Swimming Costume
Bathing costume did not evolve gracefully into the swim suit, nor was there an abrupt replacement of one garment for the other. Instead, a garb designed for swimming emerged in the 19th century as tentatively and as poorly received as had the suggestion that women should be active in the water. The growing popularity of swimming and the changing status of women eventually made it possible for the swimming suit to replace the bathing suit in the 1920s. By the 1930s, however, this trend was accelerated by a growing advertising and ready-to-wear clothing industry. Thus a history of the swimming costume tends to divide itself into two sections: early swimming suits and the influence of the swim suit industry.
EARLY SWIMMING SUITS
The earliest reference to swimming costume I have found was in 1869. At this date swimming in the United States was considered a masculine skill, exercise, and recreation; only men were provided with a real opportunity to swim at popular watering places. As described previously, Harper’s Bazar reported that American women in general rejected the European bathing suit made with long trousers and a skirtless waist. Nevertheless, this costume was “... worn by expert swimmers, who do not wish to be encumbered with bulky clothing.”[48]
In the 1870s the rare descriptions of this more functional garment—called “swimming suit” even at this early date—were limited to a sentence or two buried within long columns of fine print describing popular bathing apparel. One mentions a “... single knitted worsted garment, fitting the figure, with waist and trousers in one.”[49] Another was made without sleeves as “one garment, the blouse and trousers being cut all in one, like the sleeping garments worn by small children.”[50] These more practical bifurcated garments probably derived from the European suit of the 1860s that had been rejected by the majority of American women. For example, an English source reported that in 1866 the following garment was worn: “... Swimming Costume, a body and trousers cut in one, secures perfect liberty of action and does not expose the figure.”[51]
The descriptions of American swimming suits, however brief, offered evidence that the pastime was growing in popularity with women. Generally speaking, 19th century women’s magazines were mere disseminators of fine and decorous ideas and practices for well-mannered ladies; their editors were not innovators. With such an editorial policy it is understandable that these magazines would not, as a rule, publicize trends of popular origin until they were fairly well established. The skirtless swimming suit of the 1870s was no doubt more common in the United States than its meager description in Harper’s Bazar would seem to indicate.
As long as feminine swimming was not generally accepted, however, efforts to develop practical swimming suits remained isolated owing to the lack of communication between manufacturer and consumer and to traditional attitudes. Feminine interest in swimming and physical activities threatened belief in the “weaker-sex” that contributed to maintaining the traditional masculine and feminine roles; efforts to develop functional swimming dress also attacked established standards of feminine modesty. These challenges to the status quo were met with the weapon of the complacent majority—silence. Consequently, from the third quarter of the 19th century, when we find the first reference to a specialized garment for swimming in the United States, writings on swimming costume appeared infrequently until the 1920s.
In 1886 two “ladies’ bathing jerseys” and two bathing suits of the traditional type appeared in the First Illustrated Catalogue of Knitted Bathing Suits of J. J. Pfister Company in San Francisco. The captions over the illustrations leave no question that the briefer bathing jerseys were intended for swimming while the others were for bathing. These jerseys—form-fitting tunics that were mid-thigh in length—were made with high necks and cap sleeves. Underneath this garment women wore trunks that extended to the knee and stockings; there was also the alternate choice of tights, a combination of trunks and stockings. To complete the outfit the feminine reader was encouraged to buy a knitted skull cap.
Apparently these bathing jerseys were successful; three, instead of two, jerseys appeared in the same catalog in 1890. It is obvious from this later catalog, however, that there was a greater demand for bathing dresses since twelve designs of the skirted costume were featured as opposed to the two dresses in the first issue.