Wearing the Trousers

In the 1850s a craze swept through the wardrobes of the women of British and American society. These 'bloomers', wearing their new loose-fitting 'Turkish dress', represented a turn against the painful and unhealthy fashions of the Victorian hey-day with its corsets and bindings. But it was more than that: with the newspapers everywhere decrying this new style of dress, bloomers became an overnight feminist firestorm. These early pioneers had set in motion a form of social protest in which everyd