essays on fashion history

Caroline Rennolds Milbank

Fashion Historian/Author/Writer/Curator/Appraiser

“Ahead of the World”: New York City Fashion    In Art and the Empire City, New York 1825-1861, Edited by Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and John K. Howat,  Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

"Orientalism in Fashion"    In Noble Dreams Wicked Pleasures. Orientalism in America, 1870-1930 . Holly Edwards, Princeton University Press,  2000.

Various essays in  Icons of Fashion :  the 20th Century,   Edited by Gerda Buxbaum, Prestel Publishing, 1999.

1.  "Ready to Wear"

2.  "Cristobal Balenciaga" ​  

3.  "Second Skin"​  

4.  "Space Age"

5.  "Geoffrey Beene"

"The Elements of Style: Chanel’s Accessories"    

 In Chanel. Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, The Metropolitan Museum of  Art, Yale University Press, 2005.

“Hermes”   In "Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion” Volume 2, Valerie Steele, Editor in Chief, Thomson Gale, 2005.

“Paul Poiret”  In "Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion” Volume 3 , Valerie Steele, Editor in Chief, Thomson Gale, 2005.

“High Priestesses of Fashion”    In Poiret by Howard Koda, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

"The Sands of Time: Historicism in Armani’s Designs for Women"  In  Georgio Armani ,  Guggenheim Museum Pubns; First edition, 2000.

"Bibliographical Notes on the Couturiers"  In New Look to Now, French Haute Couture 1947-1987. Stephen de Pietri and Melissa Leventon and Rizzoli, Fine Arts Museum San Francisco , 1989.

Dorota Liczbinska-Bates

Articles on Fashion history

Displaying 1 - 20 of 42 articles.

Foy & Gibson’s 8,100,000 miles of yarn: how Australians were sold ‘fashionable’ (and ‘healthy’) wool 100 years ago

Lorinda Cramer , Deakin University

How the Academy Awards became ‘the biggest international fashion show  free-for -all’

Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén , University of Southern California

A Queensland woman allegedly stole 70 wedding dresses. Here’s why the white gown is worth much more than its price tag

Lisa J. Hackett , University of New England and Jo Coghlan , University of New England

What was the mantua? How a 17th-century gown transformed dressmaking and ushered in financial freedom for women

Sarah Bendall , Australian Catholic University

Five Christmas fashion trends we should bring back – and may be found in your wardrobe already

Bethan Bide , University of Leeds

At HOTA, sneakers find their well-deserved place in art galleries at last

Indigo Willing , Griffith University

Napoleon: the film’s fashion tells a story of its own, from cropped hair to ribbon chokers

Tania Sheikhan , UCL

The surprisingly punk fashion of the Bloomsbury set, including Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell

Francesco Ventrella , University of Sussex

Surry Hills was once the centre of New South Wales’ ‘rag trade’: a short history of fashion manufacturing in Sydney

Peter McNeil , University of Technology Sydney

For diamonds, disguises and bears, the Met Gala has nothing on Georgian masquerade parties

Meg Kobza , Newcastle University

‘Cultural expression through dress’: towards a definition of First Nations fashion

Treena Clark , University of Technology Sydney and Peter McNeil , University of Technology Sydney

How pink became fashion’s colour of controversy: a brief history

Harriet Fletcher , Anglia Ruskin University

‘I want people to be afraid of the women I dress’: the celebrated – and often controversial – designs of Alexander McQueen

Clothes women wanted to wear: a new exhibition explores how Carla Zampatti saw her designs as a tracker of feminism

How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion

Beverly Lemire , University of Alberta

How the kimono became a symbol of oppression in some parts of Asia

Ella Tennant , Keele University

Part of the Japanese revolution in fashion, Issey Miyake changed the way we saw, wore and made fashion

‘This is not a barbeque’: a short history of neckties in the Australian parliament and at work

Lorinda Cramer , Australian Catholic University

Rihanna and radical pregnancy fashion – how the Victorians made maternity wear boring

Serena Dyer , De Montfort University

Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala Marilyn moment shows how good she is at her job: being famous

Harriette Richards , The University of Melbourne

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Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

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Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

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The view from the front row: a history of the fashion show – photo essay

Once, photographers were banned from fashion shows, with designers suspecting they were spies. Today, fashion shows are a multimillion-dollar global business. As London fashion week begins, we chart the evolution of the fashion show, from secret salons to the snap-happy Instagram era

Most fashion shows last less than 10 minutes, but have the power to transport an audience to another world. There’s an intensity to a great show, a distillation of a designer’s extraordinary vision.

Once upon a time, though, things were a lot humbler. The intimate salon shows of Chanel in the 1950s bear no resemblance to Karl Lagerfeld’s fully-stocked supermarket in the vast Grand Palais in 2014. The main change is scale – along with location, set production, and budget. From John Galliano’s historical dramas at Christian Dior, to Hussein Chalayan’s theatrical impossibilities and the late Alexander McQueen’s gothic, heart-stopping wonders, we chart how the fashion show developed from low-key to king.

Haute beginnings

In a show in the 1860s, Parisian-based designer Charles Frederick Worth, the so-called “father of haute couture”, introduced the idea of presenting collections on live models. Li ke other couturiers of the age , he launched his collections at Longchamp Racecourse. Though not quite a fashion show, it was certainly good publicity.

Fashion parades

The early 20th century saw the advent of “fashion parades”. In London, leading British designer Lady Duff-Gordon regularly showed collections at her Hanover Street salon, giving her models romantic names in order to make them sound more exotic. In turn-of-the-century Paris, designer Paul Poiret staged fancy-dress balls where women could dress up in his eastern-inspired looks. He would also tour theatres and department stores in Europe with mannequins in tow. In New York, the Ehrich Brothers department store began hosting their own shows in-store. Others, including Wanamaker’s in Philadephia, followed suit from the 1910s-20s.

• A salon presentation in New York, 1925.

The 1920s saw the dawn golden age of haute couture in Paris, particularly with the dominance of powerful women such as Gabrielle Coco Chanel , Madeleine Vionnet, queen of the bias cut, and Elsa Schiaparelli.

• In Paris, clients would attend intimate couture salon shows, and place orders with their all-important vendeuse who would develop a close relationship with the clients.

During the Great Depression, fashion designers started selling patterns to be made at home as many incomes shrank. But somehow, haute couture continued to flourish. In 1931, Elsa Schiaparelli showed a collection on a catwalk at Saks in New York. Photographers were not allowed to attend, to stop designs being copied, so the collections were sketched by artists.

New York, New York

In 1943 saw the launch of what would become New York fashion week: under the umbrella of “Press Week”, fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert set up shows at the Pierre Hotel and the Plaza. Until then, US fashion had been dominated by European designers. But with American press unable to travel to Europe during the war, this became an opportunity to promote homegrown talent, including minimalist pioneer, Norman Norell.

New York’s shows continued from then on, interrupted only by the terror attacks of 9/11, which happened on the first day of New York fashion week.

New beginnings

After the war ended in 1945, the French fashion industry needed to be rebuilt. Couturier Nina Ricci’s son, Robert, had the idea of inviting fashion houses to create miniature versions of their designs, as a way of showing their potential without wasting valuable resources. It became known as Le Petit Théâtre de la Mode , or the miniature theatre of fashion.

On 28 March 1945, 200 mannequins, a third of human size, wearing scaled-down designs by couture houses such as Balenciaga and Jeanne Lanvin, went on show at the Louvre before touring around Europe. The following year, with a new set of immaculately made clothes, the mannequins were shown in America. It was a fashion show of sorts, a pragmatic solution using limited resources.

New Look, new rules

Before the war, couture shows were usually presented in small salon spaces, often at the designer’s headquarters, selling directly to the client, who would return for a series of fittings over a period of about six weeks. In those early days, before the advent of the catwalk, the emphasis was on the client rather than publicity. Photographers were not allowed in.

In 1947 Christian Dior became one of the first designers to allow photographers to document his first collection, which Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, famously named “The New Look”.

The rise of Italy

The Italian shows began in Florence in the early 1950s, with couture houses from Rome, Turin, Milan and Capri – including Simonetta Visconti, Schuberth, and Emilio Pucci – showcasing collections at the grandiose Sala Bianca.

• Models in evening wear at a fashion show in Florence, 1951.

Founded by Giovanni Battista Giorgini, the shows were an attempt to compete with Paris, and rebuild Italy’s textile, fashion and craft ateliers after the war. They were promoted as a stop-off for American editors on the way back from the shows in Paris, when the European fashion season required a voyage from New York by ocean liner. Guests – a mix of store-buyers and society – were transported from Rome to Florence to be wined and dined in luxury as they immersed themselves in the grandeur of Italian fashion.

It was in 1958 that the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana was founded, and the shows moved from the windy streets of Florence to the more commercial business centre of Milan.

New model army

In 1952, Hubert de Givenchy showed his first collection. Givenchy’s relationship with Audrey Hepburn, who he dressed for her roles in Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, would become one of the first great celebrity fashion partnerships.

• Givenchy at a fashion show promoting his latest designs in Paris, 1970

Throughout the 1960s, fashion shows remained closed affairs. In his book, Catwalking, photographer Chris Moore recalls, “at that time, they did just think we were spies”.

In 1956, the pioneering designer Gaby Aghion, who founded Chloé, invited press to the Café de Flore in St Germain to view her first collection. It was an informal presentation that brought the models into an everyday cafe setting, away from the controlled environment of the designer’s salon.

The rise of pret-a-porter

• French couturier Pierre Cardin in 1963. Right: Yves Saint Laurent after a show in 1963.

Although couture dominated, in 1960, a group of couturiers including Carven and Nina Ricci began to show their pret-a-porter (ready-to-wear) collections two weeks before the haute couture collections. In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent launched pret-a-porter his Rive Gauche boutique.

• Throughout the 1960s, the sexual revolution was also transforming elements of the fashion industry, with André Courreges slashing skirt lengths in 1965, and a new wave of designers including Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne designing for a more youthful customer.

Beginning of the modern runway show

In the 1970s, ready-to-wear took over from haute couture, and the catwalk became the new medium for designers’ collections. In Paris, so many designers were showing their collections twice a year that in 1973, the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, was founded to coordinate the shows. This was the birth of Paris fashion week .

• The main attractions of Paris fashion week included the Japanese designer Kenzo, Sonia Rykiel, and Chloé (designed by Karl Lagerfeld) with models including Pat Cleveland and Jerry Hall prowling the catwalks..

Europe’s renaissance

During the early 1980s, London became known as the capital of creativity. Vivienne Westwood burst on the scene with a mix of historically researched clothing, sex, and anarchy and a band of followers who were as fanatical about music as fashion. Westwood’s shows were irreverent, rude and raised a one-fingered salute to the grand traditions of the fashion show.

• In 1984 London fashion week launched.

A year after the British Fashion Council was founded in 1983, the British Designer Show and the London Designer Collections, which had been organising shows since 1975, were centralised under one roof. Shows took place in a tent in the car park of the Commonwealth Institute.

London became a key city for press and buyers looking for the Next Big Thing. Other key designers who reinvented the concept of the catwalk show included the progressive label BodyMap, which made a specialty of diverse casting in terms of age, size, colour and gender. The New York Times succinctly described the atmosphere of a BodyMap show in the 1980s: “as bizarre as any rock star’s video”.

• In Paris, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana and Jean Paul Gaultier showed alongside the revolutionary Japanese designers, Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake, and the old-guard French houses, Dior, Chanel and Givenchy.

If London was the place to discover new talent, the 80s and 90s cemented Paris as fashion’s cultural heartbeat. In April of 1981, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto arrived from Tokyo with their debut show. Held in Paris’s Intercontinental Hotel, Comme des Garcons and Yamamoto brought a new more disheveled, asexual attitude to fashion, contrasting with the dominance of high-gloss power-dressing.

At the same time, New York’s show scene was given a shake up in the mid-1980s when Stephen Sprouse showed his edgy arthouse fashion in crowded lofts to a fashion/music/art crowd. Regulars included artist Keith Haring and Debbie Harry of Blondie.

The era of supermodels and slickness

In the 1990s, attention turned from the shows and the designers to the models, with supermodels gaining prominence. Versace’s autumn/winter 1991 show was the pinnacle of the phenomenon, with Linda, Cindy, Christy and Naomi singing the words to George Michael’s Freedom as the show’s final; a moment Donatella Versace relived in tribute to her brother for her spring/summer 2018 show.

Tom Ford’s Gucci upped the ante for a new style of slick, controlled show that was all about sex, status and glamour. The autumn/winter 1995 show used lighting like no other, a single spot following the model along the catwalk focusing the attention on the sheen of Amber Valletta’s velvet hipsters, the sensuousness of Kate Moss’s silk blouse, and – most importantly – the “It” bags that became the other stars of the show.

Location, location, location

The mark of a really edgy designer was the ability to attract the fashion crowd to see a collection in the most obscure, out-of-the-way venue. In 1989, Belgian designer Martin Margiela became one of the first to completely ignore the conventions of fashion shows (then largely held in a tent in a courtyard of the Musée du Louvre until they moved in 1993 to a series of purpose-built runway theatres under the Carrousel du Louvre) when he took over a rundown children’s playground on the outskirts of Paris. There was no seating plan, the locals and their kids were invited to watch. The models walked as they would normally down the street. The stage was set for a less hierarchical, more democratic approach.

• No designer understood the atmosphere of a show location more than Alexander McQueen.

In 1996, Alexander McQueen’s Dante show was held at Hawksmoor’s Christchurch in Spitalfields, a landmark moment when the fashion show became as much about the location, the atmosphere and the setting as the clothes.

The show setting was of utmost importance to John Galliano, too, particularly after his move to Paris in 1993. His first show was facilitated by society hostess Sao Schlumberger, who lent the designer her Left Bank home for his Japanese-inspired show. Five years later, for his spring 1998 Dior haute couture debut, he took over the Opera Garnier in Paris for the ultimate fashion show spectacular. Joan Juliet Buck, then editor-in-chief of French Vogue called it “an excess of beauty”. It was one of the most lavish shows ever, a serious statement of one-upmanship from one of fashion’s most powerful houses.

• In Hussein Chalayan’s Autumn/Winter 2000 collection, a table was transformed into a skirt

From internet to Insta show

Technology has had the biggest impact on the evolution of the fashion show, although at times, the conservative industry has had to be dragged into the digital age. In 1998 Austrian designer Helmut Lang was one of the first to embrace the internet, and presented his autumn/winter show online.

“I sensed at the time that the internet would grow into something much bigger than imaginable, so I thought it was the right moment to challenge the norm,” he said.

In 2010, Alexander McQueen became the first designer to livestream his show, Plato’s Atlantis. By the next year, designers at New York fashion week were livestreaming their shows. Now it is possible to watch most shows in real time, if not via livestream, through Instagram .

• With the advent of social media, fashion shows have arguably become more democratic spaces

Some designers seek to attract the public in real life, too: in 2015, Riccardo Tisci used a lottery to invite members of the public to his Givenchy show. For autumn/winter 2016, Tommy Hilfiger opened his Tommy Pier fairground show to around 1,000 guests who could access free tickets online.

They could also buy some of the collection there and then, part of the “see now, buy now” trend, designed to leverage the publicity around showtime into sales. This was a format that Burberry also launched in September 2016, making its shows into exhibitions open to the public. It is a model that Mulberry is taking for its presentation for AW18 when it takes over Spencer House .

Insta-nt fashion

In keeping with this revolution, Instagram has become the medium the fashion industry now most relies on. Hence the three-day resort-show “holiday” phenomenon, where designers take their audiences on all-expenses paid trips of a lifetime. Dior jetted off to the remote mountain Californian mountain resort of Calabasas for its resort 2018 show. Chanel has flown its international audience to Havana, Salzburg, Edinburgh and Los Angeles. Louis Vuitton travelled to Tokyo for its 2018 Cruise show, and to Rio the year before. These trips are designed to be Instagram frenzies. The clothes are almost an irrelevance.

• Whether it’s the size of the hair or the attention to detail, post Instagram, the shows are all about being insta-fabulous

The world of fashion might have become a more hard-nosed, commercial space, but it is no less extravagant for it. With livestreaming, (and endless opportunities for Instagram, fashion’s social media obsession) the scope is much grander – it is now possible for anyone to see the shows as they happen. But despite all this, there is no substitute for actually being there. A fashion show is a multi-sensory experience.

• Donatella Versace with Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen at the end of the show in Milan

The front row – or Frow as it is affectionately abbreviated – has become its own entity. In the early salon show days, guests sat in clusters around tables, permitting the creations and construction to be appreciated up close. As the industry got bigger, the number of invitations increased, forcing practical benches in neat rows to become the norm, and so a seating hierarchy formed.

Generally its a commonsense one: top magazine and newspaper editors, who can report and promote the collections, take precedence alongside head buyers for department stores and online boutiques, who will place orders after the show. In recent years, the rise of the internet and social media has meant bloggers and influencers are also guaranteed a spot on the Frow, as are celebrities, famous friends of the designer, and high-profile family members.

Undeniably, seating is a status issue . For example, at couture shows, clients are known to demand a front-row seat as close to the beginning of the catwalk as possible so that they can be the first to nip backstage post show and get first dibs on a one-of-a-kind gown to which they have taken a shine.

Some designers have been known to do away with the FROW entirely, as when Chanel created a Parisian neighbourhood for its Metiers D’Art show in 2015 and sat attendees on wrought-iron café tables or when The Row made showgoers stand around a New York loft to present its AW18 collection. Undeniably, however, there’s nothing quite like a front row seat.

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Fashion Illustration from the 16th Century to Now

Sarah goethe-jones by  | mar 12, 2019.

Fig. 1.  René Gruau , Tribute to Christian Dior's first fashion collection in 1947, 1987

The majority of fashion illustrations were created to be seen on a page at close range, allowing for the personal experience associated with books and letters. Therefore, fashion illustrations possess a unique feeling of intimacy, with the image held in the viewer’s hand, as well as an urgency, the need to stop us in our tracks before we turn the page.

Fashion illustration requires the unique ability to use pen or brush in such a way that it not only captures nuance through gesture but is also able to transform the graphic representation of a garment, accessory, or cosmetic into an object of desire. The job of the fashion artist is to ‘tell the story of the dress.’

Fig. 2.  Charles Dana Gibson , The Gibson Book, Volume II , 1907

THE BEGINNING OF FASHION ILLUSTRATION

Fashion illustration began in the sixteenth century when global exploration and discovery led to a fascination with the dress and costume of people in many nations around the world. Books illustrating the appropriate dress of different social classes and cultures were printed to help eliminate the fear of change and social unrest these discoveries created.

Between 1520 and 1610 more than two-hundred collections of such engravings, etchings, or woodcuts were published, containing plates of figures wearing clothes particular to their nationality or rank. These were the first dedicated illustrations of dress and the prototype for modern fashion illustration. The illustrations likely found their way to dressmakers, tailors, and their clients, serving to inspire new designs.

Fig. 3.  Abraham Bosse , Un homme se dirigeant à droite monte un degré , 1629

Seventeenth-century artists Jacques Callot (1592-1635) and Abraham Bosse (1602-1676) both used modern engraving techniques to produce realistic details of the clothes and costumes of their times.

The journals, which began to be published in France and England from the 1670s onward, are considered the first fashion magazines, among them Le Mecure Gallant , The Lady's Magazine , La Gallerie des Modes , Le Cabinet des Modes , and Le Journal des Dames et des Modes . The increase in the number of periodicals and journals produced during this time was in response to an increasingly well-informed female readership eager for the latest news of fashion. Illustrations of current male styles became equally as important as those for women by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Fig. 4.  Jacques Callot , Etching from  La Noblesse , ca.1620

THE FASHION PLATE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The fashion plate came into its own in the late eighteenth century, flourishing in Paris with publications such as Horace Venet's Incroyables et Merveilleuses . This series of watercolor fashion drawings under Napoleon I was engraved by Georges-Jacques Gatine (1773-1824) as a series of fashion plates. France's position as the arbiter of fashion ensured that there was a constant demand, at home and abroad, for fashion illustration. This interest in, and growing access to, fashionable dress resulted in the introduction of more than one hundred and fifty fashion periodicals during the nineteenth century, all of which included fashion plates. These highly detailed fashion illustrations captured trend-driven information and provided general dressmaking instruction. These illustrations were created by such talented artists as the Colin sisters and Florensa de Closménil .

Fig. 5.  Georges-Jacques Gatine , Le Goût du Jour, No. 21: Les Modernes Incroyables , from Caricatures Parisiennes , ca.1815

Couture fashion emerged in the 1860s. Fashion houses hired illustrators who would work directly with the couturier to sketch the new designs as the maestro draped the fabric onto a live model. They also drew illustrations of each design in the finished collection which could then be sent to clients. By the end of the nineteenth century, hand-colored prints were replaced by full-color printing. Fashion plates began to feature two figures, one of which is seen from the back or the side so that the costume could be seen from more angles, making it easier to copy. The focus of nineteenth-century illustrators was on accuracy and details. They conformed to static, iconographic conventions in order to provide information and instruction to their viewers.

Fig. 6.  Florensa de Closménil , La Mode, 25 septembre 1846: Chapeaux de Mme Penet , 1846

Fashion illustration by the turn of the twentieth century became highly graphic and based more on the artist's individual style. For example, Charles Dana Gibson 's (1867-1944) scratchy renderings of the modern American woman, with upswept hair and shirt-waist, defined a type as well as provided a humorous, sometimes satirical, commentary on contemporary American life.

FASHION MAGAZINES AND ILLUSTRATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The early decades of the twentieth century saw the first flowering of fashion illustration in its modern sense. The business of drawing became a vocation as the circulation of the latest styles became an increasingly lucrative business. Fashion, formerly the work of individual artists, was becoming an industry, producing new merchandise in unprecedented quantities to fill department stores. These stores were inventing the culture of shopping, a new national pastime.

In Paris, couturier Paul Poiret was commissioning limited edition albums by artists such as Paul Iribe (1883-1935). In 1908, Iribe introduced figures printed using the pochoir method, based on Japanese techniques which involved creating a stencil for each layer of color which was then applied by hand. Known for his jeweled-tone palette and clean graphic line, Poirot now aligned his new uncorseted and exotic silhouettes with the elite and exclusive world of art.

Fig. 7.  Paul Iribe , Les Robes de Paul Poiret Racontée , 1908

Published from 1912 to 1925, the luxury French magazine Gazette du bon ton brought together a group of young artists who were given unprecedented freedom in their interpretation of fashion. Each edition contained up to ten color pochoir plates and several croquis design sketches. Iribe was one several fashion illustrators who contributed to the celebrated publication that also included work by such greats as Charles Martin (1848-1934), Eduardo Garcia Benito (1892-1953) George Barbier (1882-1932) Georges Lepape (1887-1971) and Umberto Brunelleschi (1879-1949). The plates they produced for the Gazette show the influence of Japanese wood-block prints as well as the new sleek geometry of Art Deco styling.

Fig. 8.  George Barbier ,  Artémis - Manteau, de Worth , plate 29 from Gazette du Bon Ton, No. 4 , 1924-1925

In the United States, mass-market fashion magazines Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar covered the social scene as well as contemporary clothing trends and beauty. Harper’s Bazaar signed an exclusive contract with Erte which lasted from 1915 to 1938—one of the longest contracts in publishing history. From 1910 until the outbreak of World War II, the cover of Vogue always featured an illustration. Vogue ’s early covers displayed artwork created by American illustrators Helen Dryden (1882-1972), George Wolf Plank (1883-1965), Georges Lepape (1887-1971), and F.X. Leyendecker (1876-1924). Following the First World War, they were joined by European artists including Eduardo Benito (1891-1981), Charles Martin (1884-1934), Pierre Brissaud (1884-1964), and Andre Marty (1882-1974).

Fig. 9.  F.X. Leyendecker , Cover of Vogue , March 1, 1911

THE GOLDEN AGE OF FASHION ILLUSTRATION

The 1920s and ‘30s represent the “golden age” of fashion illustration. Every commercial artist was considered a fashion artist—all were consummate draughtsmen. Many were able to represent the texture, sheen, and even weight of the fabric with authority and conviction.

New technological developments in photography and printing began to allow for the reproduction of photos to be placed directly onto the pages of magazines, meaning the fashion plate was no longer a representation of modern life. By the beginning of the 1930s, photographs began to be preferred in magazines, with Vogue reporting in 1936 that photographic covers sold better. Illustration began to be relegated to the inside pages.

Fig. 10.  Rene Bouché , Red Suit , 1950

With the economic recession that followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the United States fashion industry grew less dependent on Paris for fashion. American garment manufacturing made great strides during the interwar years, improving large-scale production methods and standardizing sizing. Middle-class women relied on skillful dressmakers to interpret the latest couture designs at more affordable prices, while the patterns published by magazines such as Vogue and Women’s Journal were invaluable for the home dressmaker. With the outbreak of World War II, these skills assumed a new importance as women struggled to maintain some level of fashionability in the face of severe supply shortages and restrictions. 

The prime objective of Vogue was to show fashion to the reader in as much informative detail as possible. Photography had freed illustrators from the need to make an exact record of the clothing in favor of more interpretive renditions of fashionable dress. The magazine publishers were said to complain that ‘the artists were chiefly interested in achieving amusing drawings and decorative effects...they were bored to death by anything resembling an obligation to report the spirit of contemporary fashion faithfully.” Vogue and Harper's Bazaar kept the art of fashion illustration alive, featuring the work of fashion illustrators like Christian Berard (1902-1949), Eric [Carl Erickson] (1891-1958), Erté [Romain de Tirtoff] (1892-1990), Marcel Vértes (1895-1961), Rene Bouché (1906-1963), and René Gruau (1908-2004).

Dior’s “New Look” in the late 1940s provided the inspiration for the fashion revival after the war. In many ways it was a retrograde style, harking back to the past rather than anticipating the future, yet it also symbolized a return to more cheerful, optimistic times.

Fig. 11. Erté , Symphony in Black , 1983

THE DEMISE AND REVIVAL OF FASHION ILLUSTRATION

By the 1950s, fashion editors were investing more of their budgets for editorial spreads of photography. The subsequent promotion of the fashion photographer to celebrity meant that illustrators had to be content with working on articles for lingerie and accessories, or in advertising campaigns.

The 1960s saw the continuing demise of fashion illustration in magazine publishing, which was featured in the new category of youth-oriented teen magazines, a number of which launched in the 1960s and all of which used illustration as a cheaper alternative to photography. Their role was to inspire and suggest, rather than dictate. Illustrated covers were occasionally featured, and editorial illustration was included by artists such as Rene Bouché, Alfredo Bouret (1928-2018), Tod Draz (1943-1987), and Tom Keogh (1922-1980).

Fig. 12. Alfredo Bouret , Illustration for Vogue Paris , 1960

Antonio Lopez (1943-1987) was the only artist regularly featured in the pages of Vogue during this time, having started his career at Women’s Wear Daily.

During the second half of the twentieth century, fashion illustration struggled to survive, until it underwent a renaissance in the 1980s. A new generation of artists was given an outlet in magazines such as La Mode en peinture (1982), Conde Nast’s Vanity (1981), and Visionaire (1991). Credit for this revival is attributed to advertising campaigns, notably Barney’s New York’s 1993-1996 advertising campaign with witty illustrations by Jean-Philippe Delhomme (b.1959).

Fig. 13. Jean-Philippe Delhomme , Advertisement for Barneys New York, 1993-1996

FASHION ILLUSTRATION TODAY

Falling between fine and commercial art, fashion illustration has only recently been reevaluated as a significant genre in its own right. Since beauty and grace are now outmoded both in fashion and in art, fashion drawing seems at times like a throwback to an earlier era. With photography so much more adept at documenting a garment’s details, the illustrators’ focus was no longer on the accurate rendition of the garment, instead interpreting the clothing and the person who might wear it. This developed a wide range of unique artistic styles in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, bolstered by digital tools and social media platforms. The 1990s saw the rise of computer-based drawing by such pioneers as Ed Tsuwaki (b.1966), Graham Rounthwaite (b.1970), Jason Brooks (b.1969), and Kristian Russell .

Fig. 14. Jason Brooks , Illustration for Revlon, 2013

This period, which saw the emergence of computer design programs Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, also witnessed a revitalization of traditional art-based forms of fashion illustration. New York’s Parsons School of Design and FIT began offering illustration as a dedicated element of their fashion curriculum. “Traditional” hand-worked illustration has continued to enjoy a revival, with fashion illustrators often looking back to the masters of the past for stylistic inspiration. Fashion illustration that is grounded in classic methods has managed to survive alongside those created by more modern processes.

Most recently, illustration has come into vogue through collaborations between fashion designers and illustrators. With the use of social media, fashion illustrators are beginning to make their way to the spotlight. Bursting with vibrant colors, intricate patterns, and endless personality, fashion illustrations never fail to impress.

Sarah Goethe-Jones

Sarah Goethe-Jones is a costume designer and fashion historian. She has a diverse background in theatre, film, styling, and museums. She holds a degree from Parsons New School of Design in New York City, and is currently a student at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 2018, Sarah served as a research fellow of fashion illustration at Norman Rockwell Museum's Center for American Visual Studies. 

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The Evolution of Fashion Trends

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

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The ancient origins of fashion, the influence of royalty and aristocracy, revolutions and societal change, the industrial revolution and mass production, the twentieth century and beyond, the role of technology and media, conclusion and the ongoing cycle.

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The History & Rise of Fast Fashion: From the 18th Century to Today

Fast fashion changed fashion. 

The fast fashion business model of making cheap, trendy clothing fast has changed the way many consume and perceive fashion.

It has changed our relationship to our clothes. It has changed our relationship to who makes our clothes.

Disposable instead of durable. Cheap versus a treasure.

But it wasn’t always this way. And it doesn’t always have to be this way.

But, to set a more sustainable, ethical course for the future of fashion, we must understand fast fashion’s history and cultural origins. That’s what we’ll explore in this article here.

For more from our entire series exploring the fashion industry, where we interviewed many leaders of the sustainable fashion movement, check out: The Impact of Fashion .

But for now, to understand how fast fashion came to be the predominant business model of the industry today, we can look to its history and the broader cultural and economic contexts that allowed it to flourish.

When Did Fast Fashion Start? 

The term “fast fashion” was coined by the New York Times in the 1990s to describe Zara’s goal of getting a garment from design to stores in just two weeks. But, the practice of fast fashion finds its roots as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries, at the dawn of the industrial revolution. 

18th and 19th Centuries

Before the industrial revolution, highly skilled workers made clothes and textiles by hand within local communities. Making clothing was a labor-intensive pursuit, which meant purchasing new clothes was only available to upper echelons of society that could afford to hire tailors to create their custom wear. Members of the lower and middle classes relied on second-hand clothing or made their own.

As technologies developed during the industrial revolution (such as the sewing machine), textiles could be made more easily and quickly. Local tailors and weavers, once the primary source for textile and clothing creation, were now overshadowed by companies with these new technologies. 

Companies began to take charge of textile production slowly, and by the end of the 19th Century, ready-to-wear garment factories increased , and out of this came the very first department store.

20th Century

Although textile and garment factories increased throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, local tailors and small workshops still met most of their communities’ production needs. 

These small operations and the large-scale factories that were popping up began to consider ways to cut costs for their growing number of middle and lower-income customers.

One way these workshops and factories cut the costs of production at the end of the 19th Century was by guiding fashion trends away from the intricately embellished gowns, skirts, bustles, and blouses of the past centuries to simpler, sleeker ready-to-wear designs of the modern era, which, of course, were easier and cheaper to produce.

During this same period, large and small production centers alike began to curtail expenses by outsourcing parts of production to “sweaters ,” i.e., people who could complete simple production tasks for low wages. Sweaters began to offer their services to clothing shops for increasingly reduced prices to compete for business. This race to the bottom consequently lowered the wages possible for those doing the work.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, textile companies became infamous for their widespread exploitation of workers with the growing use of what we now refer to as “sweatshops.” Workers in the industry at the time could be just a few years old and were made to work 15-20 hours shifts in horrendous and dangerous conditions. 

In 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 garment workers trapped inside the building. Regarded as one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history, the tragedy sparked the birth of textile workers’ unions and the passing of several labor protection laws in the U.S. This left the growing fashion companies to cut costs in other ways.

1940s-1960s

Mass production of consumer goods had already begun to take root in the U.S. when World War II began, facilitated by automation and the production line (thanks, Mr. Ford).

During the second world war, fashion became another industry seized by the production line.

Fashion producers again simplified garment designs to make production simpler. 

In 1940, fashion companies tried to measure women from all over the country to create a universal sizing system that would enable even more efficient clothing production.

By the end of WWII, the American population had grown used to the standardization of clothing (and other consumer goods) and had the disposable income to buy more of it in the decades after the war. 

With the cultural revolution of the 60s, fashion became a means of protest, expression, and experimentation. As such, fashion trends began to surge in the 1960s. Young people sought inexpensive clothing to keep up with such trends, which companies were happy to oblige.

In the 1950s and 60s, synthetic fibers, which were much cheaper to produce, gained popularity. Clothes were still generally well-made (even with the rise of synthetic fibers). Clothes still lasted for years and were easily mended.

1970s-Today

In 1965, 95% of clothing consumed in the U.S. was made in the U.S. In the mid-1970s , however, companies began to outsource their production facilities to China and other developing countries in Asia and Latin America. This was because labor and raw materials were cheaper and less regulated. 

The adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s, triggered a massive change in clothing production practices. 

Eric Henry, President of TS Designs, told us that before NAFTA, his company could (and did) contract with brands like Nike, Gap, and Polo while offering their more than 100 employees high wages and comprehensive benefits while minding their environmental impact. Like most apparel brands, though, all of the brands they’d worked with moved their production outside the U.S. within two years of NAFTA. This wave of globalization reduced TS Design’s team to 12. 

Henry informed us, “that [was] all driven by one thing: chasing cheap, usually unsustainable, labor.” In fact, between 1990 and 2011 , the U.S. lost about 750,000 of its apparel manufacturing jobs as apparel companies increasingly outsourced production to low-income countries.

Apparel brands shifted their production offshores to take advantage of cheap labor, vast tax breaks, and lenient laws and regulations . 

While companies were spending less on production, they were spending more on advertising to fuel a breakneck consumption pace. 

Increasingly over the past few decades, companies began pushing out new collections each week , as opposed to every season or two, which had been the industry norm. To keep up with fast-paced trends and their demand, companies set unprecedented production schedules in the 1990s to get items from design to display in as little as two weeks. 

The increased advertising budgets helped to keep these trends hot and flying off the shelves.

This fast-paced approach resulted in poorly made garments and flagrant industry-wide violations of garment workers’ rights and environmental protections.

American fashion culture based on resources cited above and conversations from our Impact of Fashion series.

There is much to be said about fast fashion’s roots in European and American slavery and colonization that warrants a detailed recounting. While I did not go into that history here, don’t hesitate to comment below with topics on that history you feel necessary to include in our discussion.

We approach all of our content as continually-evolving resources.

For more of a look at the history of fashion from this perspective, I’d recommend our series on conscious consumerism featuring Aja Barber and her book: Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism .

Fast Fashion’s Cultural & Economic Roots

Now that we better understand fast fashion’s historical contexts let’s explore some of the other cultural and economic frameworks that allowed for its emergence and continued prominence.

Profits Above All Else

The history of fast fashion is very much the same as the fashion megacorp. As they grew, their goal remained the same as most companies in our capitalistic system: increase shareholder value at all costs. 

This linear model adopted by the fashion industry meant brands paid no attention to the impact of their production or the consumption of their goods. No matter how destructive the fast fashion model is to communities and to the environment, it is very lucrative for those at its helm. 

As part of our series on The Impact of Fashion, we had the pleasure of speaking with Andrew Morgan , director of the provocative documentary, The True Cost . Morgan describes an incredibly unsettling contrast between Paris Fashion Week, the slums of a community that enables it, and the boardrooms generating billions of dollars in profit.

The fashion industry employs 1 in 8 adults in the world , the majority of them women, and many, many of them considered among the poorest in the world. 

In hyper-dystopian fashion, the fashion industry and its high status, edge, and luxury culture are made possible because of the many garment workers who do not make a living wage. 

With little regulation in place to restrict them and lacking transparency, the growth of these companies has mainly been unfettered despite these chasmic discrepancies (but more on regulatory imperatives below).

Culture of Consumerism

Over the 20th and 21st centuries, companies across industries have influenced our collective cultural values. With time, fashion companies grew bigger, and as they did, so did their influence over our daily lives and habits.

The culture of consumerism lies at the core of the fast fashion industry’s success. 

Not coincidentally, the fast fashion industry is deeply invested in mass media as a leading industry fueling our culture of consumerism. 

In the film, The True Cost , Andrew explains copywriter Earnest Elmo Calkins’ take on consumption (AKA consumerism). The film explains there are two kinds of products: ones we use (think products like cars) and others we use up (things like chewing gum). 

Consumerism, he concludes, is about getting “people to treat the things they use as the things they use up.”  And this is precisely what the fashion industry had to do to make up for its failing quality and exponential production.

Fashion brands had to tap into the deeper social, cultural, and psychological roots of consumer desire to increase consumption while eroding quality.

To do this, fashion marketing and media have convinced us that happiness, popularity, and the “best possible you” is centered on owning and sporting the latest trends. Just think about all those magazine ads and commercials on TV! The pressure to buy new for every event, to keep up with the latest celebrity looks, and NEVER repeat an outfit is everywhere. In short, buy and buy some more.

This emphasis is seen everywhere we look and, of course, has “drugged us all,” as Orsola De Castro from Fashion Revolution explained to us. “[This consumerism] is based on addiction and on quantity versus quality.”

Ayesha Barenblat, CEO of Remake, explains how social media has further catalyzed this kind of quick turnover consumerism: “There is a culture, especially with Tik Tok and Instagram, that’s pushing us constantly to be chasing trends. You get that one photo for the ‘Gram, and then you throw it away without thinking about the human and planetary impacts of those choices.”

The Global Economy and the Lack of Regulation

Fast fashion companies want buyers to refrain from thinking about the consequences of their purchases. Given that the model depends on our constant buy-in, it doesn’t make business sense for you to know. In reality, it doesn’t make business sense for them to know the consequences either since that would require them to acknowledge their role in the issues.

Regardless of recognition, the decisions of businesses have led to the destruction of communities and ecosystems. With the globalization of the fashion industry, the rules of engagement changed. 

No longer were companies confined to American labor laws like minimum wage, workplace safety, or environmental protections like regulated waste disposal. Instead, they sought out developing countries that didn’t have the regulatory infrastructure to curtail corporate practices that exploited local labor forces or resources.

Companies tolerate subcontractors’ dangerous labor conditions, low wages, low-quality materials, and unregulated pollution in pursuit of boundless cost reduction.

Barenblat explained that “fashion operates in a complex web of suppliers who, in turn, subcontract. You’ve got this web of where the product is made versus who’s buying it, and you’ve got all these intermediaries in between. Absent smart regulation, like the Garment Worker Protection Act , what brands manage to do then is essentially outsource all risk.” 

The bigger a company gets, the more they lose connections to the local communities where their products are made. 

These (maybe inherently and maybe intentionally) opaque and complex supply chains mean companies don’t know about, and thus, can’t be held accountable for, injustice in their value chain. 250 of the world’s top retailers, according to the Fashion Transparency Index 2021 , averaged a transparency score of just 23% (out of 100%).

This lack of transparency in fashion (and, by proxy, accountability) is what Orsola de Castro believes to be the cause of the widespread exploitation practiced within the fashion industry today. “This closed-doors mentality leads to rife environmental and human abuse,” she says.

More than that, she explains that this widespread exploitation also motivates the need to cover up, remove oneself, and deny accountability.

The lack of regulation, transparency, accountability, and the harm resulting from it is a self-perpetuating loop. For more of a specific example of this transpiring in the fashion industry, I recommend reading: The Rana Plaza Collapse .

Fast Fashion Brands of Today

From the history of fast fashion to now, there are several brands who have made this model their standard means of doing business:

•  Forever 21
•  Primark
•  Topshop
•  Mango
•  Uniqlo 
•  Boohoo
•  Missguided
•  Shein
•  Fashion Nova
•  PrettyLittleThing
•  Urban Outfitters
•  Old Navy
•  Charlotte Russe
•  Wet Seal
•  Aeropostale
•  Abercrombie & Fitch
•  American Eagle
•  Hollister
•  Rue21
•  Express
•  PacSun
•  Cotton On
•  Pull & Bear
•  Bershka
•  Romwe
•  Nasty Gal
•  Fashion Union
•  Miss Selfridge
•  New Look

For more, considering reading our complete list with insight into identifying these brands for yourself: Fast Fashion Brands to Avoid .

What’s the Future for Fast Fashion? 

The future of the fast fashion industry remains to be determined. While highly criticized by proponents of a more sustainable fashion industry, notable fast fashion brands (H&M, Shein, Zara) still have strong positions in the marketplace. Many of these brands are reporting higher profits than in years past. 

And so, many of the voices we featured in our series on the Impact of Fashion, would agree – there’s no single solution to ending fast fashion. 

The good news is that are many solutions, and for the sake of the planet and the people suffering at the hands of fast fashion companies, we must pursue them all. In broad strokes, here are a few: 

Regulation and Accountability

Increased pressure from consumers and advocacy groups may lead to stricter regulations and greater accountability for fast fashion brands. Governments could implement laws to protect workers’ rights and enforce environmental sustainability measures. Organizations like Barenblat’s Remake or de Castro’s Fashion Revolution advocate for this means of progress. 

Shift to Sustainable Fashion 

We must continue to raise awareness about the negative impacts of fast fashion. If successfully done, more consumers may support sustainable and ethical fashion brands. This shift could lead to a demand for quality, longer-lasting garments that are, most importantly, produced transparently and responsibly.  While a difficult challenge, given the strength of the fast fashion brand today, shifting consumer demand from a fast to a slow fashion industry is critical. 

Circular Economy and Clothing Rental

Circular fashion is gaining traction, although we still have a ways to go. Innovative designers are creating garments with reuse and end-of-life in mind. Mud Jeans launched their “Lease-a-Jeans” program, implying that they accept ownership of the product they make and sell. Dhana , our partner on the Impact of Fashion series, launched their store with no inventory, producing garments like their Circular Memory Jacket from your old t-shirts. 

Unfortunately, change driven from the consumer side is limited in scope (at least now). Most sustainable brands are on the high side of the market. This challenge of adopting all more sustainable products (in fashion or other categories), limits making a change within the customer base with a disposable income. The appeal of fast fashion retailers is explicit and potent—affordable prices.  

And that speaks to why all solutions to changing the fashion culture, from fast to slow, must be pursued. Even those this is an apparent uphill battle, various fashion advocates remained optimistic. 

For more on what’s next, I recommend our post: How to Stop Fast Fashion .

Thanks for reading. You can take your sustainability journey further with our weekly newsletter. Each week, I share 1 meditation on the art of living & working sustainably . Over 7,000 people subscribe. Enter your email below to join in.

Alma Rominger

Grow Ensemble Contributor

Alma Rominger is an educator and farmer passionate about regenerative agriculture, composting, gardening for mental health, and outdoor education. 

Alma believes that the health of the earth and the health of its people are intrinsically connected and has spent her entire career advocating for both. She currently specializes in Bokashi composting systems and soil ecology through her work with Compost Queens, a women-owned community composting company based in the San Antonio area.

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Essay on Fashion for Students and Children

500+ words essay on fashion.

Fashion refers to anything that becomes a rage among the masses. Fashion is a popular aesthetic expression. Most Noteworthy, it is something that is in vogue. Fashion appears in clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup, hairstyles, lifestyle, and body proportions. Furthermore, Fashion is an industry-supported expression. In the contemporary world, people take fashion very seriously. Fashion is something that has permeated every aspect of human culture.

History of Fashion

The origin of Fashion is from the year 1826. Probably everyone believes Charles Frederick to be the first fashion designer of the world. He also established the first Fashion house in Paris. Consequently, he began the tradition of Fashion houses. Furthermore, he gave advice to customers on what clothing would suit them. He was prominent form 1826 to 1895.

During this period, many design houses hired artists. Furthermore, the job of these artists was to develop innovative designs for garments. The clients would examine many different patterns. Then they would pick the one they like. Consequently, a tradition began of presenting patterns to customers and then stitching them.

At the beginning of the 20th century, new developments in Fashion took place. These developments certainly began in Paris first. Then they spread in other parts of the world. Consequently, new designs first came into existence in France. From Paris, they went to other parts of the world. Hence, Paris became the Fashion capital of the world. Also, Fashion in this era was ‘haute couture’. This Fashion design was exclusively for individuals.

In the mid-20th century, a change took place. Now Fashion garments underwent mass production. There was a significant increase in the rate of production of Fashion garments. As a result, more and more people became involved with Fashion garments. By the end of the 20th century, a sense of Fashion awareness was very strong. Now people began to choose clothes based on their own style preference. Hence, people began to create their own trends instead of relying on existing trends.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Fashion Trend

Political influences certainly play a major role in influencing Fashion. Many politicians become fashion symbols. Notable examples are First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana. Also, political revolutions make a huge impact on the Fashion trend. For example, in 1960’s America, liberal clothing styles became popular among the younger generation. This was due to the Liberal revolution.

Another significant factor which influences Fashion trend is technology. There certainly has been a rapid growth of technology in the Fashion industry. For example, wearable technology has become a popular Fashion trend. Furthermore, 3D printing technology and the internet have also made an impact on Fashion.

Social influences are probably the strongest influences on the Fashion trend. Many music stars strongly influence Fashion choice. For example, wearing hoodies became famous due to rap musicians. Furthermore, movie and television actors create a big impact on Fashion. Many youngsters love to emulate the Fashion sense of their favourite celebrity.

To sum it up, Fashion certainly has become a part and parcel of human life. It certainly is a force that is here to stay. Most noteworthy, Fashion has immersed every place on Earth.

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Essay on History Of Fashion

Students are often asked to write an essay on History Of Fashion in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on History Of Fashion

Early fashion.

Long ago, people wore clothes made from plants and animal skins. They used these to stay warm and safe. As time passed, they started to choose different colors and shapes to look nice and show their status.

Fashion in Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, rich folks wore velvet and silk, while poor people had simple cloth. Kings and queens had fancy clothes with jewels and gold to show power.

Modern Fashion Changes

Fashion changed fast in the last few centuries. Machines made clothes cheaper, so more people could buy different styles. Magazines and movies made new fashions popular quickly.

Today’s Fashion

Now, fashion is all about personal choice and what’s new. Designers make new styles every season. People can pick from many kinds of clothes to express themselves and look good.

250 Words Essay on History Of Fashion

What is fashion.

Fashion means the clothes and accessories that people wear. It changes a lot over time. Long ago, people made clothes from animal skins and plants. As time went on, they learned to make cloth and sew different styles. Fashion is not just about looking good; it also shows a person’s status and culture.

Ancient Times

In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, fashion was very important. Egyptians wore light clothes because it was hot. Greeks liked simple tunics, and Romans loved togas and fancy jewelry. In China and India, silk and cotton clothes were popular.

Middle Ages to Renaissance

During the Middle Ages, in Europe, clothes showed if a person was rich or poor. Rich people wore velvet and fur, while poor people wore simple wool. In the Renaissance, fashion got even fancier, with big dresses and lots of lace for the rich.

Modern Fashion

In the 1900s, fashion changed a lot. Dresses got shorter, and men started wearing suits. After World War II, teenagers had their own fashion with jeans and T-shirts. Today, fashion is all about personal style and what’s new. Designers make clothes for every season, and people can choose from many different styles.

Fashion’s history is full of changes, and it tells us a lot about how people lived. It’s not just about clothes; it’s about art, culture, and people’s lives. Fashion will keep changing, and we will always find new ways to express ourselves through what we wear.

500 Words Essay on History Of Fashion

Introduction to fashion history.

Fashion is like a language. It shows who we are and how we live. For many years, people have used clothes and accessories to express themselves. Fashion changes with time, and looking at its history tells us about the people and cultures of the past.

Ancient Fashion

Long ago, in ancient civilizations like Egypt, Greece, and Rome, fashion was simple. People wore clothes that were easy to make and comfortable. In Egypt, for example, men and women wore tunics called “kalasiris.” The materials and colors used in clothing also showed if a person was rich or not.

Medieval and Renaissance Fashion

During the Middle Ages, fashion in Europe was modest because of the strong influence of the church. But by the Renaissance, clothing became more elaborate. Rich people wore clothes made of silk and velvet, with fancy designs. They also started to use lace and embroidery to decorate their outfits.

17th and 18th Century Fashion

In the 1600s and 1700s, fashion was very grand. Women wore dresses with big skirts and men wore knee-length trousers called breeches. Wigs also became popular, especially in places like France and England. Kings and queens set the fashion trends, and people in their courts tried to copy them.

19th Century Fashion

The 1800s brought big changes. The Industrial Revolution made it easier to make clothes and people started to care more about fashion. Women’s dresses had tight waists and full skirts. By the end of the century, clothes became simpler and more practical, especially for men who started wearing suits.

20th Century Fashion

The 1900s saw the most changes in fashion. In the early part of the century, women’s clothes became looser and shorter. After World War I, the “flapper” style with short skirts and bobbed hair became popular among young women. In the 1960s, fashion was all about freedom and young people wore colorful, casual clothes. Designers like Coco Chanel and Christian Dior became famous for their stylish designs.

Today, fashion is everywhere. We see it in the streets, on the internet, and on television. People can choose from many styles and trends. Fashion also moves very fast now, with new trends coming in every season. Designers from all over the world show their creations in big fashion shows, and people can buy the latest styles in stores and online.

Fashion is a way for people to show who they are and to connect with others. From the simple tunics of ancient Egypt to the fast-moving trends of today, fashion has always been a part of our lives. It reflects our history, our society, and our dreams for the future. Studying fashion history helps us understand how people lived and what they cared about at different times in the past.

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The Evolution of Style and its Influence Throughout Fashion History

T rends come and go, but style is forever… At least, that’s what they say. As much as people like to tout the concept of timeless style, there’s no denying that fashion is cyclical. Looking back through fashion history, it’s pretty easy to see how certain styles throughout the decades have influenced and built off of each other. Plus, plenty of styles have gone through the wringer of being cool, uncool, and then cool again. Let’s step back in time and discover the fabulous, the funky, and the fantastically weird trends that have shaped fashion throughout history. Who knows? Some of these styles might become popular again sometime soon!

The 1950s “New Look”

Even if you don’t care about designer fashion, there’s no denying that Christian Dior had a huge influence on women’s fashion. He invented a post-WWII style that was eventually coined “The New Look’ in the 1950s. This new style branched out from the harsh and utilitarian styles of the 40s and embraces a sense of ultra-femininity. 

Cinched waists, full skirts, and rounded shoulders became the norm for women’s fashion in the 50s. “The New Look” became so synonymous with that decade that it’s exactly what most of us think of today when we envision amazing retro fashion. It’s an ultra-feminine look that still holds up to this day. 

1970s Flower Power

In the 1970s, the slogan “flower power” emerged as a symbol of nonviolence and resistance. Over time, flower power developed its own aesthetic and style that was seen in art, fashion, and music. This vibrant and colorful aesthetic was seen on tons of clothing from the 70s, like maxi dresses, bell bottoms, and so much more. 

The idea behind flower power was to spread love, peace, and harmony, and the fashion mirrored this sentiment with earthy tones and an explosion of flower motifs. Honestly, these two pieces of flower power clothing look like something we’d see young women wearing today. They’re pretty cute by modern standards! Should we bring flower power back? We think so!

The Tiny Sunglasses of the 90s

If you’re of a certain age, you undoubtedly remember all of the hottest celebs of the 90s wearing the tiniest oval sunglasses. From Britney Spears to J.Lo, everyone was wearing this style like it was the hottest thing since sliced bread. As with any fashion trend, it eventually faded into the archives of cringe fashion . Or did it?

As you’ve probably noticed, these tiny sunglasses from the 90s have made a comeback among Gen Z celebs like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. People either love it or love to hate it. Millennials no doubt feel pretty ancient, considering they’ve lived to see this fashion trend come around more than once. 

1980s Aerobics Wear 

The 80s were a colorful, fun time. The economy was doing fine, Hollywood was cranking out some amazing blockbusters, and stay-at-home moms everywhere were working out in their living rooms. Yes, we’re talking about the colorful rainbow that was 80s aerobics wear. From bright neons to high-waisted shorts, this style had it all. 

If you want to recreate this retro look at home, all you need are some leg warmers, a neon leotard, and a sexy sweatband on your head. Oh, and make sure that the fabrics are as bright as possible. Neons and insanely bright colors were popular for 80s aerobics outfits. You want to turn heads as you’re working out, obviously. 

Air Jordans 1985

Air Jordans are an example of fashion that has yet to go out of style . The very first pair of Air Jordans were produced for basketball player Michael Jordan himself. Nike created the shoes for him during his time with the Chicago Bulls in 1984. Fans went wild, so Nike eventually debuted them to the public in 1985. 

Air Jordans have been a coveted shoe ever since. The debut of Air Jordans and their continued popularity shows how streetwear has become part of our everyday style. Air Jordans are bold, chill, and a definite status symbol. Nike releases a new edition of the shoe style every year, making them a rare must-have for sneakerheads everywhere. 

Bias Cut Gowns in the 1930s

Fashion from the 1930s often gets overshadowed by the 20s and 40s, but it definitely had its own distinctive style. After the loose silhouettes of the 1920s came the more form-fitting, feminine bias cut. Women’s dresses took on a more feminine silhouette, with natural draping around the waistline and flowing fabric. 

This slinky silhouette and the bias cut specifically were popularized by French designer Madeleine Vionnet. Vionnet created beautifully flowy silk gowns for fashion-forward upper-class women. Ready-to-wear bias-cut dresses made with rayon and other synthetic materials soon followed for other, less wealthy women. 

The 1980s: The Big Hair Era

If you grew up in the 80s, one look at this picture will instantly bring back visceral memories of Aqua Net and teasing combs. No one knows how it happened, but big hair became the end-all-be-all of hairstyles in the 80s. The bigger you could make your hair, the higher your status on the social ladder. 

Men were no exception! Hair metal bands like Ratt and Bon Jovi embraced and popularized the big hair life for guys, too. How many young couples shared a bottle of hairspray back in the day? Thankfully, this trend has gone by the wayside. But who’s to say it will never come back in vogue? 

Feathered Hair from the 1970s

Many of us can instantly recognize the celebrity in this iconic photo. The late great Farrah Fawcett was extremely popular in the 70s thanks to her starring role in “Charlie’s Angels.” To top it all off, people went wild over her feathered hairstyle. It instantly took off as the hottest hairstyle of the decade. 

There’s something timeless and feminine about Farrah’s signature bouncy layers and feathered bangs. Not everyone can pull this look off, but if you can, we have to admit that we’re more than a little jealous. We think this volumizing look is way more natural-looking than the giant hair trend that came afterward in the 1980s. 

All-Star Converse, 1960s Edition

We take the classic All-Star Converse sneaker for granted these days. Every kid and their mother wears or has worn this classic lace-up sneaker– literally. However, Converse All-Stars were in vogue back in the 1960s for an entirely different reason. It seems hard to believe today, but they were a popular basketball shoe!

Converse high-tops were thought of as the ultimate shoe for playing sports, mainly for kids and teens. Back in the 60s, it was rare to see a full-grown adult walking around with Converse sneakers on. Things were much more formal than they are today, so Converse was mainly viewed as performance gear. Pretty wild, right?

Denim on Denim: The Ultimate 90s Flex

We all remember Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake showing up to the 2001 American Music Awards wearing matching all-denim outfits. However, the younger people in the chat may not know that Britney and Justin were continuing a fashion tradition that was extremely popular in the 90s. 

Denim on denim was THE look of the 90s. This old snap of Drew Barrymore goes to prove it. An oversized denim jacket worn over equally oversized denim jeans was the ultimate way to prove you were a fashion girlie back in the day. The key to achieving this style was to ensure all of your denim pieces were the same color. Voila! Fashion. 

The Flapper Era, The 1920s

Through a modern lens, it may not seem like flappers were the most fashion-forward women of the 1920s. But they most definitely were. The 1920s were a time when women, young and old, were pushing the boundaries of societal expectations and traditions. The flapper dress became a symbol of that change.  

The looser fits, shorter hemlines, and lower necklines of the flapper dress were pretty scandalous at the time. Every decade before the 1920s saw women wearing corsets, long skirts, and hats on a daily basis. This 1925 photo of a wealthy flapper girl is a perfect example of how women were letting loose like never before. Flappers cut their hair short, wore “short” dresses, and embraced opulence without shame. 

Totally Flared

Forget skinny jeans… Flared pants were everywhere in the 1970s. The flared silhouette of bell-bottom jeans began with counter-culture hippies and rebels. Flared pants began as a symbol of rebellion against the straight-laced expectations of the 1960s. Instead of wearing straight-leg jeans, younger people started rebelling quite literally by wearing wide-leg pants. 

It seems wild to think that flared pants were once thought of as weird and rebellious. There’s a first time for everything, and this pant style has come back in style in recent years. The counter-culture kids of the 70s walked in flared pants so that we could run. Thanks, fashion icons of the past!

1960s Mod Fashion 

The 1960s has to be one of the most iconic decades in fashion history. So many styles and movements happened in the span of ten short years, and they still influence us to this day. One such movement was mod fashion. Mod fashion was all the rage because it involved mini-skirts, androgynous silhouettes, and bold patterns. 

Dress hemlines were shorter than ever before, which was quite cutting-edge at the time. Another big part of mod fashion was the go-go boot. Popularized by André Courrèges in the mid-60s, this knee-high, heeled boot came to symbolize modernity and the future. Interestingly, a lot of mod fashion was influenced by the space race craze of the 60s. 

The Hobble Skirt 

We’re going way, way back with this fashion style. The 1910s saw the dawn of greater freedoms and rights for women in the United States and Europe. Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally), the Edwardian era also saw the popularization of the hobble skirt. In case you’re wondering, yes. The hobble skirt is exactly what it sounds like. 

Hobble skirts had an extremely tight hemline, making it impossible for women to walk freely. Wearing a hobble skirt required small, dainty steps because the hemline around the ankles was so restrictive. For whatever reason, this look became extremely popular among upper-class women who didn’t have to work on their feet all day. Thankfully, this look hasn’t come back in style. 

Leggings for Days

Leggings are more of an athleisure thing for us today, but they were cutting-edge back in the 1980s. Leggings became extremely popular in the 80s for several reasons. First, aerobics was the hot new form of exercise, so a ton of women were drawn to leggings for their stretchy, comfortable fit. 

Another reason leggings became all the rage in the 80s was because of advances in technology. Brand-new fabrics were coming to the forefront, such as Lycra and other synthetic, plastic-based materials . Because these fabrics were fairly cheap to produce, brands started making leggings en masse. 

Making Waves 

Waves of all sorts were the most popular hairstyle of the 1940s. In particular, long waves and a side part were seen as the most chic and stylish. Waves grew in popularity during this decade because of the rationing and mindful consumption spurred by World War II. Certain products were out of reach for many families, so women worked with what they had to create glamorous hairstyles. 

Movie stars and housewives alike rocked long waves with a side part. It’s undoubtedly the most iconic hairstyle of the 40s and is instantly recognizable. The best thing about this style was that it could be adapted for different types of hair and different occasions. Dressed up or down, this is a hairstyle that is automatically timeless and elegant. 

The Rise of Athleisure

A woman living in any other decade would never be caught dead running errands in her pajamas. The thought of going out in public wearing a sports bra and skin-tight leggings would have been an unspeakable fashion faux pas. Not anymore! Things have changed so much since the lace-up days of the 40s, 50s, and even 60s. 

Wearing activewear and athleisure brands is a given nowadays. We’re all about dressing for comfort and ease, no matter the occasion. Heck, some of us even wear our favorite athleisure sets out to dinner. As with any trend, athleisure wear will probably change in some way or another. However, we’re going to embrace this comfortable style for as long as it lasts. 

The Nike Cortez 

The Nike Cortez debuted in 1972 and changed streetwear forever. That sounds dramatic, but we’re only kind of exaggerating. The iconic Nike “swoosh” emblem and textured sole are instantly recognizable, and the Cortez shoe style is still produced today. Back in the 70s, the Cortez was an instant hit among skaters, athletes, and cool kids everywhere. 

Another reason Nike Cortez sneakers became popular was because they were a more affordable option than Air Jordans in the 80s . The Cortez sneaker gave people that Nike status symbol without breaking the bank. From Chicano culture in LA to skater kids, Nike Cortez sneakers have meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. 

Reaching New Heights

Fashion really is cyclical. If you love rocking platform heels or sandals with your outfit, you need to thank 1970s disco culture. The platform started off as a “dance shoe.” Disco-goers would wear sky-high platforms as a way to stand out on the dance floor. The look caught on. Eventually, people started wearing platform heels out and about on the street in the 1970s. 

Although this photo was taken in the 70s, this woman’s outfit and platform shoes would fit in on any major metropolitan street today. Heck, we’ve probably seen a social media influencer or two wearing shoes like hers on TikTok and Instagram. The dramatic height of platform heels opened new doors for people in the 70s , and the look is still going strong today. 

The Jean-Harlow Effect

Although many of us still pay attention to movie stars and Hollywood celebrities, they held a lot more social sway back in the 1930s . Movie stars were at the top of the food chain when it came to tastemakers and influencing. Jean Harlow was one of the most popular starlets of the 30s. 

Jean Harlow was so popular, in fact, that she sparked a new hairstyle craze. She was known for her platinum blonde curls and short bob haircut. Women across the US jumped on the bandwagon and tried to recreate her hairstyle, for better or for worse. Although Harlow swore her platinum hair was natural, the reality was that she dyed it weekly with ammonia, Clorox bleach, and Lux soap flakes. Any hairdresser today knows how harmful those products are, but people didn’t really know better back in the 30s. 

S-bend Corsets, 1900s

The age of the corset was a wild time. It seems almost incomprehensible to modern folks that women laced themselves up into wildly restrictive corsets on a daily basis, regardless of the weather, occasion, or their own health. Believe it or not, there were different styles and iterations of the corset over the years. The S-bend corset rose to prominence in the early 1900s. The S-bend corset was marketed as a “healthy” style of corset because it was believed to put less pressure on the abdomen. 

Whether that was really true or not was beside the point, as it also created a “desirable” silhouette that many women wanted at the time . The S-bend corset forced a woman’s shoulders and bust forward while pushing their backside out, creating a swishing posture and gait that was probably insanely uncomfortable. We don’t miss the “good old days” of corsets being the norm. 

Spiky Hair: An Early 2000s Fad

Millennials everywhere are probably internally cringing at this early-2000s photo of Mandy Moore. If you know, you know. If you don’t, allow us to introduce you to the fad that was spiky, pointy hair. Believe it or not, young girls across the US tried desperately to recreate this spiky hairstyle , usually to no avail. 

Where this wild trend came from, no one can be sure. What we do know is that no young woman or man was safe from its pointy grasp. Boy bands like NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys were also rocking spiky hair with frosted tips and plenty of hair gel. We know that Y2K has come back into fashion, but we really hope this particular trend stays in the past. 

The Pixie Haircut

We take the pixie haircut for granted nowadays. But it was quite cutting-edge when it became popular back in the 1960s. Twiggy, the iconic British model and actress, became synonymous with this super-short, super-straight hairstyle. She absolutely rocked this look and convinced everyone else that they could pull it off, too. 

The pixie haircut was groundbreaking because it was an androgynous look that went against the ultra-feminine expectations of the 50s and early 60s. Twiggy made waves with this haircut because it was even shorter than the bobbed flapper cuts of the 1920s. This boyish haircut pushed the envelope of women’s fashion for the better. 

The flapper bob is instantly recognizable as a quintessential 1920s look. After decades of women being expected to keep their hair long and pinned up in polite company, this ultra-short haircut was shocking and cutting-edge. The flapper bob signified a new era of freedom and exploration for young women across the nation. 

The bob haircut that many young women wore became synonymous with the “Roaring 20s” mentality. People were breaking from tradition in ways that had never been seen before. Older generations were no doubt scandalized by this bold new hairstyle. It just goes to show how shocking new trends eventually get absorbed into our larger cultural consciousness and eventually become normalized. 

1950s Pin Curls

The pin curl hairstyles of the 1950s were very similar to their 1940s predecessors. If anything, the pinned-back curls of the 50s were more time-intensive and complicated than ever before . Women were generally sporting shorter hairstyles, and they spent a ton of time perfecting their curls. Unfortunately, many of the popular methods for creating pin curls were quite damaging to hair. 

There’s no denying that this classic 50s hairstyle still looks amazing. It’s timeless, chic, and oh-so-elegant. Although most of us don’t wear this style on a regular basis, we can all agree that it’s beautiful. Many people who are into vintage fashion keep this hairstyle alive by dedicating themselves to perfecting the pin curl look for special occasions. 

The 1980s Power Suit

Move over, Hillary Clinton. The shoulder-padded power suit of the 1980s was here first! Most of us wouldn’t be caught dead in shoulder pads today, but back in the 80s, it was the ultimate girl boss look. Shoulder pads evolved into an office must-have as more and more women began moving up the corporate ladder. 

The corporate world was still largely dominated by men, so many women felt that a strong shoulder-pad silhouette made them look more authoritative and in charge. They weren’t wrong. Huge shoulder pads might not look hip by today’s standards, but they certainly cut a striking silhouette. This look definitely served its purpose for women at the time. 

Minimalism of the 1990s

Before we dive into how minimalism was popular in the 90s, can we just take a second to appreciate this paparazzi photo of Jennifer Aniston? She is rocking the quintessential 90s minimalist look in her simple denim jeans and a chic black t-shirt. Oh, yeah, and Brad Pitt is there, too. In a matching ensemble, no less. 

90s minimalism rose in popularity as a reaction to the decadent fabrics and loud colors of the 80s. People started gravitating toward muted colors, simple silhouettes, and basic cuts for their clothing. Many of the principles of 90s minimalism still ring true, with simple slip dresses, high-waisted denim, and laid-back fits being popular choices for it-girls.

Grunge-Inspired Hair

Along with the minimalist fashion style of the 90s came the rise of straight and messy hair. Kate Moss was the poster girl for this look, with her effortlessly unkempt hair always, somehow, looking on-point. The rise of grunge music and fashion was another factor that contributed to simple hair becoming popular.  

The key to pulling off the straight and messy look was to pretend you didn’t care. It-girls of the 90s were spending hours on their hair in order to make it look like they spent no time at all on getting ready. Oh, the irony. To this day, many of us have tried and failed to achieve the “I don’t care” look that Kate Moss, Winona Ryder, and Courtney Love so immaculately pulled off.  

Mod Sunglasses

The 1960s brought about a ton of change in the world of fashion. Accessories also saw a huge shift in this decade, becoming bolder and more carefree. Designers and fashionistas alike were having a blast wearing zany, funky, and creative shades as part of their outfits. Nothing was off-limits when it came to sunglasses in the 60s. 

Brands drew inspiration from mod fashion and pop art to craft oversized bubble glasses and shades with bold geometric shapes and asymmetrical outlines. The 1960s were a time of experimentation and exploration , and the era’s sunglasses reflected that. The future was bright, so sunglasses were an inevitable accessory. We love it!

Wayfarer Sunglasses

The 1980s were THE heyday of the Wayfarer sunglasses. Ray Bans became the top brand of the 80s for anyone who wanted to look cool, calm, and collected. Stars like Madonna, Tom Cruise, and Michael Jackson popularized this look, which was quite a departure from the blocky sunglasses a decade before. 

Honestly, Ray Ban sunglasses still look cool today. Even if they’re not the newest “trendy” eyewear, they look timeless, classic, and effortlessly awesome. Another plus is that Wayfarers look good on pretty much anyone. If you want to boost your hotness, throw on a pair of these and see what happens. 

The 1950s Silhouette

Tea-length dresses are still pretty popular today, but they were the must-have silhouette of the 1950s. Stars like Audrey Hepburn popularized this classic, beautiful style that oozed elegance and femininity. This dress length became wildly popular because it was refreshing, flirtatious, and fun while remaining modest for polite society. You could show a little leg without being accused of anything salacious. 

The key to this 1950s look was the cinched waist and A-line skirt. These two elements combined to create a flattering figure that was simultaneously sexy and classy. Any woman who completed her look with a pair of heels and her best pearls was dressed to impress. While we don’t miss the societal restriction of the 50s, we sure miss this elegant fashion trend. 

Shorter Hemlines in the 1960s

There were a lot of changes in the 1960s thanks to social movements like second-wave feminism and the civil rights movement. Along with those shifts in societal views came big changes in fashion. Women’s hemlines had been getting gradually shorter over the decades of the 21st century, but the 60s saw the normalization of the miniskirt. 

British fashion designer Mary Quant is often credited with “inventing” the miniskirt, but it was actually the culmination of a bunch of different factors, such as social movements, British street style, and women experiencing newfound freedoms. Stars like The Supremes brought miniskirts to the forefront of fashion , giving women the confidence to wear what they wanted in a new way. 

The Drop Waist Arrives in the 1920s

The “Roaring 20s” brought about a huge shift in women’s fashion, especially for younger generations. Flapper girls started cutting their hair and wearing dresses that would have been deemed “indecent” just a few years earlier. This photo of a group of women wearing flapper dresses looks pretty tame by today’s standards, but it was pretty fashion-forward at the time. 

A signature element of the classic flapper dress is the drop waist. Flapper dresses from the 20s had lengthened torsos, with the skirt portion starting at or below the hips. While this silhouette isn’t flattering on all body types, it signified breaking with tradition and stuffy expectations at the time. 

Fashion is doing something really interesting in our current era… The 2020s have ushered in a time where “ugly” fashion is considered trendy. If you were around in the early 2000s, you probably remember seeing Crocs for the first time and thinking, “Wow, that’s ugly. I’ll never wear those.” Now look at us. Crocs and other similarly ugly shoes are at the forefront of fashion. 

High-end luxury brands have even jumped on the ugly-core train. Balenciaga even created their own line of Crocs that includes platforms, stilettos, and rain boots. In case you’re already feeling old, don’t forget the fact that “dad shoes” have come back in style. The youths no longer scoff at chunky white New Balance sneakers. They’re the ones wearing them. 

Utility Clothing in the 1940s

The 1940s were a tough decade for many countries, including the United States. Rations of food and materials were common in order to redirect as many resources as possible to the US military fighting on the war front. Naturally, that meant less material was available to make new clothing . As a result, women’s fashion took on a more utilitarian aesthetic. 

Dresses, suits, and pants were streamlined to use less fabric. That meant shorter hemlines and more practical fabrics were used in women’s fashion. Plus, many women entered the workforce while a majority of men were enlisted in the military. These women needed more practical clothing that they could move around in freely. 

The Velvet Tracksuit 

If you’re a millennial, you know that Britney Spears wearing this blue velvet tracksuit was the height of early 2000s fashion. Everyone who was anyone had a coordinated tracksuit or two in their closet. If it was a Juicy Couture tracksuit, even better. The rest of us regular people with limited budgets longed for a pair of soft velvet track pants that read “Juicy” on the bum. 

Don’t judge us. We didn’t make the fashion rules, we just tried to follow them. The early 2000s were an era of extreme bling, decadence, and questionable fabric choices. So what if your bell-bottom track pants dragged on the floor and got extremely dirty? It was all part of the aesthetic!

Breaking News: Women Wearing Pants 

It seems hard to believe that the concept of women wearing pants is less than 100 years old, at least in Western culture. Except for practical work environments, women wearing pants was unheard of until about the 1930s. Even then, most women still wore dresses and skirts in their day-to-day lives. 

This 1930s photo of a woman wearing wide-leg pants looks pretty average to us, but it would have been considered pretty wild back in the day. Forget the fact that those pants are loose enough to look like a skirt. The fact that her bottoms had a crotch and gave the vaguest hint of a leg was considered mind-blowing. 

Fashion Design and Famous Designers Essay

Fashion design is an expression of a particular character’s art and uniqueness. It is mainly based on original work, while others are borrowed and improved. It is how individuals show their creativity and talent through their productions. The designers have grown to influence the world with their products globally. They are known internationally for their products supplied globally due to their efficient expression of art in original work. This project is about fashion design because it focuses on the most exciting journeys of widely known designers and their influence in the industry. Considering the stories of the most famous individuals, the upcoming designers are inspired to keep growing. They start looking up to these influencers and admiring their brands, which are the most significant influence in society.

Martin Margiela

Martin Margiela is referred to as the silent designer whose clothes tell his story. This is because since he started his career in 1988, he had never appeared before the press or conducted an interview. This brought up the character narrative of Martin Margiela as one who would not take a bow for his achievements but let his art express him. Martin Margiela challenged all that was deemed traditional couture when he first began working in early 1980. Margiela’s designs were motivated by his mother’s reconstruction of furniture, frequently revealing the layout of the garments and intentionally exposing the linings and seams. One of the most prominent looks that Martin Margiela pulled on the runway was during their first show for his eponymous label in the fall of 1989. Against all other expectations, his collections included ripped sleeves, frayed hems, and clumpy shoes in uneven runaway and stumbling models.

Demna Gvasalia

Demna Gvasalia is a Georgian fashion designer who innovates a streetwear-savvy brand that has dominated the fashion industry. He has been the creative director of Balenciaga collections since 2015. His general approach to the design philosophy is to recreate something which dismantles the boundary between vernacular, street, and luxury wear. Some of his creations are crocs, satirical prom suits, leather Ikea bags, baggy tracksuits, subversive tailored denim, and others that made the headlines on the platforms. He dresses most celebrities, such as Kanye West and the Kardashians, which is the best platform to express his art. One of the most prominent looks that Gvasalia sent to the runway was a chic, floor-sweeping, cap-sleeved gown overlaid with an understated veil, which was contrary to what a bride would look. He is portrayed as one who fearlessly expresses his art and talent without fear of public opinion or online critics.

John Galliano

John Galliano was the founder and the creative director of his eponymous label John Galliano and French fashion houses Givenchy and Dior, respectively. His design philosophy is romantic historicism with technical skills and progressive aesthetics. He represented the garments that people wore on romantic occasions. Galliano’s designs became known for their twisted romanticism. His work was intricate, feminine, and undeniably beautiful – but also sinister, slightly frightening, and lavish to the point of showy. Galliano has always seen the runway as a storytelling medium. The designer told the story of an escaped Russian princess on a journey of self-discovery in his spring/summer 1994 collection. The fashion elite praised Galliano’s “Princess Lucretia” show for its crinolines, capes, and impossible-flowing locks. However, the most outstanding character of John Galliano came up when he was fired from Dior due to the racist utterances that he made. Regardless of the controversies, he is one of the most fabulous designers.

Virgil Abloh

Virgil Abloh has worked with different brands as a fashion designer, such as Off-white and Louis Vuitton. He was the first African American to be the artistic director of a French Luxury Fashion House when he joined Louis Vuitton in 2018. His most extensive design philosophy is based on compromising between two different options. He brought streetwear into the world’s high fashion when working with Off-white. He has proven to be a team player from his many successful collaborations. The main was his collaboration with Kanye West, which was brought about by the success of Off-white. He uses that to inspire the success of black children in the fashion world. Some of his most significant creations are Nike x Off-White™ “The Ten” Jordan 1, which was made in collaboration with Nike. The most iconic runway moment was Louis Viton’s first outing, as he demonstrated menswear for the following male celebrities.

Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji Yamamoto is a master tailor known for his avant-garde tailoring featuring Japanese design aesthetics. He has worked as a fashion designer with brands such as Adidas and Hermes. His signature aesthetic, which distinguishes his collections, is that all his collections are black. He put a new spin on tailoring and stood out among the cinched waists, shoulder pads, and bold block colors that ruled the 1980s fashion scene. His design philosophy states that he does not look for perfection because perfection is ugly. However, black is modest, and it also brings the imperfections, such as arrogance, which is what he likes to show. His narrative explains the display’s unisexual oversized apparel, which means that any gender can express fashion. The Yohji Yamamoto spring/summer show is one of the hugest demonstrations of his collections, which shows different designs of all-black apparel with other models who strive to bring back to the 1990s.

Alexander McQueen

He is the founder of a luxurious British fashion house known as Alexander McQueen. His label does not only include clothes but also shoes, perfume, and fashion accessories. McQueen is widely known for his well-tailored clothes and other controversial designs. He took classic pieces and redesigned their form to look chic and unique. His design philosophy was to make a piece that could go beyond any trend and still be relevant in a hundred years. His character narrative is about the blend of the past and the present as he tries to make his collections more relevant. The skull scarf and armadillo shoes are two of his most well-known creations. The LACMA Museum is currently displaying “Mind, Mythos, Muse,” a collection of imaginative clothing. McQueen’s most controversial runway show was the fall/winter of 1997, which was the theme of the jungle. The animalistic designs included tiger stripes, cowhide material, and horned headpieces.

Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean-Paul Gaultier was a seven-year fashion director at Hermes. He did not only sell clothes but also his fragrance and colognes. His designs are primarily costumes, which are simple and ambient. His design philosophy is for the ateliers to work hard to present the designer’s collections to the world. He believed that having different is beautiful in that representing something opposite to society’s expectations is a significant step that any designer would be willing to take. Even though the new generation has taken them over, his most outstanding designs on the runway are the naked dresses with techno dots. They have been ranked the highest viewed for the designer. He reinvented Haute Couture by using exceptional French savoir-faire to satisfy his obsession with combining different genres, cultures, and materials. His character narrative states that it is the job of the models to bring the designer’s work to the field to help them push forward.

Thierry Mugler

Thierry Mugler is a French fashion designer, creative director, and creative adviser of Mugler Fashion house. He is one of the few people who rose to dominance due to the promotion of haute culture. He was often met with racism, ageism, and critics for incorporating non-traditional models such as drag queens and transgender women. His design philosophy was to make women look beautiful and efficient with essential glamour. He is strong-willed and willing to give any woman a chance to showcase his collections with the basics of making them look gorgeous. Mugler has hosted fashion shows with over 300 exhibitions on display. When attending the Met Gala, he dressed many celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, which was a significant step in showing his work. Pat Cleveland’s descent from the skies as a sparkling Madonna descended from the skies, pregnant and surrounded by cherubs with golden wings, was the most iconic moment.

Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld was a German designer who was represented by his signature white hair, black sunglasses, and shirts with high-detachable collars. He was known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel and the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi. Karl Lagerfeld has a very different design philosophy, believing that ‘less is more and emphasizing objectivity, simplicity, and elegance. He emphasizes the cut and proportion of the garment and occasionally adds details. He was known to be a person who would turn anything into gold, especially after revamping Coco Chanel and making ready-to-wear garments and a huge success. His Fall 1977 collection, one of the most celebrated of the 1970s Soft Look era, featured lace trim, headwear, and thigh-high boots in 1700s styles. His Fall 1979 collection was one of the most influential of the early years of the big-shoulder era, featured millinery reminiscent of Napoleonic bicornes. It also included button-sided spats/leggings that looked somewhat like military accouterments from the same period.

Alessandro Michele

Alessandro Michele is an Italian fashion designer who, in 2015, was appointed the creative director of Gucci. He is responsible for Gucci’s brand image and collections. His design philosophy is that fashion is more than just clothes. It is like a whole universe by itself, where everything is connected to it. This tells that he showcases style not as a dependent component of human lifestyle but as the entire independent world that humans depend on. Michele created replicas of selected models’ heads to carry down the runway as accessories for the Fall/Winter 2018 season. While other models walked down the catwalk holding baby dragons in their arms, the catwalk was transformed into an operating room. Michele worked with the Italian special effects studio Makinarium to make the fiction as accurate as possible. He explained that these post-humans represented how people build identities today and how one can expose, hide, or reshape oneself through social media, fashion, and cosmetic surgery.

Phoebe Philo

Phoebe Philo is a British fashion designer who was the creative director of fashion brands Chloe, Celine, and Louis Vuitton. Her main philosophy was to redesign and revolutionize the industry with her new aesthetic, to define the new modern look of today’s generation. Her character narrative depicts using fashion to express what she is feeling at a particular moment. She was determined to push her dream in style to the highest she could achieve, regardless of taking numerous risks. It was one of the most iconic moments on the runway when she was leaving Celine. It was graced by the presence of her preteen daughter, who was propped against a pole in the center if the runway with two of her friends. Women respond to Philo’s Céline precisely because a woman runs it. Her shows are mostly graced by women models, inspiring the young generation.

Guo Pei is the most well-known designer in China. She is the first Asian designer to be invited to become a guest member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. She has been dressing celebrities, eminent women, royalty, and even members of the political elite for more than 20 years. Guo Pei is a dedicated artist who aims to inspire others by showcasing the best in traditional Chinese artistry while blending modern innovation and a Western flair. Her extraordinary creations are available in the Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy exhibition at the legion of honor museum in San Francisco. One of Guo Pei’s creations includes Rihanna’s famous 2015 Met Gala Yellow Empress gown. The breathtaking yellow cape took 50,000 hours of embroidery and two years to create. Two helpers were used to aid Rihanna in climbing the gala steps because the gown weighed fifty pounds. Guo Pei described her motivation as her desire to convey the “beauty of strength” of building through works that showed a conversation between the human body and space dimension.

Miuccia Prada

Miuccia Prada is an Italian fashion designer best known for serving as the Prada fashion house’s chief designer. She is famous for fusing traditional and modern styles through minimalist designs. She serves as co-CEO and head designer for the Prada handbag and clothing empire. Her company demonstrates its influence in the fashion sector. Prada has been creating and marketing exquisitely produced and creative bags, clothing, shoes, and accessories for men, women, and even kids. Miuccia co-owns most of the world’s luxury brands, including; Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s, and the historic Pasticceria Marchesi. She has won many awards, like the Glamour USA’s Women of the Year award, for her part in fashion, art, and culture in 2016.

Prada’s clothing and accessories have been characterized as traditional and unconventional, frumpy yet relaxed, and distinguished by a hazy techno-retro vibe. She once stated that she made ugly garments from terrible material, but they always looked fine. She might have been referring to looks like a Formica check pattern that looked like polyester from the 1970s.

Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood, a British fashion designer, had no intention of becoming a household name in the industry. Her creations were taken from historical texts, modernized, and changed as she thought fit. She was a significant player in the ’90s fashion movement thanks to her rebellious heart. Westwood still inspires fashion today and has successfully laid out her style visions regardless of time and trends. This has contributed to winning the title of British Designer of the Year three years consecutively. She pioneered the punk movement and the androgynous movement with the Fall/Winter 2015–2016 collection and has influenced and changed fashion for over 50 years. Westwood frequently employs heavy materials like wool, tweed, and tartan and enjoys drawing inspiration from earlier times. She even has a tartan MacAndrews’ of her own. Her gowns were distinguished by their extravagant use of fabric. The distinctive aesthetic of Westwood’s collections is characterized by lush drapery, crazy pattern and color combinations, and unexpected style adaptations.

Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo is a French and Tokyo-based fashion designer from Japan. She is the founder of Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons (CDG). Rei Kawakubo is one of the most influential and forward-thinking designers today. For about five decades, she has defied tradition to reinvent fashion. She has twisted the shape and function of clothing and reframed perceptions of beauty through her designs. She has therefore offered a new relationship between the body and dress. Rei has had many successes and styled many celebrities who looked stunning. She styled Rihanna for the 2017 Met Gala. However, she does not believe she has completed her final form yet. She once told Elle that she had not achieved anything because every time before a collection, she expresses her desire for it not to be released, but it does. Rei argues that she designs the company and not the clothing.

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The Complex, Gender-Bending History Behind ‘Florals for Spring’

Essayist Olivia Laing delves into the surprisingly subversive lore behind the motif.

We got married at a University of Cambridge college, in a 15th-century hall decorated with Pre-Raphaelite exuberance in the same unusual black, red, and green palette as the dress. There were heraldic roses and other botanical motifs everywhere you looked, rising up the walls and swarming across the painted ceiling. It was like entering a fantastical Eden, at once traditional and anarchic.

Flowers are often coded as sweetly feminine, especially in fashion, but their historical use is far stranger and more subversive. Before I became a writer, I trained as an herbalist, falling deep under the spell of medieval herbs, with their bewitching floral associations. Flowers had once formed a kind of secret language, an arcane code that only an adept could read. Bouquets, paintings, even dresses could carry a hidden message, by way of the humble plants they contained.

While I was researching my new book, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise , I came across a historical study with the beguiling title of Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d . It was an account of the marvelous dresses the Tudor queen had worn, many of them densely embroidered with flowers, which broadcast a coded message about her virtues. The dress worn by Elizabeth in the famous Hardwick Portrait includes pansies for humility, lilies for purity, and roses to emphasize her Tudor lineage. They appear on a dress swimming with floral, animal, and even monstrous life. It wouldn’t look out of place on a catwalk now, perhaps worn by Gwendoline Christie at Maison Margiela .

It was William Morris who brought the lost language of flowers back into everyday circulation. He’d pored over medieval herbals as a child, and their flowers reemerged in his fluid, fertile prints. Morris wanted everything to be as beautiful as possible, and he covered the staid bedrooms and stiff drawing rooms of the Victorian world with a restless profusion of marigolds and roses, chrysanthemums and lilies. His flowers encoded a subversive dream of a shared Eden, a secret message he even managed to install in the Throne Room of St James’s Palace.

The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing

There’s a similar sort of subversion going on in the clothes of Steven Stokey-Daley, a young British designer much loved by Harry Styles. Stokey-Daley is a gay working-class man who draws his inspiration from the elitist and highly coded uniforms of British public schools. His label S.S. Daley deploys the distinctive shapes and styles of an aristocratic wardrobe, creating a gorgeous Brideshead Revisited world of dressing gowns, flowing shirts, and rowing blazers. It’s not so much an emulation of privilege as an exposure and reclamation of how power is worn.

Since presenting his debut collection in 2020, Stokey-Daley has incorporated flowers into his work, often using 16th-century botanical prints. One of my prized possessions is an oversize S.S. Daley men’s shirt, finely striped and covered in an angular tracery of orange poppies. His flowers spell out a distinctive and defiant queerness, disrupting the conventional language of gender.

Simone Rocha’s spring 2024 collection was also awash with gender-bending florals. She sent both male and female models down the catwalk in shirts and jackets cunningly folded to create outsize floppy roses. Some models carried roses; others had rose transfer tattoos on their legs. The pièce de résistance was a series of tulle dresses stuffed with real roses. “They smelled amazing,” she told me. Rocha is a keen gardener, especially of roses, and it felt natural to incorporate the flowers she loves into her clothes. What excited her was “to contrast the natural with the man-made. In particular, the stuffed rose dresses were almost to mimic the boning of a garment, but trapping it and exposing it in tulle.”

This is the kind of floral fashion I love. Queen Elizabeth I would have understood its appeal: clothes that are like walking inside a private garden, in bloom summer and winter alike.

Olivia Laing’s new book, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, is published by W. W. Norton.

A version of this story appears in the June/July 2024 issue of ELLE.

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Get to Know Rachel Willingham

In the spotlight today: New Jersey-based Rachel Willingham draws inspiration from decades of fashion history to shape her own style— often creating her own pieces in the process.

Full name/pronouns: Rachel Willingham (she/her)

Location: New Jersey

Vogue Club member since: 2024

Instagram handle: @willinghamrach

My signature look: My personal style changes—like we all change—continuously. I mostly wear consigned or vintage pieces, but I also like to wear pieces I've made myself. I started sewing in January 2023 (after receiving my first sewing machine for Christmas), and ever since have been making pieces inspired by looks I like.

My favorite designers: From a fashion-history perspective I love Christian Dior, Cristobal Balenciaga and, above all, Schiaparelli. I like how enigmatic and flighty Balenciaga was—the fact he had hardly any pictures taken of him throughout his life adds to the sheen of mystery. My favorite contemporary designers to wear or admire from afar are Bishme Cromartie, Simone Rocha, Jonathan Simkhai and Norma Kamali.

On my fashion wish list: In the short term, I'm looking for (or will make!) a double-breasted wide-leg jumpsuit in all-black—something I can wear backstage for my work as a fashion show producer. Longer-term, I promise to fly to Paris and buy myself a full-sized Dior saddle bag—but only after I reach a certain major life goal! It's the bag I keep returning to—no matter what age or stage of life I'm in!

A fun fact about me: As a former college athlete and the wife of an NFL coach, my style is heavily influenced by sports. Throughout football season—and when I'm not working—I'm piecing together or sewing my outfits for upcoming games. I parent alone for seven months of the year and often move every few seasons, so making my clothes is one of the fun aspects of a very hectic lifestyle.

Want to be the star of a future Member Spotlight? Check out our submissions page !

The Shenandoah County School Board’s Terrible History Lesson

O n May 10, 2024, 161 years to the day after General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s last breath fighting for the Confederate insurrection intended to continue enslavement of human beings in America, the Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to restore his name on a high school in rural Virginia.

More than 50 concerned community members, students, and parents, including one of the first African Americans to integrate Stonewall Jackson High School in 1963, and hundreds of their supporters, continued to advocate a new reckoning of the county’s heritage of enslavement, segregation, and racial injustice. They affirmed the names a community committee selected in 2021 renaming the school as Mountain View High and another school named after Confederate generals Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee as Honey Run Elementary.

But the school board heard none of it. Instead, the board sided with those idolizing the faith and loyalty of “heroes” like Jackson, condemning pandemic-related processes that did not take into account the voices of “we the people,” and complaining about “woke outsiders.” At the end of the board meeting, the board had delivered a disgraceful new chapter in our community’s history and a terrible lesson for the children they are sworn to educate.

Historians will debate the consequences of the board’s vote and perhaps whether the nation’s current political mood has rekindled racial tensions. But the school board members and their embittered supporters made it clear that the shadows of our segregated past still loom large.

For context, we should look at 2020, particularly the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video that emblazoned the truth of racial injustice in America. After George Floyd’s murder by police in May of that year, national, state, and local leaders across the nation took up resolutions against racism, including Shenandoah County’s Board of Supervisors and the county School Board.

At around the same time in our mountain-cradled county, another incident reminded us of America’s lingering racial unrest: an encounter between a white mob and a black pastor in Edinburg, Va. On June 1, 2020, Pastor McCray approached a couple illegally dumping a refrigerator on his property, asking them to leave. They left, returned with three more people and began “attacking him physically, saying ‘they don’t give a darn’ about ‘my black life and the Black Lives Matter stuff,’ and telling him they would ‘kill’ him,” according to Associated Press reports. McCray put distance between himself and the mob by brandishing a gun that he was legally licensed to carry. When the police arrived, they arrested the Black man with the gun.

The Shenandoah County Sheriff later apologized for the incident, but it reinforces the need for formal resolutions against racism and leaders willing to make difficult decisions for a more inclusive community. The Shenandoah County School Board at the time agreed. They chose action, encouraged by then-Department of Education secretary Atif Qarni and then-Governor Ralph Northam, both of whom supported statewide removal of Confederate leaders’ names of public schools.

The 2020 school board, tying in as the next step to its June “Resolution condemning racism and affirming the division’s commitment to an inclusive school environment for all,” retired the names of Confederate leaders, and developed a process for community and student input into choosing more unifying public school names. On September 10, 2020, the then school board reaffirmed the foregoing motion, as well as moving forward with renaming the schools on southern campus. Community committees met during the next three months, with new names chosen at the January 14, 2021 meeting, after seven months of public input.

By 2024, recently elected school board members focused their arguments for restoration on the former board’s “secret” process during the COVID “plan-demic,” stating that community input was not taken into account at the time. Two years before, three current school board members ran on a campaign to restore the school’s Confederate leader names, an attempt that ended at the June 9, 2022 school board meeting with a 3-3 stalemate. The current board consists of three more new school board members, elected in the fall of 2023. Like many school boards around the nation, ours has committed to reversing civil rights often under the lost-cause banner of Confederate pride.

The memory of Stonewall Jackson High School as a whites-only public institution until its integration in 1963 is not a distant echo of history but an agonizing experience for many Black residents of Shenandoah County. These individuals are not just statistics in history books; they are our neighbors, friends, and family—and they were intentionally harmed in Shenandoah County as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s.

Read More: Confederate Monuments and Other Disputed Memorials Have Come Down in Cities Across America. What Should Take Their Place?

And now again in 2024. Dozens of citizens, alum, parents, and current students of the schools addressed the board, offering poignant testimony about lived experiences with institutionalized discrimination or in support of others who had. Approximately two-thirds of the speakers opposed back-naming the schools. For them, returning to Confederate leader names makes the damage linger.

Aliyah Ogle, a student who represented her school in three sports this year and would be attending the renamed high school next year, said it best: “I'm a black student and if the name is restored, I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves. That makes me feel like I'm disrespecting my ancestors and going against what my family and I believe, which is that we should all be treated equally, and that slavery was a cruel and awful thing.”

Most of the board members could not have cared less about the county’s 252 year history. They were more concerned for judging the 2020 school board’s actions and recognizing the Confederate heritage of the county. Their brand of leadership consisted of telling the people they represent that we all have problems of one kind or another; it’s time to move on. “War is hell,” said Dennis Barlow, chairman of the Shenandoah County School Board. They were joined by two dozen pro-Confederacy speakers, claiming there is no evident racism in Shenandoah County, and never has been.

Board member Tom Streett used his decision to discuss pro-slavery General Jackson. “When you read about this man — who he was, what he stood for, his character, his loyalty, his leadership, how Godly a man he was — those standards that he had were much higher than any leadership of the school system in 2020,” Streett said.

Streett, however, neglected to mention that even Jackson’s descendants have weighed in on this legacy issue. For the past seven years, the general’s great-great grandsons, William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian, have said they support removing Confederate statues and other monuments—including in Shenandoah County this week—as “part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought.” They added that they were “ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer.”

Yet Shenandoah County’s school board and its grievance agenda does nothing to provide historical context, advance dialogue, or heal the feelings of well-meaning citizens. Using the same policy the 2021 school board used to name Mountain View and Honey Run, the 2024 board defiantly focused on undoing the decision and giving voice to the people they wanted to hear. The decision unfairly places our children as pawns on a rhetorical battlefield, keeping the board’s focus on vengeance and political control—not due process or heritage. But it’s more dangerous than just talk and hard feelings: The county remains on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center , which tracks white supremacists, including ongoing activity by the Patriot Front. To address this reality, we need better, sensible leadership from our school board. But for now, we must live with a stark reminder that elections have consequences.

Looking ahead, the many good people of our county will strive to ensure that our complete history, good and bad, remains available to students and the public. We must find a way to truly honor our whole heritage without insisting that students salute pro-slavery traitors or the treatment of their ancestors as subhuman property for almost 400 years.

If the U.S. Department of Defense can rename military bases once emblazoned with Confederate leaders’ names, then our public schools can do the same. After all, these are the spaces where the first lessons of civic duties are learned. History is complicated, no doubt, but there’s no better place to examine complex issues than in a good school. Other nations and communities reckon with difficult pasts. In Germany, for example, students still learn about Adolf Hitler, but they are not forced to wear sports jerseys and school-pride t-shirts that glorify symbols or names associated with murderous war crimes.

Our fight for what’s right in Shenandoah County is not over. We will continue to oppose historical injustices and help all constituencies in our community learn from the lessons of our past. As it has throughout our nation’s history, the work of decent people striving for a better, more united America will go on. We hope the school board here can find a way to join us along the way.

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Why tariffs are SO back

Darian Woods

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An image characterizing the Whiskey Rebellion when a government inspector is tarred during the Insurrection of 1794 in the four western counties of Pennsylvania, caused by Hamilton's excise tax. Bettman hide caption

An image characterizing the Whiskey Rebellion when a government inspector is tarred during the Insurrection of 1794 in the four western counties of Pennsylvania, caused by Hamilton's excise tax.

Last week, President Biden placed tariffs on a slew of Chinese goods. When Donald Trump was president, he did the same. Regardless of who wins the election, the US is gearing up for heavy tariffs on imports in 2024. But this is far from the first time the economic tool has been in style. Today, a brief history of US tariffs: how they came into fashion, fell out of fashion, are now back again and why economists aren't too happy about it. Related Episodes: Trade wars and talent shortages ( Apple / Spotify ) The surprising leader in EVs ( Apple / Spotify ) A brief history of tariffs Worst. Tariffs. Ever. For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Music by Drop Electric . Find us: TikTok , Instagram , Facebook , Newsletter .

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Dear Boomers, the Student Protesters Are Not Idiots

By Elizabeth Spiers

Ms. Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and a digital media strategist.

Appearing last week on “Morning Joe,” Hillary Clinton lamented what she views as the ignorance of students protesting the war in Gaza. The host, Joe Scarborough, asked her about “the sort of radicalism that has mainstream students getting propaganda, whether it’s from their professors or from the Chinese Communist government through TikTok.” Ms. Clinton was happy to oblige. “I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months,” she said. “They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country.”

I’ve taught students at the college level for 12 years, most recently at New York University’s journalism school. I’ve also seen and heard the assumptions made about them by some of their elders — administrators, parents and others. So it’s no surprise now to hear protesters described as “ spoiled and entitled kids ” or delicate “ snowflakes ” who cower in their safe spaces and don’t believe in free speech . Billionaires like Ken Griffin , Bill Ackman and, of course, Donald Trump — as entitled as anyone — have been particularly vocal in their disdain, calling the students in one instance “whiny” and demanding that they be punished for protesting. Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, even suggested that TikTok should be banned in part because “you’re seeing how these kids are being manipulated by certain groups or entities or countries to foment hate on their behalf and really create a hostile environment here in the U.S.”

Whether they realize it or not, Ms. Clinton, Mr. Lawler and the rest are engaging in a moral panic about America’s youth that is part of a larger effort to discredit higher education in general. That effort includes fearmongering about diversity programs and critical race theory. But it starts with students.

In the current panic, the protesters are described as somehow both terribly fragile and such a threat to public safety that they need to be confronted by police officers in riot gear. To justify the police department’s excessive response at Columbia University, Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry showed Newsmax viewers a large chain and a book with the title “Terrorism” that had been recovered from one site of protest. The former was a common bike chain Columbia sells to students and the latter was part of Oxford University Press’s lovely “Very Short Introductions” series, which covers topics from animal behavior to Rousseau and black holes.

There are some obvious partisan factors at work here: Staunch support for Israel among Republicans , for instance, and the long-running right-wing insistence that elite universities are liberal indoctrination camps. But recent research reveals a significant generational divide as well. A recent YouGov poll found that 45 percent of people ages 45 to 64 strongly opposed the protests, as did 56 percent of people 65 and older. By comparison, only 12 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds strongly opposed them, and 21 percent of people ages 30 to 44.

It’s not just about Gaza; similar age gaps emerged in response to protests after the murder of George Floyd, too. Eighty-seven percent of adults ages 18 to 34 supported the protests in June 2020, according to Gallup , while only 54 percent of adults 65 and older did. And just 3 percent of the older group had participated in the protests, while 26 percent of the younger group had.

We know from research that adults under 40 are more likely to participate in a protest than adults over 40, and generally prefer informal political participation more than their older cohorts, who are more likely to participate by voting. But that doesn’t fully explain the outright hostility some have leveled at campus protesters.

High-profile public figures of all ideological stripes have varyingly called for the students to be kicked out of their institutions, made unemployable or sent to prison. They’ve floated implausible scenarios in which the protests turn deadly. Students brave enough to risk their financial aid and scholarships are derided as childish rather than principled. And though they are educated to participate in civic life, as soon as these students exercise their First Amendment rights, they are told that protecting private property is a more pressing public concern. It’s as though some older adults simply can’t wrap their heads around the idea that college students, who are old enough to marry, have families and risk their lives for their country, are capable of having well thought-out principles.

“They basically want students to shut up and study,” is how Robert Cohen, a scholar of 20th-century social protest, put it when I spoke to him this week. It doesn’t matter how virtuous the cause, he explained; older generations start with a bias against students. But protest is often the only way students have any voice at all in university matters. “People do not understand that university governance is fundamentally undemocratic,” Mr. Cohen said, noting that even students who have convinced universities to consider divestment have won, at best, the right to make their case to the board.

In my experience, the stereotypes about today’s students are often ludicrously far from reality. College students of this generation have far more knowledge about complex world events than mine or Ms. Clinton’s did, thanks to the availability of the internet and a 24/7 news cycle fire-hosed directly into their phones. Representative Lawler may be correct that some portion of that information comes from clips on TikTok, and social media can be misleading, but there’s no evidence that college students are more likely to be misled by TikTok than people Mr. Lawler’s age and older are likely to be misled by Facebook. In fact, research indicates that younger people are more savvy and skeptical about media, and more likely to triangulate among different sources to see if something is true.

They may also be more sensitive to the horrors of children being killed here and elsewhere because they grew up participating in active shooter drills and watching the aftermath of mass shootings on the news. They are less financially secure than generations prior, and less likely to believe that institutions will save them or reward them for loyalty and hard work . But they are not babies, and they are not oblivious or naïve. And their ideas and actions cannot be dismissed just because some bad actor — no mass movement is without them — does or says something stupid.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to those who find protests uncomfortable. They’re always disruptive, as they’re supposed to be. And big loud crowds make me nervous now in a way that they didn’t when I was 22 and a big loud crowd was fun and meant I was at a club with oontz-oontz-oontz music and 73 of my closest friends. I now prefer political participation that is less hard on the knees. But I am exhilarated to see students using protest for exactly the reasons it’s protected by the First Amendment. It allows them to stand up for their values, invest in what’s happening in the world and hold decision makers accountable, even if it means putting themselves at risk. And most compellingly, it’s getting the attention of the president and other lawmakers who can effect change far beyond the walls of any university campus.

Elizabeth Spiers, a contributing Opinion writer, is a journalist and a digital media strategist.

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Kansas City Royals' Stud Fills Stat Sheet in Historic Fashion on Tuesday

Brady farkas | may 22, 2024.

• Kansas City Royals

The Kansas City Royals beat the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday night, 10-3, at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.

With the win, the Royals are now 31-19. After finishing with the second-worst record in baseball a season ago, Kansas City is now just 1.5 game back in the American League Central. It's been a great start for Kansas City, who hasn't made the playoffs since 2015.

Salvador Perez is certainly the emotional leader of the Royals and Bobby Witt Jr. is the team's best overall player. In the win on Tuesday, Witt Jr. did things that have rarely been duplicated in baseball history.

Per @JayHayKid of the "Baseball is Dead" podcast and the Underdog Fantasy Group:

Bobby Witt Jr. is the 4th player with 2+ HR, 6+ RBI, SB and a sac fly, joining Ryan Braun (2016), Gary Sheffield (1995) and Joe Carter (1986).

Bobby Witt Jr. is the 4th player with 2+ HR, 6+ RBI, SB and a sac fly, joining Ryan Braun (2016), Gary Sheffield (1995) and Joe Carter (1986). — nugget chef (@jayhaykid) May 22, 2024

Witt Jr. went 3-for-4 with two homers, three runs scored and the six RBI. After the two home runs, he's got seven on the season to go along with 31 RBI and 16 stolen bases. He's hitting .304 with a .908 OPS.

At just 23 years old, Witt Jr. is already one of the best players in baseball. He seems destined for his first All-Star appearance this summer.

After making his debut in 2022, Witt Jr. is a lifetime .271 hitter.

The Royals will take on the Tigers again on Wednesday afternoon with the first pitch slated for 2:10 p.m. ET.

Left-hander Tarik Skubal (6-0, 1.80 ERA) will pitch for Detroit against Cole Ragans (3-3, 3.70 ERA).

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BRADY FARKAS

Brady Farkas is a baseball writer for Fastball on Sports Illustrated/FanNation and the host of 'The Payoff Pitch' podcast which can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Videos on baseball also posted to YouTube. Brady has spent nearly a decade in sports talk radio and is a graduate of Oswego State University. You can follow him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady.