ABSTRACT
In the year of London hosting the Games of the XXXth Olympiad, it is appropriate that this special issue of Costume dealing with sports-related clothing commences with an Olympic-related paper. This chapter examines the contradictory discourses surrounding women's sport during the inter-war period in Britain and reports on how these discourses impacted upon the choices that women made about their sporting apparel. It looks at how the popularity of football and its players was used by the clothing industries to market their leisurewear on Britain's high streets. The chapter draws attention to the provocative sport-spectator practice known as 'streaking'. Streakers, much like their clothed contemporaries, are fashioned entities whose energetic efforts to disrobe and dash are imbued with historical, socio-cultural, political, and arguably aesthetic, significance.
