THE  SOCIAL  HISTORY  OF  FLATBUSH


by Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt

1887



DRESS  
HOOP-SKIRTS

    History tells us that in the year 1709 the petticoats worn by the ladies 
of fashion in England had attained an enormous size. The "Tatler," the great 
"censor of the morals and manners of the day," jestingly speaks of it as a 
"silken rotunda, not unlike the cupola of St. Paul's."

    This fashion seems to have reached its most absurd height in 1745. A 
pamphlet was at that time published against the fashion, entitled, "The 
Enormous Abomination of the Hoop Petticoat," because the garment "had become 
of so enormous a circumference that it could not be longer endured."

    Slowly and gradually this unnatural fashion passed away, but its 
extinction was not to be final. Somewhere about 1858 it was revived in a more 
moderate form, and hoop-skirt making became an industry that gave employment 
to thousands of workmen. There were manufactories in all the large cities. 
The ribs were made of steel or tin, with a woven cover over each rib. They 
were pliable and not expensive.

    It is probably that through the invention and improvement of machinery 
the hoop-skirts of this century were much lighter and less cumbersome that 
the "stiff hoops" which Pope denounces in his "Rape of the Lock."

    The fashion held sway for nearly twenty years, only varying in the size 
and shape of the framework. Then the modern hoop-skirt passed into disuse, 
and woman once more presents herself in the size of her natural figure.



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