Hobble skirt
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A hobble skirt was a skirt with a narrow enough hem to significantly impede the wearer's stride. It was called a "hobble skirt" because it hobbled the woman as she walked. Hobble skirts were a short-lived fashion trend that peaked between 1908 and 1914.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>
History
The hobble skirt may have been inspired by the Japanese kimono<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> and by one of the first women to fly in an airplane.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> At a 1908 Wright Brothers demonstration in Le Mans, France, Mrs. Edith Ogilby Berg asked for a ride and became the first American woman to fly as a passenger in an airplane, soaring for two minutes and seven seconds.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2">Template:Cite web</ref> She tied a rope securely around her skirt at her ankles to keep it from blowing in the wind during the flight. According to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, a French fashion designer was inspired by the way Mrs. Berg walked away from the aircraft with her skirt still tied and created the hobble skirt based on her ingenuity.<ref name=":2" />
The French fashion designer in the Berg story might have been Paul Poiret<ref name=":1" /> who claimed credit for the hobble skirt, but it is not clear whether the skirt was his invention or not.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref> Skirts had been rapidly narrowing since the mid-1900s.<ref name=":3" /> Slim skirts were economical because they used less fabric.<ref name=":3" />
The hobble skirt became popular just as women were becoming more physically active.<ref name=":3" />
Hobble skirts inspired hundreds of cartoons and comic postcards.<ref name=":3" /> One series of comic cards called it the "speed-limit skirt."<ref name=":1" /> There were several reports of women competing in hobble-skirt races as a joke.<ref name=":3" />
Boarding a streetcar in a hobble skirt was difficult. In 1912, the New York Street Railway ran hobble-skirt cars with no step up.<ref name=":1" /> Los Angeles introduced similar streetcars in 1913.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Hobble skirts were directly responsible for several deaths.<ref name=":1" /> In 1910, a hobble-skirt-wearing woman was killed by a loose horse at a racetrack outside Paris.<ref name=":1" /> A year later, eighteen-year-old Ida Goyette stumbled on an Erie Canal bridge while wearing a hobble skirt, fell over the railing, and drowned.<ref name=":1" />
To prevent women from splitting their skirts, some women wore a fetter or tied their legs together at the knee.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Some designers made alterations to the hobble skirt to allow for greater movement.<ref name=":3" /> Jeanne Paquin concealed pleats in her hobble skirts while other designers such as Lucile offered slit or wrap skirts.<ref name=":3" />
The trend began to decline in popularity at the beginning of World War I, as the skirt's limited mobility did not suit the wartime atmosphere.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The post-hobble skirt era
The next time skirts would be narrow enough to impede movement would be with the sheath skirts of the 1950s, first introduced at the end of the 1940s.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Though shorter lengths (from just below the knee to the lower calf) and advances in fabric would enable a little more movement than in the hobble-skirt era,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> the 1950s sheath skirt's new waist-to-hem tightness, said to reveal the shape of the leg, still created problems of mobility,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> with split seams a familiar occurrence.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Nonetheless, they were widely promoted by designers and the fashion industry, their narrowness exaggerated even more by having models pose with one leg directly in front of the other.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Despite being very different in shape from the original hobble skirts, 1950s sheath skirts were still occasionally referred to as hobble skirts. Some other skirt styles of the time also had very narrow hems, particularly the knee-length puffball/pouf skirts shown by Pierre Cardin,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Yves Saint Laurent, Simonetta,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and others from 1957 to 1960.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Several of Saint Laurent's Fall 1959 skirts were so narrow at the hem, with some of the evening dresses so 1910-looking, that fashion writers immortalized the line as Saint Laurent's hobble skirt collection.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Sheath skirts remained part of the fashion picture into the early 1960s and then went very much out of style with the rise of the flared miniskirts of the mid- to late sixties<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and the easy, comfortable clothes of the 1970s.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
During the 1970s, only one designer consistently produced sheath-style skirts among his other skirt varieties and that was Pierre Cardin, who revived tight, knee- to ankle-length skirts in 1970<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and continued to make them for at least half the decade. Fashion writers mostly ignored them, but those who did comment on them often used the word hobble to describe them.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> They did differ in one way from the sheath skirts of the 1950s in being unlined. Clothes in the fifties had been heavily constructed and worn with substantial undergarments. Fifties sheath skirts were not only lined but worn with girdles to both maintain the skirt's line and prevent the sight of jiggling flesh and unsightly dimples and crevices. Cardin's 1970s sheath skirts were unlined, thin of fabric, and worn only with pantyhose, and fashion writers sometimes commented on the visible panty lines on the models who wore them.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> These skirts were so out of step with public preference at the time that they were confined to Cardin's runways.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Toward the end of the seventies, beginning in fall of 1978, more designers began reviving the narrow skirt silhouettes of decades past, usually lined. Initially, many of them allowed some movement via slits,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> though not always. Some were so inhibiting that the word hobble was once again used to describe them.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> When the tight silhouette of the 1950s sheath skirt was revived in the early 1980s, it was somewhat less restricting, as it was now usually produced in stretchier, often knit fabrics and could even be in mini lengths, as there is only so much movement possible in a knee-length or longer skirt that is tight all the way to the hem.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> This time, many of them were unlined, particularly those by Azzedine Alaïa, who was famous for his figure-hugging styles so tight that writers joked that there was barely any room for undergarments.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 1980s-style stretch sheath skirts in various lengths have been revived off and on ever since.
In popular culture
Movies and television
- Intolerance: The Dear One (Mae Marsh) wears a makeshift hobble skirt in the hopes of impressing a man.
- Titanic: Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) wears many hobble-skirted gowns throughout the film. Early in the film, she runs across the deck in a beaded hobble skirt, stumbling and tearing it. The skirt nearly causes her to fall overboard.
- The Addams Family: Morticia commonly wears long, black gothic hobble dresses.
- Darkwing Duck: Darkwing Duck's girlfriend, Morgana Macawber, commonly wears a long, red hobble dress.
- Dick Tracy: Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) appears in a shiny black skintight gown.
- Ugly Betty: In the episode "Icing on the Cake", Amanda (Becki Newton) wears a tight silver rubber hobble dress named the "Amanda".
- What a Way to Go!: Louisa May Foster (Shirley MacLaine) is seen in a shiny red pencil hobble skirt.
- Static Shock: Daisy Watkins wears a purple pencil hobble skirt in the first few seasons of the show.
- Parade's End: Sylvia Tietjens wears a hobble dress to her mother-in-law's funeral, Template:Circa (episode 2); the gentry disapprove of her stylishness, but the servants admire it.
- Darling Lili: Lili Smith (Julie Andrews) briefly wears an orange hobble dress with gold embroidery.
- Funny Girl (film): Fanny Brice (Barbra Streisand) wears a purple hobble dress with a matching wrap at dinner.
Music videos
- "Love Religion" by U96
See also
References
External links
- The Hobble Skirt Streetcar, streetcars designed with women wearing these skirts in mind