Hooped: Dress of the 1860s

During the 1860s, women’s dress expanded to enormous circumferences thanks to hoopskirts manufactured from graduated sprung-steel rings held together with vertical cotton tapes. This infrastructure suspended many yards of fabric around the waist without the need for multiple starched petticoats, which unencumbered the legs and created an elegant sway in motion. This exhibition presented objects from the FIDM Museum Permanent Collection that showcased this unique decade in fashion history.