San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-01-25
The HOOP.SKIRT.
It's Rise and Progress and It's De
cline and Fall.

It's Rise and Progress and Its De-
cline and Fall.
From the Cincinnati Times-Star.
The lady who invented the old
steer hoop skirt, with fitting attach.
ments, died the other day at the ripe
age of ~. No more appropriate cpl
tibet could be conceived for her stone
than the words with which the mes
cage conveyed this intelligence was
closed:
And she wore q fitting skirt to the
very last
To the present generation hoop
skirtdom is terra in cognita. and the
fitting skirt an almost extinct spe-
cies. Indeed, the last of its kind was
perhaps to be laid away with the per-
son OF the inventor. But the elders
still cherish the memory of the day
when the skirt flourished in its full
breadth and circumference.
One whose memory goes back to
that by. gone day says: II think that
the hoop skirt wac first generally in
troduced about the year 1859. The
idea was of slow growth. 1t did not
spring out full grown by any means.
At first pieces of stiff rope of small
dimensions were sewn into the skirts,
three or four pieces sufficing to an
swer the purpose. Then the steel
wire was employed and covered with
cloth, and the hoops increased in
number in proportion as they grew in
size. Twas strange fashion. we
say, as we look back upon it, but there
l. a. In
accounting for fashions.
"For few years following the close
of the war the hoop-skirt was the
sine qua non of q woman's make up,
and the wider 1t spread its dominions
the wider it spread its hoops. The
tide of its popula ity reached it's flood
about 1868, and 1t was about that
time that the so.called "tiltipg skirt
came in vogue This was a skirt with
an outline very much like the lower
lines of the letter r. The fitting was
carried TO such an extreme that the
skirt soon became the mark of the
vulgar, and from that day it's decline
commenced. In four years its power
had so waned that its wearer was re-
garded as rather eccentric, and in
half q dozen years it was rarely to be
seen.
"The fashion no doubt received its
greatest impetus from the tradesmen.
1t was an expensive conceit. not in
itself, but in what it led TO. In 1864
the range of prices from cheapest to
best was from 81. 80 to So. But In its
extreme form it contained 120 feet of
wire, and the lower hoop was A or 5
feet in diameter. This necessitated
the use ofnearIy twice as much cloth
for the making of dress as Is now
used. IL took IL yards to IA yards to
make dress in those days where it
REQUIRES now. OF course the trades.
men did all that they could to make
the hoop-skirt popular, and
perhaps upon them chiefly rests
the responsibility of having created
this strange work of fashion.
THE reaction was not sudden,
however. The period of decline lasted
about years, from 1868 to 1876, and
even after that it remained in form
so disguised as to entirely conceal its
identity. After ceasing to exist as q
hoop.skirt lie became q hustle. Its
mountainous dimensions shrank to
those of mouse-trap. The history of
fashion knows that the hustle was
evolved out of the hoop-skirt, and
that for q time the latter seemed to
have gained new lease of life In
its new form The hustle, swelled
with q sense of it's Importance, after
a brief career of dazzling success fell
into disfavor, through its very sue
cesses.
"The hoopskirt is no more.
"The hustle is on its last legs. Sic
transit gloria mundi."
But it is q mi- take to suppose that
tho hoop skirt dates back only to the
Sos. In IT'S petticoats had swollen to
such a degree that writer says: "Ii
men also adopted the old fashion o!