Western fashion for women in the 1900s emphasized tight waists and exaggerated hips. Dresses and skirts were long and often ruffled. Skirts were often paneled to have great flares at the bottom, often with trailing trains. Except for evening wear most articles of clothing had long sleeves with puffed, exaggerated shoulders. Fifteen yeas later, the skirts are shorter (ankle length instead of floor length), gathered instead of paneled, and waists are no longer so well defined. blouse and jacket sleeves have lost elegance of line, becoming straighter whether narrow or broad. There’s a lot less use of lace as well.

The Roaring twenties find looser fitted clothing and waists have dropped from the empire height to down about the hips. For suits, the fit is rather loose. Skirts are straight, lacking the feminine line of twenty years ago. Blouses, too, are loose and hide the feminine curves. Skirt length continues to shorten until by 1929, they each just below the knees.

Fashions of the 1930s show how drastic evolution from the turn of the century, with flowing curve-fitting dress lines, short sleeves and a lack of overlays of fabric. A woman nowadays would not seem so far fetched wearing a Summer dress from that era. The forties seemed to be a continuation of emphasizing a woman’s form until the influence of WWII when clothing begins to take on an almost masculine look. This probably occurs because while men go off to war, women begin to take over their jobs at all levels especially in the factories.

The technological and scientific advances of that time were far-reaching and rapidly changing, but it has been the most recent three or so decades that have seen the fastet and greatest change in technology (although scientific understanding continues to advance quickly, it seems to me that it could be even faster under the right conditions – this is a treatise for another time and place, however). Has fashion also changed with similar rapidity? I say no. In fact, fashion now shows a kind of cycling with color themes, boot and shoe styles, cuts and drapes seeming to come and go with only minor variations to differentiate them from earlier decades’ fashion trends.

Some things have remained constant – men’s suits have hardly changed at all once they took on the form of suit coat, trausers, button down shirts and ties. Womens skirts move up and down and there are a few standard cuts. The mini skirt (the thigh high skirt of the late 1960s and early 1970s hasn’t actually disappeared so much as lost its name and shock value. Padded shoulders come and go but that’s a minor structural change. Tee shirts and jeans have been acceptable casual wear for at least 60 years (though the cut and line fo the jeans vary). The last thirty years show a fashion sense that is very nearly motionless!

There are two most likely conclusions to be drawn from this. Either people no longer reach out to experiment and rebel against standard fashion dictates or anything goes. There is a third possibility; that the truth is something of a combination of these.

Next week I will write about some fashion forms that would seem to refute my assertion that fashion evolution may have come to a grinding halt. You might be surprised where this takes us.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 12:27 AM and is filed under Style Mastery Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.