The Reformkleid celebrated by Pochhammer’s association was loose-fitting and modeled on designs by progressive artists in Austria and Germany, including the Belgian Henry Van de Velde. Van de Velde promoted artistic dress in Germany by lecturing, writing, planning exhibitions and designing reform dresses. As demonstrated in an essay on art principles in
women’s clothing published in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (1902), Van de Velde saw women as victims of fashion and set out to coordinate women’s dress with modern artistic trends. He believes a woman’s dress should harmonise with her character, rather than with society at large or with historical sartorial trends.271 His approach was emancipating: ‘Er bezog Frauen als
Akteurinnen in die gewünschte Äesthetisierung des Alltags ein und ermöglichte ihnen, ihre Persönlichkeit selbstbestimmt zu entfalten.’272 Nevertheless Pochhammer objected to his lack of
emphasis on the hygienic and health benefits of reform dress. Neither did Van de Velde’s argument detract from perceptions of women as ornamental, an idea explored critically in
Bülow’s Die stilisierte Frau (Chapter Four).
Many exhibitions of women’s artistic dress took place throughout Germany and Austria. Berlin hosted a continuous exhibition of reform designs from 1899 and by 1905 every German town had
269 Cited in Ober, Der Frauen neue Kleidung, 108.
270 See Sabine Merta, Wege und Irrwege zum modernen Schlankheitskult (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag,
2003), 410.
271 See Ober, Die Frauen neue Kleidung, 99. 272 See ibid, 125.
67 a few artists producing reform clothing.273 Munich was the centre of the Jugendstil and the home
of many aesthetic designers, including Peter Behrens and his wife Lilli, whose styles were plainer than those of Van de Velde and Alfred Mohrbutter.274 ‘Die Neue Frauentracht’ exhibition took
place in Berlin in 1903 and demonstrated the forward-thinking attitude of the Germans and Austrians who became forerunners in trend-setting at the end of the century. Artists who contributed to arguments for aesthetic dress included Emilie Flöge and Gustav Klimt. Many authors provided ethical and aesthetic arguments that reinforced the aims of dress reform
designers. Architect and designer Paul Schultze-Naumburg also argued for the need to liberate the female body in his study Die Kultur des weiblichen Körpers als Grundlage der Frauenkleidung (1902). In Das Kleid der Frau (1904), Mohrbutter agrees with Van de Velde, arguing that women think they dress individually when in fact they are fashion’s slaves. In Die Frauenreformkleidung (1903) the pioneer of the ‘Freikörperkultur’, Heinrich Pudor, discusses the philosophy, hygiene and aesthetics of women’s attire. He likens dress to a symbol of class slavery; promotes nudism as a means of breaking down social boundaries; and argues that women's dress should be visually appealing and comfortable. More radical than most dress reformers, he campaigned for the invention of women’s trousers and shunned the corset which he considered a garment worn by immodest women.275 Indeed, he went as far as to call it a ‘Hurenerfindung’ and argued that it
damaged a woman’s fertility and symbolized a sick, lewd society.276
As mentioned in the Introduction, women’s fashion oppressed women not only in a physical sense by holding the body in, but also in a social sense, since dress represented the only opportunity women had to participate in public society and associate herself with a group. A woman’s desire to identify herself with other women meant that she forfitted her own individuality and, unlike men who were arguably in a similar position, she was not able to express this individuality elsewhere. Simmel, who posited this viewpoint, concluded that sartorial fashions were de- humanising.277 It was in this context that Van de Velde encouraged women to make their own
dresses according to a similar classical cut, but with their own unique touch in order to allow for sartorial self-expression. Other sociologists, such as Adolf Thiele in Zur Philosophie der neuen
Frauentracht, also produced philosophical treatises on the function of clothes and the necessity of
a reform, while in the 1880s Dr. H. Lahmann wrote that ‘Die Reform der Frauentracht ist eine Mitbedingung und wahrlich eine nicht geringe bei der Befreiung der Frau; denn die Modesklavin
273 Patricia Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Dress, 1850-1920 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2003),
184.
274 Ibid, 177.
275 See Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Dress, 147. 276 See Welch, Ein Ausstieg aus dem Korsett, 14. 277 See Ober, Der Frauen neue Kleider, 95.
68 ist für die Wiedergeburt der Menschheit unbrauchbar.’278 Lahmann’s mention of ‘die
Wiedergeburt der Menschheit’, depending on fashion reform, women’s liberation and female biology, suggests the extent to which dress reformers were envisaging ‘new possibilities for gender’,279 even if they could not imagine a world where men and women dressed and performed
entirely alike.
Female artists who shared such views, such as Else Oppler-Legband and Anna Muthesius, were also progressive designers of reform dress. Oppler-Legband was the artistic director of the arts and crafts department of the Wertheim Kaufhaus in Berlin while Muthesius contributed theoretical texts to the debate. Muthesius’s understanding of artistic dress as an ‘Eigenkleid’, a highly individual garment for liberal-minded women, demonstrates the extent to which sartorial freedom was considered a sign of female autonomy. By designing their own clothes, female designers laid claim to creativity traditionally associated with men and showed a combination of logic and self-expression. Muthesius argued for the aesthetic value of reform dresses and
defended the designs against criticism from stylish women, for ‘Bei diesen [neuen] Kleidern kann mann […] gar nicht mehr von dem allzu Legèren, Uneleganten reden, was die pariserisch
gekleidete Frau an der neuen Mode tadelte.’280 She also appealed to the German national spirit by
indicating that the techniques used to produce these dresses, both in terms of the design and the machinery, were all of German origin. Her only criticism is that the materials for the aesthetic costumes had to be imported from England and France. She calls on Wertheim to stock more appealing cloth to enable women to make or have made entirely German, modern clothing. Such persistent and inventive artists eventually influenced the celebrated French designer Paul Poiret who was instrumental in establishing the lasting popularity of aesthetic designs.281
Writer and social activist Lina Morgenstern (1830-1909) criticised women’s dress in an article for the journal Blätter für Volksgesundheitspflege: ‘Die Mode ist Spekulation auf den Unverstand, die Nachahmungssucht, die Eitelkeit und Gefallsucht der Frauen.’282 Morgenstern indicates the extent
to which woman, through her association with dress, is inhibited from developing an individuality on par with her male counterparts. Because her exterior might show her to be concerned with her appearance, her interior is negated, summarised as ‘Unverstand’. And it is this desire to ‘belong’ to her gender and to please (men) that means that women are followers not leaders. Morgenstern
278 Cited in Thiel, 361.
279 Butler, Gender Trouble, 198. 280 Ibid.
281See Katharine Anthony, ‘Some realizations in dress reform’ (1915) in Purdy, The Rise of Fashion, 119;
Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-siècle France (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001), 89-114; and Mary Davis, Classic Chic: Music, Fashion and
Modernism, (London: University of California Press, 2006), 22-47.
69 believed that by freeing themselves from popular fashion, women would be able to distance themselves from what is in essence a degrading gender trait, a performance of blind capitulation.