Rational Dress Society Founded in London
Poet involved
What happened
The Rational Dress Society was founded in London in 1881, led by Viscountess Harberton and other reformers, to campaign against the injurious effects of the corset and the impractical weight of women's skirts. The Society published pamphlets, held exhibitions at Prince's Hall in Piccadilly, and proposed dress standards that would limit the total weight of women's underclothing to seven pounds. Their campaign attracted the support of prominent physicians, artists, and early feminists across Britain and was widely reported in the press.
Literary impact
The Rational Dress movement gave women writers a concrete institutional framework for linking bodily freedom to social and intellectual liberation. The aesthetic arm of the movement intersected with the Aesthetic Poetry circle and Oscar Wilde's brief campaign for dress reform, blurring boundaries between artistic and feminist agendas. Poets associated with the fin-de-siècle New Woman movement, including Edith Nesbit and Constance Naden, engaged directly with rational dress ideals in their work.
Source: Wikipedia
