Crinoline: The Word Meant a Horsehair Cloth Before the Cage

A cage crinoline hangs from its waistband: steel hoops on cloth tapes, each wider than the one above. The Met's American example of 1857 is recorded as steel and cotton [1]. Yet the name is older than the steel: in French, the TLFi dictionary first records crinoline in 1829 for a cloth of horsehair and linen, and in 1848 for a stiff petticoat that held a skirt out [2].

Littré's French dictionary of 1873 kept that order: first a horsehair cloth, then a petticoat originally made of it [3]. Its example "une crinoline en acier", a steel crinoline, shows the name moving on again, to frames like The Met's [1][3].

A cage of hoops on tapes

In the museum's photograph, a cloth waistband closes with a metal buckle. Tapes run from it down each side, and two more run down the front from the top hoop to the bottom one. Each hoop passes through these tapes, so the hoops hang in tiers with only tape between them [1].

This site calls the drawing below the tension map: a qualitative diagram of where a garment takes strain, marking the tapes and fastenings that bear load without putting a number on them. A solid line is what the photograph shows, and a dashed line is inferred and labelled that way.

Wider than a phone screen: swipe sideways along the diagram, or open it full size.

The cage works like a suspension: the waistband holds the tapes, and the tapes hold the hoops. That second step is path C, drawn dashed because it is inferred.

Crinoline was a cloth first

Before steel, crinoline was something woven, and TLFi defines the cloth as a linen warp (the lengthwise threads) crossed by a horsehair weft (the crosswise ones), used for upholstery and for clothing [2]. Littré gives the warp as black thread and lists collars, bags, furniture covers and petticoats made of it [3].

The two dictionaries disagree about where the word came from. Littré derives it from crin, French for horsehair [3]. TLFi calls it a borrowing from Italian crinolino, from crino (horsehair) and lino (flax), a word Italian used for both the cloth and the petticoat in the first half of the 19th century [2].

Illustration

Human hair was worked in these decades too, and Mark Campbell's 1867 manual braids it at a table with bobbins and weights [4], as the Victorian hair jewelry entry shows.

TLFi also sketches the petticoat's route: horsehair cloth at first, then flexible strips and whalebone at the hem, then metal hoops joined by cloth tapes [2]. The timeline below sets the dated evidence read for this page in order.

Wider than a phone screen: swipe sideways along the diagram, or open it full size.

• crinoline-timeline.csv (CSV, crinoline-timeline.csv) · file notes (JSON): where the values come from, version and license Data: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access data (CC0): C.I.53.72.15, 2008.297a, b, 1985.27.4; Paris Musées, Musée Carnavalet G.2037, collection data (CC0); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, collection data (CC0): RP-P-OB-41.038; The Workwoman's Guide (London, 1838), Project Gutenberg eBook #75494, public domain; É. Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, vol. 1 (Paris: Hachette, 1873), p. 901, public domain (facts restated); Order of entries compiled for this page: seven dated entries from museum records, an 1838 sewing book and Littré's dictionary, each with its source.

Before the cage: panniers

Frames that stand out from the body did not begin with the crinoline: The Met's French panniers of the late 18th century, recorded as silk, cane and metal, stand out at the hips in the museum's photograph and leave the front flat [5]. The 1857 cage, by contrast, stands out all round [1].

The 18th-century clothing entry places the petticoat among the layers of those decades. The crinoline itself began as one more petticoat, a stiff one of horsehair cloth [2].

What the satirists drew

Daumier drew these wide skirts at least twice, and his 1855 lithograph, plate 16 of a 41-plate series on the Exposition universelle in Le Charivari, takes as its title what the turnstile did to crinoline petticoats [7]. Its two women stand in a crowd with their skirts crushed out of shape.

Two years later he drew a man watching a woman in a hoop skirt cross his garden. The Rijksmuseum's description says he would sooner see a hurricane go through it [8].

These prints are jokes rather than records. No source read for this page says how wearers sat down, went through doors or rode in carriages, so those questions stay open here.

After the cage: the bustle

The Met's British bustle of about 1871 is recorded as cotton and metal [9]. The records read here do not date the end of the round cage, but this later shape carries its fullness at the back.

Bustles were not new after the cage. The Workwoman's Guide of 1838 already describes three kinds: two flounces of strong calico hemmed over a very thick cord, two flounces of jean, and a bag of glazed lining muslin filled with down [6]. It warns that they "should not be too large, or they look indelicate" [6].

For period costume, this site's stance is that the outline matters more than the trimming, and panniers, a cage and a bustle make three different outlines.

FAQ

Is a hoop skirt the same thing as a crinoline?

In the museum records read for this page, the two names overlap in the 1850s. The Met titles its 1857 frame of steel hoops a cage crinoline [1], and the Rijksmuseum describes the crinolines in an 1857 print as hoepelrokken, Dutch for hoop skirts [8]. The word crinoline is older than the steel cage: French dictionaries record it first for a horsehair cloth [2][3].

Cite this page

Sources

1. 1The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Cage crinoline," American, 1857, steel, cotton, C.I.53.72.15 (Gift of Mrs. William R. Witherell, 1953). Catalogue data row on the Wikimedia Commons file page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cage_crinoline_MET_CI53.72.15_F.jpg (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
2. 2Trésor de la langue française informatisé, "crinoline", definition and étymologie et histoire, via CNRTL Portail lexical (ATILF–CNRS and Université de Lorraine). https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/crinoline (full text; paraphrased)
3. 3Émile Littré. Dictionnaire de la langue française, vol. 1 (A–C). Paris: Hachette, 1873, p. 901, "Crinoline." https://archive.org/details/dictionnairedel01litt (scanned copy, read for verification; one short phrase quoted)
4. 4Mark Campbell. Self-Instructor in the Art of Hair Work, Dressing Hair, Making Curls, Switches, Braids, and Hair Jewelry of Every Description. New York and Chicago: M. Campbell, 1867. Project Gutenberg eBook #38658. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38658 (full text)
5. 5The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Panniers," French, late 18th century, silk, cane, metal, 2008.297a, b (Purchase, Friends of the Costume Institute Gifts, 2008). Catalogue data row on the Wikimedia Commons file page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Panniers_MET_DP162233.jpg (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
6. 6The Workwoman's Guide, Containing Instructions to the Inexperienced in Cutting Out and Completing Those Articles of Wearing Apparel, &c. Which Are Usually Made at Home. By a Lady. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1838. Project Gutenberg eBook #75494. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75494 (full text)
7. 7Musée Carnavalet, Paris Musées. Honoré Daumier, "Effets du tourniquet sur les jupons en crinoline," plate 16 of L'exposition universelle, published in Le Charivari, 1855, lithograph, G.2037. Collection data on the Wikimedia Commons file page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Effets_du_tourniquet_sur_les_jupons_en_crinoline._N%C2%B016,_G.2037(3).jpg (collection record (catalogue data, CC0); title and lettering read from the print)
8. 8Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Honoré Daumier, "Man ziet vrouw met hoepelrok door zijn tuin wandelen" (J'aimerais autant voir un ouragan se promener dans mon jardin), lithograph used for Le Charivari, 29 August 1857, RP-P-OB-41.038. https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200182571 (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))
9. 9The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bustle," British, circa 1871, cotton, metal, 1985.27.4 (Purchase: The New York Historical Society (by exchange) and Louise Moore Van Vleck Gift, 1985). Catalogue data row on the Wikimedia Commons file page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bustle_MET_DT8035.jpg (collection record (catalogue data, CC0))