Dressed to Thrill
Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960 Taft Museum of Art, 316 Pike St.
Opens Oct. 14, continues through Jan. 14, 2024
Featured Programs & Events
Family Funday | Sporting Fashion
Sunday, Oct. 15
10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Explore the Taft’s newest exhibition, Sporting Fashion, with the whole family! Discover the vibrant history of women’s athletic fashion with a day at the museum full of fun, musical performances, art-making, and more to inspire your young creators!
Workshop & Tour | Sew Valley
Thursday, Oct. 19, 11 a.m.–12 p.m.
Sew Valley, 1010 Hulbert Ave., 45214
Join Sew Valley designers for a tour and demonstration of both modern and historic women’s sporting fashion assembly techniques and patterns. This special opportunity includes a chance to learn and practice with Sew Valley CEO Shailah Maynard and Director of Operations Madeleine Misleh.
Signature Talk | Bringing the Girls Together
Thursday, Nov. 9, 6–7 p.m.
Team up with Kevin Jones, Curator of the FIDM Museum/Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, on a sprint to the exhibition finish line, as he takes you on treks far and wide in search of the rare objects displayed in Sporting Fashion. Peek into the curatorial locker room as the mannequins prepare to gallop, leap, and punch their way out of the award-winning catalog. Wear your trainers and tracksuits and join the fitness fun with these Outdoor Girls.
For more information, visit taftmuseum.org/Exhibitions/Sport.
Explore more than 100 years of fashion, feminism, and female athletes at the Taft Museum of Art.
Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960, a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts and the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles, opens on Saturday, Oct. 14.
The exhibition is the first to explore the evolution of women’s sporting attire in Western fashion over this 160-year period. The exhibition includes over 60 fully accessorized ensembles comprised of more than 400 objects selected from the exceptional collections of the FIDM Museum.
“We are thrilled to present Sporting Fashion in Cincinnati,” says the Taft Museum of Art’s associate curator Ann Glasscock, who is curating the museum’s installation of the show. “The exhibition not only includes an array of stylish, innovative, and truly stunning attire, but it also gives us the opportunity to explore the lives of women—as both athletes and spectators—and how they helped break down the barriers that had isolated them from the then male-dominated sporting world.”
The clothing and accessories in the exhibition range in date from the turn of the nineteenth century to the mid-20th century when the basic forms of women’s sportswear we know today were codified. Covering women’s athletic pursuits from spectating to participating, Sporting Fashion offers valuable insight into the social customs, innovative technologies, and shifting notions of style and functionality behind women’s sporting attire. The exhibition includes garments and accessories from long-established sportswear companies such as Champion, Pendleton, Spalding, and Stetson, in addition to key fashion brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Balenciaga, Patou, Pucci, and Chanel.
The subtitle, Outdoor Girls, is inspired by the printed script on a 1940s wool scarf that depicts women engaged in thirteen different sports, such as golf, horseback riding, ice-skating, and tennis. The exhibition will include ensembles worn for more than forty other outdoor activities from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each carefully assembled based upon extensive primary-source research. Garments made for activities ranging from traveling to calisthenics, and from motorcycling to promenading will be featured.
The exhibition has an accompanying publication with a foreword by Serena Williams, offering a contemporary and personal perspective on the role of fashion in sport that opens the illustrated 344-page catalog. The book provides both a stunning visual record of the garments on display and serves as an important point of reference for further research into women’s sporting attire. The catalog features an introductory essay and detailed entries on each ensemble in the exhibition, co-written by curators Kevin L. Jones and Christina M. Johnson. It is one of the very few authoritative publications on the diverse aspects of women’s sport history and the development and evolution of their athletic attire.
Organized into seven themes, Sporting Fashion will explore how clothing met the needs of new pursuits for women, while at the same time preserving their socially approved, restricted mobility. Garments for swimming and tanning will illustrate how innovative designers and manufacturers responded to the increasing acceptance of exposed skin at beaches and pools; winter sports ensembles will show how apparel for pastimes such as skiing and ice-skating protected female participants from the elements; and clothing and accessories for cycling, motoring, and flying—often adapted from men’s athletic gear—will reveal how women navigated open roads and skies.
Those themes are
Stepping Outdoors
Demonstrates how women who dressed for leisurely outdoor pursuits in the early 1800s were required to maintain proprieties considered socially necessary for their time.
Further Afield
Showcases the attire of women with a sense of adventure who eagerly took up mountaineering, hunting, and traveling.
Subzero Style
Surveys numerous activities that took place on snowy slopes and frozen rinks.
Taking the Reins
Represents traditions of riding and wrangling horses.
A Team Effort
Shows the advent and evolution of warm-weather ball sports and considers the development of regulation uniforms on courts and fields, and in gymnasia.
Wheels and Wings
Traces women’s ventures into the previously male-dominated realm of mechanized sports as they enjoyed increased freedom of travel via road and sky.
Making Waves
Explores how designers both reacted to and encouraged the growing acceptance of exposed skin at public beaches and pools.
As dialogues regarding women’s equality in athletics continue, Sporting Fashion enriches the conversation, illustrating the dynamic ways that women engaged in sport during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, the contents of this exhibition do not represent the lives of all women. The garments and accessories on view come primarily from western Europe and North America. They often belonged to the affluent, who had greater access to leisure and sport activities. Nevertheless, these rare pieces illustrate the active lives of women—some known, others anonymous—who wore ensembles such as these to challenge the status quo, for the betterment of themselves, and as examples of achievement for ensuing generations.
Additionally, a hands-on experience developed in partnership with the University of Cincinnati will offer visitors the opportunity to touch and feel their way through the evolution of sportswear technology.
Sporting Fashion is on a national tour across the United States through 2024 with final presentations at the Taft and the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida (Feb. 24–May 19, 2024) before returning home to the FIDM Museum in Los Angeles, California.
General admission to Sporting Fasnion is free for Taft members, military, and youth (18 and under); $12 for adults; and $10 for seniors. Non-members save $2 by purchasing tickets online. Sundays are free!