Description:
Hoop skirt or cage crinoline with a cut-away front, nineteen steel hoops, six cotton double-weave tapes stitched to go around back in a grid of tapes - six down and three across (one tape down center front), buckle, and bustle. Variously called hoop skirts, skeleton skirts, or skirt improvers, the word crinoline comes from the French word for horse hair. As skirts became increasingly wider in the 1830s and 1840s, more and more petticoats were needed to achieve the fashionable dome shape. One solution was to stiffen petticoats with horsehair and other materials. By the early 1850s, steel was sporadically used in petticoat hems in the United States and abroad. It wasn’t until 1856 that a French patent outlined a system for entire “cages” of flexible steel rods connected by vertical tapes made from linen or cotton. Seen as oppressive today, these devices (averaging one to two pounds) were heralded as a reform in women’s dress. Nevertheless, the lighter weight was tempered by the new problem of correctly walking and sitting in society. Cage crinolines became one of the first mass-manufactured garments for women in the 19th century. The growing steel industry produced the hoops. Vertical tapes were machine-woven in a double weave, creating evenly-spaced channels through which women, employed in factories, inserted the hoops. Cage crinolines were used and modified extensively reflecting the streamlined skirt shape in woman's dress in the 1870s and 1880s by women of all classes. By that time, skirts were flat in front, and the bustle, a shelf-like extension worn underneath, projected skirts out behind. Contemporary cage crinolines reflect this shape and could be worn with a bustle added. The criss-cross of linen tapes seen at the hem in front provided a slight extension to the skirt that made walking and climbing steps easier. Critics of the cage crinoline, however, still poked fun of the tripping that sometimes occurred during the garment’s reign.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+87.806 |
