Divided skirt

A divided skirt is a skirt split between the legs so that each leg has its own panel, cut full enough to look like an ordinary skirt when the wearer stands still. It was promoted by British dress reformers from the 1880s and became one answer to the problem of riding a bicycle in a long skirt.

What was it for?

Women cyclists of the early 1890s faced a practical problem: long skirts caught in the chain and wheel. The Henry Ford museum notes that riders who defied convention wore divided skirts or short bloomers, and its collection includes a late-1890s linen skirt "divided into two wide leg sections." Cycling UK's historian describes other inventions of the 1890s: skirts that unfastened at the back to divide over the wheel, and "convertible skirts" adjusted with buttons and pulleys.

Who promoted it?

Florence, Viscountess Harberton, a leading member of the Rational Dress Society, founded in London in 1881, is the person most often linked with the garment. The Fashion History Museum says she advocated divided skirts or bloomer costumes for cycling, and the writer Sara Harris lists divided skirts among the styles of Victorian rational dress. In October 1898 she was refused service at the Hautboy Hotel in Surrey for wearing knickerbockers and a jacket. Sources differ on whether she founded the society or co-founded it. A study of cycling dress by Caitlin Cohn (2016) finds that the riders who persuaded others of their legitimacy wore clothes modified enough to cycle in, but not so modified as to look out of place off the machine, which describes the divided skirt well.

See rational dress and bloomers.

Sources

1. Dressing for Bicycling Success. The Henry Ford
2. Women's cycling fashion from the 1870s onwards (Sheila Hanlon). Cycling UK
3. Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton. Wikipedia
4. Rational Dress Society. Wikipedia
5. Wheelwomen: Women's Dress in a Transatlantic Cycling Culture, 1868-1900 (Caitlin Cohn, 2016). University of Minnesota Conservancy
6. The Rational Women (Sara Harris). The Chap
7. The Bicycle Bloomer Brouhaha of the 1890s. Fashion History Museum

See also

• Bloomers
• Rational dress

Read more

• Trousers, Bicycles and the Divided Skirt

Last updated October 16, 2026 · Markdown