Being able to have Frederick Worth, the great British-born Couturier, custom-make-your gowns,

was a mark of truly being in the elite social set in the Gilded Age and Belle Puck.

With his team of seamstresses and assistants, Worth was able to create fantasy and achieve

extraordinary effects in satin, lace, and silk from his eponymous design house on Paris's

Rue de la Pais.

It was said that only Worth could truly capture the personality and allure of any woman by making

gowns based on her particular specifications and preferences.

Many of his great creations have been lost to history, but there are a number of Worth

gowns from the Gilded Age that survive today in museums and archives so we can see the

exquisite fabrics, detailed handwork, and costly effects that went in to some of his creations.

But there is one dress, a worth creation, to be sure, that has become legendary in the tales of

the Gilded Age, and that is the

dress, often called the electric light dress, that Alice Vanderbilt wore to her sister-in-law

Alva Vanderbilt's grand costume ball that opened Alva's Petit Chateau on 5th Avenue on March 26, 1883.

Alice knew that she had to make a statement at that ball.

Alva, her sister-in-law, was jockeying for social power.

And Alice knew that it was Frederick Worth that could create a gown

that not only would make a statement of relevance,

dramatic symbolism, and beauty that night, but that would be talked about for years to come.

What Alice didn't know was just how incredibly right she was.

Music right she was. Hello, I'm Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilda Gentleman History podcast where every two weeks we journey into corners light and dark for a look at America's Gilded Age, Francis Bel-Ipac, and England's late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

There are a number of images of the Gilded Age caught in fading photographs that so many of us know all too well.

...