ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of women's increasing participation in sport and its impact on the subsequent emergence of sportswear for women in inter-war Britain. The inter-war years in Britain (1919-1939) witnessed a boom in sporting participation amongst women. Women's involvement in sports during this period, and in particular the very early inter-war years, was a complex process of negotiation. While the backlash which had met women's initial participation in sporting pastimes in the late nineteenth century had died down somewhat by the 1920s, there still remained an ongoing debate about the undermining potential of such activities. Female dress had traditionally linked women 'with frivolity, helplessness, compliance and inaction'. The body, and in particular the female body, was a central focus of modernity. Women sought advice about what they should wear to play sport. Fashion spreads and advertising stressed the need for sportswomen to strike a balance between practicality, comfort and up-to-the-minute fashion.
