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Overview
This wire bustle was manufactured by the American Braided Wire Company, which was a London-based enterprise. Wire bustles were promoted as being ‘light and cool’ and therefore healthier than those stuffed with horse hair or ‘rubbish’ that the wearer could not see. In their advertising, the American Braided Wire Company set out to counter some of the issues that women wearing bustles had to negotiate, claiming:
They are the LIGHTEST, STRONGEST, and most PLIABLE Bustles made. They yield to the slightest pressure, yet immediately return to their proper shapes after the severest usage, and they properly sustain the heaviest drapery, so that the wearers are never mortified by their being crushed, or bent into ridiculous shapes. (Advertisement, The Queen, 5 May 1888, p. 69).