Fashion and Museums by Marie Riegels Melchior;Birgitta Svensson;

Author:Marie Riegels Melchior;Birgitta Svensson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472567932
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Sports and skiwear in vogue

In the 1920s, female fashion underwent a radical change. A common interpretation is that many women in Europe were forced to contribute to production when men were drafted to fight in the First World War. Long skirts disappeared along with the corset when women had to perform tasks that required a strong and agile body. In addition, the growing interest in sports and outdoor recreation had a major influence on fashion. When sportswear and fashion history meet, “Coco” Chanel used to be mentioned. She is considered the designer who introduced casual and comfortable clothing for the modern woman. Chanel created soft, pliable garments, with skirts that ended just below the knee. The stiff corset was gone. Oddly enough, I found just a few traces of ski suits clearly dated to the 1920s. They are absent in the costume collections, they occur rarely in photos, and they still do not appear in Åhlén & Holm’s catalog. Yet, there are a couple of photos in the collections. One shows five women on skis in 1924 in the Swedish mountains and demonstrates clear signs of transition. Two women are dressed in calf-length skirts, while the others seem to be wearing full-length trousers with a large expanse of fabric over the thighs, like the elephant-ear breeches, but laced over the calves. They are all wearing knee-length jackets, and one of them wears a scarf, a cap, and gloves of knitted wool. Another photo, dated to 1925, shows a mother and her daughter on skis. The mother is wearing a long jacket with a slim waist and a calf-length skirt, plus a hat with a narrow brim. The daughter, and donor, explains that it was her first ski trip with her mother, and she compares her knee-length coat with the 1950s, practical children’s overalls.

While the first photo seems to show a group of modern middle-class women on a mountain holiday, the other gives the impression of skiing in the neighborhood. My reading is that mother and daughter are skiing in ordinary winter clothes instead of ski suits dictated by sportswear fashion. The opportunity to go on a mountain vacation and to be dressed in modern skiwear was a matter of urbanity, class, and economic assets. However, during the 1920s, the view of the female skier was normalized, as sports and physical exercise were given elements in the society. Female skiers were no longer perceived as unique, even if skiing was still a pursuit mostly reserved for the upper or middle classes.

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