In 1850, the New Yorker Amelia Bloomer was ahead of her time when she proposed a sensible female costume, which became the target of mockery just about everywhere. Far from wanting to create a “masculine” garment, she was, on the contrary, a romantic woman of her time, fascinated by the trousers worn by Turkish women.

The clothing reform movement was in development during the second half of the 19^th century in England and Germany, with the implication of intellectuals: but it was a failure in France. At least if we’re looking for a well-organised movement. However, feminists such as Jeanne Deroin, attempted to appeal to the public as early as 1852. A league for the costume reform was founded in 1891. Doctor Marie Pierre called for identical hygienic and practical costumes for both sexes, her league adhering to the French Federation of Feminist Societies.

The clothing reform movement was in development during the second half of the 19^th century in England and Germany, with the implication of intellectuals: but it was a failure in France. At least if we’re looking for a well-organised movement. However, feminists such as Jeanne Deroin, attempted to appeal to the public as early as 1852. A league for the costume reform was founded in 1891. Doctor Marie Pierre called for identical hygienic and practical costumes for both sexes, her league adhering to the French Federation of Feminist Societies.

“Costume reform”, published by Jeanne Deroin

“Costume Reform” in Almanach des femmes pour 1852, published by Jeanne Deroin, 1852, p. 62-70.

[page 62]

                                   COSTUME REFORM

Le Journal des Débats and many other journals after it, told us in September, under the title of Les Jupons et les Culottes (Petticoats and Pants), about a reform that a group of intrepid American women from far and wide are trying to introduce in England and wherever women see fit. Born in

in the land of the free, having been able to develop their moral and intellectual sense there, our reformers, seeing women of all nations led by circumstances and a sense of right to enter more and more into practical and public life, our reformers have judged, at these signs, that women’s clothing, as it exists, is destined, as an obstacle to this progress, to undergo profound changes as soon as possible. They are no longer appealing to fashion this time in order to bring about this change; it is no longer a woman’s charms that they are invoking. But as they embark on a new order, they appeal, no more and no less than free people, to the very constitution of every human being and to the right to come and go that this constitution confers on each of its members, without distinction of sex. It is in order to restore to women, wronged by our foolish customs, their natural prerogatives, that our women reformers are rising up. The reasons they give for their work are excellent, and above all have to do with common sense. But since common sense is no greater than the common law of nations, we can only speculate on the welcome given to our courageous American women wherever they landed on our continent. In France, as far as their ideas are concerned, the progressive newspapers have refrained from speaking for themselves: they all reproduced the article in les Débats.

We can guess the spirit of this article, which is why we will not be suspicious of placing before the eyes of our readers, the reasons expressed by the female reformers in the speeches they gave, and those that Débats borrowed from the English newspapers. Mrs Dexter, a woman of 33, appears to be at the head of the reform movement, says les Débats, and it was at a meeting where there was a huge crowd that Mrs Dexter made her appearance. She was dressed in the costume that is the subject of the reform, and for the seriousness of the occasion, Mrs Dexter was dressed completely in black. The costume consisted of a sort of jacket or leotard, similar to what we now call a caraco, open at the chest and revealing a buttoned waistcoat with flat sleeves; then a short skirt which

[page 64]

came down to the knees, followed by trousers that were very wide at the knee, tightened at the ankle with elastic bands, and billowing over little Hungarian boots. The hairstyle was somewhere in between a man’s hat and a woman’s hat.

“We can agree”, said Mrs. Dexter, “that women’s grooming is a woman’s business. And yet, anything that deviates from custom is viewed with suspicion. Fashion is all-powerful in nations that claim to be civilised. There was a time when a fashionable woman was obliged to heap structures on her head. At another time, women were forced to extend their natural circumference with baskets that prevented them from passing through doorways.”

It was the preserve of the English nation to push to the extreme, the absurdity of a costume that sacrifices thousands of nature’s most beautiful works every year. I’m talking about the infernal fashion trend of corsets... Shall I mention long skirts? On a rainy day, they’re like a living landscape; they're harder to carry than a baby. And don’t forget that it’s just as inconvenient in fine weather as in bad, because on a fine day our long skirts sweep away the dust. What is it that deprives us of the free exercise of our limbs? Our skirts. We can’t go for a walk in the countryside. Why can’t we jump a hedge without the assistance of a husband or lover? Don’t we have enough elasticity in our constitution? Imagine Venus offered up to the admiration of men with forms supported by whalebone! Deformity is a consequence of civilisation. Today’s Greek women wear trousers, and Italian women wear short skirts. All our problems stem from the fact that we borrow our notions of beauty from the ancients. We’re still at with the Greeks and their Roman imitators… The women of Georgia, Circassia and India, half of the women in the world, have never seen anything but trousers, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who wears them. In America, one wonders what right

[page 65]

men alone have to wear pants. In China, men wear dresses and women wear trousers... I could be accused of boldness; but boldness is not immodesty. There are people who feel uncomfortable in front of a spider and who would swallow a camel. I appeal to any man who has had the opportunity to walk behind a woman on a windy day, and I ask him if our current dress has the right to a monopoly on decency. Up to the age of fourteen, the costume we call immodest is worn without issue; but the next day, it is considered inappropriate. It is time that the philosophical principles that characterise our age were applied to dress. If necessary, I could prove that men’s dress is absurd...”

Certainly, despite the boldness of the proposal, as Mrs Dexter says, who can fail to see the excellent reasons on which it is based? Moreover, this very boldness only seems so, to us, because of our regrettable indifference and our habit of cowardly submission to anything that does not even have the appearance of goodness to back it up. You are a thousand times right, ladies! And this is because the future undoubtedly belongs to you; this is because your reform seems to combine all at once with common sense, with necessity, with morality itself; this is because it is one of the natural prerogatives of women’s emancipation and one of the signs of social transformation, that the present feels ill at ease with you and aims the fire at you. It is the least the present can do for you to break with the tradition of the divine charms the tyrant of fashion has relied on to consecrate his greatest enormities, just as we have broken elsewhere with other equally undivine prerogatives!

Your reform is timely and useful, and everything leads us to believe that it will be adopted. As with all important things, we will proceed timidly, climbing by degrees, but we will get there. A little courage on the part of women, more independence in their position; an opportunity for activity, for travel... everything is connected to the question, everything will favour your work.

[page 66]

As you say, it is time the philosophical principles that characterise our age were applied to grooming. And what do you do, after all, if not the most necessary hygiene, the most rational eclecticism? To guarantee women bodily health and independence, you borrow short skirts from Italian women and trousers from the Chinese. A derisory image for these poor women whose feet are crushed from childhood, on the orders of their husbands or their fathers, the legislators, trousers, thanks to you, are finally becoming, for women in other countries, the sign of independence and activity.

This activity will not stop, and perhaps one day you, or the women reformers who will continue your work, will find a way to restore to Chinese women and to all the women of the world, the prerogatives that you are demanding today, by means which, without the warmth of heart and the devotion of which you are an example, would remain forever powerless.

EVE.

[...]

[pages 69-70]

One of our friends wrote to us saying that the German newspapers are in no way surprised by the reform of women’s dress and have welcomed it with benevolence. They are all talking about it, she says, and praising it as a step towards common sense and good taste.

A Frankfurt journalist, among others, delighted in the fact that women can now walk freely and without trouble instead of dragging themselves painfully through mud and dust. A small number of ladies have adopted the costume in Germany, and the newspapers that support the idea are finding more than one opportunity to praise it.

So here we have German common sense once again, keeping French wit and gallantry at bay.

Feminists at odds

For the feminist Hubertine Auclert in 1899, “free men have uniformised their simple costume; those who dream of becoming their equals cannot claim to maintain the artifices of slaves, the antiegalitarian luxury which is acquired at the expense of freedom”. Her point of view was not shared by her feminist elder, Maria Deraismes, repulsed by the “odious and sad uniformity of men” and charmed by “our pretty, bright, lively fabric.” Feminists will steer the costume debate towards a compromise, saving the “feminine” by reforming it.

An intermediate solution between pants and dresses was found in the jupe-culotte, the divided skirt or culotte, worn by numerous activists and popularised by cyclists.

The enthusiasm of radical feminists for this solution wasn’t shared by all, as we would expect. A journalist at Le Matin, seeking the opinion of a representative of the Church on culottes, was told that it would be better to consult an alienist doctor, who could treat the exhibitionist neurosis of deranged women wearing this kind of “half-garment”.

Doctors not only attacked the costume, but also the very practice of the velocipede, which was said to ruin female genitalia. It was a complicated affair, at least in the beginning. Sévérine, hostile to male costumes, approved those worn by cyclists. On the other hand, Louise Abbéma, who cross-dressed, found these new bloomers ugly. Aesthetic preferences were mixed with more political reflections.

Doctors not only attacked the costume, but also the very practice of the velocipede, which was said to ruin female genitalia. It was a complicated affair, at least in the beginning. Sévérine, hostile to male costumes, approved those worn by cyclists. On the other hand, Louise Abbéma, who cross-dressed, found these new bloomers ugly. Aesthetic preferences were mixed with more political reflections.

“Women in culottes”, by Maria Deraismes

Maria Deraismes (1828-1894) was the most brilliant feminist of her generation. Supporting herself without needing to work, she was able to quench her thirst for knowledge, culture and activism, that’s to say she was a republican, the first to be initiated into Co-Freemasonry, a sought-after lecturer and a respected campaigner for women’s rights. Her feminist thought was modern: women’s inferiority was a social fact, not a natural one, and her aim was to help them gain the freedom to decide for themselves. Differences between men and women are secondary, inessential, their similarities, which need to be cultivated, are a guarantee of harmony and understanding... except when it comes to clothes! Just what the journalist from L'Echo de Paris was looking for when he interviewed this sprightly sixty-year-old.

Maria Deraismes, “Women in culottes”, L’Echo de Paris, 13^th of October 1891.

“As in Lysistrata, women are threatening to go on strike. But less daring than the Athenians, they have not yet reached the stage of what might be called a sex strike. This time, it’s just a question of dresses and skirts.

All of you, male or female, will be boys! That’s what Mrs. Choeliga-Loevy, President of the Universal Union of Women, and her emulator and assistant, Mrs. Potonié-Pierre, want. They have just published a manifesto in favour of culottes at the last meeting of the French Federation of Feminist Societies. As these ladies see it, in future, there will only be skirts as short as possible: until something better comes along. Trousers will sadly conceal legs. Followers will no longer be on the lookout for dresses that a gust of wind ruffles up to reveal their secret charms, the fine fastening, an unobstructed arch, a full calf.

Farewell too, if you listen to these ladies, to the tempting décolletage, the round white shoulder which emerges from the bodice with naive indecency. Farewell to the indiscreet plunging neckline which penetrates like a spearhead below the bottom of the throat, and separates, or reunites, the globes which quiver after the dance. Farewell to desirable plumpness! Woman will become a stake or a barrel, and that would be the end of all order and harmony.

AT MISS MARIA DEARAISMES’ HOME

Rue Cardient. A beautiful new house. A bourgeois comfortable apartment where one feels largely at ease. From the outset you hear the din of animals, cats, dogs, parrots, and your eye is delighted by the beautiful green plants that flourish happily in this happy environment.

The lady of the house radiates her cheerful personality: a nice face softened by big hair, bright black eyes, rosy cheeks, a full body, an echoing laugh, her pearls merrily chime at the slightest word, and with it, an air of benevolence, contentment and good humour.

- “I am an outspoken supporter of woman’s civil rights”, she tells me. “I’d like to see her live in matrimony, on an equal footing with her husband qui dominates and crushes her today. What does she have to defend her interests? Nothing, apart from the right to ask for separation of property, when her fortune has long since been devoured by her husband and she has only her eyes left to cry. I asked that she be allowed to vote at least in the election of consular judges, and I won my case before the Chamber of Deputies, if not before the Senate”.

- “But I protest absolutely against wearing the masculine costume”.

- “I want a woman to remain a woman, for her to retain her grace which is equally a strength. I am an enemy of those ugly, dubious clothes which makes of us hybrid beings and I don’t know what neutral and suspicious intermediaries exist between man and woman. Who are we dealing with, these sexless figures to whom we can't decently apply a name? It's ridiculous and grotesque.

- “I’ve never been married, it’s true, and since I’ve had the chance to be independent, I want to keep my freedom. Unless struck by love at first sight, I would never go into servitude. But the coup de foudre never did strike. It couldn’t, because my mind is too critical, too observant. Enthusiasm doesn’t arise in these kinds of natures, and as I’ve gone through life, I’ve never regretted a thing.”

- Nothing at all, mademoiselle, not even motherhood? – “No, not even that.” And Miss Deraismes adds with a contradictory smile, words that one would certainly not expect from her lips:

- “I’m a pessimist”.

- How come, Mademoiselle, you, who are so kind, so cheerful, you who - as we know - does so much good around you.

-“Why yes, I am pessimistic! But without copying Schopenhauer, whom we didn’t expect to, because he was far ahead of Lucretius and the ancients. I find life to be a damned gift and I am glad that I did not give it. Injustice revolts me; this problem of good and evil, so unequally distributed, troubles me, hurts me, outrages me. In this great unknown in which we are drowning, I can't help waiting for some kind of reparation.

- And then, as if the healthy and robust nature of Mademoiselle Deraismes could no longer give off this cynical impression, shes adds, bursting into a smile:

-“Those who want to abandon their pretty, bright and vivid fabrics make me feel they are making life even darker. […] It is a civic duty to dress as nicely as possible, if only to take delight in the sight of others”.

The medical argument

In the prestigious journal, Société d’anthropologie de Paris (Paris Society of Anthropolgy), Doctor Félix Régnault pleads that “reason” is guiding the fashion reform. He approves of feminists who favour short dresses because long ones, he explains, “sweep the pavements and pick up germs along with the dirt. Examination of the hem of one dress revealed the microbes of diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus, pus, in a word, all pathogenic bacteria”. He also took a stance on the corset, which gave rise to a heated medical debate in the 1900s. In 1898, one of the first female doctors defended a thesis on the corset. Controversy erupted immediately.

Madam Tylicka against the corset (1898-1899)

In 1898, this Polish female doctor defended a thesis at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris entitled Du corset, ses méfaits au point de vue hygiénique et pathologique (The corset, its harmful effects from a hygienic and pathological point of view). Published the following year, it provoked debate in the press and in medical circles. As we’ve already seen, Hubertine Auclert was happy to cite this scientific reference which supported the cause of eliminating the corset. At the end of 1899, Le Petit Journal reported on the conclusions of the thesis while expressing some doubts about women’s desire to free themselves from fashion and men’s ability to revise their aesthetic judgements.

In 1900, the corset debate excited a furore. Mrs Tylicka's thesis had set the debate alight. According to Dr Butin, she delivered “a violent indictment of the corset, proposing that it be abolished and replaced by a strong canvas bra, fitted at the waist, reaching only as far as the belt, buttoned at the front and fitted with two whalebones on each side to support the breasts”. However, commented this professor at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, “experience has shown how futile and sterile these anathemas and decrees for its abolition are”.

Just reading these conclusions shows how un-Parisian, I would even say un-French, their author is”. Because in France, women have a “legitimate interest for their clothes”. He goes on to quote his colleagues who recognise a certain usefulness of the corset. In his Traité d'hygiène (Hygiene Treaty), Dr Proust, professor of hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine, took a stand against “exaggeration” and considered the corset essential “to ensuring the regular development of curves, to keep young people in the habit of standing up straight and not giving in to a freedom of gait that is very harmful to beauty”.

Dr Budin supported these conclusions, against the opinion of Mrs Tylicka. But the conservatism of certain doctors was not enough to disarm the opponents of the corset who were joined by the singer Yvette Guilbert, a “martyr” of the corset, who underwent the removal of a kidney (too compressed by the corset, it became “floating”).

“Proof” by anatomical drawings (1900)

The same system of comparison and an identical model of a “healthy” woman undistorted by the corset can be found in Dr Butin's work. The silhouette was inspired by the Medici Venus, reproduced in Le Magasin pittoresque in 1833.

Dr Régnault’s opinion on the effect of the corset

“Corsets are too tight. Out of exaggeration, women give themselves an hourglass figure. The result is deformed livers and stomachs that become vertical or bilobed, leading to dyspepsia and the collapsing of the womb under the pressure of abdominal organs. The pressure on the lower ribs interferes with the diaphragm and forces women to breathe through the upper ribs, which decreases when the corset is removed. The corset is all the more dangerous as it forms a longer sheath, squeezing the body to a greater height [...]. A corset understood in this way raises the shoulders, stiffens them and for the artist, damages the flexibility of the feminine body”.

A piece of advice: replace the corset with an abdominal belt

“However, we would not advise you to do away with the corset altogether. It provides support for the lumbar and abdominal muscles. It plays the same role as the leather ring worn by porters on their wrists to keep the tendons in their sheaths. Gymnasiarchs know this well when they tighten their lumbar muscles with a gymnastic belt; the same goes for agile breeds. Basques, Spaniards, Corsicans and mountain peoples in general gird their loins. The Romans were already right to be wary of “discincti”, young men who did not gird their loins. They were effeminate, incapable of virile effort”.

Women should adopt a wide gymnastic belt that hugs the loins and lumbar region but does not go too far up, leaving the lower ribs free. This belt will be enough to support skirts.

For women with a loose, sagging abdomen (ptosis), it should be supported by a hypogastric belt that reaches down to the pubis and rests on the iliac spines (Gache-Sarraute). It is up to the seamstresses to decorate these simple or orthopaedic belts in such a way as to be able to retain the name of corset.