Skip to content

WELCOME TO OUR STORE

SUPPORT OUR WORK

  • HOME
  • MAGAZINE
    • CURRENT ISSUE
    • BACK ISSUES
    • FIND SELVEDGE
    • ORDER FAQS
    • CONTACT US
  • SUBSCRIBE
    • FOR YOURSELF
    • FOR SOMEONE ELSE
    • FOR AN INSTITUTION
    • FOR STUDENTS
    • SUBSCRIBER ACCESS
    • SUBSCRIBER FAQS
    • CONTACT US
  • SHOP
    • SELVEDGE GOODS
    • ARTISAN GOODS
    • MAGAZINES
    • BOOKS
    • ORDER FAQs
    • CONTACT US
  • LEARN
    • BOOK A WORKSHOP
    • BOOK A TALK
      • REGULAR TALKS
      • TEXTILE TRAVELS SERIES
      • UNCUT CLOTH SERIES
    • LISTEN TO A TALK
    • MEET THE MAKER
    • TRAVEL WITH US
    • EVENT FAQS
    • CONTACT US
  • ARTISANS
    • SHOP
      • ALL
      • CLOTHING
      • INTERIORS
      • ACCESSORIES
      • TOYS
    • EXPLORE
    • ACCESS TALKS
    • WATCH SLOW TV
    • LISTEN TO PLAYLIST
    • CONTACT US
  • COMMUNITY
    • READ OUR BLOG
    • JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
    • SLOW TV
    • LISTEN TO A PODCAST
    • VISIT A TEXTILE COLLECTION
    • SEE AN EXHIBITION
    • ENTER A PRIZE DRAW
    • MAKE A PROJECT
    • CONTACT US
  • COLLABORATE
    • ADVERTISE WITH US
    • WORK WITH US
    • WRITE FOR US
    • WRITE FOR THE BLOG
    • BECOME A STOCKIST
    • CONTACT US
    • SEE ARTISAN INFO
  • STORY
    • READ OUR STORY
    • GET TO KNOW US
    • READ ABOUT US
    • CONTACT US
Log in
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
Selvedge Magazine
  • HOME
  • MAGAZINE
    • CURRENT ISSUE
    • BACK ISSUES
    • FIND SELVEDGE
    • ORDER FAQS
    • CONTACT US
  • SUBSCRIBE
    • FOR YOURSELF
    • FOR SOMEONE ELSE
    • FOR AN INSTITUTION
    • FOR STUDENTS
    • SUBSCRIBER ACCESS
    • SUBSCRIBER FAQS
    • CONTACT US
  • SHOP
    • SELVEDGE GOODS
    • ARTISAN GOODS
    • MAGAZINES
    • BOOKS
    • ORDER FAQs
    • CONTACT US
  • LEARN
    • BOOK A WORKSHOP
    • BOOK A TALK
      • REGULAR TALKS
      • TEXTILE TRAVELS SERIES
      • UNCUT CLOTH SERIES
    • LISTEN TO A TALK
    • MEET THE MAKER
    • TRAVEL WITH US
    • EVENT FAQS
    • CONTACT US
  • ARTISANS
    • SHOP
      • ALL
      • CLOTHING
      • INTERIORS
      • ACCESSORIES
      • TOYS
    • EXPLORE
    • ACCESS TALKS
    • WATCH SLOW TV
    • LISTEN TO PLAYLIST
    • CONTACT US
  • COMMUNITY
    • READ OUR BLOG
    • JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
    • SLOW TV
    • LISTEN TO A PODCAST
    • VISIT A TEXTILE COLLECTION
    • SEE AN EXHIBITION
    • ENTER A PRIZE DRAW
    • MAKE A PROJECT
    • CONTACT US
  • COLLABORATE
    • ADVERTISE WITH US
    • WORK WITH US
    • WRITE FOR US
    • WRITE FOR THE BLOG
    • BECOME A STOCKIST
    • CONTACT US
    • SEE ARTISAN INFO
  • STORY
    • READ OUR STORY
    • GET TO KNOW US
    • READ ABOUT US
    • CONTACT US
Log in Cart

Item added to your cart

Access Denied
IMPORTANT! If you’re a store owner, please make sure you have Customer accounts enabled in your Store Admin, as you have customer based locks set up with EasyLockdown app. Enable Customer Accounts

Guest Blog – The Hoop Petticoat

August 17, 2015
Share
Writer and portrait artist Dani Trew has researched female fashion and economics in the 18th century extensively.  Here, in a 3 part series she explores the role of the hoop petticoat in the emancipation of women. Part 1

'Costume is a language. It is no more misleading than the graphs drawn by demographers and price historians'.

-Ferdinand Braudel 1973

nkn.

Court dress worn by Mrs. Ann Fanshawe: 18th century, 1752-1753. Courtesy of the Museum of London

The hoop petticoat was constructed from a series of hoops of wale bone or cane, which allowed material to be draped over it on display. After its entry into the English court in the 17th century, it remained, in various forms, as a garment solely worn by royal and aristocratic women. In the 18th  century, however, it became a ubiquitous garment, worn not only by women of the court, but also by the increasingly fashionable bourgeoisie. The wearing of this garment eloquently voiced many of the changes felt by women of the period: the increased spending power of the bourgeoisie; the practical defences needed by women entering the public sphere; and the specifically female language of fashion which evolved in the newly created homo-social spaces of shops. The wearing of the hoop petticoat was, therefore, not a symbol of patriarchal restrictions as it came to be figured in the late 19th century, but in fact a non-verbal expression of the increasingly independent bourgeois woman.

hh

French hooped silk brocade dress: 18th century. Courtesy of The Museum of London

Aside from decorative appeal, it served an intensely practical role for the urban woman: to provide ‘shelter and protection’ by keeping ‘men at a proper distance’. In the wildly popular novel, Clarissa 1747, by Samuel Richardson, the character Anne Howe sympathetically replies to a friend concerned about unwanted male advances, ‘I desire my hoop may have its full circumference. All they're good for, that I know, is to clean dirty shoes and to keep ill-mannered fellows at a distance’.

The male reaction to women appearing in the public sphere armed with the necessary sartorial defences, was that of indignation. In The Enormous Abomination of the Hoop Petticoat 1745 the author calls this ‘Prodigious Garment’ a ‘perfect Publick Nuisance’, and describes how it impractically takes up ‘the whole side of a street ’. Men were literaly watching their space become dominated by the opposite sex.

Follow this link to part 2

www.danitrew.com

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.

Invalid password
Enter

Quick links

  • SEARCH
  • ABOUT US
  • T&Cs
  • FAQs

Subscribe to our newsletter by entering your email address below. "I just wanted to say how much I admire your informative and inspirational newsletters - I always look forward to them!" Tricia, San Rafael, USA

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
Payment methods
  • American Express
  • Apple Pay
  • Diners Club
  • Discover
  • Google Pay
  • Maestro
  • Mastercard
  • Shop Pay
  • Visa
© 2023, Selvedge Magazine Powered by Shopify
  • Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.