THE RENAISSANCE OF THE CRINOLINE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1095, 24 February 1893, Page 15

THE RENAISSANCE OF THE CRINOLINE.

Our London correspondent writes under date January 6 The fiat has gone forth, M. Worth and his myrmidons have spoken, and a third renaissance of the crinoline is all but an accomplished fact. At tho New Gallery Private View on Saturday the great Oscar, green as his own carnation with subdued suffering, indicated that more than one smart dame obviously wore what Mr Mantalini oalled 1 A dear little demnition hoop !’ So far the fashion is rather becoming. It has, I am authoritatively assured, effectively done away with thathideousinstitution, the bus , I beg pardon, the dress improver, and if it does not swell into any gross excesses as it did before, the maeculino mind will do well to ignore its existence.

The year 1864 or ’65 saw the apogee of the crinoline. 1 can just remember in a burlesque of the period these lines :

Upon thy broad foundation, crinoline, The first great spread of women’s rights was seen And, when tbe fashion took the Town by storm,

The belles in beauty became bells in form. A little pun went a long way in those dark ages. We aro wiser now. Haydn, by the way, gives the date of the seoond comiug of the crinoline as 1855, but judging fromLeech’a sketches, the fashion did not begin to ' catchon’ badly here until just thirty years ago, Beyond an occasional soupgon of crinoline, the dresses at Saturday’s private views were conventional heavy fur mantles and fur trimmed costumes and boas. A lady in along cloak of exquisitely matched Russian sables was muoh admired, owing to a complexion recalling the Jersey Lily of ’76.