The History of a Dress: Why Freedom and Fashion Go Hand-In-Hand
Out of all of the powerful symbols we could use, why a dress? Why do we use a dress to call for freedom and change when this piece of clothing has historically been tied to female disempowerment and inequality? Why do we wear a dress––with all of its history––to fight for a better future?
We think the dress can change the world. So, we’re reclaiming it as a symbol of freedom and power.
Fashion has long been used to indicate one’s role and standing in society––it often separates people of different economic or ethnic backgrounds. Historically, it was just another thing that set the sexes apart. Men, who enjoyed more freedom in general, wore a style that allowed them equal freedom of movement: pants, breeches or hose, depending on the century. Women, on the other hand, wore dresses, the style of which changed wildly over the years but generally constrained their movement more, limiting women to less ‘exciting’ pastimes. This is true particularly of feminine styles in the Middle Ages and later.
Rigid patriarchal structures barred women from seeking freedom. Women were expected to assume the roles of wife and mother and keeper of the home, and their more restrictive, confining style of clothing reflected the range of their choices. Dresses marked women as women, designating them as the weaker gender socially, culturally, politically, physically and economically.
Now, to clarify: men did not unilaterally decide to put women in dresses for centuries to keep them under control or ‘put them in their place.’ Rather, the fashions for women were simply a consequence of the subjugation of the female sex and their relegation to more ‘background’ roles.
By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Western feminists decided to use fashion to challenge the societal limitations of gender. Pushing back against the corsets, petticoats and floor-length skirts of the early nineteenth century, women started to hang up their dresses––or radically redesign them.
Feminist and writer Amelia Bloomer lent her name to the floor-length, flowy pants she developed, and later activists chopped their hemlines and got rid of suffocating layers. The changes to women’s fashion sparked some hysteria about the disintegration of gender identity and society at large. Various publications worried that the bloomer signaled the start of women’s “usurpation of the rights of man.” The woman’s wish to move about more freely and comfortably was interpreted by others as “women desiring to compete with men for places of public power.” They weren’t entirely wrong... but slowly but surely people started to recognize the truth that public power can and should be shared. Fashion functioned as a powerful visual tool that feminists used to call attention to women’s right to equality.
In the end, the reclamation of the dress by women became a more important feminist symbol than the adoption of masculine styles. Women transformed the dress into more freeing, comfortable styles that allowed for more movement and freedom of expression––like skirts (mini, midi and maxi) or the t-shirt dresses of today. Nowadays dresses are not only more comfortable and diverse in style, they’re also more accessible to more groups of people. You don’t have to be a certain race or economic level or career to wear a certain dress in a certain style––you can wear what you like.
At Dressember, we use this diversity of style and expression to make a statement: You––all of you––can do anything in a dress (or tie!), even fight for justice and freedom. We include ties in our movement to continue to break down rigid gender standards in fashion but also to ensure that advocates can join the fight in a style that is comfortable for them. Most of all, we care about turning fashions that have been used to divide and disempower into symbols of unity and freedom.
Can dresses change the world?
The people wearing them certainly can.
About the Author
Emmy Luker is a writer and MDiv candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary. She is passionate about speaking and writing about what is true, and doing it in a way people can and want to hear. Originally from Colorado, she is a big fan of alpine views and mountain hikes, but she is learning to love the wind and the lake as a recent transplant in Chicago.