A La Mode – Part Three
The crinoline cage
Amelia Bloomer may have consigned the first phase of her eponymous garment to the bin of fashion history by adopting the new craze for the crinoline cage but, in truth, wide and full skirts were a la mode since the 15th century. The Queen Consort Joan of Portugal popularised the hoop skirt, wearing it at court, although the court gossip-mongers speculated that it was to hide an illegitimate pregnancy.
Known as the verdugado, corrupted as the English have a habit of doing so to farthingale, the dress was introduced to Blighty by Catherine of Aragon. The Spanish farthingale consisted of a linen petticoat with bands of cane or whalebone inserted horizontally to produce a cone shape running from waist to hem.
Crinoline is an example of a compound word which means precisely what its parts indicate, crin being the French for horsehair and lin for linen. So the original crinoline consisted of horsehair and linen and in the 1840s the material was used to support the weight of the petticoats under the full, bell-shaped skirts that were the vogue at the time.
But what really kick-started the rage for crinoline cages was the development of the steel-hooped crinoline cage, patented in April 1856 in Paris by R C Milliet and, a few months later, by his agent in London. Consisting of spring steel, they were surprisingly flexible, could be compressed and, for the wearer, extremely liberating as they could dispense with the burdensome layers of heavy petticoats. No wonder Ms Bloomer approved.
The crinoline cages appealed to women of all classes and flew off the shelves. In America one of the biggest manufacturers, Douglas and Sherwood’s Hoop Skirt Factory in New York, employed 800 women, producing in excess of 8,000 hoop skirts a day. The Lady extolled the virtues of the fashionable garment in its April 1863 edition, commenting “So perfect are the wave-like bands that a lady may ascend a steep stair, lean against a table, throw herself into an armchair, pass to her stall at the opera, and occupy a further seat in a carriage, without inconveniencing herself or others, and provoking the rude remarks of observers thus modifying in an important degree, all those peculiarities tending to destroy the modesty of Englishwomen; and lastly, it allows the dress to fall in graceful folds.”
At its widest point the circumference of the crinoline could reach six feet and they guaranteed a large amount of personal space for the wearer. The satirical magazine, Punch, could not resist having a pop at this latest fashion. “Emily: Madame Bonton says the Circumference of the Crinoline should be Thirty-Six Feet! Caroline: Dear me! – I’m only Thirty-Two! I must Inflate a little!” and was quick to point some of the hazards for the unwary. “Take care that the Ends of your Hoops be secure; they have been known to give way—to the great alarm and discomfiture of the Lovely Wearer.”
And dangerous they were too. In England alone it was estimated that between the late 1850s and late 1860s some 3,000 women died in crinoline-related fires and in 1864 the Bulgarian poet, Petrok Slaveykov reckoned that globally in the previous 14 years the suspiciously precise figure of 39,927 had perished this way. Perhaps the worst case was a fire at the Church of the Company of Jesus in Santiago, Chile on 8th December 1863, where between two and three thousand worshipers died, many of whose deaths were attributable to crinoline dresses. Fire-proof material was available but it was not deemed to be as attractive.
If they did not kill you, crinoline dresses could get stuck in doors, carriage wheels or caught by sudden gusts of wind, blowing the wearer off their feet. The poor Duchess of Manchester tripped on a stile, her skirt flew over her head to reveal her scarlet drawers to the assembled company. At least they matched her face.
From 1862 a more sensible fashion was introduced, the crinolette, which was composed of half hoops of spring steel and created a shape that was flat at the front and bell-shaped at the back.
Now, why didn’t they think of that before?
