---
node: garment_bustle
type: garment
slug: bustle
title: "Bustle"
lead: "The bustle is a framework or pad that projected a woman's skirt out behind, fashionable in the 1870s and 1880s. It replaced the all-round crinoline with a silhouette gathered and draped at the back."
published: 2026-08-09
updated: 2026-08-09
image_file: bustle.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bustle.png"
image_author: "unknown 1880s artist, manipulation by H. Churchyard"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

A bustle is a small cage, wire spring, or stuffed pad tied at the back of the waist to support the swagged drapery and trained skirts of late-Victorian dress. It concentrated the earlier crinoline's fullness into a projecting shelf behind.

## How it is worn

It is tied on over the petticoat so the overskirt can be looped, ruched, and drawn up into elaborate rear drapery, sometimes so pronounced that a tea tray could rest on it. The style came and went twice, most extreme around 1885.

## History

The bustle followed the collapse of the crinoline about 1870, softened in the later 1870s, then returned as a hard shelf in the mid-1880s before vanishing by 1890 as skirts slimmed. It marks the last great structural underpinning of Western women's fashion.