Feminist suffragists adopted Turkish trousers as a practical dress reform

Evidence

Romantic notions of the Orient, however, featured the region as an exotic land to be admired and even emulated. Americans could brandish their cosmopolitan credentials through an interest in the Orient. Further, embracing Oriental styles became a means of resistance. Women suffragists, for example, advocated the wearing of Turkish trousers as more practical and masculine. Feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton acknowledged that the “bloomer” (as it was called) was “an imitation in part of Turkish style.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 219

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — dress as political signaling, though here it’s a positive adoption rather than a panic.
• SEED: A possible essay angle: how oppressed or marginalized groups borrow the aesthetic of an ‘exotic other’ to resist native norms — the bloomer as cross-cultural solidarity through fashion.

Related

• American suffragists borrowed Turkish dress as feminist resistance (similarity 0.85)