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Can you make a video about the hair styles and types of moustaches and beards that were in the Victorian era? I see a lot of generals and doctors with long beards and even long hair, during the ACW, but also a lot of clean faces soon after the Victorian era
No, you are not the only one I hate. Leopard prints if you can't afford real love for just stay away from them.Artificial, and of course, we don't want any real efforts wounded
I teach at a university so I see all my students' styles daily. One of the other faculty (in her 60s, while I'm in my 30s) mentioned once to me that she's glad to see that nowadays people are free to wear whatever styles/eras suit them, rather than in previous decades where there was only one specific look that was socially required for much longer periods of time. The fast cycling, internet expansion, and social globalization of fashion seems to contribute there. I don't overhear my students making fun of each other's clothing. I overhear *aggressive* positivity from them. So whenever I see a headline that XYZ trend is in, I don't pay any attention to it, because what they're actually saying to each other is "Does this make you happy? Yes? THEN WERK GIRL YOU'RE AMAZING I LOVE YOU now go drink some water." Said in all one breath of course.
This is my experience exactly! I'm pushing 50, am a uni teacher, and I have been so happy how *free* fashion is these days. My experience of fashion in the 80s was of constant fear of being caught wearing the "wrong thing," but there no longer seems to be any styles which are deemed "out of fashion" so starkly. I thought it was because I'm old and have lost my perception of coolness, but my students really do seem to allow themselves a wider range of expression. I suspect 90s grudge, combined with the time-flattening effect of the internet have really expanded peoples' clothing choices. My students wear both skinny legs or bell bottoms, and no one gets bullied. I think it's fantastic.
Omg they are so cute sometimes! Yeah, my son was never mocked for his clothes & ended up not getting ANY negative feedback from peers, so I did some gentle guiding during college to get him classroom-ready. lol he’s such an old soul, I’ve already bought new versions of tshirts he loved but they were hand me downs worn hard. I never actually wore my clothes out in my 20s, & I def didn’t just love my clothes enough already that I wanted the same tshirts for the next 10 yrs. The vegetarian human talking to the humanitarian bear is a good one, and the sassiest he is willing to go (it’s an insult tee but barely).
My grandfather was born in 1910 and apparently was much more fashionable than I thought. He told stories of making his own bell-bottoms by taking regular trousers and adding gussets to the side seams of the lower leg.
I’m impressed he was wearing bell bottoms either before 1960 or when he was in his 50s+…or both! Extreme fashion! Mine was born in 1907, and as far as I can tell, dressed like an 80 year old man with one outfit left - his whole life! He had a John Brown style beard & it and the shirt underneath were always stained with food. Ugh. The other grandfather was born in 1882 so I’ll give him a pass, he was 60 when my mom was born, he had no fashion left.
My grandparents were all born between 1907 and 1911. Finding old pictures and remembering stories. They were all very stylish. One grandfather told a story of getting in trouble from the landlady for throwing plates into the alley instead of washing them! This was just before the crash and he felt he was rolling in money! He was also working in the stock market at the time
i definitely cut open my jeans and sewed in colorful gussets in the late 90s in hs. we all couldn't afford new jeans so it was trendy at my poor hs to do that instead. it was kinda terrible since walking everywhere in the snow with big flaps of quilting cotton around your ankles is not practical at all.
I make my own Victorian-inspired clothing, so this is the most I've learned about modern fashion trends in years. It feels almost academic- fashion history in the present day!
Yes, I watch Bernadette and Abby, etc. etc., but I always learn the most from Nicole. As a scholar myself, I appreciate her careful research and her ability to make such a wide range of topics relevant to the moment. And I'm so glad she talked about the way in which we tend to glom onto certain style characteristics of a decade as if everyone were wearing them when they weren't. I was in my 20s during the 80s, and I certainly remember the absurdly large shoulder pads and boxy jackets. They were all over the women's magazines. But they were NOT all over the streets or offices. I never wore them, and no one I knew wore them.
Seriously! We are age-contemporaries, and the shoulder pads were always a wince-fest to my crowd (Renfaire/folkie/Victoriana brats). The big mistake mainstream fashion recyclers make is in ignoring the subculture camps that gravitate to particular styles, and have a culture war going with other camps at any one time. I think it's why those retro 'hits' music compilations are always so wretched, because they ignore the political and psychic demarcation lines, and only look at same-#-of-sales data.
Yeah, shoulder pads existed and I have inherited a lady’s trench coat from the 80s with them, but there’s no family photos from the 80s with that stuff in it, but several family photos include color block styles that I remember a single item with it when I was a kid: a fanny pack.
Back in the 80s I lived in NYC and big shoulder pads and boxy jackets were seen all over, including on my body. When I look back at photos I think how did I ever love that style. I guess it depended upon where one lived.
The difference is the trend cycles don't feel new any more, and it's because the past has become so accessible to us. Imagine you're a young person in the 1970s. What access do you have to the 1930s? Maybe a couple of old books in your house, some old family photos. Maybe some newspaper or magazine clippings, a movie-of-the week on TV. Not much. For the most part the 1930s are an ancient time to you. An era beyond memory. So fashions from the 1930s you find at thrift shop are going to feel new and refreshing. You can enjoy the silhouettes and colors and patterns totally removed from the context of their origin and make them new again. 25 years later, it's the late 90s, and now for young people the 70s are that ancient time beyond memory, and you can pick and choose the styles from the 70s you like without any of the context or cultural baggage. Old feels new again. Now it's 2024, but this time 1990s never went away. The 2000s never went away. The 2010s never went away. The internet preserves everything, so old can't become new again. The 1990s are more accessible now than they were during the actual decade. Seriously: you can watch any episode of ER or Friends or Frasier with just a few clicks. You can read any 90s issue of any magazine you like at will. You couldn't do that during the actual 90s. So when 90s and Y2K trends come back now, it doesn't feel new. It doesn't feel scrubbed clean of its context. It just feels rehashed. I think that's why fashion in general has felt so stale and repetitive the past couple decades. Nothing goes away enough for its comeback to have any impact.
In high school I got in a serious push bike accident because my flared jeans got caught up in the chain (I think) and I toppled over going down a hill. I didn’t bike in that cut of jeans again. I feel that actually started my love of skinny jeans because they could always be tucked into my boots.
We either rolled one leg up to the knee so it couldn't catch in the chain or put a big rubber band around the hem! Conveniently, my DAD had also come of age in the 60's/70's when bell bottoms were all the rage (he thought the repeat of the bell bottoms and platforms at the turn of the millennium and his own kid wearing what he did was pretty funny), so he told me this BEFORE I got on my bike when I wore my first pair. He spoke from learned experience. 😂
I remember something on tv where an old guy in a care home recreated the most cool trousers from his youth in 60s, it was bell bottoms with contrast gussets and he had Christmas lights under his pant leg so the gussets were illuminated! I can’t imagine imagine it was very comfortable but it’s definitely creative
As for leopard print… here’s a story. The lady across the street growing up in Tucson was so stylish. She was an artist and leaned towards a somewhat glam type style. She had waist length salt and pepper hair. She would do her yardwork in a leopard print bathing suit!
I'm 59 and I have a pair of stylized taupe mary janes that I love. I don't feel childish when I wear them👵. I think fashion will stay comfortable and, if I had my way, very long lasting in our future. Fun can be added in clothing as well and made of composable fabrics. I can dream.
In the UK wide bottom trousers in the 1920s were called Oxford bags. They came about because the Oxford students in the rowing club needed trousers that were easy to put on over their rowing shorts. The design soon found its way into general fashion and there are cartoons of men wearing very wide legged versions. Women liked them too and started wearing them particularly for evening wear.
I’ve learned so much from your videos that I need to pass a bit on. Your tutorial on buttonholes led me to spend countless hours making them until I get compliments from experienced sewists now on how great mine are.
I was always told that suede couldn’t be conditioned, but I have a vintage suede (or, technically rough-out) coat from the 70s, and it was very dry, so I figured I’d just try it anyway. Surprise! It can totally be conditioned. A heavy, cream- or wax-like conditioner darkens it a lot and mats down the nap, but a lighter lotion-like conditioner (I used Bick 4) soaks in nicely. When it has, you bring the nap back up with a suede brush, and voila!
When you started talking about the puff sleeves in the 80s, then 30s, I thought about how those big shoulders made me feel back then - powerful, commanding, taking up space - and wondered how political and societal changes might affect style. Certainly in the 80s I felt a big change in how women were seen - a big push towards women in power, leaders of corporations, not needing marriage or men, etc - and I kind of have the feeling (from the few movies I've seen from the time) a similar revolution was happening in the 30s, and wonder about the other eras. No shrinking violet wears big puff sleeves/ broad shoulders, no wallflower trying to go unnoticed. They are definitely a "I WILL BE SEEN" and "I can take up space" garment.
Going to an Army/Navy surplus store & getting a Pea Coat & sailor pants was kinda a thing at my high school in the 70s. Suede desert boots were very in too. I've always associated flare/bell bottoms with sailors & gauchos/cowboys (to fit over the boots & spurs) The main thing against the flares of the 90s & why I did not wear them was the low, low rise. Sometimes barely 3 inches. I could never figure out why anyone wanted to show off their thong.( I know, naval piercings & low back tattoos were trending as well) Hip huggers were a thing in the 60s but they weren't indecently low. I'm looking forward to the return of a high waisted flare jean with seaming details.
Love me a pea coat ! I need to find an Army/Navy store & buy another one ! Loved that BIG COLLAR. Kept the wind off your ears ! That and a scarf & I rarely even needed a hat !
Nicole, this could be a series!! Just going back through the cycles of different trends, continuing to point to how they relate to different cultural ideals of youth vs. maturity, aspiration vs authenticity, militarism and pastoralism, etc. We only learned the absolute surface film of fashion history in design school; you could even expand the series to “how to research fashion history” and more!! You always have the most amazing primary sources, haha
Thanks for explaining style and silhouette, I've never been able to figure out what does or does not go with what (or why) and this is helping. I have a lot of disparate interesting bits in my wardrobe bought through the 90s-2010s and a lot of them are neat on their own but how do I match that with anything else I have? And also, I've got plans for making some Big Pants soon and before this video I had no idea what on earth I'd wear them with. You made me think back to the kinds of shirts I was wearing the last time I bought even remotely fashionable clothing, the early 2000s, and I liked the flares I bought at the time and still wear them now because they're comfortable (most of them were made with stretch-corduroy and the off-the-hip style was in then too which meant I didn't have waistbands up my ribcage thanks to my short waist and shot rise). And thanks for pointing out what I've been missing with my head buried in the sand working on historically--inspired clothin, that comfort has become a big thing in fashion right now. That's a bandwagon I can hop on easily! (because I can actually MOVE in those PJ pants I've been wearing since lockdoowns!)
I've found a lot of inspiration in the current trends of wearing clothing "wrong"- taking a 1920s mens oversized shirt and wearing it untucked with the buttons only done at the top. Add a waistcoat or short jacket for shape. It's been a fun way to see what works and what doesn't without buying new things!
Wait, so suede is still top-up, just with the shiny layer shaved off? That's interesting, and I think it's interesting to look at how terms change in other countries. In Romanian it's called 'turned leather', because the definition is specifically referring to using the underside of the leather rather than shaving the top layer. And indeed, any traditional items made with suede are made with leather that's turned to the other side, rather than the shaved type you refer to throughout. We don't even have a term for suede that is a perfect translation.
We didn't need it in English until recently, apparently! I do feel like it also implies a level of softness to the leather which is not always present. A little less stiff.
According to Wikipedia, in Germany it can also refer to both. Either the top (usually because damaged) part of the skin is removed or the skin is prepared inside out. Fun fact, suede is colloquially called 'Wildleder' (wild leather) here. I always thought, that that referred to the slightly 'rustic' look. But nope. I just learned, that actually it's a term only correct for suede made from the skin of non domesticated animals, like deer. The correct name here would be 'velour leather', from the French velours (velvet). Learn something new, every day 😅
The association with leopards comes from Bacchus, not Hercules. Thus the leopard print for the 18th century wearer would have evoked the Maenads, the ecstatic followers of Dionysus clad in exotic leopard as witness not only to their strength, but to the breadth of their sojourns.
@@amyc.russell9487 He did, but leopard print is not the same as a lion's skin. The core of Hercules' mythology was formed when lions were found in Greece. Leopards, however, were exotic. In Greek red-figure vases, one sees Persians represented as wearing leopard skins, representing their _otherness_.
I had a lovely argument with a colleague once... we were having an 80s themed party at the office. Every one did spanx and neon colors .... I wore my favorite black jeans, an Iron Maiden shirt and a faux leather vest I bought for the occasion, fluffed up my hair and did crazy eyeshadow. He thought I cheated...
Love what Nicole said. "...it is the way we wear something that makes it modern." Skinny jeans are out, but "modern" jeans are not for me. I wear flares and my 5 feet (1.5 meters) shrinks cartoonishly. So I culled the super skinny jeans, kept the moderately skinny/straight leg jeans, accompanied by slightly loose fitting tops that are cropped giving an illusion of a more proportional outfit.
Thank you, Nicole, for helping me realize what my favourite silhouette is and why. I'm a person who doesn't really care about current fashion and would happily wear the same style for the rest of my life. I'm getting into sewing my own clothes because I can never find anything that fits me well or things in the style I like (skinny jeans never fitted me and straight jeans fit me like skinny jeans. I've been a boot cut girly since hs because it makes my legs look gorgeous). When I become proficient in this I will be able to do my own thing like I've always wanted to even when it was stupidly difficult.
Years ago, I was reading a book about feminine beauty across the ages. At the end of the book, the author included a chapter on clothing fashions. He said that in ancient times, clothing didn't change that much over centuries; that Queen Cleopatra VII Philopator (the famous one who got involved with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony) and Queen Nefertiti wore pretty much the same outfit, even though they were centuries apart. He claimed that later, the rate of change in fashions speeded up (and I can't remember why or how this happened). I'd love to see you explore this topic.
What with the current "comfortable but interesting" trend and with global warming, now is the PERFECT time to make kaftans, thawbs, and shalwar-kameez into everyday wear. They can be made in super comfortable printed muslins
Lol I have been doing that since the 80s! Those pants are so incredibly comfortable, especially for crawling on the floor cutting out multiple theatre costumes.
Yes! And they were the most comfortable shoes I ever wore... I had mine from gr8 to matric when they finally died. No shoes have ever been as comfortable as those wide fit Mary Jane school shoes.
I feel like the 1920s was when we dramatically changed fashion from long dresses and suits (even for casual and work wear) to more modern silhouettes and garments such as short skirts, pants and no corsets for women, and more casual styles for men. This is obviously an oversimplification that I bet Nicole could do a whole video on, but there is a notable seismic shift in fashion that is still with us today. Therefore, it makes sense that these trends keep being traced back to the 1920’s. It is the birth of many modern fashions.
My spouse was in the Navy. I had access to real Navy bellbottom jeans in the early '70s. The Navy jeans had no outer seam, so the fit around the hips was really on the bias of the fabric. They felt, and made me feel sexy. I was 23. I have only ever owned one item of clothing that was vaguely leopard print. I do not like animal prints, never have. I remember years when it took really hunting to find clothes that I liked that were not leopard print. It was everywhere. In the late '60s, I remember faux fur bikinis, and in the very early '70s, platform shoes with the sole at the toe 3 inches thick. Now I live in Birkenstocks for the comfort.
I love your objective take on fashion history. Regardless of whether or not it's to your taste, you frame everything in context. You're hands down one of my favourite youtubers and I always recommend your videos to people - you're how I know how to get heels to fit!
Wow... I thought I was great at historical fashion, but me and my jaw are just floored by the bell-bottom thing going SO far back--! GREAT job, SO fun to learn these things! 😊❤
This is an amazing video. As someone who doesn’t really follow trends or fashion learning that everything pretty much follows through a set of shapes is really interesting.
Well said. I think this video is helpful for understanding when a garment has a hard time “aging” or being reusable in future trend combinations. It’s because it has too many trends of a specific time period built-into it that it becomes almost impossible to update. Alternations become almost necessary
XD When you were talking about suede and boxy styles, all I could think of was my LARPing armour, which is suede with leather plates and has *very* boxy shoulders. It's also one of the only things I actually feel like I look nice in, since my body shape doesn't really go well with fitted styles.
I had a pair of the red leather double strap t-straps in that buster brown ad! The first pair of shoes I remember. My toddler self threw a huge fit to get them and they began my love of shoes and red ones in particular! 🤣
This video is making me think of some super platform black velour mary janes that I had in 1999 when I was a freshman in high school. I literally Begged my mom to get them for me out of some Just Nikki catalog right before they went out of business. It makes me think of all the things that we circled in the delia's catalog that my mom said were basically nearly straight rips of the things that she wore in the 1970's as a teen.
1890s and 1980s sleeves! 😂 What a fascinating deep-dive into trends! I had no idea leopard print was omnipresent throughout time lol. Great work, Nicole!!
I really appreciated your explanation of what suede actually is. Would you ever do a “leather explainer” video maybe like the ones you have for linen and wool? (But yes I am here for the trend analysis.)
I really appreciate the research and presentation. The history of anything is interesting to me, but especially clothing, hats, shoes, and accessories, including jewelry (because I wire wrap and I sew and crochet and quilt and weave, and do leatherwork, and a lot of other things) I set out to learn various different crafts with the goal of making my home and wardrobe as completely as possible, by my own hands. I don't know if I'll actually do it, but it's been a lot of fun so far, as well as a lot of work
The average person isn't forcing their personal style tastes to the whims of 'daaaa trends'. We are forcing trending styles to fit our personal style. If I like a certain type of trend I will force it to fit in with my cringelord urge to dress like a 80s hair metal rocker. 😅
I was in Italy in the early nineties, & was shocked when I saw designers putting business shirts under ballgowns. I think that was the last time a fashion really surprised me, although it makes sense, just thinking about the silhouette. But how uncomfortable to have all that extra fabric rucked up under the tight bodice...
Were they full shirts, or just collars and sleeves (kind of like a Dirndl-blouse, which usually ends under the bust)? Because a full shirt would indeed be uncomfortable, not so much because of the fabric, but buttons under a tight-fitting bodice.
@KathrinFranke-z4c Exactly! I expect it was all one dress, but I remember immediately feeling the discomfort of having all that fabric bunched up under a tighter bodice. I've tried all kinds of searches, but sadly, can't find any pictures.
This is one of my favorite videos you’ve done! I see the barrel pants/jeans trend mirroring the earliest bell bottoms from the early 1820’s (that you showed). Personally I dislike them. I remember my mom in the early 1970’s not buying me bell bottoms because she thought they’d go out of fashion too soon. She had zero fashion sense! Small doses of leopard is the only way I’ll wear that trend. I made a ribbon belt of leopard print in the late 1980’s that I wore till my waist expanded.
I'm not sure I ever had proper bell-bottoms, but I definitaly had boot cuts. I'll need to buy another pair if they're coming back. I agree on the animal print, It's not really my thing, too dramatic, but I could see myself maybe changing buttons, a patch on a back pocket, a bag strap, or a belt.
“Cake eater” immediately pulls up the scene in Clueless where they accidentally get on the freeway. Murray tells Cher that Christian is a cake eater. Sooo I can only imagine what Nicole had to navigate for her research
The vast majority of people don't do that which is why fashion changes over time and often through different combinations and little things like shoes and jackets and accessories. It is also teens to change their cloths a lot not just because of fashion but because they grow so they need new cloths.
It still freaks me out every time I see teenagers running around in Y2K fashion, because the thought of teens wearing the trends of their parents' youth is just weird. I get trends coming back after maybe two generations, because the fashion has been out of style long enough to no longer read as behind the times and instead being a true revival.
The craziest thing about it for me as a zillenial (born 2000), is that teenagers often aren't even wearing their parents' youth - they're wearing their older cousins' youth, even their older siblings'. Especially when you get into the emo/scene revival that's happening right now. Scene only definitively "ended" in 2014-16, though admittedly it had a long decline, so that's an extremely short turnaround.
The flared pants that the Y2K kids were wearing were from their parents' youth in the 70s as well though. That was kinda one of the points of the video.
26:58 is SO fantastic... i would kill to be able to replicate that coat, but, alas, it was an actual woven pattern in silk velvet, which, yeah, probably not getting my hands on snow leopard-weave velvet anytime soon! ugh, so good
Another amazing post! Thank you Nicole. I still remember, as a now 68 year old, when at 5 years of age!, i thought that my aunt's black bra and black stiletto & pointed shoes were scandalous. (saw them in her closet) I've seen and experienced a lot of the fashion you mentioned today. It interests me how one's point of view: age, social, cultural and financial standing influenced how fashion was/is seen. It's never been a uniform point of view.
I feel like I can comfortably wear every trend except Y2K. I was 30 back then so it’s absolutely ok, it’s typical to loathe the youth clothing from the first era that you are not youth, those tweed blazers with fancy brooches were repeats anyway, I could call that vintage! Lately I realize that any flattering style that is not dramatically of a time period will look amazing always. My current fave dresses are a 60s stew uniform made by someone who understood functional workwear (it’s a professional looking egg dress basically!), a hand painted 70s caftan maxi, & a fitted sweater maxi. I incorporate trend more thru color & pattern these days, & just have some uniforms that I think are my “final form” and I basically stopped buying anything that is not functional, flattering, & comfortable all at the same time. A few pieces get away without having pockets but only the most special. The 70s caftan has a pocket likely meant to be decorative but is now a fantastic cell phone pocket!!! How functional can you get? Vintage linen and a tech pocket! Never expected to be a caftan gal, but sometimes you just let the dress wear you! It’s an art piece hand me down, I’m just the easel lol…
Y2K had some really weird and tacky stuff with cheap materials. Even the celebrities often looked bad on the red carpet bc the expensive brands were still made cheaply. You can tell what's carried over from that now is very selective. It's kind of like the 70s in that way where there's a lot of work to avoid unflattering trends from that period
I feel like the nineties sexy feeling of leopard stayed until the 2010s when they rebranded it as cheetah print and made it playful and colourful, and young. Pairing it with the sort of ballet inspired clothes and the over the top harajuku styles. My kids have had leopard print clothes for years in very cute children's clothes but its always labelled as cheetah print, every now and then they actually make cheetah print outfits, but mostly it's mislabeled leopard.
Nichole, this is worth being on Ted Talk. Amazing information. Thank you so very much for sharing this with us. Sending best wishes from Down Under 💐🥰🇦🇺
8:26 there's even an earlier instance, even though I don't think it was as broadly of a thing: in pontormo's fresco of Vertumnus and Pomona from like the 1510s/20s, one of the figures had me do a double take, because her silhouette, even the hair looked so 1830s to me
I just ordered some burgundy red chunky mary janes after hunting for this exact pair for few weeks. Thought it’d be a fun twist on my office wear, something to replace my oxford shoes for some time, chunky but not so chunky as some doc martens styles, square toe because didn’t want them to be too feminine, lower cut shoe but not a ballet flat which i hate with all my soul and burgundy is a good off-black dark option… ya, accidentally jumped on a major trend item that ticks bunch of trend boxes. And my mom lost a similar pair on a trip to France in ‘90s. Thought i’d be unique… 😅😅😅
Mary Janes being popular children's shoes actually reminded me that I had a pair as a child with leather/suede(?) flowers on the side. That was in the 2000s
I bought several high waist, bell bottomed pants from fashion brands about 8-5 years ago. I think it was in the gap between skinny and the mom jeans.... Some had slits as well. Maybe it was not a widespread trend, or only Europe....
Am I the only one who finds leopard print, the the majority of cases, truly tacky? I don't know what it is, but I just don't like it unless it's in small doses, as an accent. Maybe it's just too busy for me.
I've never cared for it, but my late grandmother adored it. I sold shoes for almost 20 years, and anytime a shoe came in with leopard print, it would sell out very quickly.
Yes, there was one of those dresses that felt smooth and slinky enough to be leonine and the pattern really fit it, but in general my impression is Trashy. I think that is a combination of it being a go-to "sexy" print, and however liberated we may think ourselves there is still some subconscious moral judgement about that, and what Caspenbee said - it is seldom done well, easy to go wrong with a busy and supposedly natural pattern, and it being real fur wouldn't be good either.
Possibly I'm wrong, but I think it boils down to ingrained classism. Leopard print used to be a sign of luxury and expensive things, as Nicole mentioned; at some point, it became more widely availlable and the *current* fashion connotation was sex kitten-ish - but the people still invested in the luxury connotation (lower class people who can't respond as fast to changing trends) may not have caught on to that as quickly, so carried on the style for longer. It's *definitely* also the 1990s sexy panther which contributes to the sense that it's tacky.
I do love a boot cut. Probably because I've slways had Schwarzenegger calves . So they make my legs look slimmer and longer. Also have a wide foot so Maryjanes were most comfortable 😅
My cousin Karen and I loved wearing flared pants in the 1970's because they successfully hid the orthopedic braces we had to wear for her Cerebral Palsy and my Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. It was during the mega-leggy mini-skirt era. Think Seventeen magazine and wanting to look like ANOREXIC Twiggy. Karen looked like Twiggy and she lived in a larger city, but in my small town, girls were not permitted to wear pants to school. yes, there were very fierce dress codes in that day. Seriously, in those times you could wear mini skirts, bur not wear pants. Not any pants not even jeans. On the first day of sophomore high school, I was called into the the principal's office and got detention. For wearing the mother superior's costume from the "Sound of Music" theatrical costume from our theater program the summer before. Karen became an engineer in a largely male dominated field. I just sew clothes.
There's a book in there ! That is an interesting story. Because I lived through that era (born 62), I remember being hushed when I saw a disabled man on the street. I asked my mother - he had his sleeve pinned up - and my mother almost murdered me for asking. She practically strangled me while rushing me past this man. Things like disability were NOT discussed. I can't imagine how hard that was to disabled kids.
But those skirts had to touch the floor when you kneeled ot you could get sent home to change- that was mid-60's. By early 70's my sister's skirt had to be finger-tip long. But still NO pants! It always seemed bizarre to me that it was ok if our underwear showed when we bent over but pants were not lady-like😂
I recently saw a quilt that has managed to survive from the late 1700s/early 1800s and was absolutely shocked to see leopard print cotton. There were a lot of prints on the quilt, which if clean as new, read as very modern.
Funny that Nicole says bellbottoms are coming back into style, cause from my perspective they've been in style for the last three years and are very much on the way out! That's queer fashion for you lol. Happened with mullets too - all the cishet whyte boys have a mullet now that we're done with them! The thing of queer communities being a few years ahead of the curve seems to be extremely consistent through time too. As well as many other communities where people are marginalised! Of course, in the case of BIPOC communities, it's very often because their innovations and old staple styles routinely get appropriated - both by the 'mainstream' and by whyte people in subcultural spaces i.e. queer people, spiritual types, etc
Can i just say today is the best day ever. I feel behind on my queue für to a craft show, so i got to watch Abby, Bernadette, you, and i know Morgan is up soon, all in one day 😊😊😊 yay!!!!
It would be so great if delicate and more youthful styles like ingenue and yin-gamin would come back finally as I really struggle with all the current dramatic and oversized and overwhelming shapes as a petite. Shopping the last few years was a total nightmare.
I'm a natural classic, so the oversized stuff isn't really my thing either - it just doesn't work under a waistcoat. But at least I'm tall enough to make most things work, except for super wide legs which just don't suit me (probably because I don't really do heels). I've been lucky on my colours this year, as well.
About 1970s bell-bottoms: one thing you had to worry about as a teen was whether your bell-bottoms were long enough, especially with shoes, which could be flat or platform and throw the hem off. If your pants were too short-at or just above the ankles-you'd be mocked for wearing "high-waters." Very uncool! That's a reference to the sailors Nicole mentions, whose bells on the uniform in previous decades were a little higher. Punks were the first people we saw wearing skinny jeans in the suburban US sometime around 1979-80. I remember feeling some relief when saw them, visiting England in 1980. Didn't have to worry about length anymore! Capris for teens weren't a thing during the 1970s because it was something your mom wore in the 50s-60s. I was so happy when they came back when I was in my 20s.
Can you please make a video about little fashion curiosities? For example : why are men's buttons and women's buttons on different sides? I heard that is because maids helped women dress, but men also got help and not everyone had someone else to help them dress. That's why I don't really believe this one. I'd love to hear your take on it. Keep up the good work!
I read on wardrobe planning ages ago -- should I date myself? -- all right, might as well give credit where credit is due! The book was by Barbara Johns Waterston, and the title was "Pull Yourself Together." One quote I remember, which is pertinent to this particular episode was: "Fashion may borrow from the past, but it never returns." The author was advising against hoarding items such as 1980s heavy shoulder padded jackets, your grandma's Kimberly knits, or Dad's polyester leisure suits in hopes that they will "return to fashion." There may be a market for vintage clothing at times, but not that kind of "vintage."
"Cake eater" is a term we used to call our school rivals back in HS. 😅 of course they used to call us "spaghetti benders" cos my hometown is predominantly of Italian descent.
I hope this trend of comfort continues. One thing I remember from life in pre-internet days was the way you wore what was available. When favorite styled clothing wore out, you might well not be able to replace it at all. In my grandmother’s time, women seemed to develop a sort of personal style and stick with it for their entire adult life, only modifying the bits around the edges that were no longer available to purchase. I can’t imagine either of them wearing pantyhose, for example, let alone any form of trousers. The effort involved in maintaining those personal style rules surely had an influence on how they adapted their wardrobes. Plus, people back then simply didn’t shop the way we do nowadays. Seems to me, that’s the biggest difference.
When I discovered rococo leopard some years ago was a shock hahha I instantly loved it. I teach fashion and I love to share this kind of things with my students. My mum used to refused to buy to me a pair of flare trousers inspired by 70´s because "she weared it because was the fashion in her youth and she didn´t find another style availabe and she h#@ted them". The fact are I started to wear HERS trousers hahaha. I had 3 pairs until now♥. Great video. One point: I think suede used by Western/cowboys come from native people clothes made by animal skin with fringes. Occidental Trappers started to use a similar jacket and a castor hat.
The current internet has a lot of problems, but one thing it seems to have done that's good is make things like fashion and music much more individual. I hear music critics talk about how the "hits" aren't as big these days because everyone is able to access all sorts of music and just listen to whatever interests them, and I see all sorts of fashion between friends and strangers alike that would have been labelled countercultures in the 2000s, but are now just people's personal styles. The amount of J-fashion like decora and lolita inspired pieces I've seen in my local mall is crazy given only a decade ago it was totally alien to anyone I showed that wasn't specifically an anime fan. My best friend wears punk to work and no one questions it, and I've seen men casually wearing the prettiest skirts, and no one does a double take. I saw a group of girls the other day where two were in summer sportswear, one was in this floral print dress with puffy little sleeves and frills, and a third was in the most nineties baggy overalls and band tshirt, and like, yeah, it took me a second to figure out what was so odd about it because I know my own sister have all three of those looks in her closet along with half a dozen others. It's very cool, people just wear what they like.
Ah, the flare pants with the bright fabric in the pleat - that's what my high school band had for our uniforms that we inherited from the 1970's into the 1980's. Our colors were black and "old" gold, so the pants were black with the bright yellow in the pleat that showed while we marched. At least, that was until the band moms took pity on us in 1987 and sewed up all the pleats taking out the colored fabric. Still a fun memory - especially since I was in charge of handing out the uniforms to everyone.
I would be super interested in a video exploring where fashion was thought to be beaded in 2019 and how covid changed that! Or if anyone has a good article talking about it id love a recommendation
I have a couple of skinny jeans I'm considering putting gussets in tk make them more like flared bottoms 🤔 (I just hate skinny jeans, always have even when they were popular. Sensory nightmare. I used to buy tmjeans two sizes too big so they wouldn't be as tight 😅)
I have actually done it for this very same reason, and can 100% recommend! Just make sure to match fabric type as much as possible (and pay some attention to the fabric direction, especially if they're stretch jeans) and you're good to go! I did one with a patchwork of different colours, it's my favourite pant feature in my entire closet now.
Louis XV's son had a regiment whose uniform had, for the king's son, a leopard fur collar, for everyone else, leopard print was usual. I'm guessing you're aware that some of the older leopard images appearing here are genuine fur rather than leopard prints - like @26:24. My upper-middle class grandmother had a leopard fur cape in the 1950s, so the genuine article was seen on the street occasionally and not confined to the super-rich.
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Can you make a video about the hair styles and types of moustaches and beards that were in the Victorian era?
I see a lot of generals and doctors with long beards and even long hair, during the ACW, but also a lot of clean faces soon after the Victorian era
No, you are not the only one I hate. Leopard prints if you can't afford real love for just stay away from them.Artificial, and of course, we don't want any real efforts wounded
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ i "like" you Nicole your cool and explain fashion well, and you are your self love it
:) 2025 -2026 great vibes, wealth, and health to you .
I teach at a university so I see all my students' styles daily. One of the other faculty (in her 60s, while I'm in my 30s) mentioned once to me that she's glad to see that nowadays people are free to wear whatever styles/eras suit them, rather than in previous decades where there was only one specific look that was socially required for much longer periods of time. The fast cycling, internet expansion, and social globalization of fashion seems to contribute there. I don't overhear my students making fun of each other's clothing. I overhear *aggressive* positivity from them. So whenever I see a headline that XYZ trend is in, I don't pay any attention to it, because what they're actually saying to each other is "Does this make you happy? Yes? THEN WERK GIRL YOU'RE AMAZING I LOVE YOU now go drink some water." Said in all one breath of course.
😁
This is my experience exactly! I'm pushing 50, am a uni teacher, and I have been so happy how *free* fashion is these days. My experience of fashion in the 80s was of constant fear of being caught wearing the "wrong thing," but there no longer seems to be any styles which are deemed "out of fashion" so starkly. I thought it was because I'm old and have lost my perception of coolness, but my students really do seem to allow themselves a wider range of expression. I suspect 90s grudge, combined with the time-flattening effect of the internet have really expanded peoples' clothing choices. My students wear both skinny legs or bell bottoms, and no one gets bullied. I think it's fantastic.
XD
I loved the comment about it all being one breath. It made me smile.
I love this.
Omg they are so cute sometimes! Yeah, my son was never mocked for his clothes & ended up not getting ANY negative feedback from peers, so I did some gentle guiding during college to get him classroom-ready. lol he’s such an old soul, I’ve already bought new versions of tshirts he loved but they were hand me downs worn hard. I never actually wore my clothes out in my 20s, & I def didn’t just love my clothes enough already that I wanted the same tshirts for the next 10 yrs. The vegetarian human talking to the humanitarian bear is a good one, and the sassiest he is willing to go (it’s an insult tee but barely).
My grandfather was born in 1910 and apparently was much more fashionable than I thought. He told stories of making his own bell-bottoms by taking regular trousers and adding gussets to the side seams of the lower leg.
So he was a 'cake eater'? That's so cool!
I’m impressed he was wearing bell bottoms either before 1960 or when he was in his 50s+…or both! Extreme fashion! Mine was born in 1907, and as far as I can tell, dressed like an 80 year old man with one outfit left - his whole life! He had a John Brown style beard & it and the shirt underneath were always stained with food. Ugh. The other grandfather was born in 1882 so I’ll give him a pass, he was 60 when my mom was born, he had no fashion left.
My grandparents were all born between 1907 and 1911. Finding old pictures and remembering stories. They were all very stylish. One grandfather told a story of getting in trouble from the landlady for throwing plates into the alley instead of washing them! This was just before the crash and he felt he was rolling in money! He was also working in the stock market at the time
@@robintheparttimesewer6798 Great story!
i definitely cut open my jeans and sewed in colorful gussets in the late 90s in hs. we all couldn't afford new jeans so it was trendy at my poor hs to do that instead. it was kinda terrible since walking everywhere in the snow with big flaps of quilting cotton around your ankles is not practical at all.
I have a visceral memory of the sound of everyones wet, chewed up jean hems scraping the floor on rainy days in highschool.
We sewed thrifted neckties into the side seams of our jeans, too.
@@NicoleRudolph yes! _cries in rainy Washington_ 🤣
I sewed bright orange camouflage fleece into the sides of my son's jeans. It was all his design, but he couldn't sew.
Yes, I remember doing this. I'd forgotten and it all came rushing back to me. Everyone I knew did it.
I so want some leopard print breeches for my 1780s outfit now. Most of the reenactors would think I was taking the piss with that.
You gotta do it, it would be magnificent!
@@furlizardI agree, although the thought horrifies my children
1780's outfit? Is that what you meant or did you mean 1980's? Just trying to clarify, 😀!
@@saaminnc1178reenactors are people that dress up in historically accurate clothing to sort of 'roleplay'. And breeches were worn in the 1780s:)
I make my own Victorian-inspired clothing, so this is the most I've learned about modern fashion trends in years. It feels almost academic- fashion history in the present day!
I had to rig my TikTok to show me fashion trends starting like a month ago 😂
@@NicoleRudolph Nice. "I know what they were doing 200 years ago- what are they doing NOW?!" haha
@@NicoleRudolph I dress 40s-60s high femme mostly so I’m totally out on what the modern fashion is too 😂
I never follow fashion. I follow my heart.❤
@@NicoleRudolphrelatable
Yes, I watch Bernadette and Abby, etc. etc., but I always learn the most from Nicole. As a scholar myself, I appreciate her careful research and her ability to make such a wide range of topics relevant to the moment. And I'm so glad she talked about the way in which we tend to glom onto certain style characteristics of a decade as if everyone were wearing them when they weren't. I was in my 20s during the 80s, and I certainly remember the absurdly large shoulder pads and boxy jackets. They were all over the women's magazines. But they were NOT all over the streets or offices. I never wore them, and no one I knew wore them.
Seriously! We are age-contemporaries, and the shoulder pads were always a wince-fest to my crowd (Renfaire/folkie/Victoriana brats). The big mistake mainstream fashion recyclers make is in ignoring the subculture camps that gravitate to particular styles, and have a culture war going with other camps at any one time. I think it's why those retro 'hits' music compilations are always so wretched, because they ignore the political and psychic demarcation lines, and only look at same-#-of-sales data.
Yeah, shoulder pads existed and I have inherited a lady’s trench coat from the 80s with them, but there’s no family photos from the 80s with that stuff in it, but several family photos include color block styles that I remember a single item with it when I was a kid: a fanny pack.
Back in the 80s I lived in NYC and big shoulder pads and boxy jackets were seen all over, including on my body. When I look back at photos I think how did I ever love that style. I guess it depended upon where one lived.
The difference is the trend cycles don't feel new any more, and it's because the past has become so accessible to us.
Imagine you're a young person in the 1970s. What access do you have to the 1930s? Maybe a couple of old books in your house, some old family photos. Maybe some newspaper or magazine clippings, a movie-of-the week on TV. Not much. For the most part the 1930s are an ancient time to you. An era beyond memory. So fashions from the 1930s you find at thrift shop are going to feel new and refreshing. You can enjoy the silhouettes and colors and patterns totally removed from the context of their origin and make them new again.
25 years later, it's the late 90s, and now for young people the 70s are that ancient time beyond memory, and you can pick and choose the styles from the 70s you like without any of the context or cultural baggage. Old feels new again.
Now it's 2024, but this time 1990s never went away. The 2000s never went away. The 2010s never went away. The internet preserves everything, so old can't become new again. The 1990s are more accessible now than they were during the actual decade. Seriously: you can watch any episode of ER or Friends or Frasier with just a few clicks. You can read any 90s issue of any magazine you like at will. You couldn't do that during the actual 90s.
So when 90s and Y2K trends come back now, it doesn't feel new. It doesn't feel scrubbed clean of its context. It just feels rehashed. I think that's why fashion in general has felt so stale and repetitive the past couple decades. Nothing goes away enough for its comeback to have any impact.
💯
That's really interesting! Thanks for sharing.
This is an incredible point, I had never thought of that.
That makes absolute sense!
Very astute... accurate.
I had some original 1920 sailor trousers i used to wear in the early 1990s that were very flared at the bottom and fitted above.
In high school I got in a serious push bike accident because my flared jeans got caught up in the chain (I think) and I toppled over going down a hill. I didn’t bike in that cut of jeans again. I feel that actually started my love of skinny jeans because they could always be tucked into my boots.
We had metal rings to put around the ankle to corral the pants in to prevent that kind of accidents.
@@isabelleblanchet3694 Yes, I was going to mention those! They also come in plastic with reflective elements, they're still around.
Grandma put rubber band on our bells. Those who went through the Great Depression learned to use what they had on hand and to save useful items.
We either rolled one leg up to the knee so it couldn't catch in the chain or put a big rubber band around the hem!
Conveniently, my DAD had also come of age in the 60's/70's when bell bottoms were all the rage (he thought the repeat of the bell bottoms and platforms at the turn of the millennium and his own kid wearing what he did was pretty funny), so he told me this BEFORE I got on my bike when I wore my first pair. He spoke from learned experience. 😂
@@SoundShinobiYuki ❤🌺☺
Oooo something relevent to watch while I'm hand sewing a 1690s waistcoat.
I remember something on tv where an old guy in a care home recreated the most cool trousers from his youth in 60s, it was bell bottoms with contrast gussets and he had Christmas lights under his pant leg so the gussets were illuminated! I can’t imagine imagine it was very comfortable but it’s definitely creative
As for leopard print… here’s a story. The lady across the street growing up in Tucson was so stylish. She was an artist and leaned towards a somewhat glam type style. She had waist length salt and pepper hair. She would do her yardwork in a leopard print bathing suit!
she sounds so cool
omg there’s an old women ive lived near and walked past since high school and she is always wearing a leopard coat and a blonde wig….i love her
I'm 59 and I have a pair of stylized taupe mary janes that I love. I don't feel childish when I wear them👵.
I think fashion will stay comfortable and, if I had my way, very long lasting in our future. Fun can be added in clothing as well and made of composable fabrics. I can dream.
In the UK wide bottom trousers in the 1920s were called Oxford bags. They came about because the Oxford students in the rowing club needed trousers that were easy to put on over their rowing shorts. The design soon found its way into general fashion and there are cartoons of men wearing very wide legged versions. Women liked them too and started wearing them particularly for evening wear.
I’ve learned so much from your videos that I need to pass a bit on. Your tutorial on buttonholes led me to spend countless hours making them until I get compliments from experienced sewists now on how great mine are.
Ooh yay! Been planning to hunt up a tutorial on buttonholes, so I'm glad to learn she's got one!
I was always told that suede couldn’t be conditioned, but I have a vintage suede (or, technically rough-out) coat from the 70s, and it was very dry, so I figured I’d just try it anyway. Surprise! It can totally be conditioned. A heavy, cream- or wax-like conditioner darkens it a lot and mats down the nap, but a lighter lotion-like conditioner (I used Bick 4) soaks in nicely. When it has, you bring the nap back up with a suede brush, and voila!
Yep! There's a lot of great suede specific care items out there. Just like regular leather, it needs some annual (or event based) love.
When you started talking about the puff sleeves in the 80s, then 30s, I thought about how those big shoulders made me feel back then - powerful, commanding, taking up space - and wondered how political and societal changes might affect style. Certainly in the 80s I felt a big change in how women were seen - a big push towards women in power, leaders of corporations, not needing marriage or men, etc - and I kind of have the feeling (from the few movies I've seen from the time) a similar revolution was happening in the 30s, and wonder about the other eras. No shrinking violet wears big puff sleeves/ broad shoulders, no wallflower trying to go unnoticed. They are definitely a "I WILL BE SEEN" and "I can take up space" garment.
Going to an Army/Navy surplus store & getting a Pea Coat & sailor pants was kinda a thing at my high school in the 70s. Suede desert boots were very in too. I've always associated flare/bell bottoms with sailors & gauchos/cowboys (to fit over the boots & spurs) The main thing against the flares of the 90s & why I did not wear them was the low, low rise. Sometimes barely 3 inches. I could never figure out why anyone wanted to show off their thong.( I know, naval piercings & low back tattoos were trending as well) Hip huggers were a thing in the 60s but they weren't indecently low. I'm looking forward to the return of a high waisted flare jean with seaming details.
Love me a pea coat ! I need to find an Army/Navy store & buy another one ! Loved that BIG COLLAR. Kept the wind off your ears ! That and a scarf & I rarely even needed a hat !
You absolutely need to make your high waisted flares. They'll bring you joy.
I always prefer high waisted clothes, because that's where my waist is!
Nicole, this could be a series!! Just going back through the cycles of different trends, continuing to point to how they relate to different cultural ideals of youth vs. maturity, aspiration vs authenticity, militarism and pastoralism, etc. We only learned the absolute surface film of fashion history in design school; you could even expand the series to “how to research fashion history” and more!! You always have the most amazing primary sources, haha
Yes please. I'd love to see a video on stripes, history of (seeing that they're virtually always in vogue).
Thanks for explaining style and silhouette, I've never been able to figure out what does or does not go with what (or why) and this is helping. I have a lot of disparate interesting bits in my wardrobe bought through the 90s-2010s and a lot of them are neat on their own but how do I match that with anything else I have? And also, I've got plans for making some Big Pants soon and before this video I had no idea what on earth I'd wear them with. You made me think back to the kinds of shirts I was wearing the last time I bought even remotely fashionable clothing, the early 2000s, and I liked the flares I bought at the time and still wear them now because they're comfortable (most of them were made with stretch-corduroy and the off-the-hip style was in then too which meant I didn't have waistbands up my ribcage thanks to my short waist and shot rise).
And thanks for pointing out what I've been missing with my head buried in the sand working on historically--inspired clothin, that comfort has become a big thing in fashion right now. That's a bandwagon I can hop on easily! (because I can actually MOVE in those PJ pants I've been wearing since lockdoowns!)
I've found a lot of inspiration in the current trends of wearing clothing "wrong"- taking a 1920s mens oversized shirt and wearing it untucked with the buttons only done at the top. Add a waistcoat or short jacket for shape. It's been a fun way to see what works and what doesn't without buying new things!
Wait, so suede is still top-up, just with the shiny layer shaved off? That's interesting, and I think it's interesting to look at how terms change in other countries. In Romanian it's called 'turned leather', because the definition is specifically referring to using the underside of the leather rather than shaving the top layer. And indeed, any traditional items made with suede are made with leather that's turned to the other side, rather than the shaved type you refer to throughout.
We don't even have a term for suede that is a perfect translation.
We didn't need it in English until recently, apparently! I do feel like it also implies a level of softness to the leather which is not always present. A little less stiff.
@@NicoleRudolph yeah, precisely. Because turned leather is coarse. Until your video I thought it was just a quality issue, not a METHOD issue!
Actually we have one, it's velur (from the French velours/velvet, due to its texture). Piele întoarsă is simply more common nowadays.
I was taught it was the underside of leather which never sat totally right with me. Ty for the clarification.
According to Wikipedia, in Germany it can also refer to both. Either the top (usually because damaged) part of the skin is removed or the skin is prepared inside out.
Fun fact, suede is colloquially called 'Wildleder' (wild leather) here. I always thought, that that referred to the slightly 'rustic' look. But nope. I just learned, that actually it's a term only correct for suede made from the skin of non domesticated animals, like deer. The correct name here would be 'velour leather', from the French velours (velvet). Learn something new, every day 😅
The association with leopards comes from Bacchus, not Hercules. Thus the leopard print for the 18th century wearer would have evoked the Maenads, the ecstatic followers of Dionysus clad in exotic leopard as witness not only to their strength, but to the breadth of their sojourns.
Yes, didn't Hercules wear the Numedian lion's skin?
@@amyc.russell9487 He did, but leopard print is not the same as a lion's skin. The core of Hercules' mythology was formed when lions were found in Greece. Leopards, however, were exotic. In Greek red-figure vases, one sees Persians represented as wearing leopard skins, representing their _otherness_.
I had a lovely argument with a colleague once... we were having an 80s themed party at the office. Every one did spanx and neon colors .... I wore my favorite black jeans, an Iron Maiden shirt and a faux leather vest I bought for the occasion, fluffed up my hair and did crazy eyeshadow. He thought I cheated...
In the 70s, my mom went to army surplus stores and bought sailor pants!
My sister's pair were almost black navy wool, 13 button fall front, lacing gusset at back waist and wide legs, not bell bottoms.
Love what Nicole said. "...it is the way we wear something that makes it modern." Skinny jeans are out, but "modern" jeans are not for me. I wear flares and my 5 feet (1.5 meters) shrinks cartoonishly. So I culled the super skinny jeans, kept the moderately skinny/straight leg jeans, accompanied by slightly loose fitting tops that are cropped giving an illusion of a more proportional outfit.
Five feet?! Damn, you're tall! (147cm here) But yeah, if we don't want to look even shorter, then we really need to think about the clothes we wear.
Instill wear super skinny jeans. They make my legs look amazing.
Thank you, Nicole, for helping me realize what my favourite silhouette is and why.
I'm a person who doesn't really care about current fashion and would happily wear the same style for the rest of my life. I'm getting into sewing my own clothes because I can never find anything that fits me well or things in the style I like (skinny jeans never fitted me and straight jeans fit me like skinny jeans. I've been a boot cut girly since hs because it makes my legs look gorgeous). When I become proficient in this I will be able to do my own thing like I've always wanted to even when it was stupidly difficult.
Years ago, I was reading a book about feminine beauty across the ages.
At the end of the book, the author included a chapter on clothing fashions.
He said that in ancient times, clothing didn't change that much over centuries; that Queen Cleopatra VII Philopator (the famous one who got involved with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony) and Queen Nefertiti wore pretty much the same outfit, even though they were centuries apart.
He claimed that later, the rate of change in fashions speeded up (and I can't remember why or how this happened).
I'd love to see you explore this topic.
What with the current "comfortable but interesting" trend and with global warming, now is the PERFECT time to make kaftans, thawbs, and shalwar-kameez into everyday wear. They can be made in super comfortable printed muslins
Lol I have been doing that since the 80s! Those pants are so incredibly comfortable, especially for crawling on the floor cutting out multiple theatre costumes.
I wear kaftans, abayas, and thobes all the time. I love the freedom of not ever having to suck anything in and being all flowy and interesting.
As a costumer for a small ballet company, I rely on old wedding dresses and prom/ bridesmaids dresses for costumes!
I never noticed that South African girls school shoes are Mary-Janes. No wonder I consider anything in that style appropriate as formal workwear.
It's amazing what background opinions we have about clothing that we never think about!
Yes! And they were the most comfortable shoes I ever wore... I had mine from gr8 to matric when they finally died. No shoes have ever been as comfortable as those wide fit Mary Jane school shoes.
I feel like the 1920s was when we dramatically changed fashion from long dresses and suits (even for casual and work wear) to more modern silhouettes and garments such as short skirts, pants and no corsets for women, and more casual styles for men. This is obviously an oversimplification that I bet Nicole could do a whole video on, but there is a notable seismic shift in fashion that is still with us today. Therefore, it makes sense that these trends keep being traced back to the 1920’s. It is the birth of many modern fashions.
My spouse was in the Navy. I had access to real Navy bellbottom jeans in the early '70s. The Navy jeans had no outer seam, so the fit around the hips was really on the bias of the fabric. They felt, and made me feel sexy. I was 23. I have only ever owned one item of clothing that was vaguely leopard print. I do not like animal prints, never have. I remember years when it took really hunting to find clothes that I liked that were not leopard print. It was everywhere. In the late '60s, I remember faux fur bikinis, and in the very early '70s, platform shoes with the sole at the toe 3 inches thick. Now I live in Birkenstocks for the comfort.
I love your objective take on fashion history. Regardless of whether or not it's to your taste, you frame everything in context. You're hands down one of my favourite youtubers and I always recommend your videos to people - you're how I know how to get heels to fit!
Wow... I thought I was great at historical fashion, but me and my jaw are just floored by the bell-bottom thing going SO far back--! GREAT job, SO fun to learn these things! 😊❤
This is an amazing video. As someone who doesn’t really follow trends or fashion learning that everything pretty much follows through a set of shapes is really interesting.
Omg, you and Caitlin Doughty remind me SO much of each other. Y'all should do a video together... Funeral Fashions 💁🏻♀️🪦👗
Holy moly I also thought of the exact same, but because of her voice and speech pattern
I would like jeans with ribbon hems to come back. It was such an interesting style.
Well said. I think this video is helpful for understanding when a garment has a hard time “aging” or being reusable in future trend combinations. It’s because it has too many trends of a specific time period built-into it that it becomes almost impossible to update. Alternations become almost necessary
XD
When you were talking about suede and boxy styles, all I could think of was my LARPing armour, which is suede with leather plates and has *very* boxy shoulders. It's also one of the only things I actually feel like I look nice in, since my body shape doesn't really go well with fitted styles.
I had a pair of the red leather double strap t-straps in that buster brown ad! The first pair of shoes I remember. My toddler self threw a huge fit to get them and they began my love of shoes and red ones in particular! 🤣
I’ve already seen fringe on the suede!! Mostly as part of that coastal cowgirl aesthetic but also in general autumn fashion videos
I work at an art museum and I've been seeing teens in Ed Hardy and Juicy Couture track suits in the galleries recently as well as extreme JNCO jeans
While I accept the return of many styles from my youth, I didn't like those the first go around 😂
@@NicoleRudolph My initial reaction was "wrong one, pick another one to bring back!"
This video is making me think of some super platform black velour mary janes that I had in 1999 when I was a freshman in high school. I literally Begged my mom to get them for me out of some Just Nikki catalog right before they went out of business.
It makes me think of all the things that we circled in the delia's catalog that my mom said were basically nearly straight rips of the things that she wore in the 1970's as a teen.
1890s and 1980s sleeves! 😂 What a fascinating deep-dive into trends! I had no idea leopard print was omnipresent throughout time lol. Great work, Nicole!!
I really appreciated your explanation of what suede actually is. Would you ever do a “leather explainer” video maybe like the ones you have for linen and wool? (But yes I am here for the trend analysis.)
I really appreciate the research and presentation. The history of anything is interesting to me, but especially clothing, hats, shoes, and accessories, including jewelry (because I wire wrap and I sew and crochet and quilt and weave, and do leatherwork, and a lot of other things)
I set out to learn various different crafts with the goal of making my home and wardrobe as completely as possible, by my own hands. I don't know if I'll actually do it, but it's been a lot of fun so far, as well as a lot of work
The average person isn't forcing their personal style tastes to the whims of 'daaaa trends'. We are forcing trending styles to fit our personal style. If I like a certain type of trend I will force it to fit in with my cringelord urge to dress like a 80s hair metal rocker. 😅
Are you my ex lol
I was in Italy in the early nineties, & was shocked when I saw designers putting business shirts under ballgowns. I think that was the last time a fashion really surprised me, although it makes sense, just thinking about the silhouette. But how uncomfortable to have all that extra fabric rucked up under the tight bodice...
Were they full shirts, or just collars and sleeves (kind of like a Dirndl-blouse, which usually ends under the bust)? Because a full shirt would indeed be uncomfortable, not so much because of the fabric, but buttons under a tight-fitting bodice.
@KathrinFranke-z4c Exactly! I expect it was all one dress, but I remember immediately feeling the discomfort of having all that fabric bunched up under a tighter bodice. I've tried all kinds of searches, but sadly, can't find any pictures.
This is one of my favorite videos you’ve done! I see the barrel pants/jeans trend mirroring the earliest bell bottoms from the early 1820’s (that you showed). Personally I dislike them. I remember my mom in the early 1970’s not buying me bell bottoms because she thought they’d go out of fashion too soon. She had zero fashion sense! Small doses of leopard is the only way I’ll wear that trend. I made a ribbon belt of leopard print in the late 1980’s that I wore till my waist expanded.
I'm not sure I ever had proper bell-bottoms, but I definitaly had boot cuts. I'll need to buy another pair if they're coming back. I agree on the animal print, It's not really my thing, too dramatic, but I could see myself maybe changing buttons, a patch on a back pocket, a bag strap, or a belt.
Mudd bell bottoms were the RAGE when I was in middle school!
“Cake eater” immediately pulls up the scene in Clueless where they accidentally get on the freeway. Murray tells Cher that Christian is a cake eater. Sooo I can only imagine what Nicole had to navigate for her research
Cake boy
Throwing out all your clothes and buying new ones every season is insane.
The vast majority of people don't do that which is why fashion changes over time and often through different combinations and little things like shoes and jackets and accessories. It is also teens to change their cloths a lot not just because of fashion but because they grow so they need new cloths.
@@thehomeschoolinglibrarian
I never liked the shoulder pads if the 40s & 80s
Love your hair in this video! The bob is definitely one of these silhouette styles that just keeps returning
It still freaks me out every time I see teenagers running around in Y2K fashion, because the thought of teens wearing the trends of their parents' youth is just weird. I get trends coming back after maybe two generations, because the fashion has been out of style long enough to no longer read as behind the times and instead being a true revival.
The craziest thing about it for me as a zillenial (born 2000), is that teenagers often aren't even wearing their parents' youth - they're wearing their older cousins' youth, even their older siblings'. Especially when you get into the emo/scene revival that's happening right now. Scene only definitively "ended" in 2014-16, though admittedly it had a long decline, so that's an extremely short turnaround.
The flared pants that the Y2K kids were wearing were from their parents' youth in the 70s as well though. That was kinda one of the points of the video.
i don’t care tbh. it’s not hurting anyone and if they enjoy it then good for them
26:58 is SO fantastic... i would kill to be able to replicate that coat, but, alas, it was an actual woven pattern in silk velvet, which, yeah, probably not getting my hands on snow leopard-weave velvet anytime soon! ugh, so good
Another amazing post! Thank you Nicole. I still remember, as a now 68 year old, when at 5 years of age!, i thought that my aunt's black bra and black stiletto & pointed shoes were scandalous. (saw them in her closet) I've seen and experienced a lot of the fashion you mentioned today. It interests me how one's point of view: age, social, cultural and financial standing influenced how fashion was/is seen. It's never been a uniform point of view.
Watching your videos makes me feel like I'm getting a free fashion education history. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in such a lovely way!
I feel like I can comfortably wear every trend except Y2K. I was 30 back then so it’s absolutely ok, it’s typical to loathe the youth clothing from the first era that you are not youth, those tweed blazers with fancy brooches were repeats anyway, I could call that vintage! Lately I realize that any flattering style that is not dramatically of a time period will look amazing always. My current fave dresses are a 60s stew uniform made by someone who understood functional workwear (it’s a professional looking egg dress basically!), a hand painted 70s caftan maxi, & a fitted sweater maxi. I incorporate trend more thru color & pattern these days, & just have some uniforms that I think are my “final form” and I basically stopped buying anything that is not functional, flattering, & comfortable all at the same time. A few pieces get away without having pockets but only the most special. The 70s caftan has a pocket likely meant to be decorative but is now a fantastic cell phone pocket!!! How functional can you get? Vintage linen and a tech pocket! Never expected to be a caftan gal, but sometimes you just let the dress wear you! It’s an art piece hand me down, I’m just the easel lol…
Y2K had some really weird and tacky stuff with cheap materials. Even the celebrities often looked bad on the red carpet bc the expensive brands were still made cheaply. You can tell what's carried over from that now is very selective. It's kind of like the 70s in that way where there's a lot of work to avoid unflattering trends from that period
It’s funny, about 20 years ago, my dad was married to a lady, and my (former) stepmom was *very* into tasteful leopard print. And Shania Twain.
Fascinating. I love seeing how fashion 'changes' and revolves. It's interesting how different silhouette options mingle to make new, too.
I feel like the nineties sexy feeling of leopard stayed until the 2010s when they rebranded it as cheetah print and made it playful and colourful, and young. Pairing it with the sort of ballet inspired clothes and the over the top harajuku styles.
My kids have had leopard print clothes for years in very cute children's clothes but its always labelled as cheetah print, every now and then they actually make cheetah print outfits, but mostly it's mislabeled leopard.
Yeah the whole "cheetah girls" thing
Nichole, this is worth being on Ted Talk. Amazing information. Thank you so very much for sharing this with us. Sending best wishes from Down Under 💐🥰🇦🇺
8:26 there's even an earlier instance, even though I don't think it was as broadly of a thing: in pontormo's fresco of Vertumnus and Pomona from like the 1510s/20s, one of the figures had me do a double take, because her silhouette, even the hair looked so 1830s to me
Such a great video! please talk more about silhuettes in the future, it's so interesting when you do!
I just ordered some burgundy red chunky mary janes after hunting for this exact pair for few weeks. Thought it’d be a fun twist on my office wear, something to replace my oxford shoes for some time, chunky but not so chunky as some doc martens styles, square toe because didn’t want them to be too feminine, lower cut shoe but not a ballet flat which i hate with all my soul and burgundy is a good off-black dark option… ya, accidentally jumped on a major trend item that ticks bunch of trend boxes. And my mom lost a similar pair on a trip to France in ‘90s. Thought i’d be unique… 😅😅😅
Mary Janes being popular children's shoes actually reminded me that I had a pair as a child with leather/suede(?) flowers on the side. That was in the 2000s
I bought several high waist, bell bottomed pants from fashion brands about 8-5 years ago. I think it was in the gap between skinny and the mom jeans.... Some had slits as well. Maybe it was not a widespread trend, or only Europe....
Checkers are another pattern that is always "returning" without ever actually going away
One of my favorite videos you've made! 🎉 Love the birds-eye view of fashion trends! ❤
Am I the only one who finds leopard print, the the majority of cases, truly tacky? I don't know what it is, but I just don't like it unless it's in small doses, as an accent. Maybe it's just too busy for me.
I've never cared for it, but my late grandmother adored it. I sold shoes for almost 20 years, and anytime a shoe came in with leopard print, it would sell out very quickly.
Yes, there was one of those dresses that felt smooth and slinky enough to be leonine and the pattern really fit it, but in general my impression is Trashy. I think that is a combination of it being a go-to "sexy" print, and however liberated we may think ourselves there is still some subconscious moral judgement about that, and what Caspenbee said - it is seldom done well, easy to go wrong with a busy and supposedly natural pattern, and it being real fur wouldn't be good either.
Me! I won't wear leopard print. Tacky.
Possibly I'm wrong, but I think it boils down to ingrained classism. Leopard print used to be a sign of luxury and expensive things, as Nicole mentioned; at some point, it became more widely availlable and the *current* fashion connotation was sex kitten-ish - but the people still invested in the luxury connotation (lower class people who can't respond as fast to changing trends) may not have caught on to that as quickly, so carried on the style for longer. It's *definitely* also the 1990s sexy panther which contributes to the sense that it's tacky.
Nope, you're not the only one. I personally think animal prints in general are tacky.
This should be used in fashion and design classes. Very well explained, thank you!
I do love a boot cut. Probably because I've slways had Schwarzenegger calves . So they make my legs look slimmer and longer. Also have a wide foot so Maryjanes were most comfortable 😅
My cousin Karen and I loved wearing flared pants in the 1970's because they successfully hid the orthopedic braces we had to wear for her Cerebral Palsy and my Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. It was during the mega-leggy mini-skirt era. Think Seventeen magazine and wanting to look like ANOREXIC Twiggy. Karen looked like Twiggy and she lived in a larger city, but in my small town, girls were not permitted to wear pants to school. yes, there were very fierce dress codes in that day. Seriously, in those times you could wear mini skirts, bur not wear pants. Not any pants not even jeans. On the first day of sophomore high school, I was called into the the principal's office and got detention. For wearing the mother superior's costume from the "Sound of Music" theatrical costume from our theater program the summer before. Karen became an engineer in a largely male dominated field. I just sew clothes.
There's a book in there ! That is an interesting story.
Because I lived through that era (born 62), I remember being hushed when I saw a disabled man on the street. I asked my mother - he had his sleeve pinned up - and my mother almost murdered me for asking. She practically strangled me while rushing me past this man.
Things like disability were NOT discussed. I can't imagine how hard that was to disabled kids.
But those skirts had to touch the floor when you kneeled ot you could get sent home to change- that was mid-60's. By early 70's my sister's skirt had to be finger-tip long. But still NO pants! It always seemed bizarre to me that it was ok if our underwear showed when we bent over but pants were not lady-like😂
beautifully researched, beautifully told, the visuals are YUMMY.
I love watching you channel. Just listening to you talk is so soothing and interesting.
This is such an interesting one! I would love to see more analysis of silhouettes and balance and what elements tend to go together.
I recently saw a quilt that has managed to survive from the late 1700s/early 1800s and was absolutely shocked to see leopard print cotton.
There were a lot of prints on the quilt, which if clean as new, read as very modern.
Funny that Nicole says bellbottoms are coming back into style, cause from my perspective they've been in style for the last three years and are very much on the way out! That's queer fashion for you lol. Happened with mullets too - all the cishet whyte boys have a mullet now that we're done with them! The thing of queer communities being a few years ahead of the curve seems to be extremely consistent through time too. As well as many other communities where people are marginalised! Of course, in the case of BIPOC communities, it's very often because their innovations and old staple styles routinely get appropriated - both by the 'mainstream' and by whyte people in subcultural spaces i.e. queer people, spiritual types, etc
Can i just say today is the best day ever. I feel behind on my queue für to a craft show, so i got to watch Abby, Bernadette, you, and i know Morgan is up soon, all in one day 😊😊😊 yay!!!!
It would be so great if delicate and more youthful styles like ingenue and yin-gamin would come back finally as I really struggle with all the current dramatic and oversized and overwhelming shapes as a petite. Shopping the last few years was a total nightmare.
I'm a natural classic, so the oversized stuff isn't really my thing either - it just doesn't work under a waistcoat. But at least I'm tall enough to make most things work, except for super wide legs which just don't suit me (probably because I don't really do heels). I've been lucky on my colours this year, as well.
I so enjoy the apt, elegant way you can understand the topic.
About 1970s bell-bottoms: one thing you had to worry about as a teen was whether your bell-bottoms were long enough, especially with shoes, which could be flat or platform and throw the hem off. If your pants were too short-at or just above the ankles-you'd be mocked for wearing "high-waters." Very uncool! That's a reference to the sailors Nicole mentions, whose bells on the uniform in previous decades were a little higher. Punks were the first people we saw wearing skinny jeans in the suburban US sometime around 1979-80. I remember feeling some relief when saw them, visiting England in 1980. Didn't have to worry about length anymore! Capris for teens weren't a thing during the 1970s because it was something your mom wore in the 50s-60s. I was so happy when they came back when I was in my 20s.
I love that flare jeans are back (I never gave them up) but now with high waists. They've taken the 90's and improved them.
Can you please make a video about little fashion curiosities? For example : why are men's buttons and women's buttons on different sides? I heard that is because maids helped women dress, but men also got help and not everyone had someone else to help them dress. That's why I don't really believe this one. I'd love to hear your take on it. Keep up the good work!
I actually did a video on this a few years ago! It was part of my 1840s menswear series with the Gonzo cosplay.
@@NicoleRudolph Thank u! I'll check it out!
I read on wardrobe planning ages ago -- should I date myself? -- all right, might as well give credit where credit is due! The book was by Barbara Johns Waterston, and the title was "Pull Yourself Together." One quote I remember, which is pertinent to this particular episode was: "Fashion may borrow from the past, but it never returns." The author was advising against hoarding items such as 1980s heavy shoulder padded jackets, your grandma's Kimberly knits, or Dad's polyester leisure suits in hopes that they will "return to fashion." There may be a market for vintage clothing at times, but not that kind of "vintage."
I appreciate the work you put in to provide this content
"Cake eater" is a term we used to call our school rivals back in HS.
😅 of course they used to call us "spaghetti benders" cos my hometown is predominantly of Italian descent.
Oh. My. God. Sir Mix-A-Lot has a song called “Cake Boy” that I’m sure ties back to “Cake Eater” as a term. Oh, wow! History is something else.
I hope this trend of comfort continues. One thing I remember from life in pre-internet days was the way you wore what was available. When favorite styled clothing wore out, you might well not be able to replace it at all. In my grandmother’s time, women seemed to develop a sort of personal style and stick with it for their entire adult life, only modifying the bits around the edges that were no longer available to purchase. I can’t imagine either of them wearing pantyhose, for example, let alone any form of trousers. The effort involved in maintaining those personal style rules surely had an influence on how they adapted their wardrobes. Plus, people back then simply didn’t shop the way we do nowadays. Seems to me, that’s the biggest difference.
When I discovered rococo leopard some years ago was a shock hahha I instantly loved it. I teach fashion and I love to share this kind of things with my students. My mum used to refused to buy to me a pair of flare trousers inspired by 70´s because "she weared it because was the fashion in her youth and she didn´t find another style availabe and she h#@ted them". The fact are I started to wear HERS trousers hahaha. I had 3 pairs until now♥. Great video. One point: I think suede used by Western/cowboys come from native people clothes made by animal skin with fringes. Occidental Trappers started to use a similar jacket and a castor hat.
The current internet has a lot of problems, but one thing it seems to have done that's good is make things like fashion and music much more individual. I hear music critics talk about how the "hits" aren't as big these days because everyone is able to access all sorts of music and just listen to whatever interests them, and I see all sorts of fashion between friends and strangers alike that would have been labelled countercultures in the 2000s, but are now just people's personal styles. The amount of J-fashion like decora and lolita inspired pieces I've seen in my local mall is crazy given only a decade ago it was totally alien to anyone I showed that wasn't specifically an anime fan. My best friend wears punk to work and no one questions it, and I've seen men casually wearing the prettiest skirts, and no one does a double take. I saw a group of girls the other day where two were in summer sportswear, one was in this floral print dress with puffy little sleeves and frills, and a third was in the most nineties baggy overalls and band tshirt, and like, yeah, it took me a second to figure out what was so odd about it because I know my own sister have all three of those looks in her closet along with half a dozen others. It's very cool, people just wear what they like.
Ah, the flare pants with the bright fabric in the pleat - that's what my high school band had for our uniforms that we inherited from the 1970's into the 1980's. Our colors were black and "old" gold, so the pants were black with the bright yellow in the pleat that showed while we marched. At least, that was until the band moms took pity on us in 1987 and sewed up all the pleats taking out the colored fabric. Still a fun memory - especially since I was in charge of handing out the uniforms to everyone.
I would be super interested in a video exploring where fashion was thought to be beaded in 2019 and how covid changed that! Or if anyone has a good article talking about it id love a recommendation
I have a couple of skinny jeans I'm considering putting gussets in tk make them more like flared bottoms 🤔 (I just hate skinny jeans, always have even when they were popular. Sensory nightmare. I used to buy tmjeans two sizes too big so they wouldn't be as tight 😅)
I have actually done it for this very same reason, and can 100% recommend! Just make sure to match fabric type as much as possible (and pay some attention to the fabric direction, especially if they're stretch jeans) and you're good to go! I did one with a patchwork of different colours, it's my favourite pant feature in my entire closet now.
Louis XV's son had a regiment whose uniform had, for the king's son, a leopard fur collar, for everyone else, leopard print was usual. I'm guessing you're aware that some of the older leopard images appearing here are genuine fur rather than leopard prints - like @26:24. My upper-middle class grandmother had a leopard fur cape in the 1950s, so the genuine article was seen on the street occasionally and not confined to the super-rich.
this video is amazing! mixing my favorite things, fashion and history
Thank you for the video. I really enjoyed watching it ! ❤
Ive been looking for a video luke this for soooo long but never found 🥴 thank you so much for this video💖💋
ack I love this video so much thank you, you just answered so many of the questions i have 😭❤