How has Cycling changed fashion

Today more than ever sports wear plays a huge role in the fashion industry, with many established brands such as Chanel and Gucci giving in to the current trend popularised by the rise of Vetements and its head designer Demna Gvasalia. Chunky sports trainers and loose fitting joggers have been spotted on every major brands collections for the past few seasons but although many may think that sportswear has only just become a major fashion force, the idea that sports wear as fashion dates back to the late victorian era. Tennis is considered the first major sport taken up by women in 1870s although this did not affect what women wore until the 1920s when Suzanne Legnlen wore a v neck dress with no stockings, petticoat or sleeves. Although rather shocking at the time, it wasn't long before women everywhere were wearing this sort of attire in what is now recognised as the "flapper" look. Although a sport that changed women's fashion in a far more influential way was cycling.

" But bicycling - far more windespread than motoring, and not, as motoring was, restricted to a few aristocratic women who could afford to defy conventions - did mean the advent of new costumes. At first it was considered 'fast', but soon made the long-ridiculed bloomers respectable, and it was the sporting crazes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that made trousers popular wear for women. "

Trousers were an item of clothing that were typically exclusive for men. However as cycling became more popular amongst women who could not afford to drive, they had to ditch the long heavy skirts due to discomfort but also health and safety reasons that would come with riding a bike. Although women still faced ridicule and discrimination as trousers weren't widely accepted until women took up more demanding jobs during world war II and later becoming a trend associated with youth culture in the 60s. Using this extract as a reference, it is to be understood that cycling was at the forefront of women liberation from restrictive/uncomfortable victorian clothing.