In DYA November we saw how conical farthingales and wide hoops shaped female fashion during the 1500s to 1700s. Now we examine the crinoline and bustles of the Victorian age, artificial supports that underpinned the most extraordinary modes of the 1800s.

During the second quarter of the 19th century, dress skirts steadily widened, an expanding dome shape created by increasing layers of under-petticoats, including one or more stiffened with starch or horsehair (‘crin’). This concept developed further when horsehair-hemmed petticoats were inserted with a frame comprising graduated hoops of whalebone or cane and, later, of steel, covered with fabric. The revolutionary new cage crinoline evolved from 1855/56 – a vast circular contraption that tied around the waist, yet, replacing multiple heavy petticoats, was light and comfortable to wear. Dominating fashion between the mid/late 1850s and late 1860s, the widest crinoline gowns were worn c1860-62, the largest reportedly 6 metres in circumference, although 3m was more usual. Inexpensive, the crinoline frame was also adopted by women from all social classes and amongst many satirical prints of awkward swaying or lifting skirts are Punch cartoons depicting domestic servants causing havoc in their crinolines. Indeed, wide crinoline dresses were dangerous or inconvenient for all types of physical work and in 1860 Samuel Courtauld prohibited them in his textile mills.

During the mid-late 1860s the crinoline style transformed, progressively flattening in front, with increasing emphasis behind, a half-crinoline or ‘crinolette’ sometimes worn until by 1869/70 a new silhouette was established comprising layered garments softly swagged and draped up at the back over a tournure (polite French word) or bustle. The bustle pad, protruding behind the waist, was essential for the correct set of dress between 1869/70 and 1875, but described by Princess Marie Louise as ‘… a strange and terrible thing… a sort of exaggerated pin-cushion stuffed with horsehair’. After some several years of narrower skirts in the later 1870s/early 1880s, a second bustle came into vogue in 1883/84, remaining in fashion until c1889. This created a more severe protuberance behind the waist than the first bustle and, fashioned from all manner of materials from wire to old newspapers, was said to be capable of supporting a tea tray! Afterwards, never would any contrived under-structures re-shape the female form quite as dramatically as the Victorian crinoline and bustle.