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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Darkwing Manor, post: 1822977, member: 738&quot;]One of my graduate school topics was fancy dress costume. It was very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to costume up for a variety of annual holiday, community or theatrical events. Buttterick and other pattern books put out special editions of fancy dress ideas for men, women and children. The&nbsp; details were only vaguely reminiscent of actual ethnic or historic dress, heavily influenced by stereotypes and always modified into the current fashionable silhouette. You will find countless Cleopatras and Marie Antoinettes with an 1880s hour-glass figure. Others were plain flights of fancy, or based on fictional or literary figures. I would venture to guess that your cabinet card commemorates either a local theatrical&nbsp; performance or a fancy dress ball. The ball venue owners would often sell tickets to the public to stand in front of a their hall so the average townsfolk could watch the guests arrive in their finery. Local newspapers always listed the attendees names and what character they were portraying. Lots of links on-line under fancy dress, such as&nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/dance-instruction-manuals-from-1490-to-1920/?c=50&amp;fa=segmentof:musdi.033.0/%7Clanguage:english&amp;sb=shelf-id&amp;st=gallery" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/dance-instruction-manuals-from-1490-to-1920/?c=50&amp;fa=segmentof:musdi.033.0/%7Clanguage:english&amp;sb=shelf-id&amp;st=gallery" rel="nofollow">https://www.loc.gov/collections/dance-instruction-manuals-from-1490-to-1920/?c=50&amp;fa=segmentof:musdi.033.0/|language:english&amp;sb=shelf-id&amp;st=gallery</a></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]241155[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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