The competition between feminism and fashion over dress in the 1800s did not always result in fashion emerging as the victor. In addition to Elizabeth Cady Stanton helping to design and subsequently wearing the Bloomer reform dress as did other women’s rights activists, stirring negative publicity, many women were convinced by dress reformers of the dangers from the oppressive style of fashionable dress.

This scepticism comes as no surprise since the Parisian designers of the era decreed that women wore corsets. The undergarments gave them eighteen-inch waists and lingerie and skirts so long they were at risk for a coating of mud when worn out in the streets.

Amelia Bloomer is the woman for who the trousers were named. For women who chose to take exercise classes at gymnasiums, a practice that reached every distinctive class, bloomers were an essential clothing component. Bicycle riding also included some variation of the bloomer and was all of the rage in the 1890s.

The cage crinoline of the 1850s yielded to the mid-1860s bustle, a small cage on the backside. Both apparel items made it hard to sit. They were topped by a corset in the 1890s that pushed the breast forward.

Reformers criticized fashionable dress due to health risks. Tightlacing could cause damage to internal organs and cut off breathing. No wonder women of the era were always depicted as fainting.

Reformers included followers of Sylvester Graham and supporters of gymnastic exercise, such as Catherine Beecher. All of them advocated loose, comfortable apparel for women and publicized their creations.

Sylvester Graham practiced vegetarianism and is best known as the father of Graham crackers. His dietary practices influenced the Kellogg brothers and their invention of cornflakes. The creation was a predictable outcome of the Grahamite philosophy of nutrition.

Catherine Esther Beecher was born in 1800 under the accepted doctrine of the “cult of domesticity.” She was a promoter of higher education for women and wrote about the subjects of education, domestic economy and women’s health and calisthenics.

The Reform movement was international; even Gustav Klimt clothed his models in loose, flowing garments to reflect a more natural state. He also wore Reform style clothing.

The study of women’s fashions begs the question of dress reform in recent day. Does the fashion industry with its tight-laced corsets of the fifties, pantyhose of the seventies, and renewed popularity of pointed-toe shoes in the twenty-first century cleverly continue to elude feminist reform?

Reference

Banner, Lois W. “Fashion and Politics.” The Women’s Review of Books, Vol. 21, No.2 (Nov. 2003),Old City Publishing, Inc., pp. 7-8.