One can see from paintings, portraits, engravings and later, photographs, that despite the rigid-seeming governing rules, contemporary fashions to a certain extent influenced the shape of the Court dress, particularly the skirt. When first established in the mid-1830s, the shape of the skirt was bell-like, and the sleeves were quite wide, as was then the fashion:
Later, the skirt widened with the crinoline shape, as can be seen in the engraving of a court reception in the 1850s:
And in the painting of the marriage of the Tsarevitch Alexander and Dagmar of Denmark in 1866, the Tsarina's skirt can be seen to be now much wider at the bottom and flat at the sides, like the crinoline fashion in its last form - the long trains very much in that style anyway:
With the introduction of the bustle fashion, the wide skirts were discontinued although it appears the fullness at the back of the bustle was not adopted. Instead, skirts fell close at the sides and the last shape of the dress continued until the Revolution. However, it should be noted that the dress of the Empress Marie, worn for the wedding of her daughter Marie in 1874, has quite a high waist, which was fashionable at the time:
