Jewish family stand by the sukkah at their home in Izmir, Turkey, late 19th century

ALL HAIL CECILIA PAYNE

where the fuck did the phrase ‘fits like a glove’ come from. ive never worn a glove that fit perfectly in my entire life.

ah. i see. el problema es el capitalismo.

They definitely were not always custom-made throughout history, but people would buy very tight fitting gloves and let them stretch/mold to their individual hands. Because they were made of very fine leather, usually, which had that property. We don’t really have that much anymore, partially because clothes have fallen out of fashion, partially because it was more expensive to make, and partially because some idiots think that wearing plastic is kinder to animals even though it destroys their habitats to produce and when discarded

… So yes basically capitalism and faux animal activism stole that from you

Yep, they even had tools to help stretch the gloves if necessary. Here's an ivory glove stretcher from c. 1870-1900.

Speaking from experience after having sewn a number of leather gloves, they really do stretch a LOT. I've had a couple of pairs that started off uncomfortably tight in places and stretched out to be just a bit too big after I wore them enough times.

As far as I'm aware, gloves were usually not custom made, and they were something people often bought a lot of and went through fairly quickly. In the Old Bailey records you see accounts of people stealing 16 pairs of gloves, 50 pairs of gloves, three dozen pairs of gloves, etc. Those were stolen from houses, not stores!

Here is a book about manufacturing from 1845 which goes on for quite a few pages about gloves, and it's clear from the description of the process that they're made in large amounts and sold to stores with no possibility of custom measuring.

By the end of the 19th century the supply chain would have been different and you could order them from catalogues, but they were still just as stretchy as before.

Also, this is kind of nitpicking, but tailors and glovemakers are different jobs. Tailors made suits and coats and tailored things like that, and glovemakers made gloves. Dressmakers/mantua makers, staymakers, shirtmakers, milliners, shoemakers, embroiderers, button makers- all these are distinctly different jobs. (And while I'm on the subject, cobblers do not make shoes. Cobblers repair shoes, and shoemakers/cordwainers make shoes.)

I think if you said that to the medieval artist they’d just go, “oh good you understand my vision”.

Like… that’s 100% what they’re going for. Does the tweeter think it looks like that by accident?

I apologize, but I'm taking this as an excuse to infodump just a little. I am excited to tell you a number of things.

First, it is genuinely medieval; that's a pilgrim badge. This particular photo may actually be a replica of the original -- I'm not sure -- but it's a medieval design.

Second, it's definitely supposed to be a vagina. It might also represent Jesus's side wound, but it's primarily a vagina. We know this because the "anthropomorphic vagina" thing is a recurring motif in pilgrim badges and a lot of those badges also have dicks, a context which I think makes the intent clear. (And, of course, there are plenty of badges that are just dicks.)

Third, nobody is exactly sure why this is a thing, but there is some ongoing academic debate on the subject. I've seen arguments for different theories, including:

Fourth, two badges have been found with this design, and it has developed a colloquial name -- here's an excerpt from an M.A. thesis by Lena Mackenzie Gimbel that mentions it. (I was just doing a quick check through the library catalog to make sure I could verify this was a real design, and then I found this source and had to show y'all the screenshot.)

I love the Middle Ages, and so much of it is just objectively friggin' goofy. Also I will be referring to kings as "god's favorite munchkins" in future, thank you.

Reminder that the characters in the Canterbury Tales - some of the raunchiest stories available in any age - are religious pilgrims.

Medieval pilgrims were, at least some of the time, horny as fuck.

I did a work exchange at a museum in the netherlands for a bit when I was 16, and they had a whole cabinet in one of the stable storage rooms just dedicated to drawers and drawers of pilgrim badges shaped like dicks. big dicks, small dicks, fat dicks, skinny dicks, dicks in hats, regal dicks, dicks disguised as birds, dicks disguised as beasts, dicks disguised as pilgrims, ornate dicks, crude dicks. the curator who showed me around was so defeated like "we have no idea what to do with them all. people keep finding them and sending them to us. every time someone digs up a water main they find another dick badge. we have so many already."

@vagina-museum

Thank goodness I can now reblog a version of this which points out that yes it is indeed 100% a vagina

Reminds me of when I tried to find one of these on tumblr once

Literally 1984. Medieval pilgrims were raunchier than us 😔

obsessed with the era of historical fashion between the 1860s and 1870s where aniline dyes kept being invented. you can find some absolute fucking eyesores of dresses that were only made that way because “acid magenta” was invented last month and it was trendy.

like this iconic gown:

or this one from the 1870s in aniline purple and aniline black:

or a trendy yellow and black gown from c. 1865, perhaps?

feel free to reblog with additional eyesores (affectionate) that i might have missed

tags via @toytulini :

At the time I made this post I couldn’t find any historical clothing in acid magenta. However, this dress (via the Philadelphia Museum of Art) is probably close, as it’s also an aniline magenta.

I literally went to find this dress specifically to post it, damn it!

You're really gonna do this to me, aren't ya?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Victoria & Albert Museum

The FIDM Museum

Collection Galleira de la Mode de la Ville de Paris

Augusta Auctions

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

There are many, many more. This is just the my ass is being lazy version.

Lord Flashheart's (Blackadder Goes Forth) Costume

I don't think it comes to many as a surprise that I was going to do some sort of Flashheart costume. I've had people ask me after my last cosplay "So what's next? Oh please say it's Flashheart!". For a character who only appears once a series, he is well loved amongst the Rik Mayall fans and I happen to be one of them. So, strap yourself in, go get yourself a cup of tea and a biscuit because we're in for a long haul flight. We're doing this a bit back to front, usually I'll release a photoshoot all in one go but as I ran out of time to photograph myself before going to the con I'm going to, I thought I would post them after the con. The photoshoot is in the works, keep your eyes peeled!

When deciding which era of Flashheart I wanted to do, I settled with the WWI era as to my knowledge pre research, it was going to be the easiest of the bunch to do. As much as my heart sings out to Elizabethan Flashheart, my sewing skills are nowhere near good enough for that yet. I knew I wanted to get this costume totally right so I gave myself a fairly big budget and indeed the biggest budget so far in my cosplaying journey.

Go big or go home, I researched into actual Royal Flying Corps uniforms people were selling and saw just how difficult they were to find. I visited a local war memorabilia shop armed with a few questions about RFC uniforms. When I explained what I was doing, they smiled and laughed fondly about Blackadder. They very quickly informed me that finding an actual RFC uniform that's not in a museum is extremely slim and they were totally right. I had a back up plan though, I had found a company that did tailormade historical re-enactment uniforms from all sorts of eras and rather perfectly, a RFC tunic and trousers. I got myself measured by my lovely tailor friend and purchased them. I actually purchased the drill trousers instead of the breeches as the colour looked more correct. (not pictured, you'll see those when I take proper photos of me wearing it.)

The breakdown of the costume: The Royal Flying Corps tunic.

The RFC tunic was going to be a huge part of the costume and in my eyes all of the tiny elements of the costume to bring it together had to be properly researched. The base of the jacket only came with the RFC patch on the right side of the jacket so everything else had to be found. For the first part and actually the first purchase I made for this project was the collar pins. These are original WWI RFC collar pins that came in perfect condition. I also went back to the same local war memorabilia shop again and very luckily, they had a full matching set of original WWI captain's shoulder pips, with metal pins. It makes this costume more special to know I have an actual piece of history on my shoulders.

As I was informed, all pips during WWI were as standard and the more pips you have, the higher the rank. As Flashheart is a Wing Commander he technically holds the rank of captain, meaning he has 3 pips on each shoulder. With both the collar pins and the pips, I had to attach these extremely carefully. I was told that either I would need to sew them on (meaning I would have to tack them on and they wouldn't lie flat to the jacket) or I would need to pierce holes and put them in. I opted for piercing. So with an extremely delicate hand (and because this tunic was expensive) I carefully measured each one out and cut slits with a scalpel. The length of the blade was perfect because I could poke the loops through and it be in enough that if a pin slides out, I won't lose the pip. The collar pins didn't come with pins to keep them in place but the lovely gentleman I bought the pips from gave me some to cut down.

The medals:

The medals I struggled to find for a bit of time. I had researched a bit and found that someone had identified a few of Flashheart's many medals which helped but my original plan was to find actual medal bars. However, I came across a gentleman who recreates medals and could do custom medal bars of any medals I wanted. I immediately messaged them and showed them the photo that had all the identified medals on. He said he was able to do it and whether I wanted the medal that someone hadn't identified yet that was just slightly poking out of the jacket in the reference photo. I couldn't believe it! And i'm so glad that medal was identified by him because it turned out to be a good addition to the bar. Now I know Flashheart has a lot more medals than what I've got here, but trying to get all of them would be a nightmare and rather expensive so I got the ones that are visible kind of when he wears his coat.

(top left) OBE, (top middle) Royal Victorian Order, (top right) Distinguished Service Order, (bottom far left) Military Cross, (bottom middle left) Ashanti War Medal, (bottom middle right) India General Service Medal and (bottom far right) 1914 Star medal.

I did research into them and what they all mean but this post will get even longer if I put all the info. I do encourage you to have a look into them if you're interested though! What I find fascinating is the level of detail Blackadder's costume designer went to. I found out that the Distinguished Service Order medal was apparently just short of being awarded a Victoria Cross (which is an extremely prestigious award) and were normally given 'for service under fire or under conditions equivalent to service in actual combat with the enemy'. However between 1914 and 1916, a number of awards were given to individuals, often officers, for circumstances not under fire. This caused a lot of resentment towards those who got it and especially from front line officers. Which to me, makes me think no wonder Blackadder didn't really like Flashheart! That did make me laugh a little bit.

The 1914 Star medal was awarded mainly to officers but approximately 1000 were awarded to members of the RFC which is another really good touch!

The tunic is attached with 5 buttons up the person's right side and attached with two hooks at the top near the shoulders.

The Sam Browne belt and gun holster were another important addition to the tunic. Often officers or higher would have worn a Sam Browne belt and there would be space to hook a gun holster and an ammo pouch could be added too. I didn't get an ammo pouch in the end but the gun holster was a must. Which leads me onto Flashheart's massive weapon (ooer!).

The gun Flashheart uses is a Webley MK VI. Now, I did look into these guns and there was no way on earth I was going to get a real one or an airsoft one for that matter. I looked into 3D printing instead! I had got a guy to 3D print me a gun but his printer unfortunately broke half way through meaning I had to find an alternative quick. A work colleague found me one on Etsy and it was perfect! It came in about 7 pieces that I had to carefully glue together but it was easy enough as I live in a tabletop household. Flashheart's gun has a loop on the bottom to attach a lanyard to. So me using my creative initiative, I salvaged a picture frame hook from an old frame, filed down a section in the middle so the metal part would lie flat, glued it together and bob's your uncle! a loop that looks like it was meant to be there!

The lanyard loop didn't fit in the loop so I used an old keyring loop to attach it.

The next bit after gluing was to sand the gun down slightly, prime it black and then dry brushed the metal part using Citadel's Leadbelcher silver paint. I also then used Citadel's Agrax Earthshade wash to dirty it up on the metal and then once dry, I did a couple of coats both sides of a matt varnish spray just to seal it all together and none of the paint will rub off.

Another fine detail is the hinge where, if it was a working gun, you'd pull the barrel down and load it. (I don't know the correct terminology for guns!) There was just a hole and I wasn't a fan of it. So I used the small screws from the frame I got the fixtures from and screwed one either side before priming black. It worked perfectly and looked effective.

I can't believe how much time I've put into this costume, loads of research and hard work finding and piecing everything together. I just hope I can do him justice when I wear it properly!

WOOF!

There should be a specific fashion item for keeping your sleeves rolled up. Like big clasping arm bracelets. I think this would improve morale in the gay community somewhat.

There is though

They’re called Sleeve Garters, they started off in the 19th century and where popular with musicians, gamblers, gunslingers and the occasional Victorian gentleman. Nowadays you can see bartenders wearing them

Sluts! (affectionate)

Bartenders & hairdressers.

Here’s one example of Modern Pop Culture sleeve garters:

Telegraph operators, bank clerks and printers wore them too, possibly along with a green celluloid eyeshade; they appear in movies ranging from Westerns to 1930s gangster stuff. The intention was to keep sleeves pulled tightly away from ink and other risks of staining.

An alternative - or extra - was to wear protective “sleeve stockings”.

Old-style shirts were cut longer and fuller than modern styles, and besides the protective aspect of the previous examples, sleeve garters also allowed for adjustment so “the right amount” of cuff showed between hand and jacket.

When gamblers wore them it was partly for fashion and partly to show there was no spare room for an Ace up the sleeve.

(Hah. I just bet. If that’s the right phrase and I don’t think so.)

*****

Period shirts also had separate collars, cuffs and bib / bosom / dickie / shirt-front - these were the bits most likely to get dirty, so could be exchanged for clean ones without washing the entire shirt.

They were made of starched linen, celluloid or stiff paper, and the cuffs could be used as somewhere to make a hasty note perhaps using a miniature propelling pencil like this, one of the many useful (or indeed “useful”) gadgets that could be attached to a watch-chain.

Paper collars-and-cuffs were disposable, cloth ones were washable (though needed re-starched afterwards), and celluloid ones could be wiped clean like a modern white-board.

(Sapolio still exists, BTW.)

Old silent comedy films sometimes showed characters who looked fine at first but were so hard-up than all they wore beneath their jacket is a vest (undershirt, not waistcoat), collar, cuffs and shirt-front, with no shirt at all. IIRC Charlie Chaplin did this at least once.

*****

Here’s a video showing the whole process. It’s more complicated than I thought, and also mentions sleeve garters as “an extra step”…

…while this video shows the business of wearing collar-cuffs-and-bib (etc.) without a shirt.

Incidentally, the chap in the video is wearing a monocle not just for The Look Of The Thing, but because he has monocular astigmatism. Another of those neat situations where - like the lumbar support of a well-made corset - period clothing provides a modern benefit.

How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:

Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:

also according to michael collins when the three of them were discussing what neil armstrong should say when he first stepped on the moon, collins suggested armstrong say “Oh, my God, what is that thing?”  and then scream and cut out his mic.

Everyone forgets Michael Collins and it’s fucking tragic.

I really love encountering stories about what great poets were like in college, like

Feel free to add more

Source: {x}

“A Female Reporter”

NELLIE BLY. HER NAME IS NELLIE BLY.

You know what else she did??

Saved a ton of mental hospital patients from persistent & sickening abuse. She went in undercover, and the doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc trrated her like all the others. They essentially said ‘Who cares if you don’t like hiw we treat you? No one will ever hear you or believe you!’

Wanna bet? said Nellie Bly

Nellie was a fucking hero. You put some respect on Nellie Bly’s name.

“A Female Reporter” my ass

Fortune

[ID:

The first image shows a black man wearing a black hoodie with the word 'free' in capital letters sitting cross-legged next to a gravestone reading: The man fortune. Died 1798. Buried September 13, 2013. Child of God. Free at last.

The following two images show a text reading: Fortune, his wife Dinah and their 3 children were slaves of Preserved Porter, a Connecticut bone doctor. In 1798, Fortune slipped from a rock on the west bank of the Naugatuck river, broke his neck and drowned. At the time, dissecting cadavers was illegal; but not applying to slaves, Dr. Porter cut him into pieces at the riverbank. At his office, he boiled the bones so that all the flesh fell off, etched labels into them and used them as a medical training tool. Dr. Porter died 6 years later, listing the bones as worth $15 ($330 today).

Prior to his death, Dr. Porter used the bones to teach anatomy to his son; who used them to teach anatomy to his grandson; who used them to teach his daughter... 135 years of generational doctors and wealth. In 1933, his name long forgotten, the family donated the bones to the Mattatuck Museum where they were displayed next to slave tools as "Larry the slave"; a popular exhibit shown on their postcard; not taken down until 1970 when the Museum realized that it was demeaning. They stored them in the basement.

In 1999, made aware of these bones in the basement, the NAACP and museum staff enlisted anthropologists and archeologists to examine them, ultimately determining this was Fortune. Based on bone density, he was a strong man who lived and work with a broken back, hand and died of a broken neck.

On Sept. 13th, 2013, after being a slave, medical specimen, museum exhibit and archeological artifact, spanning 275 years, Fortune was finally freed...laid to rest next to White society of his time...something that wouldn't have been allowed when he died.

This is not an isolated story. Medical usage of Black and Indigenous people in ways prohibited of Whites was not uncommon. Since I still can't find my GG Grandfather (Ned Mills), Erica and I decided to make a donation to the Assoc for the Study of African American Life & History, as well as to make a regular pilgrimage here to leave flowers for Fortune.

Black History is American History and Black Lives Matter. If not to you, I got this. My actions will show they always have and still do...no statute of limitation. Now rest, Fortune.

/End ID]

Now THIS is art. 😍

“When I first saw the original painting, I began to do some research on that little boy. I could find everything I wanted about every other detail in the painting, but there was nothing about him. No history. And so I wanted to find a way to imagine a life for this young man that the historical painting had never made space for in the composition: his desires, dreams, family, thoughts, hopes. Those things were never subjects that the original artist wanted the viewer to contemplate. In order to reframe the discussion, I decided to physically take action to quiet [and crumple] the side of the painting that we’ve been talking about for a very long time and turn up the volume on this kid’s story. And that’s the reason why I started that painting.” Via Artnet News 2019/03/27

[ID: A tweet by Jason Stanley @jasonintrator that reads: Titus Kaphar took a painting that used to be on the wall of Yale’s Corporation room, showing Eliyu Yale with two other wealthy white men, with an enslaved Black child in the background, and repainted it, crumpling it up and highlighting one part. It’s called “Enough about You”

Attached is a photo of the image. The majority of it is crumpled up and no longer recognizable, but a small part of the image is preserved inside a thick golden frame. Inside the frame is the portrait of a young black man in period clothing, boldly looking towards the camera. /end ID]

ID taken from @mightyoctopus https://mightyoctopus.tumblr.com/post/672939544818188288/elierlicknow-this-is-art-id-a-tweet-by

Thanks for the image description!!

ALOK VAID-MENON Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness 1x03 (2022)

Alok’s book report of The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century by Dr. Kyla Schuller

So Gregor Mendel (yes, the guy with the pea plants) wrote down that he wanted to be given a thorough autopsy after he died. The year he died was 1884. Autopsies were increasingly common at the time, but Mendel was an Augustinian friar and the arguments preventing donating your body to science for teaching autopsies, research, etc. were theological. The “ethical” source of teaching cadavers for doctors to autopsy was (in many places) the bodies of executed criminals, as a sort of post-mortem punishment.  Mendel became a monk specifically because he couldn’t afford to study otherwise, even after one of his sisters donated her dowry to the cause. He did too well as a monk to continue his work as long as he wanted: he got promoted to Abbott and the last sixteen years of his life were spent doing administrative work, and his experiments weren’t properly replicated, or examined as a viable alternative to then current theories on inheritance, until 1900. But he chose to donate his body to science (which he loved) and be of material benefit to the field of medicine, which he didn’t practice but two of his nephews did.  There’s just something beautiful about a guy who lived through the era where having your body dissected was the height of dishonor, in an institution that had advocated against the practice, deciding that anything that helps humanity as a whole was worth doing. There’s something just as beautiful about the fact that he was exhumed for genetic sequencing on his 200th birthday - usually we don’t just dig people up and grab their genes as a surprise party, because in addition to it being a lot of work we can’t assume they would have appreciated it, but Mendel? He would have been jazzed. 

genuinely, we should bring back bumppads and other bits of padding to get a fun fashion silhouette in our clothing. Forget all this stuff about "flattering your natural body type" or "getting the perfect body" or whatever. Let's just put some fake ass and thighs into the skirt and call it a day.

I mean, this is the thing. For a large chunk of human history, nobody thought your actual human body was supposed to be shaped like the currently fashionable silhouette.

Like, a given person’s ability to meet the standards of fashion was very much tied to wealth and class, but the standard was “be able to strap on the various foundation garments required to fill out the dress, which is ideally made from as much expensive fabric as you can possibly afford.”

A lot of people today talk about stays and corsets as instruments of torture, but they don’t seem to notice that we absolutely do still have a fashionable silhouette that changes cyclically. It’s just that now, if the clothes don’t fit you right, the problem is not your lack of crinoline/bum roll/sleeve supports/bustle/bust improver/whatever — it’s just you. Your body is the thing you’re supposed to change.

And, frankly: fuck that.

Is there any explanation as to *why* it changed from "Clothing is meant to change your silhouette" to "Your body is meant to change"?

I’m sure nonasuch has an actual answer but to my knowledge the major shift away happened post ww1 in the 20’s and then the expense of fabric during the depression really cemented things in that direction

It was actually later, in the late 60s/early 70s. 20s silhouettes still relied on careful cutting and structured underpinnings to create the shape, and most women’s clothing was still very tailored and supported by girdles through the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

The big thing was the advent of stretch fabrics, and overlocker sewing machines. Once you can make clothes that kind of fit with simple shapes and zero tailoring, the labor needed to make them doesn’t have to be nearly as skilled and the cost of production plummets. But those clothes also can’t achieve the architectural shapes of earlier eras, and don’t need the understructure those heavily tailored clothes needed.

The marketing for new (synthetic) stretch fabrics leaned heavily on how modern they were, and they were hitting the market in tandem with major social upheaval and the offshoring of the American garment industry. All of these things influenced each other — there was no grand conspiracy to make women feel bad about their bodies.

There was a social milieu happening that made it easy to view girdles and the New Look silhouette as old-fashioned and repressive, and equate modern styles, made in modern stretch fabrics, with liberation. And then the fashion industry and the beauty industry had to figure out how to sell women new things, because they weren’t wearing the old things any more, and what they landed on was what got us to where we are now.

so, tldr? polyester ruined everything.

I mean it is also the case that we didn't look directly AT bodies till the 30s, when we had bias cut satin, and movie stars, and photos of women in bathing suits weren't illicit. As you wear less clothing, the clothing can do less work on your behalf, and your body comes under scrutiny directly.

Let's not blame sweatpants alone for what can be accurately attributed to the accretion of exclusionary competition over time. The 1800s saw several body-type trends, but they were things like having light skin, or tiny feet -- the body parts people were able to look at. Long before the invention of modern marketing, the rich and powerful were finding ways to define themselves against hoi polloi, using their bodies when their clothes and habits couldn't do the trick. It just got faster in the 20th century, and became predominantly bodies because, well, among many other reasons when you buy a dress you've bought a dress, but when you try to buy a body you have to keep paying installments forever. Marketers love that.

(It is charming to go through 70s sewing patterns and watch them teach their audience how to sew with knits. The Pick-a-knit ruler on the side of the package! Sometimes it'll say in bold, NOT SUITABLE FOR WOVENS. And you know what the first body-mod innovation I see in patterns from that era? The waist measure in sizing goes up by two inches, because people aren't wearing girdles any more.)

all very true! I was oversimplifying a process that drastically sped up in the late 60s, but it’s roots start much earlier.

And just to reiterate a point made above: because clothing is costume, the status associated with it is generally the most expensive/difficult part of it. When fabric production was one of the most labor intensive tasks (food, fabric, metal, military), the status symbol was wearing as much, and as fine, of it as possible. The Roman toga is up to 20 feet of blindingly white linen because that is (a) a lot of fabric and (b) a lot of work to keep it white. (ditto white dress shirts). Women wore lots of petticoats because, again, as much fabric as you could get away with. (Nonasuch, the the bussell become a thing because it was a way to pretend you had more fabric than you really did?)

And then the industrial revolution happened, and fabric costs plunged from "one of the all-consuming human activities" to "people in Africa can clothe themselves with discarded shirts made for the team who didn't win the superbowl".

Fabric is still costly. Making yourself a gorgeous ballgown is going to be a few thousand dollars of fabric and labor (counting your own, if you sew it yourself). A thousand dollars is a lot! It is three weeks of labor at US minimum wage. So probably a few months of savings if it is carefully budgeted for.

But think about that. At minimum wage, it is still possible to make yourself an outfit that would have purely been affordable to the gentry and upper middle class. In P&P, the Bennetts can afford dresses, but they are still a substantial drain on the family's resources. And those were regency and far less nice than some of the Dickens' Faire outfits. And if you are rich, then even super nice outfits have to be Branded to be a status symbol.

So what do you do to differentiate yourself of "lots of fabric" just isn't a problem?

Make it about weight, which is notoriously difficult to deal with.

And additionally, I don’t think we can ignore that there was also a good deal of pushback against understructures and formal clothing norms. A lot of that was countercultural, but it bled over into mainstream culture and slowly, younger people did find going without a girdle more comfortable and overall societal standards shifted (though unfortunately not to include going braless...one can dream)

Another major social change to note is the shift from fashion being the realm of the mature adult, to youth culture defining fashion. It seems logical to me that when a 30-40 year old woman is the pinnacle of fashion, it’s going to be more acceptable to pad and structure, but when literal teenagers are the standard, well—teenagers don’t tend to sag as much as the rest of us. I remember one comment on a vintage clothing youtube channel of an older lady who remembered being really excited to grow up and be able to wear the classy stuff her mom was wearing, but by the time she was a teenager, fashion had shifted so that youth clothing was all the rage and she never did get to wear the kind of ‘classy’ clothing that was previously the mark of the mature woman and also fashionable.

People also generally stopped wearing the same amount of clothing. People don’t wear hats, gloves, hose, heels, and pearls before going out, and that was a norm into the 70s and even later in many places.

Also? Pants. Or trousers if you prefer. They’re a complicated kind of garment, now worn ubiquitously. It’s way easier to fluff out a skirt than it is to pad out close-fitting pants that shift with your body as you walk (potentially revealing any padding, and it’s generally been gauche to let your shapewear show, even when said shapewear was ridiculously artificial), and it’s way easier to add a bumroll to a skirt that’s not form-hugging.

That being said, formal wear does retain elements of structure—many formal dresses have boned bodices and padded busts and blazers are enhanced with shoulder pads. We haven’t left it behind entirely, either. On the one hand, I remember stuffing one’s bra to be a concept common in at least books when I was in middle school. For adults, various push-up and padded bras are still a thing, and wedding dresses usually retain corsets and petticoats as needed.

I would argue that there was an attitude change and I think it had to have happened a lot later than people acknowledge. “Fakery” in some form has been mocked for centuries for people who enhance their features to the point that enhancements are visible, but somewhere in the past handful of decades, mainstream US culture accepted that adding is fake/bad, but subtracting or re-shaping is normal. Boned bodices and spanx are fine, but padding bras beyond what a push-up bra will do is fake. (you do see this in attitudes towards plastic surgery a little, where liposuction is eh but breast implants are O.o ) There’s probably something to be said for the interaction of health culture combined with the growing awareness that many things for “health” are not as good as advertised (e.g. smoking)

There’s probably also something to be said for the demise of at-home sewing as a common pursuit, though that’s been in a long, slow decline. Structured things are complicated to make and require a lot of know-how, and being able to tailor your clothes is not a commonly taught skill.

I do have to say, though, the shift from the expectation of structure to loose-and-free is vividly illustrated by an episode of Star Trek, originally aired October 20, 1966:

[ID: An image of Kirk and Nurse Chapel, who wears a wearing a cowl-necked dress with clear understructure. Her silhouette is almost angular, with a clear hourglass waist and lifted bust, reminiscent of a classic 1950s silhouette, but the cowl-neck of her dress and her bouffant hairstyle mark the outfit as a little later. End ID]

[ID: the same characters shown from a different angle and lighting. End ID]

Then later in the episode, we’re shown this character, who is later revealed to be an android, and if not explicitly written then heavily implied to have been created for sexual gratification and created by Nurse Chapel’s lost fiance, who she is trying to reach.

[ID: an image of a younger woman with loose, shoulder length hair, not heavily set or styled. She wears a jumpsuit with a deep, wide v-neck made of two crisscrossing panels that leave the sides of the waist exposed. She is clearly not wearing shapewear  (or any torso undergarments) underneath. End ID]

Stark contrast, huh? I think it’s interesting how not only can you see a woman (who is looking for a lost fiance) being contrasted with a younger woman or at least youthfully presented woman who has figuratively replaced her. It’s scifi, of course, and not a representation of what people are actually wearing, but it does give insight into the cultural imagination and expectations of its time.

reblogging for some really good additions!

And so, as the Paris Point is derived from the metric system, European shoe sizes are another outcome of the French Revolution.

“The French Revolution (1789–99) provided an opportunity for the French to reform their unwieldy and archaic system of many local weights and measures. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand championed a new system based on natural units, proposing to the French National Assembly in 1790 that such a system be developed. Talleyrand had ambitions that a new natural and standardised system would be embraced worldwide, and was keen to involve other countries in its development. Great Britain ignored invitations to co-operate, so the French Academy of Sciences decided in 1791 to go it alone and they set up a commission for the purpose. The commission decided that the standard of length should be based on the size of the Earth. They defined that length to be the 'metre' and its length as one ten-millionth of the length of an Earth quadrant, the length of the meridian arc on the Earth's surface from the equator to the north pole.” (Wikipedia, background section of “metric system”)

Still sad they didn't get the decimal time system and calender to last though.

In some parallel universe, we're living in the year 230 and Anglos can't read our clocks and watches. It'd be glorious.