A riding habit is women's clothing for horseback riding.
Since the mid-17th century, a formal habit for riding sidesaddle usually consisted of:
Low-heeled , , and often a necktie complete the ensemble. Typically, throughout the period the riding habit used details from male dress, whether large turned cuffs, gold trims or buttons. The colours were very often darker and more masculine than those on normal clothes. Earlier styles can be similar to the dresses worn by boys before breeching in these respects.
When high waists were the fashion, from roughly 1790 to 1820, the habit could be a coat dress called a riding coat (borrowed in French as redingote) or a petticoat with a short jacket (often longer in back than in front).
Origins
In France in the 17th century, women who rode wore an outfit called a
devantiere.
The skirt of the devantiere was split up the back to enable astride riding.
By the early 19th century, in addition to describing the whole costume, a devantiere could describe any part of the riding habit, be it the skirt,
[ the apron,]
In his diary for June 12, 1666, Samuel Pepys wrote:
Two and a half centuries later, Emily Post would write:
Gallery
Image:Joseph Parrocel, attributed to - Madame La Comtesse de Saint Géran - Google Art Project.jpg|Masculine-styled jacket and waistcoat,
Image:Gobert - Marie Adélaïde of Savoy - Versailles MV 6825.jpg|Scarlet habit, male cuffs, gold trim, buttons, early 18th century
Image:Ladyworsley.jpg|Cutaway coat, waistcoat, military details matching husband's regiment, 1779
Image:Morland squires door detail.jpg|Redingote and tall hat, 1790
Image:1799 Riding Habit July LMM.jpg|High-waisted, 1799
Women's redingote
The redingote (or redingotte, redingot)[ Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, September 2009] is a type of coat that has had several forms over time. The name is derived from a French alteration of the English "riding coat", an example of reborrowing.
The first form of the redingote was in the 18th century, when it was used for travel on equestrianism. This coat was a bulky, utilitarian garment. It would begin to evolve into a fashionable accessory in the last two decades of the 18th century, when women began wearing a perfectly tailored style of the redingote, which was inspired by men's fashion of the time. Italian fashion also picked it up (the redingotte), adapting it for more formal occasions.
The redingote à la Hussar (from French redingote à la Hussarde) was trimmed with parallel rows of horizontal braid in the fashion of ' uniforms.
The style continued to evolve through the late 19th century, until it took a form similar to today's redingote. The newer form is marked by a close fit at the chest and waist, a belt, and a flare toward the hem.
File:Woman's redingote c. 1790.jpg|
Image:Morland squires door detail.jpg|
File:RedingotJosefina.jpg|1810s
Image:Redingote a la hussar.jpg|à la Hussar, 1817
File:Fig9REDINGOTEdrap carreaux fanraisie.png|1887
File:Redingote-polonaise-1914.png|Redingote polonaise (left), 1914
See also
Notes
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Cassin-Scott, Jack, Costume and Fashion in colour 1760–1920, Blandford press,
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Payne, Blanche: History of Costume from the Ancient Egyptians to the Twentieth Century, Harper & Row, 1965. No ISBN for this edition; ASIN B0006BMNFS
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Takeda, Sharon Sadako, and Kaye Durland Spilker, Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915, LACMA/Prestel US 2010,
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Tozer, Jane and Sarah Levitt, Fabric of Society: A Century of People and their Clothes, 1770–1870, Laura Ashley Press,
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Pepys' diary for June 1666
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Emily Post's Etiquette, 1922, Chapter XXXIII. Dress See paragraph 40 "Riding Clothes"
External links
