A stylish ice skating costume from the 1890s featuring a dress with a fur trimmed muff and hat it was advised by women’s magazines that the wires and the bustles had to go. Ladies skating skirts should not be extremely short, even for young girls. The skates themselves raise one several inches from the floor and make a moderately short skirt just that much shorter. It is better to have a fairly long skirt which clears the floor well when the skates are adjusted. There is no reluctance on the part of the fashionable young girl of the moment to study the art of skating.

Jackson Haines, the Father of Figure Skating – In the mid 1800s, American Jackson Haines was experimenting to combine his dance training with skating during the time that the accepted norm was to rigidly etch complex patterns into the ice. a sleigh. His is marked “America’s Skating King.”

Skating belongs to the regular curriculum, at least it has been included among the studies planned for the education and physical development of the coming debutante and every young girl who can balance herself is learning the art.

There is something about the rhythmic motion of the girl poised on skimming blades which cannot be reproduced in any other sport. Skating itself is graceful, Every movement is picturesque and full of life and action, and a girl can hardly learn to skate well without acquiring an effective and attractive movement of the body.

Any girl who has become fairly expert on skates will tell you so if she attempts any other sport, such as driving an automobile, tobogganing, skiing or something else requiring a certain amount of strength and visual accuracy. It is twice as easy to learn to handle a motor car when one has mastered the art of skating before. Unconsciously almost, the skater learns to measure distances, to take in situations at a glance; in fact, to see without apparently looking when flying along the ice balanced on two keen, cutting blades.

A crowded rink is not suitable for the display of fancy figures, which need the space taken up by cutting a figure “8” or a figure “3.” These are usually reserved for special exhibitions or for occasions when the centre of the rink is comparatively free. Both of these figures, as well as pirouettes, can be mastered in a very few lessons if the pupil is keenly interested in the sport and is an intelligent skater.