hobble skirt

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A hobble skirt ^[1] is a skirt with a narrow enough hem to significantly impede the wearer's stride, thus earning its name. A knee-long corset is also used to achieve this effect. A dress consisting of such skirt is called a hobble dress.

History

A postcard (circa 1911) depicting a man pointing his thumb at a woman wearing a hobble skirt. Caption says, "The Hobble Skirt: What's that? It's the speed-limit skirt!" since hobble skirts limited the wearer's stride.

Although restrictive skirts first appeared in Western fashion in 1880s, the term was first used in reference to a short-lived trend of narrow skirts in around 1910-1913. The Parisian fashion designer Paul Poiret is sometimes credited with the design, inspired by the widespread Oriental influence on Western culture, but in fact the extreme hobble skirt is an evolution of the narrowing skirt seen in fashion since the turn of the century.

The archives of the New York Times between 1910 and the beginning of the First World War contain many detailed accounts of the hobble skirt wearers of the era. It seems that some New York fashion houses may have asked their dressmakers to interpret too literally the slim styles depicted in Paris fashion illustrations. Many women and their admirers subsequently discovered quite accidentally the delights of the geisha-like way of walking which such narrow skirts create, and the hobble skirt, impractical though it was, achieved tremendous popularity.

Although the term is sometimes used in reference to narrow ankle-length skirts in the early 1910s, some skirts of this period, although called hobble skirts, had slits, hidden pleats, and draping that lessened the restriction on a woman's ability to move freely, because in this period women were becoming more active in various activities which would have been impossible to do in a hobbled hemline. The most restricting extant styles from this period, which truly do hobble the wearer, are either evening wear or are found in wedding dresses when a woman was only required to take small measured steps down the aisle of a church.

Modern history

Long tight skirts reappeared through the century in various forms, particularly in evening gowns, as well as daytime pencil skirts popular from the 1950s onwards. A more literal interpretation of hobble skirts became a mainstay in bondage-oriented fetish fashion, often made out of leather, PVC, or latex. For example, they were a regular topic in the 1950s John Willie fetish magazine, Bizarre.

Hobble skirts are still present today in goth and BDSM communities, but are also sometimes used as evening gowns and wedding dresses and sometimes in other occasions although rarely due to restricting properties. Like other skirts in western culture they are almost exclusively worn by women.

Advantages and disadvantages

There are several advantages and disadvantages of hobble skirts.

Advantages

• Some people enjoy the feeling of legs being "hugged" together by the skirt.
• Due to their tightness and close proximity to the body, hobble skirts can make the wearer feel very warm, without having to wear bifurcated legwear.
• May be seen as protecting the wearer's modesty by largely eliminating the chance of unexpected exposure of undergarments.

Disadvantages

• They shorten the wearer's stride.
• They render the wearer unable to run.
• It is impossible to perform activities which require spreading legs or having an object between them, such as cycling.

In popular culture

Movies and television series

• The Addams Family — Morticia commonly wears long, black gothic hobble dresses
• Dick Tracy — Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) appears in a shiny black skintight gown
• Ugly Betty — in "Icing on the Cake" episode Amanda (Becki Newton) wears a tight silver rubber hobble dress named the "Amanda".
• What a Way to Go! — Louisa May Foster (Shirley MacLaine) is seen in shiny red pencil hobble skirt.

Music videos

• Love Religion — U96

Coca-Cola

• In 1916, Coca-Cola debuted its now famous bottle design, which was not only inspired by the popularity of the hobble skirt but would help consumers differentiate Coca-Cola from competitors.^{[citation needed]}

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hobble skirt

• Fetish clothing
• Fetish fashion
• Gothic fashion
• Pencil skirt
• Skirt

References

1. ^ not, as popularly understood, from the passive verb to hobble = "to limp" but from the noun describing a device used to restrain, or hobble, horses, or alternatively the active verb, as in "to hobble a horse"

External links

• HobbleSkirt.com
• Flickr Tight Skirts and Dresses Group (Hundreds of pictures of long tight skirts, a Yahoo address is required
• The Hobble Skirt Streetcar designed with these skirts in mind