When American women attempted to adopt alternative clothing to nineteenth-century fashions, they attracted scathing attention from middle-class American society. Women in trousers were publicly scorned. Past investigations into the subject of nineteenth-century dress reform conclude that the movement failed when reformers, unable to accept the public's ridicule, returned to their long skirts.
In my analysis of the origins, development, and consequences of the U.S. dress reform movement from 1840 to 1920, I assert that dress reform was an evolution rather than a revolution. I argue that dress reform was not an isolated and failed attempt in the mid-nineteenth century, but that there were significant continuities among diverse groups of dress reformers from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The number of short dress garments, organizations, and individuals discussed in this work demonstrates that dress reform extended beyond the women's rights movement. The movement involved people as diverse as health reformers and water curists, utopian community members and women's rights leaders, farmers and travelers on the overland trail, cyclists, clubwomen, and even flappers. Arguments for health, physical mobility, emancipation, and expense - as well as the persistent opposition denouncing reformers as immodest, immoral, rebellious and mannish - link reformers together across the decades. Sometimes they shared interests with other dress reformers. Other times, their ideas diverged sharply.
By exploring the dress reform movement from the early women's rights critiques into the era of the New Woman, my study expands the history of women's activism and contributes to our understanding of the relationship between social movements and social change. The commitment and innovation of the dress reformers, together with larger social forces, propelled the general public gradually to implement changes in women's dress by 1920.