Sitting Pretty: A Dress History of the L-Shaped Frame, the Side-Saddle Habit and the Design of Adaptive Wearables

This chapter highlights the potential that dress history has for informing present-day creative fashion practice and, particularly, the design of adaptive dress for sitting. It offers a critical analysis of the complexities and curiosities of formal side-saddle habit dress, encompassing approximately a century from 1850 to 1950. Using period riding manuals, personal sporting diaries, dress artefacts and original pattern books, the chapter presents and explains devices such as the ‘apron’ style of side-saddle skirt and the ‘cut away’ design of the formal riding jacket. Unusually, habit makers tailored these garments in, and for, the sitting position, reducing excess fabric around the seat and accommodating the ‘L’-shaped, seated, body through innovative internal construction. It is suggested that these historical approaches may usefully be transposed across time to enhance both the form and functionality of adaptivewear for certain seated communities today, notably people using wheelchairs. The chapter discusses examples of contemporary adaptivewear that have been designed specifically for the L-shaped position. In so doing, it advocates for collaborative approaches between product developers, creative pattern cutters and dress historians in order to benefit both the thinking and practice of inclusive design.