By Jarrett Zeman, Marblehead Museum
If a Marblehead woman visited a beach in the 1890s, her bathing suit would have looked very different than swimwear today. The Marblehead Museum’s collection includes this cotton bathing suit, featuring a knee-length tunic with puffed sleeves and a sailor collar. The woman’s swimsuit was designed for “sea bathing,” which consisted of wading and socializing rather than swimming, as the suit could weigh 25 pounds when wet.
Like most Victorian fashions, the primary goal was to maintain modesty, aided by long black stockings that covered the legs. To protect their hair, women sometimes wore bathing caps, like the women in this image taken at a local beach.
Today’s one piece, form-fitting bathing suit owes a huge debt to Australian swimmer and actress Annette Kellerman. Police arrested Kellerman for public indecency at Revere Beach in 1907, when Kellerman showed up in a swimsuit that revealed her legs. In response, Kellerman asked, “What’s more indecent, a woman’s legs or the weight of society’s expectations dragging us under?”
Kellerman used the ensuing trial as a platform to promote recreational swimming and fashion reform for women. Throughout the 1910s, Kellerman toured America teaching women to swim in a line of bathing suits she designed herself. Her tours through local towns like Revere and Boston helped to popularize the leg-exposing, form-fitting swimsuit that became common by the 1920s.
