Unhoop the Fair Sex: The Campaign Against the Hoop Petticoat in Eighteenth-Century England

Hail, happy coat! for modern damsels fit, Product of ladies’ and of taylors’ wit; Child of Invention rather than of Pride, What Wonders dost thou show, what wonders hide. ¹

Figure 1.

This anonymous print, circa 1730, depicts the scene outside a Cheapside hoop warehouse. The text advertises “A new Invention by your Sex’es Friend,” a system of “silken Cords” designed “to guide the huge Machine” through crowded streets, as demonstrated by the woman at the left. In the center, a black servant holds his lady’s skirt in imitation of the hooped silhouette, while a hoop-wearing woman is lowered into her carriage by pulleys. At the right, Sir Isaac Bickerstaff presides over The Tatler’ s mock trial of the hoop petticoat; the “wide Machine” is displayed “to public jeer and Sport,” while its owner “Wails her lost Hoop.” The hoop-like cupola of St. Paul’s Cathedral can be seen in the distance. Photograph courtesy of the British Museum.

The origin of the hoop petticoat—specifically, the factors responsible for its emergence and unprecedented popularity in eighteenth-century England—is a matter of much controversy and conjecture. ² But even more problematic than the history of the hoop are the reasons why so many women adopted it, and the vehemence with which so many men opposed it. As one Victorian historian wrote, “if the ladies had determined to do their best to excite the wrath of all satirists, nothing could better serve the purpose” than this singular article of dress. ³ From its unsung birth in about 1709 to its ignominious death in 1820, the style was perpetually mocked in poems, caricatures (see p. 6), and satirical diatribes with titles like “A Short and True Description of the Great Incumbrances and Damages that City and Country is like to sustain by Women’s Girded Tails” and “The Enormous Abomination of the Hoop Petticoat as the Fashion now is.” Yet the hoop petticoat remained popular throughout the eighteenth century, despite its inconvenient size and shape, the fickleness of fashion, and continual complaints from the papers and the pulpit.

The hoop’s history mirrors the history of economics, gender relations, and social mores in eighteenth-century England. The artifact is unique to that time period, peaking in both size and ubiquity in the 1750s. And, although it was worn throughout Europe, contemporary accounts suggest that the hoop petticoat was almost certainly invented in England. In any case, it was there that the hoop acquired its lasting meaning and notoriety. Despite obstacles both practical and perceived, the garment endured to become an icon for its age: “Epitomizing the quixotic tenacity of fashion itself, neither convenient, comfortable, cheap, nor by many accounts even attractive, the hoop held on in the face of practical difficulty and outright attack to become a sartorial symbol central to the iconography of the eighteenth century.” ⁴ The origins, innovations, fluctuations, and failings of the hoop demonstrate the tenacity of eighteenth-century Englishwomen in their struggle for sexual autonomy. Although it is tempting to condemn the hoop as yet another example of female subjugation through dress, such as the medieval chastity belt or the crippling corsets of the nineteenth century, the hoop actually had quite the opposite function. In the face of widespread and violent protest from men, women willingly adopted the hoop as a means of protecting, controlling, and, ultimately, liberating female sexuality.

In order to understand the significance of the hoop petticoat in eighteenth-century society, we must chart the development of female fashion until that time. Although the artificially inflated female silhouette reached its outer limits in the eighteenth century, the shape had long been familiar in Western Europe. Since the Middle Ages, female dress had been characterized by broad, flowing skirts, suggesting or mimicking pregnancy. Three closely related garments—the Elizabethan farthingale, the eighteenth-century hoop petticoat, and the Victorian crinoline—represent what one theorist has called “the culmination of the distinctive feminine garment, the skirt, as a protection and affirmation of the pelvic character.” ^5...