Ballgowned

[…]finally ready, they stood like petticoated, ballgowned ladies around the room, ready to be lifted on their rods into place above the windows.

Neighbors dressed in the gray and blue uniforms of Civil War soldiers walked alongside bewigged and ballgowned prerevolutionary “French aristocrats.”

“That’s my call,” he said, over the music, then began making his way back toward the stage, through the back halls, where a double-wide elevator door opened and unloaded a gaggle of ballgowned women in big hair and men in waistcoats and tails.