From bloomers to Billie Eilish, why do people read so much into women dressing for comfort?

Billie Eilish has got me thinking about Bloomers. The young popstar’s loose, oversized style of dress has become iconic, melding with her generation-defining music to secure her successful world-domination. She has stated that she loves to dress loudly and to make heads turn, as well as confessing to covering up as a means of protection against body shaming. But recently, Eilish has become increasingly frustrated with how her clothing choices are interpreted. Many have praised her clothes for what they see as a way to desexualise her image, an intention she has never herself expressed. For a star whose music and taste are totally of her own design, this reinterpretation has caused huge frustration.

As someone who has an MA in Fashion History I was stirred by this powerful young woman’s predicament and have cast my mind back to our foremothers who also strove for comfort whilst batting away unwanted scrutiny.

If you think of the history of comfort in women’s clothing, Coco Chanel might spring to mind as the woman who banished corsets and championed men’s tailoring for women. Amelia Bloomer isn’t a name that features in most lists of female sartorial liberators and bloomers, those bifurcated undergarments now favoured mostly by Panto dames, don’t often get a look in on lists of activist clothing. But their origin story is a significant tale of dress-liberation and one which starts in mid-19th century New York.

In July 1848, the world’s first Women’s Rights Convention was called in the town of Seneca Falls, New York. As a result of this successful event the first American women’s newspaper, The Lily, was launched by the Ladies Temperance Society of Seneca Falls, with Amelia Bloomer as its editor.

Bloomer had recently started wearing loose trousers tapered at the ankles under a shorter skirt. She had not originated the style herself, but was pleased by the comfort it brought her. Readers of The Lily went wild for the look and the trousers took on their eponymous moniker. The surge in women wanting to wear trousers caused huge controversy, with some male journalists warning it could lead to the collapse of civilisation and religious leaders defaming the women as “loose.”

Amelia herself was dismayed that her decision to simply be more comfortable was now blurring her suffragist and temperance ideals. In the end she had to abandon her trousers in order to draw focus back to the causes she cared about. She wrote in her diary, “in the minds of some people, the [Bloomers] and women's rights were inseparably connected. With us, the dress was but an incident, and we were not willing to sacrifice the bigger questions to it.”

Thankfully, I don’t see Eilish abandoning her style anytime soon. But Bloomer’s frustrations are echoed in any woman’s quest to control her message. Speaking to Pharrell Williams in an interview for V Magazine, Eilish said that whilst some commentary on her style is positive, there’s sometimes an element of what feminists call “slut shaming,” which she resists.

“The positive comments about how I dress have this slut-shaming element. Like,’'I am so glad that you're dressing like a boy, so other girls can dress like boys, so that they aren't sluts’,” Eilish said.

"I can't overstate how strongly I do not appreciate that, at all."

Eilish most recently channelled her frustration into a video which opened her European tour. The video showed her slowly undressing whilst being submerged in water, with a stirring voiceover condemning those who want to misinterpret and appropriate her intentions.

“Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it. Some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me.”

If I wear what is comfortable I am not a woman. If I shed the layers I am a slut.”

Clothing is always a signifier, and for women in the public eye what they wear remains a mode of political messaging. Can a famous woman ever dress for comfort without it becoming political? Amy Schumer was recently interviewed by Oprah wearing a plain tracksuit, using her new-motherhood and recent painful IVF as justification. Is that progress? We’ll have to wait and see.