Dress appropriately: The evolution of women’s golf apparel

Karl Danneberger, Ph.D.

This past summer, Renata, one of my graduate students, received an internship offer from the USGA’s Green Section. She asked me about proper attire for the internship. Telling students what to wear in a university setting is sensitive and can end in an appointment with human resources. So I replied with something like, “Whatever is appropriate.”

Renata, who is bright and hardworking and wanted to give the appropriate professional impression, found my answer lacking and continued to inquire.

I tried replies like, “Go to a clothing store and ask the sales staff,” and “Ask a few women golfers what they think you should wear.” The answers Renata received were vague and often based on the age of the advice giver. Also, these clothing decisions should not entirely reflect playing golf, but additionally represent an expert providing technical support to golf course superintendents and club officials.

Men are easier to dress. Don’t wear denim, wear a collared shirt with sleeves and throw in a sports jacket just in case, and you basically have it covered. For Renata, a golf hat or visor, along with a pair of spikeless or walking golf shoes, would be appropriate. It was the in-between about which I didn’t have a clue.

Given the number of golf courses I’ve visited, why didn’t I have an impression of what is appropriate dress for women? I started scanning books and online, looking at what women golfers wear.

Through photographs, I found the evolution of women’s golf wear rather telling. In the middle of the 19th century, women playing golf in Scotland wore everyday Victorian clothes, which included stiff-structured petticoats and bustles, with hemlines slightly above the floor. Swinging a golf club in Victorian dress had to be nearly impossible, and putting could not have been easy. Twentieth century dresses weren’t much better, though the Edwardian style of the time jettisoned the hoops and many of the petticoats.

At this time, Charles Dana Gibson penned a number of satirical drawings of the “Gibson Girl,” a personification of the ideal female in all her beauty, including a female golfer. The drawing consisted of the Gibson Girl standing in the rough while several caddies (dressed in business suits) supposedly looked for her golf ball. It carried the caption, “Advice to Caddies. You will save time by keeping your eye on the ball, not the player.”

In the early 1900s, London’s Thomas Burberry introduced improvements to women golf clothing that allowed greater freedom to swing a club. By the 1920s, popular women’s golf wear consisted of a blouse, a pleated skirt and a knit cardigan sweater. The mid-1920s saw the introduction of the one-piece golf dress.

Also in the ’20s, golf fashion became more popular, with women golfers appearing on the covers of magazines like Vogue. However, other magazine covers exhibited tension with women golfers. For example, a cover of Life magazine (Oct. 14, 1920) shows a smartly dressed young woman golfer standing on the putting green checking her face with her compact while several male golfers lie in the fairway. The caption reads “Fore.”

One-piece dresses, skirts, blouses and sweaters were the common attire of women golfers through the 1950s and 1960s, with variations still popular today. However, I witnessed uneasiness with women on the golf course through the 1950s. I think his unease changed with the cover of The New Yorker (Aug. 12, 1974) depicting a woman pulling her bag to a green.

So, what advice could I give Renata? I never gave her any advice. When she returned from her internship she told me she and everyone else was pleased with her dress. I guess she figured it out.