Leg-of-Mutton Sleeves

The leg-of-mutton sleeve is exactly what it sounds like: a sleeve shaped like a joint of mutton, enormous and rounded at the shoulder and tapering to a tight cuff at the wrist. The French called it the manche gigot. It had first appeared in the 1820s and 30s, but it was the 1890s revival that made it immortal — this March 1895 fashion plate catches the silhouette at full sail, with sleeves as wide as the models' waists are small.

By 1895 and 1896 the sleeves had grown so vast that dressmakers stiffened them with crinoline-like linings or stuffed them with 'sleeve plumpers' — pads of down or feathers — to hold the shape. Punch cartoonists drew women turning sideways to get through doorways, and compared the sleeves to footballs, balloons, and hams. They were the defining feature of the mid-nineties hourglass: huge shoulders balancing huge skirts, with a tiny waist pinched between.

Like all extremes, it collapsed quickly. By 1898 the fullness was deflating, and by 1900 the fashionable shoulder was narrow and sloping again, ushering in the pigeon-breasted Edwardian line. But the gigot never truly dies — it returns to the runways every few decades, whenever fashion wants shoulders with opinions.