Fortunate Fashion- When Hoops Could Be Helpful, Who Knew?

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
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The fashion that launched a thousand nostalgic ***sighs*** , crinoline, those outlandish hoops stuck with us for over a decade. It wasn't always a bad ride.

So bear with me, looking for the lighter side of things in all the murk out there. This may not be the most staggeringly interesting topic, it's at least diverting.

BACK to those blessed hoops/crinoline, so popular factories sprang up by the gazillions, the stock market actually flinched when the fashion changed. THE iconic silhouette of the era, there was so much contention over accidents attached to them ( some deadly ) Queen Victoria condemned wearing them.

Then there's the other side, the fortunate bit attached to this unlikely fashion rage. Nope, not the belles floating between magnolia trees under a starry sky, on the arm of her beau. The one where physics came into play.

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Harper's ( of course ). Starting snip in the middle of a long-ish article, easy enough to fill in the blanks here.
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It's not a singular kind of event. We've heard all the awful stories, women burned when crinolined skirts caught fire, stabbed by popped wires, dragged when a hoop was caught on something- saved? That, too apparently. The following are both from 1864.

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That one made it into Harper's too!

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I won't bludgeon the subject to death- there are dozens of stories between the dates when crinoline came into fashion and departed this fashion life. One I can't re-find has the unwitting heroine taking a lighting strike for a group of people, grounding it through those wires- hurt, but not as dead as they could have been.
 
I remember a story my told when he joined the Us Navy in the mid 1930's they taught them how to take off their pants, tie the legs shut and flipped them over their head to catch air and make them into a life preserver. He said the old kapok vests would eventually saturate with water and sink. It is nice to see a dress could save you're life too.
 
So, two member with the same story! We just had those orange things, the ones where you were nearly immobilized? As a kid anyway, just your head sitting on a ton of ' puff '.Pretty sure I'd have preferred the pants and shirts.

On the other hand, floating around on a crinoline boat might have been a little fun.
 
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