Crinoline: Fashion’s Most Magnificent Disaster

This beautiful hardback book by Denis Pellerin and Queen guitarist and stereoscopic collector Dr Brian May explores the history of the twin crazes of crinoline dresses and stereoscopic photographs in the mid-19th century to the present day. The use of voluminous structures beneath women’s skirts was hugely popular between 1856 and 1867, despite making them highly susceptible to fire and other hazards, and this bizarre fashion was invariably captured in stereo photographs – two slightly dissimilar flat prints that appear three-dimensional when viewed through double lenses. This was the TV of its day and all manner of stereo photos, cartoons and columns were dedicated to the crinoline craze – and the husbands financially ruined by it – for the entertainment of the masses.

Readers can gain new insight into these Victorian sensations in this entertaining and insightful book, boxed with a 3-D viewer to experience stereo images from the current V&A exhibition, Undressed, A Brief History of Underwear. You’ll gain a new respect for your several-times great-grandmothers who were expected to squeeze their long-suffering bodies into ever more extreme shapes, along with the thousands of crinoline wearers whose lives were lost due to fire – the literal fashion victims of their day. Thank goodness for jeans!

ISBN: 9780957424623, RRP £50, hardback. Carlton Books. Available from Amazon and other retailers; signed copies can be bought from The London Stereophonic Company at www.londonstereo.com