The History of the Crinoline

The crinoline was not the first accessory designed to support the wearer's skirts in the correct shape; the farthingale was worn in the seventeenth century and panniers in the eighteenth century. However, these very formal and elaborate styles were only worn at royal courts and in the highest levels of society.

After the French Revolution, French fashion turned against the elaborate styles favoured by royalty, the court, and the aristocracy. As Parisian fashion was very influential, most western European countries adopted the same styles.

Under the prevailing neoclassical influence, women’s fashions had adopted a simple style based on the simple draped garments of Ancient Greece and the togas of ancient Rome. Skirts were straight and slender, and worn with very few — if any — petticoats.

However, the silhouette did not remain that way for long, and skirt hems began to widen to give a cone shape. In the 1810s, gores began to be used in skirts again, and skirts grew wider in the 1820s. The width of these skirts was sometimes supported by a small bustle. These were not always sufficient, and so extra petticoats were worn to help.

The first 'crinolines' were petticoats starched for extra stiffness, or made out of the new crinoline fabric, and they often had ruffles to support the skirts to the desired width. However, dress fabrics were heavy but not stiff enough to support their own weight, which tended to collapse the petticoats out of shape. Extra rigidity was added to petticoats through rings of cord or braid running around the hem. In the 1830s, women started to wear petticoats with hoops of whalebone or cane around the hem.

In 1856, the cage crinoline was patented in the United States, France and Britain by the American W.S. Thompson. This facilitated the fashionable silhoutte's development from a cone shape to a dome. It was not an entirely original idea; Thompson was probably inspired by the open cage or frame style of farthingales and panniers. The cage crinoline consisted of steel hoops suspended by tapes descending from a band around the wearer’s waist.

The cage crinoline was adopted with enthusiasm: the numerous petticoats, even the stiffened or hooped ones, were heavy, bulky and generally uncomfortable. It was light — it only required one or two petticoats worn over the top to prevent the steel bands appearing as ridges in the skirt — and freed the wearer's legs from tangling petticoats.

Unlike the farthingale and panniers, the crinoline was worn by women of every social class. The wider circulation of magazines and newspapers spread news of the new fashion, also fueling desire for it, and mass production made it affordable.

Problems with the crinoline

The crinoline was the subject of much ridicule and satire, particularly in Punch magazine. Dress reformers did not like it either — they seized upon the cage aspect of the crinoline and claimed that it effectively imprisoned women. Given that the crinoline did eventually have a maximum diameter of up to 180 centimetres (six feet), it is easy to imagine difficulties in getting through doors, in and out of carriages, and the general problems of manoeuvring in such a large structure. However, while the crinoline needed to have a degree of rigidity, it also had a degree of flexibility. A particular kind of steel, known as sprung steel or watch-spring steel, enabled the hoops to be temporarily pressed out of shape.

The second problem was the potential impropriety of the crinoline. Its lightness was a curse as well as a blessing, as a gust of wind or a knock could set it swinging and reveal quite a lot of the wearer's legs. Even worse, if she tripped up or was knocked over, the crinoline would hold her skirts up.

Sitting down could be a problem if the wearer failed to spread her skirts out properly as the entire hoop contraption would fly up in her face. This embarrassing but humorous tendency is often depicted in comedies of the era.