who was wearing what. Guests dressed up as historical figures such as Marie Antoinette or Napoleon. They also wore more creative costumes—many of which were recommended in fancy dress advice manuals and costume books.
Following up to this post, here’s a fantastic look at Victorian “fancy dress balls”–they were all the rage at the time, but really picked up in the later half of the century where the focus was more on self-expression than hiding oneself, as was the case at 18th-century masquerades (Phantom hearkens back to this earlier tradition, but the idea of a masquerade hiding one’s true identity also works perfectly for its theatrical setting).
Here are some wackier costumes from fancy dress balls. I’m in love with this one:
And look! A bee!
Here’s a fashion plate with some costume ideas from across the centuries (and of course, we wouldn’t be in the Victorian era if there weren’t a bit of tone-deaf cultural appropriation with the Native American costume.):
It was actually common for women to wear shorter skirts at these balls so they could show off their fabulous boots (as you see above, and as is the case with Christine’s stage version of the Star Princess dress):
Depending on your host, masks of all kinds were welcome, so you were free to be as unsettlingly disturbing as you wanted while you lounged by the punch bowl and made rabbit eyes at the eligible young heiress whose hand in marriage comes with fifty thousand pounds a year and a lifetime of resentment because women’s rights didn’t exist yet:
Suppose you can’t make it to the most fashionable balls London or Paris this season. If it’s 1883 and you are Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and happen to have $6 million of disposable income at your fingertips, why not throw your own fancy dress ball for New York City’s elite (and spend millions on champagne alone)? And why don’t you one-up every single one of your guests by dressing as that most wondrous of new inventions, Edison’s electric light? I defy the Rockefellers to steal your spotlight when the spotlight in question could very easily electrocute them.
Like flowers? Of course you do. Like spring? Oh, my God, do you ever. Like pretending you’re but a mere shepherdess, giggling and flouncing away from the advances of the blacksmith’s apprentice? GOOD LORD, YES. Like the 18th century? HELL YES, OH MAN, GIMME THAT ROCOCO SPRING FLOWER EXPLOSION:
BUT WAIT! You’re not gonna let that Rococo Spring Flower Explosion HARLOT flounce away with your suitor, are you? HELL NO, YOU ARE NOT. Which is why you are prepared to send her running dressed as a GORGEOUS FREAKING BUTTERFLY:
But where would a butterfly be without a lovely flower upon which to perch? Enter your secret lesbian lover, the Rose:
Or, if you’re uncomfortable with NOT being the center of attention every waking moment, you could just pull the equivalent of one-upping the bride at a wedding by wearing white and come dressed as the DAMN SUN:
But maybe you’re more of the goth persuasion. Might I suggest a tasteful sorceress?
A dainty Batman ensemble to match your wife’s delicate moth angel gown?
Vampire mistress of the night, perhaps?
Actually, bat motifs were an extremely popular costume option, not just in the 19th century, but also at 18th century balls:
But if it’s 1880 and you want to carry on grandma’s bat tradition, this might be a more modern take on a pocket-sized blood-sucking demon:
Or this:
You are so thrilled to attend the costume ball like the goth nightmare you are, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm:
Here is a tastefully acceptable take on Satan. Might I sample your punch, Mrs. Higgenbottom, before I make away with your soul?
“Oh, Ella!”
“Yes, Constance?”
“Oh, I do so love your seagull gown.”
“Oh, why thank you, my dear friend!”
“But I’ve not the slightest idea what I shall wear to the ball!”
“Why, Constance, it is a simple matter of identifying something near and dear to your heart and then adapting it into a suitable costume. I, for example, find solace in the sea, particularly in the birds of the sea, and most particularly when they nose-dive into and defecate upon the boat, shrieking like banshees in heat. Hence, the seagulls adorning my gown. What do you like the very most, Constance?”
“MOTHER-EFFING LOBSTERS.”
Or, maybe you’re just a shameless ho and don’t give a brass farthing about showing your ankles, your calves, your thighs, or your hoo-ha at the Embassy Ball, in which case, blaze it:
A Correspondent furnishes us with the following Picture of an Exquisite alias a Dandy in distress, ‘Walking in one of the squares last week it was my fate to follow an Exquisite stock’d and Stay’d laced and bound collar’d and pilloried in all the fashion, so slender so straight and so stiff that a man of ordinary strength might have used it as a wakking stick, This thing flourishing a very nice perfumed handkerchief happened to let it drop; the question then was how to get it up again; stoop it could not, and I confess I enjoyed its distress; for this for any other female I would have raised the handkerchief with alacrity; I wish’d to see how this creature would help itself, then this it was: having eyed the handkerchief askance, something like a magpie peeping into a marrow-bone, it gently straddled … legs, and lowering the body between them it brought the right hand in contact with the object sought. What shall we say to the association of [ideas?], when I assure you that looking on this unmanly figure, brought into my mind the knights of old, who when once unhorsed could never from the weight and stiffness of their armour hope to mount again.’ -N.B. It is found remarkably convenient in such a case for the Exquisite to carry a cane or a stick with a hook at the end, as he may fish up any thing he unfortunately drops without breaking his back or exciting the pity or the visibility of the spectators.”
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