Edwardian sportswear

The HSM challenge for April is gender-bender. For the longest time I have had zero inspiration for that one. I also want to concentrate on my 16th century project and my current Star Wars project, so I feel like I already have a bit too many projects going on. Still I started to look around for inspiration and I have one long term planned project that I had as a starting point to find inspiration.

This is a picture of Paula, Countess von Lamberg. She was one of the pioneers of women's ski jumping, and jumped an impressive 22 meters in the early 20th century. I would love to one day recreate her outfit, even if it's hard to actually see what she's wearing. I'm guessing a jacket and skirt, all in wool.

Still it was a starting point, and I started to look for pictures of other early female ski jumpers. Pictures can be found in the book "Licence to Jump - the history of women's ski jumping" . Most of the pictures are like the one above though, taken from a distance and only showing the flying so it's hard to make out any details. There is a really nice picture of the sisters Dorthy and Maxine graves in front of a hill from some time in the 1930's. They're wearing what looks like a soft wool wrap jacket with shawl collar and baggy pants in the same fabric. My first idea was to recreate that jacket, but it's not quire realistic. I'm not used to working in knitted fabrics (and I'm pretty sure that the fabric is a knit) and I'm not used to the style either.

I then started to look at accessories, but most of them are knitted scarves, caps and mittens. And I can't knit.

Recreating a female ski jumper's outfit will have to wait for some other time. I started instead to look at general Edwardian sportswear. I'm once again invited to take part in a "back to 1900" -event at the national railway museum in May, so something that I could wear with the shirtwaist I did last year could also be fitting.

Just look at this magnificent ski outfit. I want it, all in gold and purple.

Anyway, on to something more realistic for this small project.

This bicycle outfit shows up with a few descriptions on pinterest. One of them dates it to 1895. I really like both the colours and the style.

This bicycle outfit is a bit more simpe and restrained. It's an Austrian outfit from 1900. Overall quite a few of the bicycle outfits with baggy pants seem to be from the German cultural sphere.

For a more British inspired look there is this golf outfit from around 1908.

Not just a knitted vest, but a full knitted sweater from 1895. I just fell in love with this one, it make me almost want to learn how to knit myself. (Then I remembered that I've hated knitting every time I've tried it).

So that being said I think Edwardian sportswear can help me come up with something, both for the challenge and the event in May. The sportswear is clearly inspired by menswear after all. If I have enough time I could go for a vest or a full pair of bloomers. If I don't have that much time a collar or simply a tie would do as well.