1897
FREDERICK LOESER & COMPANY
Riding Habit
Ca. 1897
Frederick Loeser & Company, American, founded 1860
Black wool broadcloth
Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Frances Engeman, 1971 (2009.300.491a, b)
1968
VICTOR JORIS
Suit
1968
Victor Joris, American
Black wool gabardine
Gift of Jane Holzer, 1974 (1974.384.27a, b)
For centuries, horseback riding was one of the few sports enjoyed by women as well as men; the woman’s riding habit was therefore traditionally tailored in correspondence with the men’s from the waist up. This impeccably cut habit was made and sold at the preeminent Brooklyn department store, Frederick Loeser & Co. It exemplifies the essential combination of functionality and fashionability required of this type of garment: suited to the rigors of active riding while maintaining a chic silhouette—fitted through the waist and flaring out over the hips.
The asymmetrical skirts of sidesaddle riding habits, which accommodated the positioning of the rider’s legs, inspired the draping of this skirt by designer Victor Joris from 1968. With the addition of a tailored, cutaway jacket with fitted seams at the bodice and high, set-in sleeves, the suit recalls the hourglass shape of late nineteenth-century equestrian dress. Joris’s adaptation of the riding habit, with its knee-length skirt and deep front opening, reflects the romantic revival of Victorian fashion in the late 1960s.
The asymmetrical skirts of sidesaddle riding habits, which accommodated the positioning of the rider’s legs, inspired the draping of this skirt by designer Victor Joris from 1968. With the addition of a tailored, cutaway jacket with fitted seams at the bodice and high, set-in sleeves, the suit recalls the hourglass shape of late nineteenth-century equestrian dress. Joris’s adaptation of the riding habit, with its knee-length skirt and deep front opening, reflects the romantic revival of Victorian fashion in the late 1960s.