CRINOLINES AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 27 (Supplement)

CRINOLINES AGAIN

NEW PLIABLE HOOPS

Webster defines the word crinoline thus: n. (F., fr. crin, hair. L., crinis) 1, a kind of stiff cloth. 2, a woman's skirt of any stiff material; also, a hoop skirt. The example the Queen set in wearing a crinoline recently makes women think, states a writer in the "Daily Mail." During the last few months we have often toyed with the idea of the crinoline, liked to see it hung on mannequins, but were not quite certain whether we dared to introduce it ourselves. Who began wearing the crinoline, j anyway? Mme. Pompadour in the ISth century. Queen Victoria revived the fashion in England in 1840. The style survived for many years. Women went shopping in crinolines, | climbed into hansoms in them. First declaration of independence apparently came from the three brides Ellen, Edith, and Annie Beeman Hughes in 1867, when they discarded their hoops and walked down' Hackney Road. "This," they reported, "wlas a most daring thing to do." went "out" then, and many times since they've threatened to come back. In 1911 M. Poiret, a Paris dress de-! signer, created a sensation by reintroducing them in his winter collec-: tion; They came as a direct contrast j to the "notorious harem-skirts" which had a rather fleeting vogite. But M. Poiret couldn't quite' get the Oriental j bias out of his mind; bis crinoline was j of an Oriental style. In 1914 they said, "The crinoline is not only threatened, it has arrived." and the highlight was a model made of taffetas with a skirt "describing a series of puffed circles with a corded line between each puff." No undue exaggeration of width, of course, and I don't know how they had the temerity to call it a crinoline, because the hoops were absent. In 1921 they said, "Crinolines have come at last ... women can wear them with the full balloon effect beloved of their grandmothers, having due regard to the contingencies of modern life." In 1923/ it was crinolines again; in 1925 a demand for bustles and, supposedly, an end to masculine fashions. But it wasn't so. It was just a reaction, in the same way as our return to crinolines now is a reaction. Having become emancipated, presumably we want the best of two bargains, and hope to be considered ultra-feminine too. As a : concession to the narrow doorways of modern flats and cars the new' crinoline hoops are pliable.