Les Petites Dames De Mode

is a collection of scale model mannequins (29" high) costumed in the intricate and splendid fashions of the Victorian and Edwardian eras from 1855 to 1914.

As a contemporary designer Mr. Burbidge, after extensive research, has journeyed back in time to create and execute a series of original and detailed ensembles that evoke the style and elegance of that vanished society that was the Gilded Age.

There are the romantic crinolines of the fifties and sixties; the intriguing complexities of the bustle period of the seventies and eighties, followed by the enormous sleeves, wasp waists and gored, spreading skirts of the nineties; and, finally the incomparable elegance of La Belle Epoque.

Victorian and Edwardian ladies of wealth and position lived in an insulated world quite apart from the real one, adhering with a delusive certainty to an endless array of complicated rules and rituals prescribed for those in Society. Surrounded by servants, one assured one's place in the order of things by means of an endless round of social calls and carriage drives and the arranging of teas, receptions and dinners; one attended the opera as well as the season's countless balls. And let us not forget that most arduous of tasks: arranging suitable marriages for one's daughters.

Not only did these activities provide the lady with a raison d'etre, they kept an army of dressmakers, ladies' maids, milliners, purveyors of textiles, jewelers and makers of fans, gloves and parasols engaged in a whirlwind of activity to keep Madame and her daughters properly turned out for all occasions in fashionable splendor.

One lady, recounting how physically fatiguing it was to maintain one's position in that gilded society mused in retrospect, "How could one have enjoyed life then? And yet one did, immensely; it was all so grand."

John R. Burbidge is the retired Senior Designer from the bridal firm of Priscilla of Boston. He is also a member of the Costume Societies of both America and England, the United Dolls Clubs of America, the Doll Costumer's Guild and the French Fashion Doll Club. Mr. Burbidge lectures on his collection and exhibits it in museums throughout the country.

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