Das Eigenkleid: Artistic Dress for and by Women
In 1903 Anna Muthesius published Das Eigenkleid, a book that advised women to design their own clothing. “The creation of a style of the Reform Dress cannot be a question of standardization; rather the pattern is to be broken and every woman clothe herself as her particular personal style requires. The resulting dress will be an artistic reform of women’s attire that is truly significant: the personal dress [Eigenkleid] on the basis of health.” Aspects of Muthesius’ book echo the work of a number of Artistic Dress advocates but ultimately asserts a new goal—that women maintain greater control over their clothing.
She is alone among the well-known continental Artistic Dress proponents to offer an economic argument for Artistic Dress. She called for all women, not just art students, to study dress making, color, and clothing design in order to ensure that their clothing would be as becoming as commercially available 
dresses. In this way, they would be able to save money by resisting fashion, which “has ruined the small saving of our German housewife,” and which consisted of “calculating business people [who] determine the appearances of the entire civilized female world, whose appearance they alter exactly as they please. Like a gardener who cuts all the trees of his garden to form, they mold us one year into a ball, the next year into a spindle, and this, with the ingenuity of businessmen, so quickly as to succeed all the better at introducing their novelties.” Her railing against the monetary oppression of women recalls the precedent of Glaswegian artists (She knew many Artistic Dress designers from Glasgow), who insisted on using economical common materials, rather than fashionable silk and satins, to make clothing for themselves.
Perhaps the most extreme Eigenkleid advocate was Hedwig Buschmann. Buschmann was the first designer to guarantee a dress that the wearer could put on without help. This feature stood in contrast to an aspect of fashionable clothing that was a common subject of derision: the lacing of the corset and the hook and eye closures down the back of fashionable dresses made women dependent on others whenever they dressed. Bushmann’s guarantee was only one feature of her designs that related to women’s independence. She had established a business that produced clothing by 1905, but her greater contribution came through her publications and lectures that focused on clothing that could be made by the wearer. She designed garments that required only one or two pieces of cloth attached with simple side seams and provided patterns in books and magazines. These garments were easier and quicker to make than the complex cuts and difficult construction of fashion, and thus could be produced by the average woman.
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