Today’s fashion scene is a hodgepodge of the past 50 years.
As though they were walking down palace stairs for a ball, models walked in hip-extenuating farthingales.
More recently, you might have heard these antique garments referred to as hoop skirts.
The history of the hoop skirt
The hoop skirt is what creates that Cinderella-like silhouette.
According toBritannica, the farthingale is considered one of the first iterations of this fashion trend.
Originating in Spain, it spread across the west in the 1500s.
From that point forward, women began wearing bell-shaped structures made from whalebone or wood beneath their skirts.
With wider hips than men, the farthingale imitates and extenuates a woman’s anatomy.
An Italian who arrived at the French court in 1533."
TheDesign Museum Foundationexplained that Catherine de Medici used fashion strategically to exacerbate her proportions as a sign of power.
This is exactly what drew Chiuri to the tight corsets and dramatic hoop skirts.
“Practical” didn’t exactly include enormous whale bones attached to the hips.
In it, she described the public’s reaction when she threw out her wide skirt for pants.
However, brands like Dior and Loewe attempted to rewrite the narrative of this extreme silhouette.
