Petticoat

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The petticoat has traveled further than most garments in history. In the 14th century, men wore them as under-doublets to stay warm in cooler months. By the 18th century, they had become the most visible layer of a woman's outfit. By 1947, Christian Dior revived them as the centerpiece of his "New Look" silhouette, sending ruffled, stiffened skirts back into fashion for two full decades. What is this piece of clothing that refuses to stay hidden, that crossed genders, continents, and centuries? And why did the Oxford English Dictionary end up with a different definition for it depending on which side of the Atlantic you lived on?

• 2. From Coat to Undergarment

  ›

  In the 14th century, both men and women wore undercoats called petticotes. The word itself arrived through Middle English as pety cote or pety coote, meaning simply "a small coat." It was not yet underwear. The original petticoat was made to be seen, worn openly with an unfastened gown.

  By 1585, wearing petticoats as undergarments was well established in England. In France, the garment was called a jupe. In Spain, a version known as the basquina was counted among the same family of garments.

  Men in western fashion wore a petticoat equivalent as well. From the mid-15th century through roughly the 17th century, the garment functioned as an under-doublet, typically padded or quilted, worn beneath a shirt in cold weather. That garment would eventually evolve into what later became known as the waistcoat.

• 3. The Visible Eighteenth Century

  ›

  In 18th-century Europe and America, petticoats were not hidden. They were considered part of the exterior garment, made from matching or contrasting textiles, sometimes embroidered with care. Shorter underpetticoats, also called dickies, were the garments that counted as true underwear.

  Working women in the American colonies wore bedgowns, also called shortgowns, paired with petticoats that typically matched in color. Petticoats in that era often had slits or holes so women could reach pockets worn beneath. Petticoats were worn by all classes throughout the century.

  The style known as the polonaise made the petticoat even more prominent by intentionally revealing much of it. Hem length tracked with whatever silhouette was fashionable at any given moment, so the petticoat shifted with the times rather than holding a fixed form.

• 4. Crinolines, Bustles, and Color

  ›

  By the Victorian era, petticoats had settled into their long-held identity as undergarments, used to give bulk and shape to the skirts worn over them. The mid-19th century brought hoops, also known as crinolines, worn beneath the petticoats to achieve the extreme volume that defined the decade. White cotton petticoats of the 1860s regularly featured lace and broderie anglaise along the decorative border.

  When the bustle became fashionable in the 1870s, petticoats were redesigned with flounces concentrated toward the back to complement that understructure. Women continued layering multiple petticoats throughout the decade.

  By the 1890s, colored petticoats came into fashion, many made from silk and trimmed with decorative frills at the hem. The early waltz craze of the 1820s had already shown how dancing could pull full skirts back into favor; now late-Victorian fashion was driving a different kind of opulence, built from silk and color rather than sheer volume.

• 5. Dior, Connolly, and Revival

  ›

  Christian Dior revived the petticoat with his "New Look" collection of 1947. The full skirts required tiers of ruffled, stiffened petticoats beneath them, and those petticoats remained in high demand through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Some clothing stores still stocked them as late as 1970.

  Irish designer Sybil Connolly drew on a more specific thread of petticoat history. During a visit to Connemara, she saw a woman wearing a traditional red flannel petticoat. She bought a bolt of the same fabric from a local shop and fashioned it into a quilted evening skirt, which became the centerpiece of her first international fashion collection, held in New York in 1953. One of those skirts is now held in the collection at The Hunt Museum.

• 6. Petticoats Beyond the West

  ›

  South Asian petticoats are rarely cut shorter than ankle length and are always worn from the waist down. They are sometimes called inner skirts or inskirts, reflecting a distinct regional vocabulary.

  In Japan, a garment called the nagajuban serves a parallel function beneath the kimono. It resembles a shorter kimono but typically lacks the two half-size front panels known as okumi, and its sleeves are only marginally sewn along the wrist end. Nagajuban are commonly made of white silk, though historically red silk was the norm. Because the collar of the juban shows beneath the kimono and sits against the skin, a half-collar called a han'eri is often attached, serving both as protection and decoration. Beneath the nagajuban, the hadajuban may also be worn; it resembles a tube-sleeved kimono-shaped top, worn without a collar, paired with an accompanying skirt slip.

• 7. Politics, Power, and Culture

  ›

  Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest feminist writers, was dismissed by Horace Walpole as a "hyena in petticoats." Florentia Sale, who travelled through the British Empire alongside her military husband Sir Robert Henry Sale, earned the nickname "the Grenadier in Petticoats."

  The phrase "petticoat government" took root in literary and political life for centuries. Henry Fielding used it in several of his plays. An Irish pamphlet titled Petticoat Government, Exemplified in a Late Case in Ireland appeared in 1780. Washington Irving placed the phrase in Rip Van Winkle in 1819. Frances Trollope wrote a novel called Petticoat Government in 1850, and Emma Orczy wrote another with the same title in 1911.

  G. K. Chesterton, in his 1910 book What's Wrong With the World, made an argument from the petticoat itself. He wrote that when men wish to be impressive, as judges, priests, or kings, they wear long trailing robes derived from female dress, and concluded: "The whole world is under petticoat government; for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern."

  President Andrew Jackson's administration was caught up in a scandal known as the "Petticoat affair," which was dramatized in the 1936 film The Gorgeous Hussy. Blake Edwards directed Operation Petticoat in 1959, a comedy set aboard an American submarine filled with nurses from the Battle of the Philippines. Petticoat Junction aired on CBS starting in 1963, and the network ran a second petticoat-titled series, Pistols 'n' Petticoats, in the 1966-67 season.