Fashion historian Laura Fitzachary explores the history of the skort and what it represents about women's experiences in sport.
From bodysuits to bikini bottoms, women's outfits in sport have garnered frankly unnecessary attention, often at the detriment of the sport itself.
Surely what is worn on a court, floor, or pitch should be determined by the athletes themselves and dependent on their comfort level?
The debate has been reignited once again, with the Camogie Association making recent headlines after Munster Camogie’s senior final was deferred on Saturday.
As we await the verdict of a Special Congress to be held on 22 May, the comfortability of the skort has been called into question - as it should.
The portmanteau of skirt and shorts is usually associated with tennis courts and field hockey pitches. In Ireland, this has extended into the domain of the Camogie Association in the 1980s. The skort was originally created as a response to a fad that swept through the US and Europe in the 1890s: bicycling.
The first skorts were quite baggy, wide-legged pants beneath a panel that buttoned up, double-breast style. This was done to conceal the fact that there was a pair of pants below the skirt to allow women to mount bicycles.
In turn, these women could demonstrate modesty while simultaneously retaining Victorian ideals and traditional femininity, breaching a man's role in society by wearing a trouser-like garment.
Even Ireland’s own Oscar Wilde weighed in on Victorian dress reform in 1885 with an essay for the New York Tribune entitled, The Philosophy of Dress.
A vital movement, dress reform liberated women to be able to move comfortably and freely (and indeed swiftly on a bicycle) without the restrictions of long, caged skirts and large bustles.
Yet, these women still had to compromise in order to appease the society they lived in and ensure that they were policing their own bodies to do so. Now, over a century later, we are seeing the reverse as larger sporting bodies and delegations decide what women's bodies should wear, revealing a stark absence of choice.
The original skort is an important part of fashion history, specifically for athleisure and not as street clothing. It conveyed newfound independence and opened the gates for women's athleisure wear to develop, finding a home in dancing as a solution to the restrictive dress.
As the decades progressed, designers who challenged the idea of being 'ladylike’ and supported women in sport, such as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, saw their pieces appear on court.
Schiaparelli designed a skort (of sorts) for Spanish tennis player Lili Alvarez in 1931, who wore culottes (to the shock of the audience) draped with a layer of fabric, imitating a skirt, to Wimbledon. Despite it already making an appearance at a previous French Open, the conversation around women and what they have worn on court persists.
Over 80 years later, at another French Open, tennis player Serena Williams wore an all-black Nike bodysuit less than a year after suffering dangerous complications while giving birth to her daughter.
After suffering a series of blood clots, Williams indicated that the bodysuit’s design was functional by wearing pants to keep blood circulation going.
However, French Tennis Federation president Bernard Giudicelli said Williams's bodysuit would be barred under a new dress code. At the time, he stated that it would no longer be accepted and that the game and the place must be respected.
A bodysuit had previously been worn on court in 1985, when tennis player Anne White ran into some trouble when she wore a white bodysuit, often described as a catsuit. In this case, her opponent Pam Shriver complained about the outfit being distracting, but not after officials of the All England Club stated their disdain and shortly after deemed it unfit.
This was not the first time the All England Club decried an outfit: Gertrude Moran (‘Gorgeous Gussie’ in the press) shocked Wimbledon in 1949 by donning frilly knickers beneath a shorter-than-allowed skirt. The visible undergarments beneath what was not a knee-length skirt saw officials deem her outfit as bringing "vulgarity and sin into tennis".
Just over three decades later, Anne White recalled how her catsuit was an example of fashion and function and that players should wear what they like, working with their sponsors.
In there lies another layer to how such policing of women’s bodies has been allowed to continue: consumerism.
On one hand, there is the persistence of appeasing the male gaze with outdated restrictions on clothing, an example of which was in 2021 when the Norwegian women’s handball team were in battle with the sport's governing bodies to wear less-revealing uniforms. Lest we forget, when the team wore shorts during a game in 2021 and were fined €150 each.
And what if an athlete wants to wear a smaller version of an outfit? Well, there can be problems there, too. Again in 2021, Welsh Paralympian Olivia Breen recounted a competition official remarking that her briefs were ‘too short and inappropriate.’
Other female athletes shared their story after Breen. What each of these stories highlights is that often there is no winning - respectability, comfort, function, or fashion come second to policing women’s bodies.
On the other hand, you have the sponsors of athletes dictating design, such as Team USA’s track and field uniforms during the Paris Olympics in 2024. When Nike revealed the outfits in April 2024, it sparked a massive online debate ranging from sexist ideals to beautiful design. Fashion vs function.
When Sha’Carri Richardson and Athing Mu donned the outfits, opinion shifted as the line consisted of 50 unique pieces to ensure that a wide range of body types were fit, but more importantly, that the athletes were comfortable.
Comfortability is a personal choice, and it is the ability to choose that is the primary concern of women in sport. With comfort achieved, athletes can focus on the sport at hand. But on Saturday, the sport itself was neglected.
Despite 70% of women who play camogie stating they are not comfortable wearing skorts and 83% of players wanting an option to wear shorts, the Munster final was postponed, disrupting workloads, training and personal lives.
A stance on clothing that did not reflect the opinions of the actual players themselves took precedence over the sport itself.
Is it a last vestige of control? As women have spent the best part of a century cementing their presence in sport, is policing what they wear the last bit of power that can be wielded within women’s sport?
Often under the guise of design features from brand deals or ‘maintaining a sense of respectability,’ the question is asked: Who is being respected?
Skorts were originally a compromise, and the time for that is over.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ.
