#1890s cycling

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Brown wool cycling suit, 1896-1898, American.

Met Museum.

[nemfrog]

"Ordinary bicycle." Cycling for health and pleasure. 1890.

Internet Archive

[crinolinecuriousity]

Cycling Suit | c.1896-1898 | American

[semioticapocalypse]

Alfred Eberling. Dvortsovaya Embankment, Saint-Petersburg. 1899

I Am Collective Memories   •    Follow me, — says Visual Ratatosk

[fisarmonical]

Harper's October 1894. Creator: Penfield, Edward, 1866-1925, artist. Image of an advertisement for Harper's magazine October 1894 issue featuring a man cycling and smoking a pipe on a bicycle near the shore in a wooded area with a copy of Harper's in one pocket.

[dcbnam-aep]

marvel knew that putting loki and mobius on that two person bike would have been too powerful

[vera-simik]

Day #21 - Sport clothes: Kristina "Kitty" Devrees-Delacroix

[detroitlib]

Exposition : Royal Cycle Works : manufacturers of high grade wheels, Marshall, Mich., U.S.A. / Royal Cycle Works. Title from cover. Includes illustrations. Forman-Bassett-Hatch Co., 1893.

National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library

[akallabeth-joie]

Les Mis 1.2.2

Following up from Pilf’s post, because clothing is the topic I have stuff to say about. [Also the rest of the action feels very natural follow ups from the previous 15 chapters: the people and house we met in 1.1.1-14 are about to encounter the guy having an awful day in 1.2.1, and this is Hugo’s set up for that.]

Caveat: my main research area is the mid-19th century (right around the time Hugo was finishing Les Mis, not the years it is set), and my working language is English. The US in 1860 is not France in 1815-1832, but I think some elements here do transfer over, or at least offer insight into how Hugo’s readers might have interpreted the text.

Main observations re: Baptistine Myriel’s clothing:

9 years is a very long time for a dress in active use. Washing and non-washing dresses will have different trajectories, but in contemporary non-fiction, making a silk dress last 7 years is a feat of clever planning and care. Five years is noteworthy. One to two years is more typical, and 3 months isn’t necessarily a frivolous waste (wearing a silk dress only once would be). Much like with the soup thing, the Myriel household is taking ‘practicing good economy’ to an extreme, almost absurd degree.

Also, the fact that Mlle Baptistine is still wearing her silk dress “in the style of 1806″ in 1815 is notably weird. Fiction and non-fiction sources of the 1850s/60s show economically-minded women remodeling their silks every season in order to keep up to date. Magazine articles give instructions for turning last year’s flounced skirts into gored ones, or adding puffed overskirts to update narrow gored skirts. Advice books recommend getting an extra yard or two of fabric so that you can update the sleeves of your dress when it’s taken apart for washing. Trousseaus should have some of the dresses left “unmade” (as lengths of fabrics) in case fashions change over the year. A missionary woman writing from not-yet-Seattle in the mid-1850s opines that the dresses she made for her wedding less than a year earlier are too “rusty” to be worn at home (in New York) but are sufficient for living in the woods.

So my impression of Baptistine is that she’s meant to be The Superlatively Economical gentlewoman, and also Not At All Vain About Clothes. She’s not spending her time or money on fashion, but the fact that she is still bothering to wear a silk gown for dinner is signalling that she’s still performing (her class’s) respectability. From this, and her letter about re-doing her room, I expect that her whole wardrobe and all the house’s domestic interiors are scrupulously clean and mended, but also old and likely inharmonious. The two women will do the work to live respectably, but will not spend any unnecessary money on their own comfort or aesthetics.

Hugo taking the trouble to describe Baptistine’s dress (”short waist, a narrow, sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons”) just reminds me of how much crinoline-era Victorians do not like the Neoclassical look. All of these specific elements are basically the opposite of early 1860s fashion--waists are worn just at/above the natural waist, skirts are about as wide as they can get, more fitted coat sleeves are replacing the wide-open sleeves of the late 1850s. It’s a bit different from how most modern folks seem to view the 1810s style (Austen! Romance! Bridgerton?): I’ll need to dig through my notes, but there’s at least one 1850/60s cartoon and one article I recall which amount to ‘yikes, the fashions of 50 years ago were awful’, and another article from the late 1860s which holds that the crinoline is a great improvement on the raised-waistline silhouette. I think we all prefer to ignore the weirdness of the c.1865-9 Second Empire style, but there were absolutely pairing high waistlines with fitted sleeves and trained skirts over elliptical or half-hoops (transitioning from the rounder cages of the late 1850s and early 1860s into the bustles of the early 1870s).

[vintagepromotions]

Poster advertising a cycling magazine called ‘Bearings - the cycling authority of America’ (c. 1890). Artwork by Charles A. Cox.

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Beige linen bicycling jacket, ca. 1895.

Kerry Taylor Auctions.

[bitsofsciencelife]

Ok everyone, before you panic, go look up dr.andrealove, drjengunter, and drjenniferlincoln on Instagram they have broken down this subject. But basically, the study is basically a nothing-result. The methodology isn't... Great. But even with the bad methodology and unrealistic conditions of the study, the ammounts of metals found were very low, below consumer food safety limits. They were definitely NOT "concerning levels". Most trace toxic substances found in consumer goods are often due to accidental contamination of raw materials or during the manufacturing process. They are NOT added on purpose. Yes, we should still monitor for safety levels to make sure everything is OK, but that's what regulatory bodies like the FDA and toxicologists do. They aren't just doing nothing all day. Also, metals can often be there on purpose for antimicrobial reasons, as we know silver and copper have such properties, for example, but the sensationalized short videos and news don't seem to care about THAT, huh? Biases.

It isn't like tampon companies are trying to scam and poison us un purpose. (If anything, these results are a lesson in why organic and natural often don't mean anything beyond marketing tactics and how sensationalized and taboo female bodies still are. Weird.) Women, trans men, AFAB, and feminine-presenting people already have a lot to deal with as is without everyone trying to scare us about period products that have been safely used for decades in the modern world.

Yes, we still need more research and funding in gynecology, periods, and women's health, but this article is just bad science, and the news covering it are fearmongering. You can keep using your tampons they're safe!! (Just remember to change your tampons, cups and discs every 8 hours max to avoid toxic shock syndrome.)

(Also, not everyone can or wants to change to a reusable period product for multiple reasons. Check your privilege. Please don't shame people for what they use to deal with their periods. Not everyone has ready access to clean water either.)

Weighing up the pros and cons of different sanitary products requires sound knowledge of what risks and benefits each poses. For the first time, researchers have measured concentrations of various metals in tampons, finding worrying levels of several toxic types, including lead, for which there is no safe level of exposure. The walls of the human vagina are lined with a highly absorptive tissue that has the potential to soak up stray pollutants – like metals – that would circulate in the bloodstream without being filtered by the liver first.

Continue Reading.

[kennedyvietor1978blog]

[124daisies]

1899

[jamesusilljournal]

Le Cycle des Passions, Jean Delville, 1890

[debrink]

Zim Strock & Cie.

35 Avenue de la Grande Armée, Paris

~ Wilhio, circa 1890