jockeys and the trainers. With these men she felt at ease, understanding their working-manâs language. She rapidly became not only a fearless and skillful rider, but also a fine polo player, at that time unusual for a woman.
Gabrielle would say that her fine horsemanship didnât spring from an obsession with horses, that she wasnât like Etienne or those English women who âloved hanging around the stables.â Nonetheless, it was for her horsemanship that she was remembered by Valéry Ollivier, one of Etienneâs friends, himself a distinguished horseman. He and the other visitors to Royallieu hadnât regarded Etienneâs young mistress as particularly significant: âShe was a tiny little thing, with a pretty, very expressive, roguish face and a strong personality. She amazed us because of her nerve on horseback, but aside from that there was nothing remarkable about her.â 11
Valéry Ollivier was correct: Gabrielle did have a strong personality. And as a character of outstanding force and intelligence, she could also have excelled at a number of things. In the future, she would say of her couture business, âI could easily have done something else. It was an accident.â 12
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After the mid-nineteenth century, it had become increasingly fashionable for women of means to go horse riding. Both female riders and lesbians were called Amazons (referring to those sexually suspect women in Greek mythology). This was because their riding habits had for many years been quasi-masculine ensembles and were regarded as an especially forward-thinking, modern aspect of female dress. 13 The riding habits were made of woolen cloth and dark, sober colors (then uncommon for women of means in their daily attire). The women wore severely tailored jackets and skirts over chamois trousers, attached to a corset, frequently made by menâs tailors. It was accepted that these outfits were intentionally masculine, made even more so with the addition of a manâs bowler or top hat. But while the adoption of semimale attire for riding had remained much the same for years, some of the women who hunted were more radical in their appropriation of menâs clothing. For several years, they had worn shorter skirts or even breechesâand rode astride their horses.
Not long after Gabrielle began learning to ride with Etienne, she was to make another gesture revealing her capacity for nonconformity: she went to the tailor at La Croix Saint-Ouen, in the forest of Compiègne, whose usual clients were stable boys and huntsmen, and had him make her a riding outfit. She didnât request a female ensemble of fitted tailored jacket and a long skirt; she wanted a pair of trousersâin other words, jodhpurs. Years later, she remembered the tailorâs confusion at her request.
A photograph shows her sitting astride her horse in her new riding gear: a short-sleeved, mannish shirt, a knitted tie and those rather shocking menâs jodhpurs. Nudging again at tradition, Gabrielle has also substituted the womanâs riding hatâeither a top hat or a bowlerâfor one both less formal and more feminine-looking, wide brimmed and made of soft felt. With her slight figure and broad young face, in this outfit she could almost have been mistaken for a boy.
If Gabrielleâs part in the evolution of womenâs dress was not always as outrageous as others have suggested, while riding astride her horse was in the vanguard, and most shocking was her wearing menâs riding trousers, and not only when she was hunting. And Gabrielle was famously to take this idea further. Rather than confining her blurring of male-female sartorial boundaries to horse riding, it was to become one of her great trademarks; with a hint of that frisson given by cross-dressing, femininity and seductiveness were heightened by borrowings from a manâs wardrobe.
Â
Etienne Balsan was neither a man of politics nor
Gabrielle would say that her fine horsemanship didnât spring from an obsession with horses, that she wasnât like Etienne or those English women who âloved hanging around the stables.â Nonetheless, it was for her horsemanship that she was remembered by Valéry Ollivier, one of Etienneâs friends, himself a distinguished horseman. He and the other visitors to Royallieu hadnât regarded Etienneâs young mistress as particularly significant: âShe was a tiny little thing, with a pretty, very expressive, roguish face and a strong personality. She amazed us because of her nerve on horseback, but aside from that there was nothing remarkable about her.â 11
Valéry Ollivier was correct: Gabrielle did have a strong personality. And as a character of outstanding force and intelligence, she could also have excelled at a number of things. In the future, she would say of her couture business, âI could easily have done something else. It was an accident.â 12
Â
After the mid-nineteenth century, it had become increasingly fashionable for women of means to go horse riding. Both female riders and lesbians were called Amazons (referring to those sexually suspect women in Greek mythology). This was because their riding habits had for many years been quasi-masculine ensembles and were regarded as an especially forward-thinking, modern aspect of female dress. 13 The riding habits were made of woolen cloth and dark, sober colors (then uncommon for women of means in their daily attire). The women wore severely tailored jackets and skirts over chamois trousers, attached to a corset, frequently made by menâs tailors. It was accepted that these outfits were intentionally masculine, made even more so with the addition of a manâs bowler or top hat. But while the adoption of semimale attire for riding had remained much the same for years, some of the women who hunted were more radical in their appropriation of menâs clothing. For several years, they had worn shorter skirts or even breechesâand rode astride their horses.
Not long after Gabrielle began learning to ride with Etienne, she was to make another gesture revealing her capacity for nonconformity: she went to the tailor at La Croix Saint-Ouen, in the forest of Compiègne, whose usual clients were stable boys and huntsmen, and had him make her a riding outfit. She didnât request a female ensemble of fitted tailored jacket and a long skirt; she wanted a pair of trousersâin other words, jodhpurs. Years later, she remembered the tailorâs confusion at her request.
A photograph shows her sitting astride her horse in her new riding gear: a short-sleeved, mannish shirt, a knitted tie and those rather shocking menâs jodhpurs. Nudging again at tradition, Gabrielle has also substituted the womanâs riding hatâeither a top hat or a bowlerâfor one both less formal and more feminine-looking, wide brimmed and made of soft felt. With her slight figure and broad young face, in this outfit she could almost have been mistaken for a boy.
If Gabrielleâs part in the evolution of womenâs dress was not always as outrageous as others have suggested, while riding astride her horse was in the vanguard, and most shocking was her wearing menâs riding trousers, and not only when she was hunting. And Gabrielle was famously to take this idea further. Rather than confining her blurring of male-female sartorial boundaries to horse riding, it was to become one of her great trademarks; with a hint of that frisson given by cross-dressing, femininity and seductiveness were heightened by borrowings from a manâs wardrobe.
Â
Etienne Balsan was neither a man of politics nor
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