It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur. Archer remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur. There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing.
-Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence is a classic because it deals with the conflicts between self-satisfaction and duty (a term many have apparently forgotten in our time) and the age of innocence refers to how we are all innocent, naive at some point and then come to a certain realization. It is a great book and brings to life how Victorian society in New York City was like.
And here's the trailer from the great film adaptation:
This film stars the very talented Daniel Day-Lewis.