Bikes and Bloomers: Victorian Women Inventors and their Extraordinary Cycle Wear

by Kat Jungnickel

An illustrated history of the evolution of British women's cycle wear.

The bicycle in Victorian Britain is often celebrated as a vehicle of women's liberation. Less noted is another critical technology with which women forged new and mobile public lives—cycle wear. This illustrated account of women's cycle wear from Goldsmiths Press brings together Victorian engineering and radical feminist invention to supply a missing chapter in the history of feminism.

Despite its benefits, cycling was a material and ideological minefield for women. Conventional fashions were unworkable, with skirts catching in wheels and tangling in pedals. Yet wearing “rational” cycle wear could provoke verbal and sometimes physical abuse from those threatened by newly mobile women. Seeking a solution, pioneering women not only imagined, made, and wore radical new forms of cycle wear but also patented their inventive designs. The most remarkable of these were convertible costumes that enabled wearers to transform ordinary clothing into cycle wear.

Drawing on in-depth archival research and inventive practice, Kat Jungnickel brings to life in rich detail the little-known stories of six inventors of the 1890s. Alice Bygrave, a dressmaker of Brixton, registered four patents for a skirt with a dual pulley system built into its seams. Julia Gill, a court dressmaker of Haverstock Hill, patented a skirt that drew material up the waist using a mechanism of rings or eyelets. Mary and Sarah Pease, sisters from York, patented a skirt that could be quickly converted into a fashionable high-collar cape. Henrietta Müller, a women's rights activist of Maidenhead, patented a three-part cycling suit with a concealed system of loops and buttons to elevate the skirt. And Mary Ann Ward, a gentlewoman of Bristol, patented the “Hyde Park Safety Skirt,” which gathered fabric at intervals using a series of side buttons on the skirt. Their unique contributions to cycling's past continue to shape urban life for contemporary mobile women.

Genres: History, Cycling, Nonfiction, Fashion, Feminism

264 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2018

About the author

Kat Jungnickel is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology department of Goldsmiths, University of London.

Reviews

[Dana Staples · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was completely delightful. I found it because I am interested in urban design, specifically improving biking transportation infrastructure. I am also an avid cyclist and interested in feminist issues and women’s rights and history. So this niche topic was right up my alley. I thought women’s patents in cycle wear to be a very creative and fascinating specific focus. I loved that the writer not only researched the costumes, but recreated them. The pictures are lovely. It was very amusing at times how ridiculous the cultural restrictions on women’s clothing were, but also depressing to realize they still very much persist. I remember buying my daughter her first bike and being dumbfounded at how gendered the bikes were. It was then that I did some research and learned that drop frames were originally to accommodate women’s skirts- I couldn’t believe the design persisted to this day, even in children’s bicycles! Very much enjoyed this book, and am happy to keep it in my urban design/books about bikes library.

[Meg]

Delightful! Jungnickel goes through a number patents registered by several British women for cycling attire to talk through how the contentious intersection of women, bicycles, and clothes drove certain innovations. As part of the process a team of people figure out how to make the clothing in question (which I LOVED) so my only criticism can possibly be there were not more, larger, colour plates of the clothes. (I know costs...) But! There are a couple videos out there on the internet of at least one of the convertable dresses I am sure.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish it had been maybe 10% less dense, but this was very interesting!

[T.R. Ormond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jungnickel's book explores innovations in women's clothing during the cycling craze of the 1890s. It accomplishes this by looking at patents for cycle wear that would enable women to ride bicycles safely and comfortably. What was really remarkable about these designs is that they were convertible so that the wearer could switch back into "normal" dress and avoid social scrutiny around what would have been considered acceptable for Victorian women. Jungnickel and her team actually attempt to recreate some of the designs using the patents.

Much more than a fashion book, Bikes and Bloomers shows how women's clothing designers responded to the social, material, and technical challenges created by the bicycle in order to ensure that more women participated in the opportunities for freedom, mobility and public life that bicycles offered. Jungnickel does not simply pay lip service to Susan B. Anthony's claim that the bicycle "has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world"; she offers very concrete evidence of how the bicycle emancipated and the complex nuances of that emancipation.

I have never read a book like this one before. I really enjoyed it.
http://katjungnickel.com/portfolio/bi...

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book over a long time as I took it into appointments with me during Covid and I think that this hurt my ability to keep the thread going. By coming and going, I lost track of some of the technical differences of the clothing. That being said the author does a nice job of proving her thesis.

[Ava Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super in depth history of the invention and popularization of women’s pants and the bicycle. I also read this for research, but enjoyed it WAY more than I thought I would. I want to go back and read this for fun this summer :)

[Camila · Rating 3 out of 5]

i didn’t expect to like the book, but it was actually quite interesting. i loved the chapters on the women who patented the cycling skirts. they all revealed so much about society during this time

[Lyka Rhodes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and interesting coverage of the book