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1850s fashion bloomersA pair of bloomers, 1981
Bloomers, also called the bloomer, the Turkish dress, the American dress, or simply reform dress, are divided women's garments for the lower body. They were developed in the 19th century as a healthful and comfortable alternative to the heavy, constricting dresses worn by American women. They take their name from their best-known advocate, the women's rights activist Amelia Bloomer.
Victorian dress reform was an objective of the Victorian dress reform movement of the middle and late Victorian era, comprising various reformers who proposed, designed, and wore clothing considered more practical and comfortable than the fashions of the time. Dress reformists were largely middle class women involved in the first wave of feminism in the United States and in Britain, from the 1850s through the 1890s. The movement emerged in the Progressive Era along with calls for temperance, women's education, suffrage and moral purity. Dress reform called for emancipation from the "dictates of fashion", expressed a desire to “cover the limbs as well as the torso adequately,” and promoted "rational dress". The movement had its greatest success in the reform of women's undergarments, which could be modified without exposing the wearer to social ridicule. Dress reformers were also influential in persuading women to adopt simplified garments for athletic activities such as bicycling or swimming. The movement was much less concerned with men's clothing, although it initiated the widespread adoption of knitted wool union suits or long johns.
Amelia Jenks Bloomer was an American women's rights and temperance advocate. Even though she did not create the women's clothing reform style known as bloomers, her name became associated with it because of her early and strong advocacy. In her work with The Lily, she became the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women.
Bloomers were an innovation of readers of the Water-Cure Journal, a popular health periodical that in October 1849 began urging women to develop a style of dress that was not so harmful to their health as the current fashion. It also represented an unrestricted movement, unprecedented by previous women's fashions, that allowed for greater freedom—both metaphorical and physical—within the public sphere.[1] The fashionable dress of that time consisted of a skirt that dragged several inches on the floor, worn over layers of starched petticoats stiffened with straw or horsehair sewn into the hems. In addition to the heavy skirts, prevailing fashion called for a "long waist" effect, achieved with a whale-bone-fitted corset that pushed the wearer's internal organs out of their normal place. The result was a feminine population which, as one medical professor warned his students, was of no use as cadavers from which to study human anatomy.[2]
A skirt is the lower part of a dress or gown, covering the person from the waist downwards, or a separate outer garment serving this purpose.
Women responded with a variety of costumes, many inspired by the pantaloons of Turkey, and all including some form of pants. By the summer of 1850, various versions of a short skirt and trousers, or "Turkish dress", were being worn by readers of the Water-Cure Journal as well as women patients at the nation's health resorts. After wearing the style in private, some began wearing it in public. In the winter and spring of 1851, newspapers across the country carried startled sightings of the dresses.[3]
Bloomer craze of 1851
In a reversal of genders, a "bloomer" asks her fiancé's shocked father for consent to marry his son: satirical cartoon from 1852
In February 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller of Peterboro, New York wore the "Turkish dress"[4] to Seneca Falls, New York, home of Amelia Bloomer and her temperance journal, The Lily. The next month Bloomer announced to her readers that she had adopted the dress and, in response to many inquiries, printed a description of her dress and instructions on how to make it. By June many newspapers had dubbed it the "Bloomer dress".[5]
Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822–1911), known as 'Libby' was an American advocate and financial supporter of the women’s rights movement.
Peterboro, New York, located about twenty-five miles southeast of Syracuse, is an historic hamlet and current administrative center for the Town of Smithfield, Madison County, New York. The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum is located at the former Smithfield Presbyterian Church, in Peterboro. Peterboro has a post office with ZIP code 13134.
Seneca Falls is a town in Seneca County, New York, United States. The population was 9,040 at the 2010 census.
During the summer of 1851, the nation was seized by a "bloomer craze". Health reformer Mary Gove Nichols drafted a Declaration of Independence from the Despotism of Parisian Fashion and gathered signatures to it at lectures on woman's dress.[6] Managers of the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, gave a banquet for any of their female workers who adopted the safer dress before July 4.[7] In Toledo, Ohio, sixty women turned out in Turkish costume at one of the city's grandest social events.[8] Bloomer balls and bloomer picnics were held; dress reform societies and bloomer institutes were formed.[9] A grand festival in favor of the costume was held at New York City's Broadway Tabernacle in September.[10] In August, a woman who had spent six months sailing from Philadelphia around the Horn to California with the reform dress packed in her trunk disembarked to find that the dress had preceded her and was being displayed in the window of a San Francisco dress shop.[11]
Broadway United Church of Christ is a Congregationalist Church located on West 86th Street, between Broadway and West End Avenue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Bloomers in London
Interest in the bloomers was also sparked in England when Hannah Tracy Cutler and other women delegates wore the new dress to an international peace convention in London.[12] Many newspaper reports were dedicated to the controversy the outfit caused. One prominent figure who began to lecture about the bloomers in London and beyond was Caroline Dexter.[13] When she and her husband later emigrated to Australia, she continued to advocate for dress reform. Although few women are known to have worn the bloomers in Australia, Dexter's continued support led to controversy in the Sydney Morning Herald.[14]
Hannah Maria Conant Tracy Cutler was an American abolitionist as well as a leader of the temperance and women's suffrage movements in the United States. Cutler served as president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Cutler helped to shape the merger of two feminist factions into the combined National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
Caroline Dexter was an English-Australian dress reformer, writer, and feminist.
The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia and has become a national online-news brand. The print version of the newspaper is published six days a week.
Women's rights
Bloomer Costume (Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1864)
The Bloomer also became a symbol of women's rights in the early 1850s. The same women—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony—who adopted the new form of dress also advocated women's right to vote. These women preferred to call their new style the "freedom dress."[16] Crowds gathered to not only hear these women's radical words, but also to see their "scandalous" mode of dress. After three years, however, fearing that the new dress was drawing attention away from the suffragist cause, many of these women returned to corsets, long skirts, and more conventional forms of dress. In similar suit, the Dress Reform Association which was formed in 1856 called the outfit the "American costume" and focused on its health benefits rather than its political symbolism. Following the American Civil War, interest in the Bloomer costume waned almost completely until its resurgence in the 1890s.[17]
In the 1850s, the "bloomer" was a physical and metaphorical representation of feminist reform. This garment originated in late 1849 for the purpose of developing a style of dress for women that was less harmful to their health. Because it was less restricting than the previously popular attire, the bloomer provided more physical freedom for women. Being a completely new and distinctively different form of dress, the bloomer garment also provided women with a metaphorical freedom, in the sense that it gave women not only more diverse dress options, but also the opportunity and power to choose their type of garment.
Some individuals at the time even argued that the Bloomer dress should be adopted for moral reasons. A reporter noted that a group of "very intelligent appearing, lady-like women" met in Milford, Massachusetts in July 1852. The purpose of this meeting was to consider the propriety of adopting bloomers. The women unanimously passed a resolution approving the costume, declaring the currently existing fashion to be consistent with "moral evils" and arguing that the bloomer would facilitate women's efforts to engage in good works."[18]
And now I'm dressed like a little girl, in a dress both loose and short, Oh with what freedom I can sing, and walk all 'round about! And when I get a little strength, some work I think I can do, 'Twill give me health and comfort, and make me useful too.
Feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and numerous others, essentially claimed that women who took on the "feminist dress" look without being fully knowledgeable of all the accompanying issues were imposters. They were concerned that individuals could demonstrate reform without actually being an expert in the issues. In the Sibyl poem, the feeling and element of reform was demonstrated through simplicity and the subtle appreciation of this small step in women's fashion in parallel to a small step for women in general. During the 1850s, feminist reformers were fighting numerous battles to bring about change and further equality to women everywhere. Feminists believed that it was more important to focus on the issues, and that giving in to fashionable trends was exactly what they were battling against. This now popularized simple change in dress symbolically furthered women's liberation.
Opposition to Bloomer dress
Bloomer's promotion of the style as a freedom dress rather than as a health dress did nothing to recommend it to the orthodox clergy and other critics of the woman's rights movement, who denounced the wearing of pants by women as a usurpation of male authority.[20] Associating it with the woman's rights movement, the New York Sunday Mercury published a woodcarving representing the woman's rights convention held in Akron, Ohio, in May 1851. It depicted every woman in coat, breeches, and high boots, sitting cross-legged and smoking cigars, when in truth not a bloomer was present.[21] Some young women were denied church membership for wearing the dress.[22] Public meetings were called to put down the fad, and the very same newspapers that had previously praised the dress began ridiculing and condemning "Bloomerism". In August 1851, Harper's Monthly reprinted a cartoon and article from a London newspaper ridiculing the American dress, one month after it had printed a sketch of the "Oriental Costume" and pronounced it tasteful, elegant, and graceful.
Bloomers in the West
Lucy Stone, one of America's most famous orators in the woman's rights movement during the 1850s, helped popularize the dress by wearing it as she addressed immense audiences in over twenty states, the District of Columbia, and Ontario between 1851 and 1855. She had begun wearing the dress as a health measure while recuperating from typhoid fever during the winter of 1850–51, and she wore it exclusively for three years.[23] In 1856 a National Dress Reform Association organized[24] and one of its officers, Dr. Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, who had worn the dress since 1849, established a journal, The Sibyl, as the society's organ. From July 1856 through June 1864, that paper carried news of dress reform to subscribers from New England to California and published the names of nearly a thousand women who sent in their names as wearers of the reform dress.[25] A letter-writer from Iowa said it was especially suited for life on the prairie and reported that many women from various parts of the state wore it all the time. Readers from Illinois, Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, and Oregon attested to its popularity among western women.[26] In 1860, an English traveler reported meeting a bloomer wearer in Laramie, Wyoming, and a traveler to Pike's Peak reported that "the bloomer costume is considerably in vogue and appears peculiarly adapted to overland travel".[27]
Civil War nurses and the bloomer
When Dorothea Dix was appointed superintendent of army nurses in June 1861, she issued a statement banning the bloomer from army hospitals and requiring women to abandon it before entering nursing service. But as western communities organized battalions of soldiers, they also formed corps of volunteer nurses to accompany them, and many of these nurses adopted the reform dress for field service. All members of one such corps, organized by Dr. Fedelia Harris Reid of Berlin, Wisconsin, and called the "Wisconsin Florence Nightengale Union", wore the bloomer not only in the field, but also while caring for patients at a military hospital in St. Louis. Four bloomer wearers were among the nurses who accompanied Minnesota's First Regiment.[28] Dr. Mary E. Walker, who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for her medical services during the Civil War, wore the reform dress while working in a military hospital in Washington, D.C., as well as for field work. As she accompanied troops in the South, she wrote to the Sibyl that New Orleans women of wealth and standing had worn it to Haiti and Cuba.[29] The dress was still being worn by members of the utopian Oneida Community in 1867[30] but gradually it was abandoned by all but a very few stalwart wearers willing to defy society's mores.
Bloomers and bicycles
In 1893, the Woman's Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition revived interest in the bloomer as an aid in improving women's health through physical exercise. Their session on women's dress opened with Lucy Stone reminiscing about the bloomer movement of the 1850s; her extolling the bloomer as the "cleanest, neatest, most comfortable and most sensible garment" she had ever worn; and young women modeling different versions of the dress.[31] The following year Annie "Londonderry" Cohen Kopchovsky donned the bloomer during her famous bicycle trip around the world, and an updated version of the bloomer soon became the standard "bicycle dress" for women during the bicycle craze of the 1890s.[32]
In 1909, fashion designer Paul Poiret attempted to popularize harem pants worn below a long flaring tunic, but this attempted revival of fashion bloomers under another name did not catch on.
Athletic bloomers (unskirted)
19th and 20th centuries
During the late 19th century, athletic bloomers (also known as "rationals" or "knickerbockers") were skirtless baggy knee-length trousers, fastened to the leg a little below the knees; at that time, they were worn by women only in a few narrow contexts of athletic activity, such as bicycle-riding, gymnastics, and sports other than tennis (see 1890s in fashion). Bloomers were usually worn with stockings and after 1910 often with a sailor middy blouse.
Bloomers became shorter by the late 1920s. In the 1930s, when it became respectable for women to wear pants and shorts in a wider range of circumstances, styles imitating men's shorts were favored, and bloomers tended to become less common. However, baggy knee-length gym shorts fastened at or above the knees continued to be worn by girls in school physical education classes through to the 1950s in some areas. Some schools in New York City and Sydney still wore them as part of their uniforms into the 1980s. In Japan their use persisted into the early 2000s.[33]
Known as buruma (ブルマ), also burumā (ブルマー), bloomers were introduced in Japan as women's clothing for physical education in 1903.[34] After the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, a newer style of bloomers which fit the body closer, similar to volleyball uniforms, became commonplace. Around the mid-1990s, however, schools and individuals began to choose sports shorts instead, citing modesty concerns.[35] Some people are interested in bloomers in clothing fetish context.[36]
Gallery of athletic bloomers
An example of late 19th-century athletic bloomers: the Smith College class of 1902 basketball team
1890s caricature of athletic bloomers
Gymnasts in Stockholm, Sweden. Early 20th century.
Undergarments
Women's baggy underpants fastened to just below or above the knee are also known as "bloomers" (or as "knickers" or "directoire knickers"). They were most popular from the 1910s to the 1930s but continued to be worn by older women for several decades thereafter. Often the term "bloomers" has been used interchangeably with the pantalettes worn by women and girls in the mid 19th century and the open leg knee length drawers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A petticoat or underskirt is an article of clothing, a type of undergarment worn under a skirt or a dress. Its precise meaning varies over centuries and between countries.
A tunic is a garment for the body, usually simple in style, reaching from the shoulders to a length somewhere between the hips and the knees. The name derives from the Latin tunica, the basic garment worn by both men and women in Ancient Rome, which in turn was based on earlier Greek garments that covered wearers' waists.
Fashion in the 1890s in European and European-influenced countries is characterized by long elegant lines, tall collars, and the rise of sportswear. It was an era of great dress reforms led by the invention of the drop-frame safety bicycle, which allowed women the opportunity to ride bicycles more comfortably, and therefore, created the need for appropriate clothing.
Hotpants or hot pants describe extremely short shorts. The term was first used by Women's Wear Daily in 1970 to describe shorts made in luxury fabrics such as velvet and satin for fashionable wear, rather than their more practical equivalents that had been worn for sports or leisure since the 1930s. The term has since become a generic term for any pair of extremely short shorts. While hotpants were briefly a very popular element of mainstream fashion in the early 1970s, by the mid-1970s, they had become associated with the sex industry, which contributed to their fall from fashion. However, hotpants continue to be popular as clubwear well into the 2010s and are often worn within the entertainment industry, particularly as part of cheerleader costumes or for dancers. Performers such as Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue have famously worn hotpants as part of their public performances and presentation.
1850s fashion in Western and Western-influenced clothing is characterized by an increase in the width of women's skirts supported by crinolines or hoops, and the beginnings of dress reform. Masculine styles began to originate more in London, while female fashions originated almost exclusively in Paris.
Fashion in the 1970s was about individuality. In the early 1970s, Vogue proclaimed "There are no rules in the fashion game now" due to overproduction flooding the market with cheap synthetic clothing. Common items included mini skirts, bell-bottoms popularized by hippies, vintage clothing from the 1950s and earlier, and the androgynous glam rock and disco styles that introduced platform shoes, bright colors, glitter, and satin.
The history of bras is inextricably intertwined with the social history of the status of women, including the evolution of fashion and changing views of the female body.
19th century in fashion is famed for its bloomers, bonnets, bustles, corsets and petticoats for women, and top hats and three piece suits with vests for men.
Trousers or pants first appear in recorded history among nomadic steppe-people in Western Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests that men and women alike wore pants in that cultural context. However, for much of modern history, the use of trousers has been restricted to men. In many regions, this norm was enforced not only by social custom but also by law. There are, however, many historical cases of women wearing trousers in defiance of these norms, for a variety of reasons, including comfort, freedom of movement, fashion, disguise, attempts to evade the gender pay gap, and attempts to establish an empowered public identity for women. Especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, the customs and laws restricting this manner of dress have relaxed dramatically, reflecting a growing acceptance and normalization of the practice.
Trousers or pants are an item of clothing that might have originated in Central Asia, worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately.
Anti-fashion is an umbrella term for various styles of dress which are explicitly contrary to the fashion of the day. Anti-fashion styles may represent an attitude of indifference or may arise from political or practical goals which make fashion a secondary priority. The term is sometimes even used for styles championed by high-profile designers, when they encourage or create trends that do not follow the mainstream fashion of the time. Anti-fashion is considered radical creativity in apparel. It recombines a hodgepodge of details that dramatically alters current fashions. The newly transformed styles are later incorporated into the mainstream through media hype and commercial sales which reduce its stature. Ultimately, those who wear anti-fashion pieces are simply "fad-followers".
The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper edited by and for women. It was published from 1849 to 1853 by Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–1894), before she sold the newspaper to Mary Birdsall in 1854. While the newspaper initially focused on temperance, it soon broadened its focus to include the many issues of women’s rights activists in the 1850s. It grew in its distribution as a result of its discussion of bloomers, a comfortable fashion popularized by Bloomer in the paper.
Turkish şalvar, Turkish trousers or dimije are traditional baggy trousers gathered in tightly at the ankle. Men may wear the traditional loose coat, called a jubba, over the şalvar. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk changed the dress code in Turkey in the 1920s as part of his reforms. However, men and women still wear the şalvar in many areas of Turkey, indifferent to social status.
Harriet Newell Austin was an American hydrotherapist, author, and dress-reform advocate. She was the designer of the "American costume," a style of dress meant to promote women's health.
Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck was an American hydrotherapist, advocate for women's dress reform and the founder and editor of The Sibyl, a periodical devoted to that topic. Elected to the Middletown, New York, Board of Education in 1880, she is thought to have been the first American woman to hold elected office.
Women's apparel in the early 20th century was often costly, inconvenient, and weighed heavily in regards to male courtship. Despite the social pressures of normative feminine dress, some women, specifically those involved in the Women's Suffrage Movement, were intent on rebelling against the standards of women's dress. However, the 1920s was not the first decade to reject impractical female apparel. The Victorian dress reform paved the way for the more progressive and more politically aggressive women of the 1920s, though the validity of such reforms, the New Woman in particular, has been criticized for emphasis on female empowerment through dress and manner rather than political efforts–noting a decline in American feminism in the 1930s and 1940s when fashions forged in the 1920s dress movement became more widely normalized and, in some ways, reverted to more restrictive dress and styles. Despite the subsequent decline in feministic ideology, the women of the 1920s' changing attitudes, reflected in their choice of apparel, had a lasting impression on modern feminist ideals that resurged in the 50s and 60s. The New Woman's moxie was paradoxically evident in her lack of charm, exhibiting short bobbed haircuts, heavier makeup, and boyish frames. It may seem as though the flapper mirrored a rebellion against femininity, but it was actually quite the opposite; it was meant to make the modern woman's life easier. The flapper's simplistic, straight-lined style was popularized by Coco Chanel, who's somewhat ironically remembered as "fashionable without being forward," as a way of liberating women the impractical designs that hindered modern women's ability to engage in physical activities. "The newfound freedom to breathe and walk encouraged movement out of the house, and the Flapper took full advantage.” Popular accessories now viewed as classics, such as strings of pearls and petite handbags, can also be traced back to the simplistic vision of Coco Chanel. Other successful accessory designers of the Roaring 20s include that of Cartier and "strap bracelets" and Miriam Haskell with her "fashion jewelry", but wealth wasn't a necessity for obtaining the flapper's look. Magazines provided sewing patterns to mimic chic Parisian trends, which fast-tracked the look's popularity by making them easily accessible to all those with a needle and thread, the common woman. However, while standardizing practical women's attire promoted movement, it was also seen as highly provocative, as the new dress served as a symbol of sexual freedom as well as an indicator of supposed declining morals. Flappers invested more importance on fun and panache than they did in moral character, idolizing figures such as Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of Modernist author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was known for her flair, wit, and personal accomplishments as a writer and a professionally trained ballet dancer. Completing her own American novel, Save Me the Waltz, in 1932, Zelda epitomized the mantra that inspired the New Woman's change in apparel: that "a woman can do anything a man can do" without compromising her femininity. The flapper "smoked, drank, swore, drove fast, professed free love, and used makeup," and exercised sexual independence–re-positioning herself as an indelible force in Western society.
References
↑ Greig, Catherine Smith & Cynthia (2003). Women in pants: manly maidens, cowgirls, and other renegades. New York: H.N. Abrams. p.28. ISBN978-0810945715.
↑ Water-Cure Journal, reprinted in Lily, March 1851.
↑ Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband wrote to her, asking, "How does Lib Miller look in her new Turkish dress?" Henry B. Stanton to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Stanton Papers, Library of Congress, Film 1:68.
↑ To assertions that she was the innovator of the dress, Bloomer replied: "The first we heard of it, it was worn as an exercise dress at the Water-Cures; the first article we saw advocating it was an editorial in the Seneca County Courier, [Jan. 1851], which article we transferred to our columns; the first person we saw wearing such a dress was Mrs. Charles D. Miller of Peterboro, daughter of Gerrit Smith, who has worn it for the last five or six months", Lily, June 1851, p. 45.
↑ Urwin, Tiffany (2000). "Dexter, Dextra, Dextrum: The Bloomer Costume on the British Stage in 1851". Nineteenth Century Theatre. 28 (2): 91–113. doi:10.1177/174837270002800201.
↑ Stevenson, Ana (2017). "Bloomers' and the British World: Dress Reform in Transatlantic and Antipodean Print Culture, 1851–1950". Cultural & Social History. 14 (5): 621–646. doi:10.1080/14780038.2017.1375706.
↑ Fischer, Gayle V. (2001). Pantaloons and Power: Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform in the United States. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. pp.79–80.
↑ Greig, Catherine Smith & Cynthia (2003). Women in pants: manly maidens, cowgirls, and other renegades. New York: H. N. Abrams. p.28. ISBN978-0810945715.
↑ Kriebl, Karen. "From Bloomers to Flappers: The American Women's Dress Reform Movement, 1840–1920." Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Ohio State University, 1998. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 18 Apr 2014.
↑ Fischer, Gayle V. (1997). "Pantalets and Turkish Trowsers: Designing Freedom in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States". Feminist Studies 23.1. Feminist Studies. 23. pp.110–40. doi:10.2307/3178301. JSTOR3178301.
↑ Noun, Louise, "Amelia Bloomer, A Biography, Part I, The Lily of Seneca Falls", Annals of Iowa, 7 (winter 1985), pp. 598–99; Tinling, p. 24.
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