I had a lot of fun recently being interviewed by journalist Denise Winterman for her BBC News piece, “Fashion: History’s Most Shocking Styles.”
Although there are any number of surprising trends to consider, I talked about the Bloomer Suit of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. To women of the time, bloomers seemed like a rational alternative to cumbersome skirts, society was far from ready to accept the idea of young women “dressing like men.”
So head on over to BBC News and read more about why these bloomers were so scandalous… and how America’s earliest college girls were, once again, ahead of the fashion curve.
IMAGE: Vassar College student jumping hurdles on field Day, 1918. Vassar College Archives.
