Bloomer costume

Bloomer costume

Period illustration of a Bloomer costume. The image may depict Elizabeth Smith Miller.

Mary E. Tillotson

Mary E. Tillotson

Independent dress reformer Mary E. Tillotson hailed from the Utopian community of Vineland, New Jersey. In the 1870s she founded the American Free Dress League, which operated for three years. On August 22, 1878, she addressed the second convention of the New York Freethinkers Association in Watkins, later Watkins Glen.

Mary Edwards Walker

Mary Edwards Walker

Mary Edwards Walker took up the cause of dress reform independently. In this photo, she wears her Civil War-era uniform (featuring, out of shot, Bloomer-style pantaloons) and the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded for her war service; later in life, she usually dressed in formal menswear.

James Caleb Jackson

James Caleb Jackson

Former abolitionist and "water cure" quack James Caleb Jackson (1811–1895) founded the National Dress Reform Association (NDRA) in 1856, taking up the cause of more practical dress for women just as suffrage activists were abandoning it.

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