The Victorian Dress is one of two paintings with the same subject and title that McNicoll produced at the height of her career. Skirts of this shape became popular in the 1850s, and McNicoll clad her many other representations of female figures in modern dress. Perhaps this painting is a deliberate critique of the heavy expectations associated with the sartorial expression of femininity. McNicoll may be suggesting that femininity is a performance, an identity you “put on,” just like a costume.