This is a lithograph from 1860 of "Hurdy-Gurdy Girls" by J. Ross Browne from Virginia City in 1860. These women were not necessarily engaged in sexual commerce by modern standards, but they were regarded as occupying that spectrum because of their willingness to dance for or with men for money. Their dresses are revealing at the top, but nowhere else, and I'm not sure this would have been out of line for evening wear at the time for other women (it would be great if a period clothing expert could jump and and evaluating that question, namely, was this dramatically different from what women not engaged in sexual commerce would have worn in 1860?).

Having asked that question, however, we are then forced to consider how women's clothing was generally different in the West as opposed to that of the East. Mary McNair Mathews, in her "Ten Years in Nevada" (1880) commented on how Western women in general tended to be wearing more current fashions - with a great deal imported from London and Paris - and to be dressing in a more flashy formal way than women in the East at the time. So when evaluating the clothing of sex workers, we have to be careful to avoid using Eastern standards.

In general, there isn't a lot of information about what sex workers wore. The few period photographs of these women tend to be staged in a private setting, captured with the intent of producing an image that is titillating and not necessarily accurate for day-to-day fashion. Again, J. Ross Browne is unfairly suggesting that the maids of a hotel were engaged in sexual commerce provides us with this image of women. Regardless of what maids did or did not do, these fashions do not rise to the cliche of what movies, for example, depict for Western sex workers.

This image of Julia Bulette a sex worker who was murdered in 1867 in Virginia City captures a woman wearing extremely modest clothing. The photo is a commemoration of her being honored with a membership in Engine Company No. 1, a firefighting unit, and she is wearing the double-breasted shirt of the unit, but even so, there is nothing seductive or suggestive in the image.

Because Bulette was murdered without heirs (but with many debtors) her estate had to be documented with the hope that a sale of her worldly possessions might equal the amount of debtors she left behind (it didn't). Among her possessions were many dresses, a riding habit, shirts, blouses and other garments - but strangely only one pair of shoes!

Jan Loverin, the curator of the Nevada Textile Museum in Carson City, reviewed Bulette's probate records and observed that the amount of her clothing exceeded what one might find in the wardrobe of a contemporary women who was not engaged in sexual commerce. Loverin indicated that there was nothing in the inventory that would suggest anything that a "respectable" women would not have owned, but that the quantity was excessive. It's hard to say what is going on here: either Bulette felt the need to have many clothing options as part of her occupation or she was a hoarder who simply liked accumulating many garments. She was single with no known relations and she had a persistent ailment that was likely pointing to an early death, so Bulette would have had no reason to save for the future or for heirs. The issue of the quantity of her garments remains a question, but then that's not really your question. In answer to your question, there was nothing in the inventory nor in her photograph to suggest anything that went beyond what other women in the community would have worn.