---
node: garment_farthingale
type: garment
slug: farthingale
title: "Farthingale"
lead: "The farthingale is a framework of hoops or a padded roll worn under a skirt to hold it out in a fixed shape. It gave Tudor and Elizabethan women their distinctive cone- and drum-shaped silhouettes."
published: 2026-08-09
updated: 2026-08-09
image_file: farthingale.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabethan_People_-_Farthingale_and_hose.jpg"
image_author: "Henry Thew Stephenson"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

A farthingale is an under-structure, not an outer garment: the Spanish form was a conical petticoat stiffened with hoops of cane or whalebone, while the later French form was a padded roll or wheel that thrust the skirt out flat at the hips.

## How it is worn

It is tied on at the waist beneath the petticoats and gown so the outer skirt falls over its shape rather than the body's; the wheel farthingale held the skirt out horizontally before dropping it straight down. Sitting and passing through doorways took practice.

## History

The Spanish farthingale reached England by the 1540s and the drum-shaped French farthingale dominated the court of Elizabeth I. It fell from fashion in the early seventeenth century, the ancestor of the later hoop and crinoline.