I had the privilege of wearing a hoop skirt, a real hoop skirt, complete with an actual hoop when I attended the Gone With The Wind Anniversary Costume Ball in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was an interesting experience in coping.  Fortunately, I trained at home.

My home is NOT an a plantation house with wide entranceways, halls and staircases.  When I tried on my antebellum gown, everything within six inches of the floor was either dusted or knocked over.  Sitting was fun.  I quickly discovered one has to sit in the center of the hoop, and not on the back, or else the front of the hoop lifts to reveal one's pantaloons.   

My husband and I dressed for the ball in our hotel room.  This meant we didn't have to ride in a car.  If you think an exploded airbag fills the seat, try a full hoop skirt and all that covers it.  We rode a bus to the gala.  Bus seats were not meant to hold hoop-skirted women. 

And what do you do with you hands while wearing a hoop skirt with full petticoat?  If you hang them down as they naturally fall, you flatten the sides of the skirt.  I discovered that folding my hands at my waist seemed the best position for both my gown and myself.   My reticule, the small drawstring bag I carried, dangled from my bent arm to lie delicately against the outward expansion of my skirt. 

Dancing at the ball was wonderful.  I was held in the arms of a uniformed soldier whose costume came complete with white gloves so he couldn't soil my gown with (horrors!) perspiration.  There was never any danger of my toes being crushed because the skirt wouldn't let my partner that close!

No matter how many times I've seen period movies or paintings or pictures from the golden age of hoop skirts, I had never thought of the actual and necessary life modifications this fashion demands until I actually donned a hoop.  Happily I can say I don't know when I've felt more feminine.  In all that lace and rustle, it was pure romance. 

The large artificial round cage crinoline was in vogue from approximately 1856 through 1869.  Some say the Empress Eugénie of France wore the first crinoline cage to England in 1855 on a visit with her husband Napoleon III.  Perhaps her couturier invented it to hide her pregnancy or to bolster the French fabric and trim industry.

Crin is French for hair.  It comes from the Latin word for hair, crinis.

Prior to that time, a lady had to wear at least seven layers of petticoats with stiffly starched flounces to achieve the same full look.  The next fashion innovation was a rigid horsehair crinoline, but the cooler and lighter weight cage replaced that.  Because the expansive hoped skirt automatically gave the illusion of a tiny waist, the corset didn't have to be pulled so tight.  All classes of women wore them, some while even working in the fields.  After wearing layers of petticoats, the feminine form felt much freer beneath the distended skirt.  It was the first universally popular fashion statement that was manufactured rather than homemade.

Graham's Magazine of 1856 said:

The plainest of ladies, with but slight pretension to fashion, have given up their prejudices against [hoops] and adopted them.  Thus [hoops] have obtained a complete triumph, not withstanding the fair wearers occupy two, or even three times as much space as they did formerly increases their importance in the world. 

Hoops, called artificial crinolines, were constructed from whalebone, roping, cane or watch spring steel and held together with sturdy fabric webbing or twill tape hanging from an elastic waistband.  There were two common versions:

• Rounded and tiered wired that needed to be covered with a petticoat to hide the wires that might show through the skirt

• An actual petticoat with the hoop bands laced through horizontal casings on the underside of the solid petticoat  

Outer skirts could be made to cover any hoop size by piecing together long widths of fabric and gathering their tops to fit into the waistband or using knife or box pleats.  Most bodices were fitted and separate from skirt, having a point at the waist in the front and the back.  Evening gowns exposed the shoulders.  Day dresses had high rounded necklines and, often, either capped sleeves or pagoda sleeves, which are long funnel-shaped sleeves that show the sleeve lining or a fancy inner sleeve. 

Black was fashionable with bright contrasting trim or often fringe.  Also popular were brown, green, blue, gray and lavender and maroon.  Bright red and crimson or wild plaids were left to the ladies of the evening.

Most women did not live in lavish mansions and had to be careful as they maneuvered down halls and through doorways lest they knock over a precious knickknack or snag the wire of their hoop on something and topple over. 

No one had central heating so fireplaces were lit more often than not, and the big skirts were a fire hazard.

The Goodbye Lie contains a reference to this very thing as a young boy on duty at a Christmas dance repeatedly encircles a pine tree decorated with lighted candles, "Ladies, mind your skirts," he tells them while he carries a bucket of water, just in case.

As even wider skirts came into fashion, it made traveling on public conveyances difficult.  About 1859, hoops maxed out in diameter.  Nearly 500,000 were made in that year alone by one company in England!  The cost of a hoop in America was about 50 cents, and depending on the degree of their decoration, they could have cost as much as $2!  

In the early 1860s, hoops became somewhat elliptical.  The back was fuller than the front.  During the American Civil War, women from both the North and the South smuggled weapons and secret documents beneath their wide skirts.  Eventually, both sides in the war needed metal and fabric, and the skirts began to narrow.  Less trim was used.  Skirts became conical, and by 1869 hoops were so out of fashion newspapers were running disparaging cartoons depicting damsels in their hoops.    

Bustles (to fill the indentation at the small of the back and keep the silhouette looking rounded) and short trains replaced hoops.  These trains, like today's wedding gown trains, could be draped on one hip, thrown over the arm or hooked in the back at the waist.  The pretty petticoat was exposed and thus began what we call overskirts.

Fashion is forever changing.  Some styles are fun, some ludicrous, some classic and some romantic.  Whatever the trend of the day, they all tell tales of the time and people wearing them.  The study of clothing can be pure pleasure, particularly if you imagine yourself decked out in these costumes.  It's even better if you actually try them on!