Which Hoops?

One of the blogs I've got in my Vendors/Resources list is about a graduate student putting together a museum collection of original reproductions to represent the fashion of the mid-18th-century. At one point she is questioning what type of hoops to make, pocket hoops (the smaller version of the full-on hip cages) or the oval hoop. I have wondered this myself after I saw an example of the oval hoop in the only book I have (thus far!) purchased for this project:

The Kyoto Institute's Fashion: from the 18th to the 20th Century was a Barnes & Noble discount rack buy that seemed like fate, as it appeared pretty much the first trip to a bookstore I took after settling on these costumes as our wedding theme. It's a pretty awesome book, actually, and gives examples of paintings and woodcuttings of the time and then extant specimens of the depicted style. I would have loved it more if it were only 18th and 19th centuries, but beggars can't be choosers, and all that.


Anyway, it was in this book that I first saw an example of oval hoops to make me question what type I wanted.


If you are less familiar with hoops, here's an example of their most extreme, which would have been reserved for formal court dress (and, if Les Pacte de Loup is to be believed, really expensive brothels) by the period I'm working in:




Here's the more modest style (pocket hoops)again:




Here's, in contrast, the oval hoop:



I am still uncertain what I want to do...perhaps I will make both pocket hoops and the oval and see which looks better? I will have enough of the hoop boning--it was only available in a 12-yard roll, when I expect to need no more than about 3 yards for any given set of hoops. So I'll have enough material to make two types, if I deem it necessary.


My concern is not about historical authenticity, the way the grad student's was. Mine is (1) making sure I achieve the proper visual effect, and (2) figuring out which will be the easiest to wear. By which I mean, which (if either) will allow me to pee unassisted, which will be more comfortable to walk and to sit in, which will be more comfortable under 3 layers of skirts all day.


I have considered not even using hoops--case in point, my label on this dress in my costume pix file was "What You Can Accomplish with Tulle" (I re-saved and labeled it here for copyright reasons, as it is a Charles Anastase dress in the vein of Alice in Wonderland).




But I actually think that hoops would be more comfortable to wear than that many layers underneath, and I'm not sure it would support the dress at the top well enough to create a graceful drape all the way to the floor. So I'm going to make hoops of some sort...I just don't know which yet! The oval seems like it will hold everything away from my legs a little better and thus allow for me to (maybe) hitch up my skirts unassisted, and it also seems like it wouldn't interfere with walking or sitting the way pocket hoops might, because there wouldn't be anything directly against my legs. But...(there's always a "but" in this endeavor; I have already learned that!)...I don't have anything like a pattern for an oval hoop (whereas I have a real, that is, commercial, pattern for the pocket hoops) and grad student replicator said they were more complicated to make.


Conundrums, conundrums. Thoughts?