St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-28
THE OLD HoOP-sKIRT.
"Reminiscences of the Time When
Barrel Hoops Were i'm Vogue.

"Reminiscences of the Time When
Barrel Hoops Were i'm Vogue.
From Peck's Sun.
An item is going the rounds of the pa
pers to the effect that the old-fashioned
hoop-skirts are coming into style again, and
that within year the hOop-skirt factories
that have been lying idle for years will be
running full blast, and the ladies will
grow larger around as the fashion is recOg-
nized as the thing. Who that was
on earth twenty-five years ago does not re-
member the first hoop-skirt craze? Hoops
came into fashion suddenly, and all women,
whatever their condition, adopted the fash
ion at once There were few regularly manu-
featured hoop-skirts at first, and only those
who were very tony had elaborate hoops,
but as hoops were the fashion everybody
had to have something that would make
the dress stick out. Merchants sold wire
| and rattan and whalebones and strips Of
brass, and ladies made them into skirts,
and some of them were too ridiculous for
| ANYTHING. A lady would get her hoops
made. and find that the skirt Of her dress
was SO small that she would have
| to use a shoe-horn to get the skirt over
| the hoops, or. grease the hoops, and then
the dress was so tight over the hoops that
every hoop showed as plainly as though it
| had been on the outside. Some queer
scenes were witnessed when hoops first
came in. Ladies were not accustomed to
walking in barrel, and the hoops would
act awfully contrary and show themselves
on the slightest provocatlon. The
wearer of hoop could never be entirely
| certain what an hour would bring forth.
! The hoop was liable to go along all right,
| and appear to understand its business, and
] to have decided to be decent, and when the
wearer attempted to go into door, the hoop
would get ON strike, and the lady
| couldn't drive it in with a club. Men were
constantly laughing at some eccentricity
they discovered in the hoops The train
conductors enjoyed a constant picnic in
helping stranded females who got fast in
trying to enter car or car seat. Ladies
who could not afford to buy the expensive
brass hoops would utilize the hoops of bar
rels, and many lady has SO ingeniOusly
pressed a. barrel hoop into service as to
pass for leader of fashion, until some day
she attempted to sit down in a pew at
! church, when the hoop would flop up and
strike her on the nose two or three times,
and leave her in a situation so uncom-
Portable as to bring tears to her eyes. 1t is
a mean hoop that Will strlKe lazy, and
a meaner hoop that will strike her on
the nose; and cOnfOunded sight
meaner hoop that will repeat the
blow two OF three times, but
there are ladies living to-day with scars on
! their noses made from these hoops. Later,
hoop skirts were reduced to science, like
! making watches, and the ladies became SO
accustomed to wearing them that nothing
ever happened worth mentioning, but
when two lady friends of the first hoop
year get together to talk over old times.
and they get on the subject OF those
old.fashioned hoop-skirts and their expert
ences, they can keep the children Of the
present day laughing until their sides ache.
\ Ladies who are leaders of fashion and emf
nent in the affairs of the world to-day can
remember when they took the first
hoop Off of flour barrel and basted it
J.. into the bottom hem of calico dress, and
felt as proud as queens as they sailed down
the village streets with everybody looking
at them. Tragedies were enacted in the
early days Of hoop-skirts. A lady who is
now the wife of senator carries scar on
] the calf of her leg which causes her to often
| wonder, as she sits in the senate gallery,
whether it was the dog, which got into her
hoop-skirt one day to hide away from
cruel boys, that had bit her, or whether
] a corner of the barrel hoop stuck