While stiffened bodices, stays and corsets compressed the female torso and created an artificially small waistline (see DYA October), further under-structures accentuated the hips, shaping the skirt area. In the 1460s a conical farthingale developed at the Spanish Castilian Court, wider versions appearing in France (1530s) and Britain in the 1540s. The name ‘farthingale’ derived from the tough, flexible willow-twig hoops – verdugo, or osiers, although cane and bents (reedy grasses) were also used. These were covered with coarse cloth such as kersey or buckram and sewn inside a skirt in widening concentric hoops, producing a rigid frame. In 1550, satirist Robert Crowley described the Englishwoman: ‘Her mydle braced in, as small as a wande… A bumbe lyke a barrel, wyth whoopes at the skyrte.’

Farthingale hoops expanded further during the 1580s, necessitating more waist support, so linen or cotton cushion pads filled with cotton wool, called ‘bum rolls’ or hip bolsters, were tied around the hips, initially over the cone-shaped frame, but ultimately replacing it. Another transitional mode was a half-farthingale, full only at the back and sides. Eventually, during the 1590s, the new drum or French farthingale evolved – a drum- or wheel-shaped frame fashioned from whalebones or other sturdy struts that radiated outwards horizontally from the waist. This flat ‘wheel’ encircling the waist was covered in pleated material extending outwards from the bodice, the skirt fabric then descending from its outer edge – a distinctive late-Elizabethan and Jacobean mode. During the early 1600s and 1610s the long bodice busk pressed down on the frame in front, creating the tip-tilted farthingale, before the farthingale finally became outmoded c1625.

Soft trailing skirts were fashionable, until c1680 when they became draped up behind and sideways, creating a bouffant effect. As material grew heavier and petticoats increased, a support reappeared in 1710, comprising graduated hoops of whalebone, cane or wood covered in linen or cotton and formed into a skirt. Hooped gowns dominated Georgian fashion, first appearing round and full, then oval width-wise in the 1720s, progressively widening and becoming divided into two ‘paniers’ during the 1740s, for manoeuvrability. Hoops typically measured about 6 feet across producing an extraordinary silhouette – flat in profile, yet vast in width. Hoops were impractical and mishaps numerous: in time intricate internal tapes and metal hinges enabled them to be raised vertically. From c1770 they were dropped from everyday wear, although an obligatory wide hooped mantua gown remained formal Court wear until 1820.