CRINOLINE (Fr., from Lat. erinis, hair ± Haim, flax). A name originally given by French dressmakers to a fabric made of horsehair, capable of great stiffness, and employed to dis tend women's attire: it is also applied in a gen era] way to those structures of steel wire or hoops by means of which women some years ago were able to wear skirts of extraordinary size at the bottom. The first device for producing an expansion of the is the fardingalc, in troduced by Queen Elizabeth. Walpole. in his fancy descriptions of her, speaks of her 'enormous ruff and vaster fardingale.' The upper part of the body was ineased in a enirass of whaleheme, which was united at the waist with the equally stiff fardingale of the same material. to the feet. without a single fold. in the form of a great bell. In the end of the rein of James I. this fashion gradually declined, and, as a result of the Puritan feeling in the time of Charles 1.
and Cromwell, it quite disappeared. It is next heard of in 1711 as 'that startling novelty the hoop petticoat,' which differed frman the hadin gale in being gathered in at the waist. About the
year 1796 hoops were discarded in private life, but were still the mode at C'mIrt, where they flour ished until the time of George 1\'., when they were aholished by royal command.
The next development of this fashion, about the middle of the nineteenth century. began with crin oline in its original and proper sense, first in the form of the 'hustle' in the upper part of the skirt, then the whole petticoat. The hoops were some times made with a circumference of four and even live yards. At last, after indignation and ridicule had for years assailed the monstrosity in vain, and when people had ceased speaking about it. the inflation began. about 1860, without any apparent cause, to collapse: and. rushing to the opposite extreme, ladies might be seen walking about as slim as if merely wrapped in a morning gown. At the close of the nineteenth century the name crin oline was applied to a cotton gauze stiffened with a dressing of glue and sold by the yard for use by milliners and dressmakers.