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“THE BLESSINGS OF A GOOD THICK SKIRT” High climbers
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On 23 July 1871 the mountaineer Meta Brevoort, aunt to the renowned climber W. B. Coolidge, arrived at the lodgings of Monte Rosa in Zermatt to desperately disappointing news. ‘A young lady has climbed the Matterhorn.’ On only the 19th ascent of the peak, Lucy Walker had beaten her rival Miss Brevoort to the summit.
The climb caused a sensation. A woman was competing on the same terms as her male counterparts and succeeding in treacherous conditions. What might seem even more sensational in retrospect were the clothes that women like Lucy Walker and her fellow women mountaineers wore during their endeavours in the second half of the 19th century. It was all about the skirt. Whilst images of women wearing skirts to scale the highest European peaks may appear vaguely comical to a 21st century eye, skirts were the staple garment for women in almost all walks of life and to discard them during this period would have been unthinkable for most women. To write the skirt off as a wholly impractical garment is too simplistic an argument and is not supported by the rich seam of evidence left by the women themselves.
Women had started to participate in a range of sporting activities as the 19th century progressed. The rising middle classes, disposable incomes and increased leisure hours meant that men and women were able to take up cycling, rambling and swimming in vast numbers. Specialist sporting dress was not commercially available and so a culture of home-spun modifications was born.
The queries columns of popular contemporary journals are full of such advice: how to fashion a practical walking skirt, how to kilt a skirt for cycling and how to waterproof a cloak – a complex process involving several layers of linseed oil, watered down paint and plenty of patience. Women mountaineers however were arguably operating at a far more dangerous level. A report written in 1888 by the mountaineer Lucy Jackson (the first woman ever to have been invited to write for the Alpine Club Journal 4
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