Hoop (clothing)

“ CHARLOTTE Therefore it is, that when large hoops are in fashion, we often see many a plump girl lost in the immensity of a hoop-petticoat, whose want of height and en-bon-point would never have been remarked in any other dress. When the high head-dress is the mode, how then do we see a lofty cushion, with a profusion of gauze, feathers, and ribband, supported by a face no bigger than an apple! whilst a broad full-faced lady, who really would have appeared tolerably handsome in a large head-dress, looks with her smart chapeau as masculine as a soldier. ”

“ The hoopskirt was the characteristic feature of eighteenth-century styles, and it grew to such enormous proportions as seriously to inconvenience the wearer and to interfere with the cubic feet of space which a pedestrian might reasonably claim as his right on a crowded thoroughfare. But there were eighteenth-century styles which were more reprehensible than the oft-caricatured hoop. ”

“ After about fifteen years the high Commode again came into fashion, but the startling novelty was the hoop-petticoat. It widened gradually from the waist to the ground, the gown being looped up round the body in front and falling in loose folds behind (Pl. 52, Fig. 1.) . A writer of the time says of this fashion: “Nothing can be imagined more unnatural, and, consequently, less agreeable. When a slender woman stands upon a basis so inordinately wide, she resembles a funnel, a figure of no great elegancy.” ”

“ But the "quality," as heretofore, still led the manners and fashions of the people, and it is to them we must still look for the momentous changes of the eighteenth century. The century divides itself into two parts: the first half coarse, godless, merry and careless; the latter part growing in refinement, delicacy, simplicity, and soberness.
Amid the numerous varieties in women's dress, the most marked characteristics were the hoop and the powdered head-dress. The famous hoop petticoats had been increasing steadily in size and clumsiness since the reign of Queen Anne. ”

“ The hoop, which gradually developed through the Georgian era, was the most monstrous enormity that ever appeared in the world of fashion. The lady who wore a hoop really stood in a cage, and when she moved, she did not seem to walk, for her steps were not visible, but she was rather wafted along. So stepped fair ladies from their sedan-chairs, or floated down the avenues of Kensington and Hampton Court. Servants wore clothes almost as fine as their masters and mistresses, and aped their manners and their vices. ”

“ I am sure I don’t know how the mantua-maker managed it, for the cloth was only bought on Monday morning; I suppose she must have had plenty of apprentices. The gowns were sacques of cherry damask, with quilted silk petticoats of black trimmed with silver lace. I find hoops are all the mode again, and very large indeed—so big that when you enter a door you have to double your hoop round in front, or lift it on one side out of the way. The cap is a little scrap of a thing, scarce bigger than a crown-piece, and a flower or pompoon is stuck at the side ”

“ Utterly regardless of fashion, for its own sake, she always contrives to be in the mode, though I believe that if hoop skirts were suited to her, she'd have the courage of her crinoline, and wear one. ”

“ It has been strenuously argued by our ladies that hoops are a cool and comfortable fashion, but I cannot understand how they derive the benefit that is claimed for crinoline when the accustomed quantity of clothing is still worn. ”

“ His coat, of blue velvet, is richly ornamented somewhat after the fashion of the ornaments on the dress of his bride. The ladies wear enormous hoops, except the bride, who has no hoop. Their hair is powdered, and their arms project from their bodies in rather a stiff attitude, rendered necessary by the projection of the hoops. ”

“ Women did very well without them, and looked quite as well, at least in my opinion. But some ingenious man conceived the idea of tempting them with a new want, and they were at once persuaded into believing that hoop-skirts were indispensable to a genteel appearance. They were adopted all over the country with a rapidity that outstripped that of the cuffs and collars,—not, perhaps, that as many were manufactured, because, if that had been the case, they could not have been consumed, unless each woman had worn two or three. ”

“ The many-colored Madras kerchief is universally worn by the common class of women, twisted into a jaunty turban, with one well-starched end ingeniously arranged so as to stand upright like a soldier's plume. The love of ornament is displayed by the wearing of hoop earrings of enormous size, together with triple strings of gold beads, and bracelets of the same material. If any one imagines he has seen larger sized hoop earrings this side of Africa, he is mistaken. They are more like bangles than earrings, hanging down so as to rest upon the neck and shoulders. ”

“ Can they point out of what use are the high-crowned hats, their shoes tied with strings, the number of buttons lately added to their coats: of what real service that ponderosity of their watches and canes? We will even attend to the Green Grocer, if he can defend them, and no longer despise the opinions of those scrutators of our dress; but till then we must insist that the hoop (the battery at which most of their present artillery is played off against) , when of a moderate size, is an addition to the appearance of a fine woman ”

“ Women’s dress in this 18th century is dominated by the hoop-petticoat which Sir Roger de Coverley recognizes in 1711 as a new fashion and an old one revived. A stiff bodice laced in front, a gown, with short and wide-ended sleeves, gathered up in folds above the petticoat, a laced apron and a lace cap with hanging lappets, is the dress of the century’s beginning. So the women of fashion are compared with children in go-carts, their tight-laced waists rising from vast bells of petticoats over which the gown is looped up like a drawn curtain. ”

“ Cuffs are deep, but are lowered to below the elbow. The bodice of the gown is cut high in the back and low in front, and is decked with a deep frill of lace or linen, which allows less bare neck to show than formerly. A very observant gentleman! ‘But you have seen the new hoop?’ I ask him. Yes, he has seen it. As he rode into town he noticed that the old fashions gave way to new, that every mile brought the fontage lower and the hair more hidden, until short curls and a little cap of linen or lace entirely replaced the old high head-dress and the profusion of curls on the shoulders. ”

“ The ladies dress almost in the English style, except a few ancient dames, who wear a large hoop:—when going to church all wear the hoop, with a black velvet petticoat over it, sewed in small folds, and a broad piece of English flannel over their heads, generally of a brown colour, which they can fold over their faces so as to cover them. ”

“ Many of the young women prefer the basquiña y manton, a black silk or stuff petticoat without a hoop, and a black silk or lace veil; but others like the hoop, as it shews their slender waists to advantage. The hair is braided, or platted, hanging in loose tresses down their backs. The ladies are so fond of jewellery that necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets and finger-rings are never dispensed with ”

“ It was her hoop-skirt that best testified to her height. It was the period of those funnel-shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such nice mathematical proportions, from the waist down, that it seemed they must have emanated from the brains of astronomers, like the orbits, and diameters, and other things belonging to the heavenly bodies. Pupasse could not have come within three feet of the wall with her hoop-skirt distended. To have forced matters was not to be thought of an instant. ”

“ Spit out a shower of blue and white brightness. The little criss-cross shoes twinkle behind you, The pink and blue sashes flutter like flags, The hoop-sticks are ready to beat you. Turn, turn, Hoops! In the yellow sunshine. Turn your stripped willow whiteness Along the smooth paths. Stella sings: "Round and round, rolls my hoop, Scarcely touching the ground, With a swoop, And a bound, Round and round. With a bumpety, crunching, scattering sound, Down the garden it flies; In our eyes The sun lies. ”

“ The magnificence of the full-dress hoop carries with it a most noble and majestic appearance, and I hope will never be given up or hors de la mode as long as England can boast of such fine women as appear within the circle of a Drawing Room. ”

“ The Greek and Hellenistic periods, from the sixth to the second century B.C., furnish a large variety of forms, some copied or adapted from earlier ones and then independently developed. A rounded hoop tapering upward, with ornamental extremities, occasionally appears in fine examples, the ends of the hoop representing the lions’ masks; the bezels are frequently of oval shape, and the shoulders of the hoop are often nearly straight; in another type while the outside of the hoop is rounded, the inside is facetted; sometimes there is a high convex bezel, bevelled underneath. ”

“ Every body wears hoops, but how few—‘tis a melancholy consideration—how very few can manage them! There’s my friend Lady C——; in an elegant undress she passes for very genteel, but put her into a hoop and she looks as pitiable a figure, as much a prisoner, and as little able to walk, as a child in a go-cart. ”

“ No woman wearing shoes shall have a bottom hoop, farthingale, or anything else in the skirt for the purpose of making a noise, and bottom hoops or farthingales shall not be worn except with pattens at least five inches high. ”

“ The robe is made of plain sattin, chiefly white, worn without a hoop, round, and a long train. It is drawn up in the front, on one side, and fastened with tassels of silver, gold, or silk, according to the taste of the wearer; and this discloses a puckered petticoat of gauze or sarsenet, of a different colour. The sleeves are wide and short, drawn up near the shoulder with small tassels, or knots of diamonds; under sleeves of the finest cambrick, full plaited, and trimmed at the elbow with Brussels or point, give infinite charms to the whole. ”

“ An eminent London physician writes as follows:—“I cannot express myself sufficiently strongly of this abhorrent custom,—not only dangerous as regards crinoline, but, since the introduction of hoops, positively indecent. As a friend of mine said the other day, ‘Ladies might have been proud of showing their ankles when they had a good one: now every woman seems proud of showing her knees.’” An anonymous vindicator of the hoop writes to me about the indecency of the dress in a way which reads strangely on the same page with her laudation of the fashion. ”

“ The inner hoop is sure to fit so tightly within the outer one that if the material to be embroidered is at all thick, neither persuasion nor force will make it slip into place. A new hoop is now being made which can be adjusted for goods of any thickness. ”

“ Of course, no one bothers to dress specially just for a little informal game on their own side lawn. However, there is a certain type of costume that one has grown to expect in the tournaments at the country clubs.
The accepted costume is all that could be desired for comfort—a short, two-piece or plaited silk or woolen skirt and a plain tailored blouse of batiste, handkerchief linen or crepe de chine with comfortable V neck. I might add that the popular woolen sports skirt is striped.
Tennis is a hatless game. The hair ought to be dressed in a close simple manner. ”

“ Every one who has been to a fancy ball recalls the charming coiffure which surmounts this costume—the thick wavy black tresses, parted in the middle of the brow, taken down either side of the face loosely, then suddenly raised from the nape of the neck high at the back of the head, coiled round there and fixed under a tiny band of white lace, and a large bow or sash of black ribbon. Few head-dresses are at once so irresistible and so dignified, and none could be better suited to the regular features, ample beauty, and melting eyes of the daughters of Provence. ”

“ The females often wear a large hoop, and a gaudy petticoat made of English flannel, red, pink, yellow, or pale blue, ornamented with a profusion of ribbon, lace, fringe, and spangles, wrought into a kind of arabesque about half a yard deep, near the bottom of the coat, below which a broad white lace hangs, attached to an under garment. ”

“ In summer a conical-shaped straw hat is chosen, and in winter small hats obtain either of hard felt with stiff, upturned brims or of felt soft and pliable.
The costume of the lower orders is simplicity itself. A cotton shirt, trousers, and a loose sleeve-less coat exhaust the list. A narrow strip of material is tied round the waist in order to prevent the clothing getting in the worker's way, and the naked feet are thrust into low sandals. ”

“ Ball dressing requires less art than the nice gradations of costume in the dinner dress, and the dress for evening parties. For a ball, everything should be light and diaphanous, somewhat fanciful and airy. The heavy, richly trimmed silk is only appropriate to those who do not dance. The richest velvets, the brightest and most delicate tints in silk, the most expensive laces, elaborate [Pg 326] coiffures, a large display of diamonds, artificial flowers for the head-dress and natural flowers for hand bouquets, all belong, more or less, to the costume for a large ball. ”