This tailored beige visiting dress is the earliest of Nadezhda Lamanova's works in the Hermitage. The construction, colour scheme and character of the decoration all make it a vivid example of the fashion of the mid-1890s. The dress is of the ''princesse'' style made from single pieces running the full length, emphatically waisted with a flared skirt. The smooth, refined lines of the neat silhouette of this dress expressed the new ideal of feminine beauty that Anatole France was writing about in 1894 when he described the female figure in fashionable attire as ''a splendid likeness of an amphora''. Evidence of the designer's developed sense of form and great aesthetic taste can also be found in the character of the ornamental decoration that takes the form of garlands of fine flowers that seem to twine around vertical stripes running from the shoulders. They were embroidered in chain-stitch and sewn with sequins. The stripes narrow towards the waist to spread out below as they approach the hem of the skirt, emphasizing its shape.