Riding habit
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[[Image:Elizabeth of Austrua Habit.jpg|right|thumb|200px|[[Elisabeth of Bavaria]], Empress of Austria, in a riding habit, 1884]]
[[Image:Ridinghabit.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Riding habit, 1801]]
A '''riding habit''' is women's [[clothing]] for [[horseback riding]].
Since the mid-17th century, a formal habit for riding [[sidesaddle]] usually consisted of:
* A [[tailor]]ed jacket with a long [[skirt]] (sometimes called a [[petticoat]]) to match
* A tailored [[shirt]] or [[chemisette]]
* A [[hat]], often in the most formal men's style of the day (since the [[Victorian era]], a [[top hat]] with a [[veil]] has been worn)
Low-heeled [[boot]]s, [[glove]]s, and often a [[necktie|necktie or stock]] complete the ensemble. Typically, throughout the period the riding habit used details from male dress, whether large turned cuffs, gold trims or buttons. The colours were very often darker and more masculine than those on normal clothes. Earlier styles can be similar to the dresses worn by boys before [[breeching]] in these respects.
When high waists were the fashion, from roughly 1790 to 1820, the habit could be a coat dress called a ''riding coat'' (borrowed in French as [[redingote]]) or a petticoat with a short jacket (often longer in back than in front).
==Origins==
In his [[diary]] for [[June 12]] [[1666]], [[Samuel Pepys]] wrote:
: Walking in the galleries at White Hall, I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just, for all the world, like mine; and buttoned their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs under their hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever; which was an odde sight, and a sight did not please me. [http://www.pepys.info/1666/1666jun.html]
Two hundred-and-fifty years later, [[Emily Post]] would write:
:A riding habit, no matter what the fashion happens to be, is like a uniform, in that it must be made and worn according to regulations. It must above all be meticulously trig and compact. Nothing must be sticking out a thousandth part of an inch that can be flattened in...Keep the idea of perfect clothes for men in mind, get nothing that the smartest man would not wear, and you can’t go wrong...Correct riding clothes are not fashion but form! Whether coat skirts are long or short, full or plain, and waists wasp-like or square, the above admonitions have held for many decades, and are likely to hold for many more. [http://www.bartleby.com/95/33.html]
==Style gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Bourgogne-habit-c.1700.jpg|1 - c.1700
Image:Ladyworsley.jpg|2 Lady Worsley - 1776
Image:Morland squires door detail.jpg|3 1790
Image:1799 Riding Habit July LMM.jpg|4 - 1799
Image:Riding habit 1830s.jpg|5 - 1830s
Image:Lovers-Morning-Recreation-Sarony-Major-1850.jpg|6 - 1850s
</gallery>
#[[:Image:Bourgogne-habit-c.1700.jpg|Marie Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne]] in a scarlet riding habit, with male cuffs, gold trim, and buttons, early 1700s
#[[:Image:Ladyworsley.jpg|Lady Worsley]] in a riding habit with a cutaway coat and waistcoat, and military details from the uniform of her husband's regiment, then in America fighting the rebels, 1776.
#[[:Image:Morland squires door detail.jpg|Button-front redingote]] of 1790, worn with a tall hat.
#[[:Image:1799 Riding Habit July LMM.jpg|Fashion plate]] of 1799. (See notes on this plate at [http://www.regencygarderobe.com/Monthly%20QA%20Pages/RidingHabits.htm].)
#[[:Image:Riding habit 1830s.jpg|1830s]] habits show the popular full sleeves of the day.
#[[:Image:Lovers-Morning-Recreation-Sarony-Major-1850.jpg|1850s]] habit, worn with fashionable ringlets under a top hat.
==Notes==
#[http://www.pepys.info/1666/1666jun.html Pepys' diary for June 1666]
#[http://www.bartleby.com/95/33.html Emily Post's Etiquette, 1922, Chapter XXXIII. Dress] See paragraph 40 "Riding Clothes"
#[http://www.regencygarderobe.com/Monthly%20QA%20Pages/RidingHabits.htm Riding Habits at the Regency Garderobe]
==External links==
*[http://users.tinyworld.co.uk/sidesaddlelady/Museum%20-%20riding%20habits.html History of Riding Habits]
[[Category:Rider apparel]]
[[Category:Sports clothing]]
[[Category:History of clothing (Europe)]]
[[Category:History of clothing (Western fashion)]]
[[Category:Suits (clothing)]]