In the 1850s a craze swept through the wardrobes of the women of American and British society. These "bloomers," wearing their new loose-fitting "Turkish dress," represented a turn against the painful and unhealthy fashions of Victorian corsets and bindings.
With newspapers everywhere decrying this new style of dress, bloomers became an overnight feminist firestorm. These early pioneers had set in motion a form of social protest in which everyday dress--in public and in the home--became a political act. This book traces the development of this new movement through the changing fashions. With every new style of dress, there came predictable outcries of disapproval and satire. But slowly, inch by inch and stitch by stitch, the women made their progress.
At the turn of the century, campaigners such as Lady Haberton championed the new "Rational Dress Movement," adroitly rebranding the movement as a rational cause--the buzzword of the day for all right-thinking individuals--and thereby giving the case for the divided skirt a new scientific justification.
Her movement would scandalize and inspire many, from H. G. Wells to George Bernard Shaw. Merging with the early Suffragist cause in 1907, the story of women's fashion takes in issues as various as the working conditions of garment makers, female prostitution and the 19th-century slave trade.