There really was someone named Bloomer, Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer, to be exact.  Born in 1818, Mrs. Bloomer was from Cortland County, New York.  She became a teacher and tutor, then married Dexter Bloomer in 1840.  Being the editor of a local newspaper, Mr. Bloomer encouraged his wife to write articles about what was important to her heart, which were the rights of women and temperance.  A public speaker, Mrs. Bloomer eventually became the owner, editor and publisher of The Lily, 1849 through 1855.  There she presented her beliefs to a thirsty audience of readers.

Mrs. Bloomer sent tongues a-waggin' with her preposterous suggestion that women needed more freedom of movement in their daily dress.  While the average weight of underwear had been reduced from fifteen or more pounds to seven by 1850, she never the less decreed that cumbersome and heavy skirts were a nuisance.  She'd heard about a few radical women who had begun wearing what was known as Turkish trousers beneath short skirts or dresses.  This get up landed below the knee to about mid-calf.  Known as a "bifurcated" manner of dress, it incorporated lace trim at the sometimes button closured ankles of the baggy pants.  The bodice worn was without restrictive whalebone stays.  

Mrs. Bloomer promoted what she considered good and comfortable fashion sense in The Lily and personally wore these slack and short skirt/dress ensembles for half a dozen years.  She reverted back to long skirts once the cage crinoline and hoop skirt came into being because it was much more endurable, weight-wise, than cumbersome layers of heavy petticoats.  

Another reason for returning to long skirts was Mrs. Bloomer did not want to divert attention from her main causes of women's education, equality in the workplace and politics.  After moving to Council Bluffs, Iowa, she was the first president of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Society and spent the rest of her life working in this field.  Obviously, her husband was a forward thinking  man, and Mr. and Mrs. Bloomer lived to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary.

Although Mrs. Bloomer received enormous amounts of mail from female supporters on the subject of Turkish trousers, the trend was never overwhelmingly worn in the second half of the 1800s in the United States.  A group of liberated women in London, England formed The Rational Dress Society in 1881.  They tried to reform the restrictive, weighty dress of the day including immobilizing whalebone corsets.  Eventually, bloomers, as they later were called, became the favored cycling costume for the well to do women, but not until shortly after Mrs. Bloomer's death in 1894.

Other names have since been substituted for bloomers, such as knickers, pantalets, pantaloons and drawers, but these really belong in the unmentionable family.  Bloomers, technically speaking, are an exterior split pant worn beneath a short skirt, meant to be visible.  So the next time the subject of bloomers creeps into the conversation - and we know it will, set the record straight!