bloomers

ladies puff pants

After Amelia Jenks-Bloomer (Homer, New York 1818 – Council Bluffs, Iowa 1894).

Bloomer was one of the pioneers of the American women's rights movement. She wrote extensively on education and social reform and was known as a speaker.

Around 1850, her husband Dexter Bloomer, owner and publisher of the New York magazine The Seneca County Courier, published an article suggesting that the shorts and ankle-length trousers worn by Turkish women were more practical than the voluminous skirts of Europe and America.

His wife copied the article in her own feminist magazine The Lily and argued for more functional clothing for women. This is how the fashion of Turkish trousers or puff trousers was born, which was soon nicknamed bloomers. The emergence of the bicycle after 1880 promoted the breakthrough of this type of trousers.

The wearing of bloomers was initially the object of amusement and ridicule. Today, the name applies to any loose, long, trouser-like garment gathered between the knee and ankle and worn under a skirt. In English also colloquial for panties.