Cage Crinoline "A Favorite of the Empress" by Unknown Maker

Sarah Lees, a museum curator, and Beth Bacon, an art enthusiast, co-host a podcast called 'Why Do They Put That in a Museum?' In this episode, talk about the cage crinoline, an undergarment from Victorian England that's currently in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. It's basically the hoop inside the hoop skirts that were popular in the 1860's. No one knows who made it. So what's it doing in a museum?  Is it beautiful? Not really. Was it associated with a famous person? Maybe (or maybe not). Was it technically innovative? Listen to the podcast and decide. 

© 2025 Why'd They Put That In A Museum podcast hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees.

Transcript

  Cage Crinoline “A Favorite of the Empress” by unknown maker 

Beth Bacon: We're back. We're back. This is another podcast of “Why’d  they put that in a museum?” where Sarah Lees, who is a museum curator, will share her expertise about what curators think about and decide on when choosing a museum. collections. And I am Beth Bacon. And I'm just an art fan.

Sarah Lees: What we're here to do is talk about art and objects and museums and what happens when you put them together and invite people in to look. 

Beth Bacon: You know, sometimes I walk through a gallery and I wonder why is this object here? So in this podcast, we're diving deep into the stories behind some of the artifacts that we find kind of interesting.

Sarah Lees: Right, so for each episode, we'll start with one thing in one specific place, and then sort of wander off from there,  exploring the thing and its history and the cultural ideas that surround it to see where they take us. And eventually, usually coming back to the original.

Beth Bacon: It's amazing how different an object seems once you know the cultural, historical background and sometimes the unexpected reasons these objects came to be on display. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. So, and just to say also, we're going to be talking about things that you can't see, at least in this audio only format.  and there's only so much that we can actually describe in words, although we're going to try.

So we'll also always mention where the real object actually lives. And we'll try to provide a link to it when we can so you can at least call up an image, while you listen or maybe afterwards. Uh, and then hopefully you can go see it in person because I have to say, There is no substitute for the in-person experience, especially nowadays when you can find images of everything that exists in the world and lots of stuff that doesn't actually exist. We definitely recommend making the effort to see the art or the object or, whatever it is in the museum in person if you can. 

Beth Bacon: I guess it's time to talk about that museum object. Sarah, what are we going to talk about today? 

Sarah Lees: Sure, yeah. it's certainly not a thing on the wall. This one takes us to Victorian England, but it also involves the empress of France. So this one is a little bit different,  in part because we don't know exactly who made it, we are looking at a cage crinoline. 

Beth Bacon:  A cage crinoline. 

Sarah Lees: Cage crinoline. So this is actually an item of basically undergarment. I know. Well, you might, once we get into it, kind of understand better, what it is.

Beth Bacon: Ooh, England and France and undergarments. It's like, I see London. I see France. 

Sarah Lees: Exactly. So let's get to it. So if you picture a 19th century lady, she probably has a great big puffy skirt, right? So this is the thing, or one of the things. That held that skirt like out and made it look super puffy is the thing called the crinoline, a  crinoline. It was made in about 1860 to 65.

Beth Bacon: Like what Scarlett O'Hara would wear under her hoop skirt.

Sarah Lees: Absolutely, 100%. So what you're looking at, if you call up an image, it looks like a great big sort of bell shape. This one happens to me to be red, and it's made of these wiry looking concentric rings. So I don't know how many of them are, say 20. They're all linked by vertical straps. So it's sort of like one thing.

It's got basically a belt ring at the top and then a wide border at the bottom. A what? A wider border. It's actually called a skirt at the bottom. So picture the last metal ring has a little floofy lounge skirt on it. Yeah, the whole thing is about 31 and a half inches or two and a half feet high.

And if you think about jeans measurements, that comes in inches. Yeah. Like 30 by 31 or so it's  roughly ankle length for me. I don't know what the waist size is. That's not mentioned on the website, but I'm imagining it's small because this thing might also go with a corset anyway.

So you have these metal wires basically covered with wool. And linen fabric, and that's the bright red part. 

So this one in particular is at a museum in London called the Victoria and Albert Museum Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

It is a museum of art and design. 

Beth Bacon: Art and design. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, they do have some difference between art and design. Well, actually, maybe it should be arts with an S and design. The V& A, as it's known, Victoria and Albert, was actually founded in 1852 and called the Museum of Manufacturers. So it was meant to display, design objects.

It was meant to improve the standards of British manufacturing. And this, of course, In the 1850s is when the Industrial Revolution is just like blowing up and England is one of the centers of that time. 1858, yeah. 

Beth Bacon: So in the United States, that's a few years before the Civil War. Yeah, absolutely. A few years after the California gold rush?

Sarah Lees: So picture like there are a few trains across the country, but England of course is more advanced at this point.  Since they've had 

Beth Bacon: Was it the time of  Charles Dickens when there were like factories and like Les Mis and all that stuff? 

Sarah Lees: Absolutely, this is exactly what happened. That time period. And so the founders of the Museum of Manufacturers wanted to give the designers and manufacturers and also the consumers of these kinds of industrial goods and education in, basically, what good design looks like. For all types of objects. So they have furniture, they have jewelry, they have architectural designs on paper photographs.

And in this case, they also have a whole area of clothing.  We know in the past, say five to 10 years, right? Fashion exhibitions in art museums have become a big thing. The VNA was collecting items of clothing and I guess undergarments, for long before. 

Beth Bacon: And why would they put this in a museum? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, why would they put this in a museum? A piece of underwear, uh, basically. One possible reason is that this caged crinoline, or wire crinoline, is actually somewhat innovative.

Before someone came up with the material, I think it's called spring steel to make the metal rings. To hold out your skirt, you would either have to wear multiple petticoats, so just fabric,  I don't know how many of them, sometimes eight at a time, apparently, different little fabric petticoats, sometimes seven at a time, sometimes The petticoats were lined with horsehair cloth, so imagine how itchy that might be.

And sometimes there was even more padding on top of that. I don't know how many pounds we're talking about, but imagine walking around with eight layers of skirts on your first round or around your middle and then, on your legs and maybe some horsehair in there. Sounds like a nightmare, right?

But a wire cage would be light and airy and breezy in comparison. And presumably you just need that one, one layer. 

Beth Bacon: Before the cage crinoline. Yeah. Someone with a big wide skirt, that was like full of layers of fabric. But now the cage crinoline, it's just poofed out in their skin. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, exactly. I'd have to think that ladies still wore some petticoats, at least one, right? But yeah, basically, yeah, it's just airy, breezy. So that might be one reason why this object is in a museum. 

Another thing to note about this particular example, and there are several, more than a few, in the V& A, is actually, it's got a name. Sewn into the waistband, or stamped actually, not sewn, it's stamped. It says, A Favorite of the Empress. It's basically a marketing thing, right? You give this particular crinoline a name, this one is the favorite of the Empress, and this one is the Queen's favorite or something. 

Beth Bacon: So it's kind of like saying, these are the leggings that Kim Kardashian likes. 

Sarah Lees: A hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. Which Empress do you think they're talking about? Well, in fact, I'm pretty sure I know exactly who it is, because, of course, in 1865, in England, There was no empress. There was a queen. However, in that time period, there was an empress in France. Empress Eugenie, who was the wife of Napoleon III, who was the head of the French, Second Empire.

That means somebody in London, because this thing was made in England, as a marketing tool, called their crinoline a favorite of the French Empress, so It's kind of a French style crinoline. Now, you have to imagine that, in fact, Empress Eugenie never wore any such thing, at least not made in England, right?

She wouldn't have worn an English crinoline. She was widely known for wearing very large skirts, and apparently one of her nicknames was the Countess of Crinoline.

Beth Bacon: Perhaps this was the beginning of France as a fashion capital? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, France was definitely, at this time, the model to follow in terms of fashion. I think there probably was always tension between England and France, but clearly calling your crinoline a favorite of the French empress gave it an extra cachet. It was continental. It was fancy. So you know the term fashion plate?

Beth Bacon: Yeah. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, I think what that refers to is an actual printed image. It would have  engraved or etched images of:  Here's our product line. We have four different crinolines. And then that would be published in a newspaper. So that again, you could have different names for each of your different crinolines. 

One of my questions, though, is how did this thing last from 1860 to now? Most people don't keep their undergarments for that long. But, first of all, it's dirty, but somebody had to value it for a hundred-plus years in order to preserve it. It is, certainly, the metal is dirty, but the fabric would have deteriorated if it wasn't kept properly.

Beth Bacon: On a day-to-day basis, women do not wear cage crinolines anymore. 

Sarah Lees: True. 

Beth Bacon: I wonder when they stopped? I wonder why they stopped? 

Sarah Lees: The second empire ended in 1870. And then, of course, nobody would want to look like Empress Eugenie anymore. And so that, and the silhouettes of dresses were changing constantly, right?

There was a period of time where they were big and full, but then even in the 19th century, they got much smaller. And if you could think about, For example, a painting by Seurat, The Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. That is the one where, pointillism…

Beth Bacon:  It is pointillism. And I can see in my mind's eye a silhouette of a woman. I think she might be holding an umbrella. 

Sarah Lees: She is. Parasol. 

Beth Bacon: And it's a silhouette and definitely her backside goes way out. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, she has a bustle. Yes. But otherwise, it's a pretty slim silhouette, right? Yes. It's more vertical. It's not a bell around her. Yeah, exactly. That woman, yeah, is probably not wearing a crinoline.

She's just got a bustle at the back. Which, so again, fashion, even then, changed constantly. People didn't always wear crinolines, even in the 19th century. It was just a particular style at a particular time.

Beth Bacon: I can't imagine the women that were sitting at the looms in the factories were wearing those.

Sarah Lees: They were probably wearing something much simpler. Totally right. Yes. This would be for a wealthy woman for her evening wear, as opposed to evening, she probably had a day dress that didn't have a big crinoline. It is for a particular class of person, particular style at a particular moment.

One other little interesting note about the V& A, just because I came across this too, is that they introduced gas lights into the museum in 1858, so that the galleries could be open later, so that working people could visit after their workday. The museum itself wasn't just for people. The rich and wealthy people.

It was also meant to, again, educate the people who are actually making the things. So not only why did they put it in a museum, but what was purpose of the museum in the first place? Every museum has a different purpose or a different mission. I think they actually have the largest collection of clothing and costume, of any museum is, I believe, which they say on their website certainly.

Beth Bacon: So a cage crinoline. They put it in a museum because they thought it was a good example of good design for ladies undergarments to keep their hoop skirts fluffy. 

Sarah Lees: Totally.

Beth Bacon: Yeah, I was just watching a movie and the women in that movie were wearing those kinds of skirts–like the big hoop skirts. Oh really a fantasy movie, about a princess. Maybe our movies make us think that people wore that kind of fashion for longer, more decades than they actually did.

Sarah Lees: Probably, yeah. Wait, you just prompted a really funny thought though. When you were, at least, okay, so when I was a kid, and I wanted to draw a princess, she always had giant poofy skirts, right? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, yeah.

Beth Bacon I don't know where that comes from. Disney princesses, they have the giant poofy skirts. It's, but that was not that. And I think of those sort of fairy tale princesses as like kind of like the middle ages, like hundreds of years before the 1860s. Maybe people didn't wear those at all. Maybe it was like 1860s fashion, like superimposed onto our fairy tales. 

Sarah Lees: That could very well be because I wonder when many of those fairy tales were written down. I think the Grimm brothers. If we're thinking of that kind of fairytale, we're in 19th century,  writers. So that could well be. Now I'm trying to think about medieval costume. I don't, I can't picture big hoop skirts. The other thing, of course, is that collections like the VNAs now are great for movie designers. If you're trying to get an accurate period look, then people will go looking for, well, in museums, but also in other, I guess, private collections, for a specific type of clothing from a specific year, right, because things changed so frequently. So another reason they put things like this in a museum is just to allow people to do research.

Alexandra McQueen, of course, I feel like, was one that sort of kicked off this greater interest in fashion.  I don't remember when that exhibition was, but it was maybe 10 years ago or something.  And it was hugely popular.  And every year the Met does their gala, which is all about,  promoting their costume department.

Beth Bacon: Is it called a costume department? 

Sarah Lees: It's called the Costume Institute. 

Beth Bacon:  Costume Institute, which is an interesting word costume. It almost seems like it's, definitely a choice or maybe even like a something you don't usually wear. Or maybe something that you put on and it makes you look like something you're not usually.

Sarah Lees: But you know what, maybe the word costume in the dictionary has a broader meaning of just clothing. It's a really interesting question as to how you name what you're talking about. But it would sound pretty different if you call it the Clothing Institute, right? Clothing is  more everyday and mundane.

I think the Costume Institute probably does have undergarments and ordinary mundane things. That's part of, their goal there too. But so clothing isn't really the right word, or I don't know, garment sounds just as pretty, you know, it's hard to know what. What I'm wearing right now is a t shirt.I wouldn't call that fashion. Yeah Fashion sounds sort of temporary, right? 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, and it also sounds sort of like special. 

Sarah Lees: Mm hmm I mean the other aspect of the Met's department is that they have a pretty serious scientific and conservation aspect to it because of course they do have to preserve objects that are made with pretty delicate material. Fabrics and metal and fabric on metal and lace, all that kind of thing is another part of their mission.  That speaks to the Institute side is that it also is meant to cover their more scientific efforts.

Beth Bacon: The more you wear something, the more it wears out. I have a pair of jeans that I'd love to wear and they're like full of holes. They probably wouldn't be chosen for a museum because they're not really in good shape. I don't know. Also, you could preserve them as is and say, like, this is how people wore their clothing. You know? And then they could tell by the holes, which my jeans have, too. I'm looking at one right now. Okay, so maybe it's about time to sort of wrap up.

Sarah Lees: Yeah. So, for the caged crinoline in the Victoria and Albert Museum… why'd they choose that to put in the museum? It was innovative for the time, and I think it is a good characteristic example of a type of garment that was widely used and was seen to be popular and in fashion.

Beth Bacon: We hope we've given you a fresh perspective. Sometimes if you learn a little more about an object and how it got there, its whole meaning can change.

Sarah Lees: And if you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review. 

Beth Bacon: Tell your friends about Why'd They Put That in a Museum. We love getting feedback and if you send us a question, you might inspire us to feature that in a future episode.

Yep, definitely, if you're ever in a museum and find yourself asking these questions, just, uh, drop us a note 

Beth Bacon And that's our show.   See you next time please join us for our next episode of Why'd They Put That in a Museum.