The word crinoline typically conjures up an image of a vast, spreading, mid-19th century skirt. Think of Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s painting of the Empress Eugenie of France, portraits of a staunch Queen Victoria or Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in a velvet number seemingly knocked-up from the curtains at Tara.
Created in the 1850s, the crinoline is a silhouette tied to its moment — expanding empires, expanding skirts. Both have contracted over time, but while the crinoline sometimes falls out of favour, it never dies. It is an emblem of profligacy and plenty that resurfaces every few decades in times of excess — the 1980s for example — or when we want to fool ourselves into thinking everything is peachy. Like now.
Crinolines are out in force for 2025. Attending a preview of Alessandro Michele’s Valentino spring/summer 2025 haute couture collection in January was like entering a different century, as white-jacketed workers manipulated a multicoloured gown over an enormous, hooped underskirt. The pyramid forms swelled out the epic volumes of a dozen ball skirts.
At Dior couture, Maria Grazia Chiuri deconstructed the crinoline to expose its cage through raffia lace and reconstructed it in bamboo and tulle strewn with embroidered buds. For spring, crinolines were a feature of Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe collection, their dramatic domed construction barely masked by films of floral chiffon.
Crinolines have pumped up the volume of a spate of skirts by Balenciaga’s Demna over the past five years and for next season, they are buoying out the autumn/winter 2025 collections of Carolina Herrera and Thom Browne.
The term crinoline originally meant a textile woven of wool and horsehair, which stiffened skirts to give them fullness. However, since the mid 1850s it has been used to describe a skirt constructed of rigid loops, increasing in size towards the hem to create a bell shape. The loops were originally made of whalebone, and then steel, suspended from cotton straps — technological innovations powered by the industrial revolution.
Today, softer alternatives to whalebone are used, made from plastic or polyester rods woven into a firm, narrow braid. These are either stitched to a nylon or polyester tulle petticoat or threaded through channels in a cotton underskirt, creating a structured shell that stands away from the body.
After its heyday there was a mini-revival of the crinoline in the late 1930s, when designers such as Madeleine Vionnet eschewed that era’s slithery bias-cut silks for evocative historical throwbacks that provided comfort in the shadow of conflict. In 1947, Christian Dior’s New Look featured spreading skirts supported by stiffened crinoline petticoats — an illusion of abundance in a time of postwar austerity. Although for daywear they were soon replaced by a slim skirt, the crinoline continued to be worn for eveningwear over the next two decades.
The most recent and widespread revival came in 1985 when Vivienne Westwood introduced her mini-crini, blending the crinoline with the 1960s miniskirt. It seemed madcap, but the idea was enthusiastically taken up by other designers such as Oscar de la Renta and Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, evolving into the puffball synonymous with 1980s party dressing.
We might look at the original crinoline today and roll our eyes at its impracticality, at women splendidly isolated within a profligate expanse of fabric. But, far from an elite signifier of status, the crinoline could be considered a fashion leveller, adopted by women across the social classes thanks to the advent of the sewing-machine and mass production.
Compared with the cumbersome petticoats that inflated earlier 19th-century fashions — multiple layers of fabric that were hot, unhygienic and could weigh more than 6kg — the lighter cage structure of the crinoline enabled women to move more easily. Working-class women wore them in factories, wealthier women for active pursuits such as archery and rambling (an 1865 version even incorporated a series of pulleys to raise the skirt’s hem to facilitate movement).
Punch magazine lampooned the crinoline in August 1856 when it dubbed its universal popularity “Crinolineomania”. But by 1859, even American women’s dress reformer and newspaper editor Amelia Bloomer had adopted the crinoline, reiterating the idea that the technology had helped solve the problem of the cumbersome petticoat, which she had previously railed against.
Of course, the crinoline wasn’t without issues. Despite its comparative lightness, the garment itself could hardly be described as practical, with skirts often 10ft in circumference, even swelling to 20ft. A Punch cartoon from 1857 depicts women being forced to jettison their crinolines before boarding a London omnibus.
Crinolines were also highly flammable in an era where open fires cost lives, including those of Oscar Wilde’s half-sisters, Emily and Mary, whose dresses ignited at a ball in 1871. The 19th-century textile manufacturer Samuel Courtauld prohibited crinolines in his mills for reasons of safety as well as convenience.
Today, of course, crinolines aren’t worn on the factory floor, although modern construction means they could be — they’re even lighter, and more malleable. Back in the 1980s, Vivienne Westwood spoke of the fact that her plastic whaleboned mini-crinis collapsed around the body, making them suitable even for a daily commute. “You could sit on a tube train and not really know you’ve got one on until you get up and it just bells out,” she said.
Loewe’s versions convey the ease of a T-shirt, and a dynamic modernity that made them seem, at least as they bobbed by on the catwalk, an intriguing possibility for summer dressing, even if you would struggle to fit them into most people’s cars.
Today’s crinolines aren’t intended for the everyday, nor for everyone. They remain limited to catwalks, event dressing and bridal fashion — symbols of luxury and conspicuous leisure. In an age of exaggeration — Instagram filters, facial fillers, bold claims — the crinoline’s return to fashion feels inevitable, a reflection of our overblown times.
