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c. 1860s

Girl's Hoop Skirt

Artist/maker unknown

Image 1 of 21 / 2

Hoop skirts-graduated hoops of thin but strong and flexible spring steel attached to cloth tapes-are a marvel of nineteenth-century technology. They provided support for the vast feminine skirts of the late 1850s and 1860s but collapsed for storage. As this example shows, hoop skirts were also worn by girls, who dressed like their mothers but with shortened skirts.

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