Fashion Stories: The Wright Flyer and the Hobble Skirt

My apologies if you have already seen this image on Instagram, but I’m still looking for the answer to a question I asked there:

Is there any evidence that this 1908 photo inspired Paul Poiret to design his hobble skirt? Or is this just one more modern interpretation of the past?

I have been reading David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers and in it the story is repeated that Poiret saw the photo and had an inspiration. This is not referenced in the endnotes, however.

A photograph of Madame Berg seated on the Flyer at Wilbur Wright’s side, beaming with pleasure in advance of takeoff, made an unprecedented magazine cover, and the famous Paris dress designer Paul Poiret, quick to see the possibilities in the rope around the ankles, produced a hobble skirt that became a fashion sensation.

In looking for the answer, I made the obvious series of Google searches, and in doing so found more and more misinformation. Edith Berg, seen in the photo, and who was the first American woman to ride in an airplane, is sometimes identified as Katherine Wright, the sister of the brothers. In some tellings of the stories, Wilbur tied the robe around Mrs. Berg’s legs, in some she tied the rope, and in others her husband tied it. One site calls Mrs. Berg “Hart Berg”, which was her husband’s name. Others claim she was the first passenger to ride in the Flyer.

Even the Smithsonian site has a suspect version of the story:

 A French fashion designer watching the flight was impressed with the way Mrs. Berg walked away from the aircraft with her skirt still tied. Mrs. Berg was then credited with inspiring the famous “Hobble Skirt” fashion.

To be fair, many of the sites I found tell the story as a “possibility.” But in others it is related as fact. Several even gave the Wright Brothers credit for “inventing” the hobble skirt.

The closest thing I’ve found to a contempory source was quoted in Alison Matthews David’s book, Fashion Victims. A New York Times article from June, 1910 called the hobble skirt the aeroplane skirt. This does seem to hint at a connection to the skirt and to the practice of early women passengers having their skirts tied below the knees.

I also found a 1928 article based on an interview with Edith Ogilvy Druce, formerly Mrs. Berg. In the article she claimed to have inspired the hobble skirt.

I know that Poiret was not one to admit his fashion inspirations, so I doubt that he related this story even if it were true. He did write an autobiography, but I have not read it. If he was inspired by the photo, why did he not make the first of his hobble skirts until two years later, in 1910?

I know I’ve presented more questions than I have answers, and I have one more. Is the answer even out there?

 

 

My Ladies Fashions 1914 – 1915

I bought this little catalog recently because it has a sort of local connection.  It is imprinted with the name of the Hobbs-Henderson Company in Greenville, South Carolina.  Hobbs-Henderson was owned by WT Henderson and CO Hobbs, and the business was both retail and wholesale dry goods and clothing.  In 1904 Henderson retired and sold his part in the company to Hobbs.  The last reference I could find to the company was from 1920.

I’ve got to wonder about what happened to the apostrophe in the title on the cover.  Actually, I was thinking it should read “My Lady’s Fashions” but perhaps the writer had more than one lady.

Even though the catalog was distributed at Hobbs-Henderson, the clothing seems to have been made by a company called Peck’s Garments.  It will take a better web searcher than me to come up with information on Peck’s Garments.  All I could find was information on the clothing of Gregory Peck!  I’m assuming there is no connection with Peck & Peck, a New York department store, but I could be wrong.

I’m also posting an enlargement of the artist’s signature in the hopes that one of you can identify it.

But what about the clothes?  You can see quite a bit of the influence of Paul Poiret’s hobble skirt, which had been introduced a few years earlier.  And skirts were still long, but no longer brushing the floor so the shoes and stockings were easily seen.

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There was also a big trend of tunics over the skirts.  Within a few years skirts would be as short as the tunics seen in these drawings.  Maybe it was a way of getting women used to skirts that were obviously rising.

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The hair styles also foreshadow styles to come.  As you might remember from Downton Abbey, for several years before most women were brave enough to bob their hair, they were wearing it in styles that gave the appearance of short hair, at least from the front.

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As hair got closer to the head, hats soared.  These models are classified as afternoon frocks, and are considerably more fussy than the tailored suits seen above.

Is it just me, or are these clothes a bit hard to warm to?  I love the shorter dresses and suits that came along just a couple of years later as the world stumbled toward WWI.  But these just have an awkwardness, maybe due to the very narrow skirt hems.  Women must have been quite relieved to be rid of them as skirts shortened and widened.