This is rather interesting:
"Although some 19th century dress designs were closely draped, the term Hobble Skirt originates from around 1910, when the exotic, revolutionary creations of designers such as Poiret, Worth, Lucile and Paquin introduced the Western World to the concept that a skirt narrow enough around a woman's legs to substantially restrict her movement is extraordinarily attractive.
(Please bear in mind that two of these famous original Hobble Skirt-era designers were women. The suggestion by some fashion historians that women at the height of the suffragette movement were somehow forced against their will, by tyrannical male dressmakers, to struggle around in restricting skirts is completely wrong.
Poiret's boastful claim to have "shackled" women's legs should be taken figuratively, not literally. No designer can compel women to wear the garments he designs. They wear them of their own volition - including Hobble Skirts - because, however impractical such designs may have been, they are considered (by women) to be the height of stylish dressing. The way the wearer has to walk is all part of the appeal - admired by most but, inevitably, ridiculed by an ignorant minority, who, in displaying such ignorance, expose themselves as the real object worthy of ridicule.
Women will only ever wear what they wish to wear, but they will happily shorten their stride in order to wear a slender dress or skirt if they can see how attractive it is to do so. No male persuasion necessary. You will find many vintage photos of the Hobble Skirt era showing groups of women at society events strolling elegantly along together in their immense hats and obviously restricting hobble skirts. Such women dressed primarily to please themselves and each other, irrespective of male opinion.
The Hobble Skirt should be viewed, not as a symptom of male domination, but as a statement of feminine power and independence in women's struggle for emancipation and control in the battle of minds of the early Twentieth Century.)"