reform costumes and the exposition of them, notably during the Nordic Exhibition of 1888. Finland While there were no separate dress reform societies founded in Finland, the women's rights society Suomen Naisyhdistys actively addressed the issue under the influence of the Swedish Dress Reform Society in the 1880s; they held lectures in many Finnish cities, managed to have the reform costume accepted as sports wear in the girls' schools of the capital by 1887, and was awarded the grand silver medal for their reform costume for school girls in the exhibition of the Russian Hygienic Society in Saint Petersburg in 1893. France There were no separate dress reform societies founded in France. While the issue was adopted and discussed by several of the existing French women's rights organisations, the issue was not given priority and it was not until the great enthusiasm for bicycling in France in the 1890s that women in general adopted the bloomer costume with trousers and no corsets as sports wear. In the early 20th-century, however, the French fashion industry was finally influenced by the reform dress movement, which abolished the corset by the 1910s. Germany Germany was a leading country of the dress reform in the 19th-century, as it was an integrated part of the great health reform movement Lebensreform, which spoke for a health reform in clothing for both women and men supported by medical professionals and scientists such as Gustav Jaeger and Heinrich Lahmann, and freedom from the corset and trousers for women was advocated for already. The women's movement, however, did not engage in the issue until after the International Women's Congress in Berlin in September 1896. Two weeks later the German dress reform association, Allgemeiner Verein zur Verbesserung der Frauenkleidung (General Association for the Improvement of Women's Clothing), was founded. Its first exhibition took place in April 1897 in Berlin. 35 manufacturers had submitted reform proposals. Since 1899 there was even a permanent exhibition in Berlin with examples of "improved women's clothing". Like their equivalents in Austria, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, the German dress reform association focused on the reform of women's undergarments as the most realistic goal, mainly on corsets. The German movement managed to affect public opinion to such a degree that one of its leading figures, Minna Cauer, was able to report in 1907 that the German corset industry experienced hardships because of a drop in