On the page http://www.costumes.org/pages/19thV&A.htm there are some pictures of clothes from the Victoria and Albert museum collection, scanned from an old book.I don't know whether it was the photography they used, or the Gibson-girl hairstyles that some of the models have, or something subtle, but somehow the 1908 book seems to make these styles a little unappealing.
It's funny to realize that those models are somewhat decorseted, and probably wearing less cumbersome or constricting clothes than what they would have worn in ordinary life at the time (usually when you think of dressing up in historical costumes, you think of wearing more cumbersome clothes than those you normally wear...)
