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Crinolines

The crinoline, or the hoop skirt, was a form of petticoat that became popular among the wealthy in the 19th century. Victorian women were obsessed with the appearance of a tiny waist, and one way to achieve this was to make a skirt look like an inflated balloon. Crinolines evolved from earlier fashion trends, namely the verdugada or farthingale of Spanish fame and the French panniers, or side hoops, worn throughout the 18th century.

The farthingale extends the circumference of the skirt around the waist of the wearer, which made the skirt fall straight down around the structure of the farthingale. Panniers were structurally similar to crinolines, except that they only made the skirt wider around the sides and kept the front and back flat.

Crinolines were initially made of stiff horsehair but eventually were made of thin steel or whalebone to relieve some of the weight and thickness of the traditional petticoat. The larger the crinoline, the more wealth a woman was assumed to have, thus making crinolines impossibly large and seemingly difficult to navigate. Women in the Victorian era had trouble passing through doorways, and gendered chairs came into fashion due to women's wide skirts. Men's chairs had arms, and women's chairs did not because their skirts could not fit between them.

Crinolines were considered a hazard to the wearer because of the fabric's flammability. Many women chose not to wear flame-retardant materials because they were not as attractive, thus leading medical professionals like Florence Nightingale to believe that up to 630 women died from crinoline fires in a year.

Arsenic Dye

Victorian England also saw a trend of brightly dyed fabrics, particularly one invented in Germany in 1814, which made the material a striking “emerald green.” It made the wearer stand out like a jewel among crowds. The only drawback about the color was the ingredients, which combined arsenic trioxide, or “white arsenic,” with copper to make such a vivid hue. It was cheap and plentiful, but the damage to the wearer and the manufacturer were irreversible.