The Crinoline was invented in December 1856. It was a hooped cage of flexible steel or whalebone. The Crinoline was supposed to make the WIDE skirts that were fashionable at that time a little bit more comfortable and to reach new width's and sizes. During this time, women were always made to feel unimportant and useless besides the mothering of children, and, too society, they were. Psychologically, the space that women took up made them feel more important. Many people think that that is the reason the such large and uncomfortable skirts lasted for so many decades. Crinolines were slow to catch on in England. Once they did, ( since it was so cold in England ) they added fur to the bottoms of crinolines. This is the time when crinolines substituted the role of petticoats. Even though it was a huge cage hanging form women's waists, imagine the relief when they no longer had to wear layer after layer of petticoats, and instead wore a light cage of wire or bone. Crinolines made the formidable skirts of fashionable women bigger than the petticoats could have made them, and they also decreased the waist line. Although at that time thirteen inch waists were very desirable, there are few dresses out of the many that survived from that time that have a waist of less than twenty inches. Whatever size the waists were, though, was forced to that size with the aid of a tight corset.

Crinolines are still worn today; however, they are usually part of a very formal outfit, such as an evening gown or a wedding dress. The volume of the skirt required is not as great as at the height of the Victorian craze for crinolines, so modern crinolines are most often constructed of several layers of stiff net, with flounces to extend the skirt. If there is a hoop in the crinoline, it will probably be made of plastic or nylon, which are cheap, light and flexible.


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