Crinoline was a truly vital part of the clothing of nineteenth-century upper-class women. Their distinctive bell-shaped dresses supported on metal cages or whalebone petticoats can easily be spotted today in numerous period paintings, early photographs and costume movies. The trend, which originated in the 1840s, ran strong until the 1860s when dresses gradually grew flatter at the front and on the sides while being more protruding in the back, decorated lavishly with successive layers of fabric. To learn more about the history of these unusual costumes, view the photos on display at the stereoscopic photography exhibition of the Poznań Fotoplastykon.

The photographs on display have been provided with kind permission of Dr. Brian May's London Stereoscopic Company

• Crinoline - Fashion's Most Magnificent Disaster - an exhibition in the Poznań Fotoplastykon
• opening hours: Monday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm, Saturday 10 am - 5 pm, Sunday closed, last admission 1 hour before closing time
• tickets: regular admission - 5 pln, reduced admission - 2 pln, family tickets - 10 pln, group tickets (groups of 10 or more) - 20 pln

Read: Crinoline: Fashion's Most Magnificent Disaster