Styles[?] favored in the Victorian era emphasized the notion of being at the height of all possible civilization and refinement, and the elimination of any outward hint of savage or animal nature in humans.
"Proper" clothing required covering the entire body apart from the hands and head, although these too were often covered with gloves and a hat.
Men's clothing: pants, coat[?], jacket[?]; a cap[?] for the lower class, derby hat[?] for the middle class, and top-hat[?] for the upper class[?] (top hats sometimes worn by middle class men for formal occasions).
Women's clothing: dresses with skirts long enough to reach the feet. Showing an ankle[?] covered with nothing but stocking was considered rather risque, and frowned on in polite society.
Mass production of artificial dyes allowed for clothing to be in a greater variety of colors than was common any time earlier.
Home furnishing and decor[?] favored a busy (some would say "cluttered") abundance of detail; mass factory production[?] enabled the middle class to decorate their homes with bric-a-brac[?].
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump