This master's thesis discusses three separate pieces of women’s wear from the 19th and early 20th century which have received disproportional amounts of public scrutiny and derision – the corset, the crinoline, and women’s trousers or jupe culottes. The thesis contextualizes the garments within the fashion and society of their time, with emphasis on public opinion voiced in newspapers from the British Isles as well as from the Slovene-speaking parts of the Habsburg monarchy and later Austria-Hungary. In order to better understand the emergence and meaning of these three garments, an overview of the development of fashion from the late 18th century up until the first world war is provided. Each of the controversial garments is discussed in detail, with a separate chapter dedicated to the spread of fashion throughout the territory of present-day Slovenia and the distinctions of dress in Slovenia’s historical regions. The analysis delves into different ways in which corsets, crinolines, and women’s trousers have been written about, along with the various reasons for their scorn and praise. The following comparison of newspaper articles closely studies how criticism of the garments differed between English and Slovene periodicals, and searches for discrepancies and similarities among the criticisms of each garment. The thesis also addresses the question of why fashion is controversial in the first place in addition to how that pertains to the position of women in the 19th and early 20th century.
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