Victorian Dress Reform - Girl Athletes and Working Women

Girl Athletes and Working Women

In the 19th century, poor women were known to wear corsets "boned" with rope, rather than steel or bone, to facilitate work in the field.

  • Approx. second half of 1880s poster showing Annie Oakley wearing short-skirted attire

  • An 1897 ad, showing a relatively early example of an ordinary non-sea-bathing woman in public view in unskirted garments (to ride a bicycle)

  • 1895 Punch satire on wearing a bicycle suit despite lacking a bicycle

  • Wigan "pit brow lasses" scandalized by wearing trousers for dangerous work in coal mines. They wore skirts over their trousers, rolled up to the waist to keep them out of the way.

Read more about this topic:  Victorian Dress Reform

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