Breeched and Unbridled: Bifurcated Equestrian Garments for Women in Early Modern Europe

This article discusses the wearing of bifurcated equestrian garments for women in early modern Europe. Considering visual representations as well as documentary sources, the first section examines the fashion for red riding breeches between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worn for their comfort and functionality in the saddle, these garments were also invested with powerful symbolic and affective meaning. The second section provides new insights about female equestrian outfits in late seventeenth-century France. Through the close reading of two written accounts, the author sheds light on the use of breeches as undergarments in the saddle and discusses the appearance of a hybrid riding uniform that incorporated knee-length culottes. By presenting horsewomen who wore bifurcated garments in the pursuit of leisure rather than transgression, this study revises historical narratives that cast the breeched woman exclusively as a symbol of gender upheaval.

‘No Small Share of Ingenuity’: An Object-Oriented Analysis of Eighteenth-Century English Dressmaking

This article details eighteenth-century English dressmaking through an in-depth, object-oriented exploration of garment construction practices and techniques from a maker's perspective. Building upon prior scholarship of women's work and aspects of pre-industrial English garment trades, this article employs primary and secondary source materials in conjunction with extensive object-based research of extant garments. The research findings outline exactly how pre-industrial English dressmakers’ skills were nuanced, sophisticated and adaptive to making and remaking, as well as the personal, haptic connections they cultivated with their work.