Day 287: On July 19, 1848, a new garment was introduced at the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Known as the Bloomer Dress, it incorporated a variation of pantaloons designed "to improve women's health." In the days of lavish and numerous petticoats, these pantaloons (open along the center seam save for a few inches in the front) gave a woman the freedom to perform her physiological functions with greater ease, duties which otherwise had been difficult to conduct once she was dressed for the day. Alas, Amelia Bloomer's liberating and revolutionary garment was not a lasting success. It did, however, earn her a place in the history books as the inventor of the pantaloons which still bear her name.
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