Hidden history of active women showcased in US capital

Visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will have access to the work of sociologist Professor Kat Jungnickel, which reveals the hidden histories of women’s involvement in sport and active life through research into patents.

Funded by the European Research Council (ERC), the Politics of Patents research project (POP) will help visitors discover how innovations in ready-to-wear clothing transformed sports, especially for women from the 1890s to the present day. The National Museum of American History, the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are presenting the public events programme alongside the current Change Your Game exhibition.  

An interactive booth will include demonstrations of historic sportswear reconstructions, with visitors invited to both wear items and take photographs with different backdrops and props. An ‘invent your own sportswear’ workshop, where people will be asked to think of solutions to current problems they face when being active, will also feature. Professor Jungnickel will join two panel discussions during the two-day event and George Kalivis, POP Research Assistant, is part of the team preparing and running the events. 

Professor Jungnickel said, “It is fascinating how the problems inventors raise and attempt to solve in their patents, even a century ago, remain relevant today and can inspire new ideas for living active and sporty lives.” 

Wearing the garments is an essential part of POP’s approach to researching patents. In a process described as ‘speculative sewing’, compiling thousands of patents from 94 countries across the world marked only the beginning of the research. Stitching together contextual research about the lives of inventors, along with in-depth visual and ethnographic analysis with reconstructions of historic clothing innovations, was an inventive method deployed in bringing the items to life. Wearing the resulting reconstructions enables POP’s team of sewing social scientists to learn more about the patents, experience the clothing and reflect on the issues inventors were addressing. 

One of the garments to be shown in Washington DC is a convertible cycling, walking and hiking skirt, patented by Alice Worthington-Winthrop from Washington, US. Apron-style panels on the front and back, forming a skirt, can be detached to reveal wide-legged trousers better suited to cycling or hiking. One apron then folds up into a satchel, and the other into a cape, perfect for cycling in inclement weather. This would allow women to be active and travel more freely, while still being able to quickly convert the garment back into a skirt when arriving at their destination. 

The POP project, under Professor Jungnickel's direction, has explored over 200 years of clothing patents to discover how inventors created new forms of clothing and wearables which could subvert and challenge norms. As the six-year project draws to its close, Professor Jungnickel is finalising the second book to come from the research. The first book from the project, Wearable Utopias: Imagining, Inventing and Inhabiting New Worlds, was published last year.