You may not know it by name, but you’ve almost certainly seen the crinoline – a cage-like hoop skirt – in your favourite period dramas. Hugely popular among French and British women of every class in the 1850s and 1860s, crinolines were worn underneath a skirt to give the wearer an exaggerated bell-shaped silhouette. Although the steel contraptions looked rigid, they were relatively lightweight and actually freed women from the heavy layers of petticoats favoured in previous decades. The problem, though, was their size. With a skirt circumference that could sometimes
