It just so happens that Worth's Second Empire silhouette a tightly corseted hourglass with a huge hemisphere of skirt is what women were wearing when a new breed of painters emerged, artists pursuing the truth of the fleeting moment even if it meant crossing moral boundaries or breaking with the norms of pictorial representation.

WSJ: A Rustling Theater of the Self | Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity | Metropolitan Museum of Art | By Laura Jacobs