Crinolines – the followup

 

 

I was not disappointed.

 

When I did this post

Crinolines and their Comfort Zone

I said that I hoped that ‘many of my readers will enjoy, and have something to add…’

First and foremost I think we are all grateful to Daniel Milford Cottam – professional costume expert and long-standing blogfriend, who helped us out with his deep knowledge.

We wondered if crinolines were a feature of the lives of rich women, and he put us right:

 

The crinoline was one of the first truly open-to-all fashions. There were studies made at the time to survey people's possessions and almost every woman, even poor women, in the Westernised world, had at least one hoop in their wardrobe, even if they just wore it for Sunday best. There are photos of Australian expat working women living in slab huts wearing their Sunday best - crinoline and all - for the photo.

This was part of the problem, because the universality of the crinoline meant that you had servants defying their mistresses by wearing a hoop, and if Madam tried to prevent it, the maids quit and went elsewhere and Madam couldn't employ new servants because they refused to have their dress policed. Factory workers wore them, which led to some really nasty accidents. If anything, the crinoline was hated by men because it forced them to contemplate a world in which women could crowd them out and exclude them by taking up space enough for five men. That's why Punch was so obsessed with making fun of crinolinemania, it was fuelled by misogyny and fear that their masculinities would drop off if women continued taking up so much space.

Beautifully explained thank you.

And he also told me about the wonderful top picture, by John Finnie, showing Maids of all Work wearing crinolines.

We also discussed at length whether crinolines contributed to women burning to death – best to follow the chat in the comments on the post. Daniel again gives us the info, including a link to this webpage:

He says: The Punch cartoon is quite relevant! It actually gives a good sense of how a crinoline might relate to a fireplace too, as it's quite unexaggerated/non-caricatured. You'd have to get up close, almost onto the hearth, to brush up against the fireplace, and 1863 was the height of the average crinoline's width as we see here. While there were definitely much larger hoops, those would have been more of a statement/exaggeration or at least not the usual everyday garment.

One reader didn’t post a comment but wrote to me to tell me about a dreadful non-crinoline burning incident:  ‘at the French court in 1393, when five nobles, plus the king, dressed up as wildmen were dancing around wrapped from head to foot in highly flammable costumes (coated with resin and flax) when the king's brother allegedly held a flaming torch too close to them...

The king was rescued by a quick-thinking duchess; one of the nobles managed to jump into a barrel of wine. The others didn't. Hauntingly horrible.’ Here on wiki.

I was surprised that no-one mentioned either of two modern crinoline artefacts:  there used to be crinoline ladies made to cover up telephones or toilet rolls – easy to find pictures online.

But also – the Barbie Cake! I have much form with Barbie, but a key moment came with one of my daughter’s birthday parties. I knew she would love a Barbie cake, so ordered one from the local supermarket (this was in the US). As it happened, her after-school party was being held in a pottery café right opposite the shop, so I arranged to pick it up at the last minute, 5pm. When I went in to the bakery dept, they told me they had put it on display for the whole day, resulting in nearly every woman shopper stopping to look and admire and comment, and that they had taken four more orders already. Happy days.

 

And we do need a reference to Vivienne Westwood’s 1985 mini-crini collection. (Margot Robbie wore a later version for press junkets for the new Wuthering Heights film in recent weeks).

 

And I have still  another book coming that features crinolines….