This evening dress was designed by the first great Parisian couturier, Charles Frederick Worth, an Englishman whose creative genius and promotional skills won him the credit for having elevated fashion to an art form. Worth's "compositions" featured distinctive textiles, such as the floral-brocade from Lyons, here combined with satin, faille, and lace, and from the mid-1860s elicited veneration--as well as extravagant sums--from aristocratic and nouveaux-riches clients around the world. This gown, probably purchased in Paris in 1887, belonged to an American, Mrs. Ernest Fenollosa, who lived in Tokyo for twelve years and may have worn it for presentation at the Japanese imperial court. Its décolleté boned bodice, convoluted bustled and trained skirt, and myriad trimmings exemplify the late nineteenth-century concept of feminity. Strongly differentiated from the period's masculine aesthetic, this fashionable toilette--restrictive, impractical, and ornamental--was defined by Victorian society as an elegant enhancement of a woman's status and beauty. H. Kristina Haugland, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 94.