Dupont I love you!

This is Article 2 of 4 on the history of Running Fashion
Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 4

Geez! Gosh! Darn! It is interesting researching the history of women's activewear but it certainly doesn't capture my attention like stumbling upon a daring new design or colour of technical fabric! Double that with the challenge of finding information particular to running clothing and I think my lovely audience would be much better off to read this wonderful piece on the history of sporting wear for women by Pauline Weston Thomas.

Needless to say, it is not only voting that women weren't allowed to do last century. Perhaps it was thought of as very unfeminine for women to engage in rowdy behavior with odd physical maneuvers. Gosh knows that I've pulled some horrid-looking, very unfeminine soccer moves on the field in my lifetime. To top it off, the thinking "back then" was that competitiveness was certainly the domain of the male, not us females (good thing I have no recollection of being alive in that era as I don't think I have an uncompetitive bone in my body).

As I mentioned, there is scant research dedicated to running clothing. Perhaps it was a rather insignificant sport at the turn of the century, at least compared to golf or tennis. Of course, womens involvement in running was just heating up in the twenties so it's no wonder the Google and Yahoo databases lack resources on archaic running fashions.

What is quasi-certain is that despite the conservative - but evolving - battles being fought by women on the tennis court in terms of what was acceptable to wear, shorts and t-shirts were already liberated on the running scene. Check out these dated photographs from outside of North America:

The image on the far left is from the Olympics in 1928 and the photo to its right is dated 1932. This next one of young girls is dated to the 1930s:

Here's where things start to heat up for us runners - the 1950s and sixties! Hello spandex and nylon! And the inter-mingling of sports and everyday wear (errr...more later on this).

Spandex liberated every sporty women's slide into home base, game-saving slide on the soccer field, climb up a jagged limestone peak or smear up a slippery rock or heck, dive into the bushes in the midst of an adventure race! Now we're talking! Spandex was our liberator and nylon paved the way to be loud and colourful and full of pretty (or neat-o) patterns in the midst of a once male-only adventure!!!

More on my next post about female liberation thanks to the development of nylon and spandex. Dupont I love you!

(Dupont was the first to hit the market with the lovely stretchy chemical invention)