Fashion is an endless chase. The leaders are forever looking for some new, and preferably somewhat shocking style, which will distinguish them from the common herd. But the moment they appear in public in the new style, the plagiarists will copy it, and it will soon become stale as the lower classes take it up.

Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous excess have always played a large part in fashion. A ridiculously expensive dress demonstrates that your husband has money to burn, and it makes it harder for the peasants to keep up.

In earlier times the ruling classes enacted "sumptuary" laws which restricted the wearing of certain costumes to specific classes. One example of this was the Roman law preserving the fiendishly expensive shellfish dye known as "Royal purple" for the exclusive use of the Emperor. But almost always the lower classes, anxious to ape their betters, found ways to get around these laws and they were hardly ever effective.

Thus, in the second half of the 19th century, women began to wear more and more petticoats to make their skirts fuller. This process was limited by the weight of petticoats the woman could lift, but then someone came up with the crinoline. This was a wire cage which held out the skirt, eliminating the need for innumerable petticoats, and so permitting the skirt to expand to a ridiculous size.


 

It was bad enough when the ladies began wearing crinolines to social functions, but it became a disaster when the servants adopted them for everyday wear.

So it was time to move on again.

[The crinoline had one great virtue, especially for plumper ladies. The fashion of the day dictated that the waist should appear to be as slender as possible. This could be achieved by reducing the waist with a corset, but if you were plumper than you should have been, this was difficult. But you could achieve the same effect by exaggerating the lower part of the body, so that by comparison your waist appeared to be slim. And this the crinoline did to perfection.]

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