FIRESIDE CHAT: "The One that Wears the Breeches": Women's Fashion, Dress Reform and Gender Expectations in Nineteenth Century America

“The One that Wears the Breeches”: Women’s Fashion, Dress Reform and Gender Expectations in Nineteenth Century America

April 21st, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET

Virtual & Free

This Fireside Chat will pull from Laura Ping’s book manuscript Beyond Bloomers: Fashioning Change in Nineteenth-Century Dress which explores case studies of women who protested unequal gender roles by abandoning fashionable dresses in favor of loose clothing, specifically trousers and modified underwear (popularly known as dress reform).  This book demonstrates that dress reform was more widely accepted when it was adopted for function rather than as a symbol of women’s rights.