Underdress ca. 1835 American The extraordinary decadal morphing of dress forms in the nineteenth century begins in the late 1810s with the shift away from the essentially columnar, high-waisted shapes that characterized the Napoleonic period. By the 1820s the corseted waist shifted from the previous Empire line directly under the bust to a lower point at the mid-ribcage. Simultaneously, sleeves began to balloon into the gigot, or leg-of-mutton, puff together with a similar expansion of the skirt into a full bell shape.As the volume of the skirt increased in the 1830s, the hemline retreated, ultimately to a point slightly above the ankles-promenade dresses in the 1770s were similarly revealing of the lower leg. This fashion, with its sudden emphasis on the feet and ankles, precipitated a range of increasingly decorative stocking designs. This relatively unornamented dress, its crochet lace inserts appearing only discretely at the shoulder line, might therefore have been worn with hose,