Rational Dress

As we started to investigate women’s cycle clothing, we learned of the important role it played 140 years ago in the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the UK and the US. 

Women had been excluded when cycling exploded in popularity in the late 1800s. Cycling was not deemed an acceptable hobby for women and those who dared cycle were attacked for their immorality. 

Clothing was a real problem for women who wanted to ride as the accepted female dress standards of the day just weren’t practical. Equally, practical clothing bothered those who didn’t want women to ride.  Women in trousers were thought to epitomise moral decay, prosecutions were not uncommon and misogynistic ridicule was the norm.  It’s worth noting that the French didn't get as nearly as exercised about all of this as the British or Americans.

In 1881 the Rational Dress Society was established by Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton, to champion the rights of women to wear clothes that were suitable, practical and comfortable.

Women’s cycle clothing became a lightning rod for society’s debate about acceptable femininity, and cycling became visual shorthand for the ‘New Woman’ who was identified by ‘her desire for progress, her independent spirit, and her athletic zeal’.

Read more about the Rational Dress movement here and here.