“ You are never fully dressed without a smile” Martin Charnin
LAMPSHADE DRESS: A party is never completely successful unless someone dons a lampshade atop the head and dances on a table. But the lampshade dress, introduced by Paul Poiret in 1903, was the height of sophistication and fashion. It freed women from the restrictive corsets of earlier styles and created a shift (pun intended) in the cultural mindset still felt today.
HOOP SKIRT: if you “hoola-hooped” your way through the 1960’s, you certainly did not need, or want, a hoop skirt — it would not have helped your technique at all! The hoop was a “cage” worn as an undergarment to hold voluminous skirts away from legs. It existed to exaggerate women’s hips and by the 1850’s the silhouette had become so unwieldy women were compelled to turn sideways to get through doorways! Definitely no way to Hoola!
BUSTLE: The “hustle-bustle” of life forced the retirement of the restrictive hoop skirt — it turned out no one was fond of turning sideways to enter rooms or carriages! The circumferential hoop skirt cage was replaced by the partial bustle cage, placed at the back of the skirt. Today celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian’s naturally endowed cabooses have replaced the artificial bustle with the same end (forgive me) result – emphasizing the female derrière. Everything old is new again!
HOBBLE SKIRT: DANGER! FASHION AHEAD! The hobble skirt was, thankfully, a very short lived fad. In 1908 the first socialite to fly in an airplane (a Mrs. Edith Ogilvy Berg) tied her skirt at the ankles to thwart wind gusts at altitude and speed. Reportedly Influenced by this female “derring-do,” Paul Poiret introduced it as a new and extremely restrictive silhouette (temporarily undoing his freeing lampshade silhouette) — until two women died wearing it. One was unable to escape from a runaway horse and was trampled to death, with another tripping and falling into an oncoming train! A rather dire warning against immediately adopting the latest trend in clothing!
