Reform clothing
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Reform clothing is the collective generic term for variants of the usual female or male clothing, which were propagated from the middle of the 19th century in the course of the so-called life reform for health or emancipatory reasons.
Reformed clothing for women should enable women to move around more freely and participate actively in working life by removing obstructive and restrictive elements. The reform movement was supported by some doctors who had branded the corset as extremely harmful to health as early as the late 18th century . B. requested a hanging of the clothes on the shoulders considered to be more resilient or on the whole torso (instead of the waist as before).
One of the first forerunners of reform clothing was the bloomer costume , which appeared in the USA around 1850 , aroused strong press coverage and was worn by a number of women's rights activists, but did not catch on because of public resistance. In the USA, further reform attempts were made in the following decades, and reform movements arose in European countries as well.
USA and England
The first organization of dress reformers was the National Dress Reform Association , founded in Seneca Falls in February 1856. The book by the Englishwoman Roxey Ann Caplin with the title Health and Beauty, or, Women and her Clothing , published in 1860, was groundbreaking . Caplin had previously developed anatomically adapted corsets and in her work referred to health problems caused by tight lacing. At the end of the 1860s, the American Marie M. Jones campaigned for the introduction of trouser costumes that she had designed herself; she described the female clothing customary at the time as gender-specific disadvantage. However, she soon gave up her idea due to the constant public ridicule. Around 1870, associations to promote “sensible clothing” were established in all US states.
In England, the reform movement officially began in May 1881 with the establishment of the Rational Dress Society . It was supported by the existing National Health Society . The question of whether the reform goal to be aimed at was women's trousers or just a modified dress divided the organization. Nevertheless, in 1883 a large exhibition of draft reforms took place in London, in which both wings took part. Around 1888 the camps approached again and they now agreed on a trouser skirt suit.
Germany
In September 1896, the topic of women's clothing was first publicly discussed in Germany at the international women's congress in Berlin . Just two weeks later, the association for the improvement of women's clothing was founded. His first exhibition took place in April 1897 in Berlin. 35 manufacturers had submitted reform proposals. Since 1899 there has even been a permanent exhibition in the capital with models of “improved women's clothing”. After the experiences in the USA and England, it was clear to the reformers that trousers for women would not find public approval at this point in time. Heinrich Pudor , author of the book Reform clothing. A contribution to the philosophy, hygiene and aesthetics of the dress (1903) criticized the association for not being “radical” enough. He writes in his book: “It may be that the downwardly open skirt has some echoes of the structure of the female body, but it becomes the shape of the human body, which is forked on the earth, but not barrel-like not remotely fair. "
In the area of underwear, on the other hand, the willingness to reform was quite high. The open in step trousers and the propriety rock have been about 1878 through the closed reform trousers and shirt trousers peeled off and the number of sub skirts reduced to one. Increasing sporting activity by women encouraged reform clothing, as floor-length skirts and corsets were clearly not suitable for cycling , tennis or gymnastics . Trouser costumes for sporting activities were therefore widely accepted even before 1900. In the area of outerwear , however, the house dress with a high empirical waist was adopted rather hesitantly.
In 1902 the reform association split up, only to come together again in 1907. Since 1912 the association was called the German Association for New Women's Clothing and Culture .
Between 1910 and 1915, several factors worked together to establish corset-free fashion, but not yet women's trousers. Political factors were the growing women's movement , which around this time enforced women's suffrage in many countries , and the First World War , which resulted in more women being forced to work due to a lack of male labor.
After 1900, fashion designers like Paul Poiret designed the first corsetless robes. The trouser dress launched in Paris around 1910 , however, did not catch on.
At the same time, the reform movement received support from artists who felt committed to the “natural form”. In 1900 well-known artists such as Henry van de Velde were invited to the German Tailoring Day to exhibit their designs for reform clothing. The first models were deliberately waistless, that is, baggy (“reform bag”) and were not very popular with women. In addition to van de Velde, Anna Muthesius and Paul Schultze-Naumburg in particular made contributions to an artistically inspired reform of female clothing.
There were also reform clothing for men, for example the woolen knitted clothing introduced by Gustav Jäger around 1880.
A later representative of reform clothing in Germany in the 1910s and 1920s was Else Oppler-Legband .
Motives of the reformers
For those women who advocated reform of female clothing, an interest in greater freedom of movement and comfort was undoubtedly paramount. For medical professionals, the threat to health from wearing the corset was crucial. The motives of other male comrades-in-arms can be seen differentiated; they were not always concerned with emancipation . The publicist Heinrich Pudor , who also published under the pseudonym Heinrich Scham , was a life reformer with völkisch-nationalist views. He rejected the corset solely because, in his eyes, it was the typical garment of prostitutes and therefore should not be worn by “decent women”. Pudor was one of the pioneers of nudism . Nudity was considered a form of purity, while certain pieces of clothing were considered impure and immoral.
Illustration depicting a suspected displacement of abdominal organs due to wearing a corset, 1911
Reform corset around 1910 (left) ; Corset around 1890 (right)
light reform corset around 1910 (cotton, plastic and metal)
Reform brassiere, 1908
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literature
- Anna-Katharina Ganzenbacher: bodice and reform dress. On the change in women's fashion from 1900 to 1918. (PDF) Diploma thesis at the University of Graz , Graz 2009.
- Anna Muthesius : The woman's own dress . Kramer & Baum, Krefeld 1903. 84 pages and 14 plates.
- Patricia Ober: The women’s new clothes. The reform dress and the construction of the modern woman's body . Verlag Schiler, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89930-025-4 (also dissertation at TU Berlin 2004).
- Brigitte Stamm: The reform dress in Germany . Dissertation at the TU Berlin , Communication and History, Berlin 1976.
- Helga Stüfen: Professor and the reform clothing. Thoughts on the theory and practice of improved women's clothing in the years 1896–1905 . Self-published, Berlin 1997. 54 pp. And 10 sheets.
- Sabine Welsch: Getting out of the corset. Reform clothing around 1900 . 2nd Edition. Häusser, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89552-082-9 .
- Gundula Wolter : Pants, female. Cultural history of women's pants . Jonas, Marburg 1994, ISBN 3-89445-176-9 (also dissertation at the FU Berlin 1993).
- Catherine Repussard, Marc Cluet (ed.): Life reform. The social dynamics of political impotence . Francke, Tübingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-7720-8473-7 .
