Have you been watching The Gilded Age on HBO? Here's a presentation from the DAR museum that gives you an accurate historical perspective on the time and the clothing of the era.

From The DAR Museum:

"Women’s fashions in the late 1800s fully lived up to Mark Twain’s moniker for the era, the Gilded Age. Elaborate construction, rich colors, lavish fabrics and trim, and general love of excess typified high styles of the 1870s through 1890s. In this, they mirrored design in architecture, decorative arts, and interior design, as seen in our current exhibit, “Illuminating Design: The Decoration and Technology of E.F. Caldwell and Co., 1895-1959.” But change was in the air, and a new archetype, the New Woman, was about to transform women’s clothing along with her role in society."