Nineteenth-century women's fashion. The skirts were long
Generally speaking, nineteenth-century women's fashion it was quite elegant and refined, with a sobriety full of class and charm that we can still see today in paintings, postcards and engravings of the time, "but not all that glitters is gold".
The dresses that enveloped the bodies of women in the 19th century were not only a riot of precious fabrics, fluttering ribbons and innovative shapes, but also a frequent vehicle of ... disease , especially infectious.
The reason is obvious:in addition to the fact that the hygiene rules they were not yet fully assimilated and respected on a daily basis as will happen in the following century (thanks also, in particular, to the arrival of running water in homes), it often happened that the edges of skirts and cloaks, touching the ground, were easily contaminated by animal excrement (especially horses, used to pull carriages), spit, sewage and so on.
It goes without saying how much all this dirt, then coming into contact with people and objects, spread dangerously in the environments, starting with the domestic ones but also in the premises open to the public, with imaginable consequences.
It was therefore for hygienic reasons that, at a certain point, skirts and cloaks became visibly shorter.