Clothing Inventions as Acts of Citizenship? The Politics of Material Participation, Wearable Technologies, and Women Patentees in Late Victorian Britain

This article is about clothing inventions, material participation, and acts of citizenship. I explore how pioneering Victorian women at the turn last century inventively responded via to restrictions their (physical ideological) freedom movement. While bicycle typically celebrated as a primary vehicle women’s emancipation that time, argue inventive forms clothing, such convertible cycling skirts, also helped make claims rights privileges otherwise legally denied sex. ask: Do inventions create possibilities act differently? Can they be thought wearable technology, in what ways do (and invention) enact political concerns? Might skirts considered “acts citizenship?” Throughout, mobilize concepts multiplicity, in-betweenness, ambiguity case for relevance research science technology studies.