Complex sentence: In her youth Elisabeth followed the fashions of the age, which for many years were cage-crinolined hoop skirts, but when fashion began to change, she was at the forefront of abandoning the hoop skirt for a tighter and leaner silhouette.
Split into simpler sentences: In her youth Elisabeth followed the fashions of the age, which for many years were cage-crinolined hoop skirts. But when fashion began to change, she was at the forefront of abandoning the hoop skirt for a tighter and leaner silhouette.