Rebellious girls in the 1920s wanted to anger and shock their Victorian-era parents, so not only would they bare their knees with short dresses, but they would also paint pictures to make sure an onlooker didn’t miss their risque hem length. Rolled stockings became a fad with the shorter hemlines, and girls would go get roses, butterflies, ocean scenes, or their dogs’ faces painted on their knees to further push their boundaries. Much like with most makeup in women’s history, this wasn’t just an act of creativity, but an assertion of independence. After World War I, more women gained financial independence with work, broke away from chaperoned parlor dates, and became a part of the public by walking the city streets without a guardian. The new generation felt a need to express this clear break from the old era of Gibson Girls and Victorian women, and they did so with the help of paint and knee rouge. “Because of rolled stockings and short skirts they, like their fair owners, are emancipated,” The San Francisco Examinershared in 1925. The girls were no longer wearing the oppressive corsets of the previous generation, which is partly why rolled stockings became a fad — there was nowhere to clip their hosiery to.

Painted knees were also an experiment in owning sexuality. Rouged knees would seem flushed (hinting at sex,) and painted knees would bring attention to body parts that were stigmatized just a few short decades back. But these moments of self-rule were oftentimes punished, as students in Ohio Northern learned in 1925. Girls had been drawing roses on their knees, and the dean called an emergency meeting to get them to stop. “It was intimated that some of the professors had not been able to do their best work owing to the profusion of knees in certain classes, that it is difficult for a mere male instructor to think of the Einstein theory, for example, with a tastefully decorated knee — well, staring him in the face, as it were,” The San Francisco Examiner wrote. The fad eventually fell out of vogue, but it resurfaced again in the 1960s — during an era where skirts rose in hemline, women pushed for independence, and embraced their sexual freedom once more. Painted knees were the perfect compliment to mini-skirts and Bermuda shorts, and a student interviewed for The News in 1966 said that she painted her knees so often that she could “put it on faster than face makeup.” (source)

Sailor's Slops

1600s-1700s

The Museum of London (ID: 53.101/1b)

PSA to all historical fiction/fantasy writers:

A SEAMSTRESS, in a historical sense, is someone whose job is sewing. Just sewing. The main skill involved here is going to be putting the needle into an out of the fabric. They’re usually considered unskilled workers, because everyone can sew, right? (Note: yes, just about everyone could sew historically. And I mean everyone.) They’re usually going to be making either clothes that aren’t fitted (like shirts or shifts or petticoats) or things more along the lines of linens (bedsheets, handkerchiefs, napkins, ect.). Now, a decent number of people would make these things at home, especially in more rural areas, since they don’t take a ton of practice, but they’re also often available ready-made so it’s not an uncommon job. Nowadays it just means someone whose job is to sew things in general, but this was not the case historically. Calling a dressmaker a seamstress would be like asking a portrait painter to paint your house

A DRESSMAKER (or mantua maker before the early 1800s) makes clothing though the skill of draping (which is when you don’t use as many patterns and more drape the fabric over the person’s body to fit it and pin from there (although they did start using more patterns in the early 19th century). They’re usually going to work exclusively for women, since menswear is rarely made through this method (could be different in a fantasy world though). Sometimes you also see them called “gown makers”, especially if they were men (like tailors advertising that that could do both. Mantua-maker was a very feminized term, like seamstress. You wouldn’t really call a man that historically). This is a pretty new trade; it only really sprung up in the later 1600s, when the mantua dress came into fashion (hence the name).

TAILORS make clothing by using the method of patterning: they take measurements and use those measurements to draw out a 2D pattern that is then sewed up into the 3D item of clothing (unlike the dressmakers, who drape the item as a 3D piece of clothing originally). They usually did menswear, but also plenty of pieces of womenswear, especially things made similarly to menswear: riding habits, overcoats, the like. Before the dressmaking trade split off (for very interesting reason I suggest looking into. Basically new fashion required new methods that tailors thought were beneath them), tailors made everyone’s clothes. And also it was not uncommon for them to alter clothes (dressmakers did this too). Staymakers are a sort of subsect of tailors that made corsets or stays (which are made with tailoring methods but most of the time in urban areas a staymaker could find enough work so just do stays, although most tailors could and would make them).

Tailors and dressmakers are both skilled workers. Those aren’t skills that most people could do at home. Fitted things like dresses and jackets and things would probably be made professionally and for the wearer even by the working class (with some exceptions of course). Making all clothes at home didn’t really become a thing until the mid Victorian era.

And then of course there are other trades that involve the skill of sewing, such as millinery (not just hats, historically they did all kinds of women’s accessories), trimming for hatmaking (putting on the hat and and binding and things), glovemaking (self explanatory) and such.

TLDR: seamstress, dressmaker, and tailor are three very different jobs with different skills and levels of prestige. Don’t use them interchangeably and for the love of all that is holy please don’t call someone a seamstress when they’re a dressmaker

Corset discourse really likes to talk in sensationalizing absolutes but historically speaking a corset is just a kind of garment. They could be uncomfortable and painful or they could be well fitted and supportive. They could be hyper-fashionable or they could be brutally practical. You could tightlace them or you could wear them with no reduction whatsoever. Most corsets were probably somewhere in the middle. Like bras. Or shoes. To say they were never perceived as restrictive or used as tools of enforcing dangerous/misogynistic beauty standards is like saying women's shoes never restrict freedom of movement. Patently untrue, but that doesn't mean those shoes have some deeper moral good or evil and it certainly doesn't mean we can use that fact to draw sweeping generalizations about the relationships of entire centuries of women to their own bodies. Corsets, like all clothing, exist in context.

Refuting the "corsets were evil torture devices and vain shallow women were forcing themselves to lace themselves down to x inches so they could attract a man" narrative was never about saying "corsets are a universal good, actually". It's about considering more fully the variety of ways clothing shaped and was shaped by its culture, and affording the women of the past the dignity of agency and interiority

(also worth noting that very few clothing historians or even costume Youtubers worth their salt are making the argument that corsets were always good. You tend to see that more in comment sections – and when people are trying to demonize specialists in the field by making us seem reductive or anti-feminist)

(The clothing historian Who insists that corsets were universally amazing and never caused anyone any discomfort is almost always a strawman, in my experience)

literally everything is unisex if u stop giving a fuck

When I worked at Target, it was during the winter, and this guy comes up to my register with a neutral-colored beanie with a fake fur pompom on top. All embarrassed and cringing, asking me if it was a woman’s hat and if it would be weird for him to get it.

I was like, “It’s just a hat. If you like it and you wear it, it’s not a woman’s hat, it’s just your hat. You don’t need to follow what the tag says if you don’t want to.” And it was like I gave him some kind of awe-inspiring wisdom he’d never considered, and he left with that hat on his head.

More cishets need to hear and internalize this message because so many of them are avoiding things that would make them happy just because of it having a label on it for whatever gender.

dear newly-out trans girl: you need to wear yr skirt up on yr waist, not on yr hips. trust me on this one

Dear newly-out trans girl: your waist is NOT where you thought it was, and it is actually 1-3 (estimate) inches (2.6-7.6 cm) above your belly button. The thing you thought was your waist (because that’s where your pants’ waistbands go) is indeed your hips

wanted to give this a go and see for myself … and holy fuck it makes such a difference

im not even newly out and i needed this advice thank you so much

Shorts count as trousers. Leggings also count if you want them to.

this does not apply if you wear exclusively leggings. Those things tear all the time you need like a million on standby

Well you see, for most of my childhood I wore many dresses and few pants that actually suit my today's style. So my mom took me to buy some pants at a thrift shop. And my dad. And they gave me some of their old pants. Some of them are shorter, for summertime, or a lot shorter, for hell.

You don't even want to know how many t-shirts I own.

A Timeline of Women’s Fashion from 1784-1970 (source: http://kottke.org/17/07/a-timeline-of-womens-fashion-from-1784-1970)

such a useful reference to see the transition of styles 

THIS IS THE SHIT

The question is: where, but still cool!

The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:

“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”

“I was hoping they’d beat me and forget about it but to my horror they stuck my work up on the fridge”

Not just any fridge-

The public fridge

Sterling Silver or Bronze Isopod Pins // metalclothandwood

I don’t think you can talk about makeup politically without talking about economic oppression. Women are expected to spend thousands a year on cosmetics (and other stuff likeclothing, health supplements, etc) when men aren’t. This isn’t just because of social pressure, it’s required by employers implictly or explicitly the majority of the time. Women are expected to put in an extra hour, if not more, work every day for no compensation before they even leave the house. Class society props up everything else

I think this really heavily applies to a lot of other appearance-related purchases as well, which you did mention but I think it is worth emphasising.

Men can wear the same suit for a week and no one will bat an eyelid, but a woman wearing the same outfit for multiple days in a professional setting is seen as unprofessional, not to mention that most women’s clothes are more expensive and less practical, especially when it comes to pockets, which requires us to get bags, which again is more cost.

Yeah absolutely!! Thank you for this addition! Stuff like this is why eliminating the wage gap between men and women won’t actually eliminate gendered economic inequality (especially when women are expected to be the some caregivers of children which is even more unpaid labour)

The expectation that women spend all of this additional money and devote all of this additional time also serves to further stratify women across class lines. These expectations put women who are already economically disenfranchised at a even more pronounced disadvantage. It further solidifies class barriers for women and makes it even harder for women to accumulate wealth or overcome debt, which increases women’s economic dependency on men and makes their labor more exploitable.

Not only is womens’ clothing more expensive/impractical, it is often made with thinner/lower quality material. Even just compare and contrast the fabric used in a simple t-shirts or trousers in many high-street shops and see how transparent and thin the womenswear is compared to a basic t-shirt or trousers from the men’s department. Subsequently, the clothes wear out faster and have to be replaced more regularly, which chips away even more at the income.

im really not trying to be mean here but this one tag from a reblog just so colossally missed the point i cant let it go unacknowledged

the whole message of this post is that the clothes are being made regardless of whether anybody is going to be purchasing them. they’re made in sweatshops, shipped to the other side of the globe, put on racks in thousands of stores, and whatever doesn’t sell is dumped in the fucking desert to make room on those racks for the next shipment.

“buy secondhand only” in response to this is such an egregious misunderstanding and it’s doing the exact fucking thing that is implicitly being criticized by this tweet, which is that individual consumer choices are totally disconnected from the global production of consumer goods and therefore moralizing about making the Correct choices and imploring people to go to fucking goodwill instead of tj maxx is meaningless

Slave labor and borderline slave labor allow cheap junk to be made for so little that some companies can make up for the loss several times over by claiming it on insurance, getting government subsidies, or even selling certain things as scrap or filler to other industries. Companies are so frequently part of some vast network of brands owned by the same entity that they can waste a billion dollars without batting an eye. Just saturating a market with *your* unsellable shit can be seen as advantageous if it helps push out a competitor. Someone buying one new pair of shoes for $20 can mean they just covered the manufacturing cost for 500 pairs. Passive boycotting isn’t going to work ever again at this point. The only ways any of this can change will unfortunately require vastly, vastly more work from more people than just telling Twitter to stop buying pants or switching a fast food chain to paper straws.

Funny how as economic inequality increases capitalist society starts to look more and more like the dysfunctions we associate with the Soviet Union. Like, “socialism is bad because it causes production to become decoupled from demand” is one of the biggest right-wing and libertarian anti-socialist talking points.

The Bedu? Wear black in the depths of the Arabian Desert. Absolute gods of cool.

And for the curious:

Taylor, Finch, Shkolnik, and Borut measured the overall heat gain and loss suffered by a brave volunteer. They described the volunteer as "a man standing facing the sun in the desert at midday while he wore: 1) a black Bedouin robe; 2) a similar robe that was white; 3) a tan army uniform; and 4) shorts (that is, he was semi‑nude)".

Each of the test sessions (black-robed, white-robed, uniformed and half-naked) lasted 30 minutes. They took place in the Negev desert at the bottom of the rift valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Eilat. The volunteer stood in temperatures that ranged from a just-semi-sultry 35C (95F) to a character-building 46C (115F). Though he is now nameless, this was his day in the sun.

The results were clear. As the report puts it: "The amount of heat gained by a Bedouin exposed to the hot desert is the same whether he wears a black or a white robe. The additional heat absorbed by the black robe was lost before it reached the skin."

Bedouins' robes, the scientists noted, are worn loose. Inside, the cooling happens by convection – either through a bellows action, as the robes flow in the wind, or by a chimney sort of effect, as air rises between robe and skin. Thus it was conclusively demonstrated that, at least for Bedouin robes, black is as cool as any other colour.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/most-improbable-scientific-research-abrahams