Women's Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United States

A historical survey recounts the transformation of women's aquatic attire from restrictive bathing gowns to practical swimming garments, relating style shifts to fashion trends, modesty norms, and technological changes. It defines bathing as immersion for cleansing or therapy and swimming as self-propulsion, then traces customs and costume development from early periods through the rise of sportswear in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The analysis examines construction, fabrics, and social pressures that constrained or enabled movement, and uses period images and museum examples to show how changing dress both mirrored and supported evolving ideas about women's leisure and public participation.