fashionably late

Once, for example, three young ladies, dressed in the extreme of fashion, boarded the train. It was at that especial epoch in the natural history of woman which may be accurately enough described as the "warp-waist period"...the fashion [corsets] was one Miss Dix held in particular abhorrence, her own studies in physiology having apparently inspired her with an intellectual respect so profound for the functions of heart, lungs, liver, and digestive organs that she could no more tolerate the thought of their cruel imprisonment in the steel cage of a binding corset than that of the outraged insane in their own cages...

"Better be dead than out of fashion!" finally exclaimed one of the three. Miss Dix could endure their insolence no longer, and, suddenly rising, interposed with her rich, impressive voice, "My dear if you lace as tight as you do now, you will not long have the privilege of the choice. You will be both dead and out of fashion."