Forgive me for being presumptuous and starting this thread before a staff member; I'm reading this book on Paris fashion and it has a lot of great information about our period so I wanted to share it!

Couturiers (such as Worth) would use actresses and other such mannequins to display their new designs. Worth himself would use his own wife as a model and make her wear his newest designs at the racetracks.

Actresses were considered public figures and would be interviewed by gentlemen's magazines and mingle in society. They just wouldn't be invited to any "respectable" balls. In any case, in spite of their Working Class position in life, they'd still be able to go out and about and mingle in society!

It wasn't important for debutantes to be well dressed in order to attract a husband, but rather for her mother to do so. That was because debutantes themselves wouldn't really talk with their prospective suitors. Her mother served, in a way, as a promise as to what her daughter could become. Basically, the cooler your mother was, the better your marriage prospects.

^ which I realize can't really happen on here, otherwise, debs would be super boring and would only thread with their friends and mom xD

Riding habits were made by tailors rather than dressmakers, seeing that the design of that dress was more masculine than that of a regular dress.

The book is called Paris Fashion; A Cultural History by Valerie Steele!