Fashion Victims : The Perils of Crinoline Skirts
“It is, and ever was, the fashion to go to Hell”
A.W. Esquire, The Enormous Abomination of the Hoop Petticoat, 1745
I’ve been watching Paris Fashion Week and can’t help but notice that bustles are making their way onto the catwalks in enormous numbers.
Roseberry for Schiaparelli Paris Fashion Week January 2025
Firstly, I find it hard to believe that any woman would really want to accentuate and widen her hips. And secondly it got me thinking about the history of the hoop petticoats (known also as crinolines and panniers).
The crinoline appeared on the fashion scene in the mid-1800s Victorian era and took its name from the French word crin (“horsehair”), a stiff material made using horsehair — and “linen.”
During this time strict social rules were paramount (you’ve seen Bridgerton?), and of course the Church was right up there pontificating on what women may and may not wear. The Church considered the hoop petticoat as sinful, for it encouraged lustful behaviour and was associated with pride and vanity.
Furthermore, critics feared that crinoline could be used to conceal the pregnant or transgressive body, and that it also facilitated the erotic exhibition of the female body. The pendulum-like motion that resulted from the structure hanging from the waist meant that “when worn it swung provocatively from side to side, revealing glimpses of ankles and even calves”, glimpses that could also be stolen when the wearer lifted her hoop to avoid puddles, to enter or exit a carriage, to climb steps.
The crinoline also attracted derision from the males of the era, considering them a public nuisance for why should “… one woman take up as much room as two or three men?” (A.W. Esquire, again).
As the crinoline continued its fashion favour, mass produced hoops became popular and affordable. It wasn’t just upper class ladies and princesses who could afford crinolines, but factory workers and women of all classes. Factory owners banned the crinoline from the factory floor when it was found that employees were wearing them to work near dangerous machinery.
There were further dangers and inconveniences associated with wearing crinolines.
Being – at some point nearly 6-feet (1.8m) wide – getting through doors, boarding carriages and just generally getting about proved difficult.
But crinolines were deadly if worn without due care. Thousands of women died in the mid-19th century as a result of their hooped skirts catching fire (there were no fire guards at this point). Alongside fire, other hazards included the hoops being caught in machinery, carriage wheels, gusts of wind, or other obstacles. It is estimated that, during the late 1850s and late 1860s in England, about 3,000 women were killed in crinoline-related fires.
By the early 1870s, the crinoline fashion trend faded away and was replaced by the bustle. It has been periodically revived, most notably after World War II as part of Christian Dior’s New Look. And now, again, at Paris Fashion Week 2025 (sigh).
Dior, New Look, 1947