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In the middle of the 19th century, the expression “victim of fashion” took on a tragically literal turn. On March 16, 1858, THE New York Times reported on a young Boston woman who caught fire when her roomy dress – stretched to the extreme circumference by the then ubiquitous undergarment known as the hoop – came too close to the fireplace of her Beacon Street house. According to the newspaper, no less than 19 ladies had suffered a similar fate in England between January 1 and mid-February of that year. “Surely an average of three deaths a week in a fire should frighten the most thoughtless of the privileged sex and make them at least extraordinarily cautious in their movements and behavior if that fails (which of course it will ) to dissuade them from adopting such a perilous fashion”, railed the newspaper.
The misogyny and condescension are, of course, enough to make modern ears bleed, but in one respect the author was right: the hoop skirt, also known as the caged crinoline, has, despite its lack of practicality almost comical, somehow endured. Although tent-shaped dresses are no longer worn daily, as they were in the 1850s, the hoop still manages to make semi-regular appearances on red carpets, bridal aisles and fashion shows. This season, there has been a particularly notable abundance. At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson sent bouncy tea-length numbers with square, almost shelf-like protrusions at the waist. Rei Kawakubo, perhaps the most consistent purveyor of bumpy, bumpy silhouettes, pushed angular, domed hips to monumental proportions at Comme des Garçons. Christopher Kane draped sheer lace over a wide, stiff waist for a sexy peekaboo hoop. And at Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri presented several variations on the flared silhouette, some short and sweet, others regal and floor-sweeping. For her, the inspiration started from the top, with corsets inspired by Catherine de’ Medici; this meant, she says, that “it was essential that the crinoline was also part of these looks, redefining … the curves of the body”.
Alice Stordiau wears a Dior dress, shorts, socks and shoes.
Jiashan Liu and Marie-Agnès Diène wear Loewe dresses and shoes.
Like de’ Medici herself, the hoop skirt first rose to prominence in the royal courts of late Renaissance Europe. By some accounts, the original influencer was Joan of Portugal, during her reign as Queen of Castile in the early 1500s. A woman most remembered for showing an overabundance of cleavage and giving birth to two children out of wedlock, she is said to have adopted the habit of wearing caged petticoats – which were constructed of wicker or dried grass – to hide her outrageous pregnancies. In Spain, these machines were called verdugados, from the Old Spanish word for “green sticks”. (Strangely, in modern Spanish, verdugo means “executioner”.) The style is believed to have traveled from the Iberian Peninsula to England with Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, around 1509. There the garment was known as the farthingale and , says fashion historian Jessica Glasscock – who spent a decade at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and now teaches fashion history at the Parsons School of Design – was worn primarily as a way to display the wealth in the form of fabric. “The message was: look how rich and expensive my textile is, and look how many I have!” she says. It’s no surprise that the look was particularly popular in royal portraits of this era.
By the 18th century, the fashion for farthingales had morphed into a passion for saddlebags, from the French word for basket. As their name suggests, these body shapers were woven from cane or whalebone and, rather than making a full circle like the farthingale, sat on both sides of the hips, stretching the skirts into wide rectangular panels which made the size incredibly tiny in contrast. Some satchels were relatively modest in size, but others were so large that the women carrying them seemed to be walking around surrounded by a dining room table. In some cases, hinges were added so that the sides could be lowered (to the drop leaf) as the wearer passed through the doors. Like farthingales, saddlebags were associated with blue bloods, but, says Glasscock, the look quickly began to catch on. “The 18th century is when you really start having fashion, with upper middle classes imitating and adopting what wealthy people wore,” she says.
Looking rich, however, became less desirable in the 1790s, when Marie Antoinette – whose baggy sets of saddlebags were legendaryly showy – lost her mind due, in part, to her “if you have it, display it”. At this time, huge skirts were exchanged for more streamlined columnar silhouettes. But by the 1850s, big money was back, thanks to Austrian socialite Pauline Metternich (full name: Princess Pauline Clementine Marie Walburga von Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein). A famous avant-garde of her time, Metternich came to France when her husband was appointed ambassador to the court of Napoleon III. “She was a classic pretty ugly,” says Glasscock. “She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she was a lot of fun and she dressed wonderfully.” Metternich became close to Empress Eugenie and introduced her to English fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth, known today as the father of haute couture. When Metternich began wearing Worth’s spectacularly voluminous dresses, Eugenie and the other members of her entourage followed suit. Soon the massive skirts were back and bigger than ever.
Originally, dresses like those made by Worth were held together by layers of stiff linen and horsehair petticoats. Heavy, heat-trapping garments were worn four or six at a time, depending on the diameter of the robe, and tended to tangle around the legs, essentially hampering the wearer. Eventually, couturiers began to incorporate petticoats with graduated whalebone or cane hoops. These clothes were cooler and more comfortable, but also extraordinarily expensive. Ordinary people who wanted to emulate royal styles were stuck with warm, heavy layers.
Sardine wears a Christopher Kane dress; falke tights; Amina Mouaddi shoes.
Liu wears a Sheltered dress; Lorette Colé Duprat earings; Indaco shoes.
It was hailed as a form of liberation when the Parisian company RC Milliet launched the first metal-framed crinoline in April 1856. Within months, tens of thousands of skirts were produced across Europe and the United States. , and their cost quickly fell. . “Within a decade, the price of a hoop went from five dollars to something like 25 cents,” says Glasscock. That’s when the trend really exploded. “While the early iterations were very bourgeois, by the mid-19th century it was all about the fashion system,” says Glasscock. “You can find women at almost every level wearing some version of the hoop.”
No longer the domain of the superelite, the silhouette has also become a widespread cultural phenomenon, appearing in satirical cartoons depicting hoops exploding over women’s heads at the beach or crushing suitors with their girth. There were also constant headlines about crinoline victims, whether by self-immolation or being picked up and crushed by the wheels of the car. Glasscock sees these cautionary tales as perhaps exaggerated by a disturbed patriarchy. “There was a concern that, in a sense, the hoop skirt would take up too much space for women,” she says. “And there was a certain criticism and anxiety about that in the culture that would then translate into what you might call 19th-century worry about things like fire risk.”
Clothing also enforced a built-in degree of social distancing that probably wasn’t welcomed by manual types: sneaky petting and other unwanted petting was an impossibility. As stupid as they might have looked, covered in frills and swaying with every step, they were impossible to ignore. This may be the root of why such a seemingly impractical trend has enjoyed such longevity. Walking through the world in a hoop skirt – then, as now – is nothing if not a pose of power.
Hairstyle by Yann Turchi at Bryant Artists; makeup by Masaé Ito at MA World Group; manicure by Marie Rosa for Dior. Scenography by Cristina Ramos at the Magnet Agency. Cast by Lisa Dymph Megens at Industry Art.
Produced by UN Produced; executive producer: Rosie Donoghue; production manager: Béatrice Lontani; photo assistants: François Briens; Valentino Bianchi; fashion assistant: Bianca Diocesano; hairdressers: Mills Mouchopeda, Antsouo Dominique; makeup assistant: Gwendoline Joncour; set assistants: Leo Orinowski, Hamid Shams; models: Alice Stordiau at Bloom Management, Alyssa Sardine at Premier Model Management, Jiashan Liu at Silent Models, Marie-Agnes Diene at The Claw Models