Bloomers

Bloomers were turkish-style trousers worn with a large skirt that goes to the knee. In 1850, the American editor Dexter Bloomer wrote an article for the weekly Seneca Country Courier in which he claimed that the clothing of Turkish women was much more comfortable than that of Americans and Europeans. His wife, Amelia Jenks Bloomer, returned to the subject in her own newspaper, The Lily. A convinced and militant feminist, she waged real war against crinolines, suggesting that women wear oriental-style puffed culottes under shorter and less cumbersome skirts. Bloomers were adopted toward the end of the 1800s and in the early 1900s when bicycle riding became a fashionable activity. Today, they are a kind of short, puffed culottes like knickers.