The Trend, in Happier Times

A crash course in trends that ruled the twentieth century.

This decade was not about unbending beauty as much as unending activity. Cars replaced horses and women’s wardrobes mirrored the obsession. The ladies wore hats, veils and gloves. The 1910s were all set to be the decade of sportswear, until the war broke out and it became workwear.

Arrow Shirt Man was conceived by JC Leyendecker to sell Arrow’s detachable-collar shirts. He was the suave male equivalent of Charles Dana Gibson’s Gibson Girl.

1911 was the first time a Pekingese dog was used as a fashion accessory.

Women of the 1910s wore large hats with wide brims. The bobcut hair style began its journey westward from Paris, with a torrid love affair enroute with avant garde London. It was brought to America by the dancer and silent film star Irene Castle.

The 20s were characterised by abbreviation—short skirts, short credit lines and short names.

The silhouettes were distinctive, with straight lines, boyish bodies and bound flat breasts. Thus, the flapper decade. The look was ‘modern’ in its effeminate defiance of conventional appearances. Louis Brook’s rise as a film star was in keeping with the defining phenomenon of the flapper era—the worship of youth. She made blunt-cut hair famous and her character in A Social Celebrity gave the flapper fame for all time to come.

With the Jazz age, women’s skirts rose to their knees. They smoked and drank in public for the first time—defying rigid social set-ups of the 1900s.

Bathing suits were no longer objects of art, though stretch fabric was still risqué.

Men’s fashion didn’t change much, only turned sharper. Trousers tapered around the ankles. Fedoras were a statement. Pinstripes, cool.

The majority of people were hard-up or out of work, so few had money for indulgent dressing.

The icon of the 30s was Swedish actress Greta Garbo. She became a symbol of femininity, captivation and sophistication, posing a contrast to the rebellious flappers. Garbo popularised the trench coat and the berets.

Women had entered the workforce and wore business suits. Their skirts were tight and had daring slits along the side or the back. Their jackets were tight too, but had shoulder pads to lend a silhouette that commanded respect in a largely male workforce.

Time was of the essence and women were packing plenty into their 24 hours. The zip fastner offered a sound solution.

Surrealist fashion started rearing its head. And while fashion was extolling the virtues of crinoline and taffeta, The War broke out.

Platinum blonde hair gave Betty Grable the glamour to stave off competition from Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake and Lana Turner and thus emerge as the top pin-up girl for US soldiers at war in Europe.

Fashion aimed to conserve materials for the war effort. Apparel, like the sound of music, was shorn of ‘excess’. Dresses were made without cuffs, collars, buttons and zippers. Skirts, sans pleats.

Men’s suits were not three- or four-piece. They wore double-breasted coats mixed and matched with trousers.

1947 saw the most rivetting shift in fashion since 1910. Christian Dior came out with his now famous ‘new look’: wide waistband, whittled waist and deep-cut bodice. This outraged a continent still in austerity mode.

1942 saw the US legislate a 10 per cent cut in female swimsuits’ fabric. The midriff was thus notably revealed, and so followed the bikini. Viva la difference: the supernova age was here.

Tiny waists and curves returned, elastic replaced whale bone and poise trounced propriety. Audrey Hepburn was held aloft as a fashion icon. She stood out with her hourglass figure and slender eyelashes.

Men of the 1950s wore tight Levi’s or chinos with loafers or converse shoes and tight black or white shirts under leather jackets. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause was the leading pin-up for girls, and men aspired to his masculine aura. Hanging out with the gang in jeans with a knuckle-bracketed groin was soon to become the classic machismo motioning stance.

Marilyn Monroe marked the onset of the era of Playboy centrefolds, as she began her long reign atop desirability charts. She also heralded, in a way, the era of leggy sensuality and the bikini wax. Hers was the original ‘fly-up’ dress performance, leaving men with wet dreams and women with that enduring wardrobe staple, the stilleto.

The 60s signalled the arrival of the new fashion unorthodoxy with the Beatles on top.

Fashion brought to the forefront such underexplored erogenous zones as a woman’s thighs, stomach and arms. Couture was becoming passé as flower children turned eclectic second-hand clothes chic. With the sound of the Beatles, Bob Dylan and John Baez amidst the Vietnam War, the aim of fashion was to defy conformity, part of a counterculture floating high on illegal drugs and free love.

The breakdown of class barriers meant that models gave up aristocratic airs. Twiggy became the world’s first supermodel at 16 and postergirl for the androgynous ideal.

The 60s saw the Summer of Love, Woodstock and hallucinogenic fancies. Jimi Hendrix turned that blended colour purple fashionable.

The 70s were about anarchy, wild experimentation, the shock of glam rock, rise of the platform and accompanying plunge of the skirt. But most important was the gender role reversal, with men wearing make-up.

In 1977 as Britain celebrated the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, punk ran riot. As a middle finger to all things ‘propah’, the youth wore bondage trousers and ripped t-shirts, gelling their fluorescent hair. Vivienne Westwood created a controversial image of the queen with a safety pin.

Men still wore bell bottoms (John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever), shirts with dizzying patterns, gold chains and jackets. Polyester, acrylic and lycra were fabrics of the decade. Women’s dresses were loose with ruffles and always ended at the knee.

Woodstock nostalgia reigned too. Ralph Lauren became the first designer to create a retail brand.

1981: At 19, Lady Diana became the most photographed woman in the world. The 80s was a decade that worshipped status symbols—Diana and the Dynasty joined by the shoulderpad.

1982: Punk became coffee-table history and it was cool to be glamorous.

1983: After two decades of brilliance and fluorescence, black became the colour’d attire.

But most importantly the 80s was the decade of the fashion designers. Jean Paul Gaultier quickly became fashion’s enfant terrible with his conical corsets and quirky tailoring. In 1984 John Galliano graduated and sent out his first collection called Les Incroyables.

The 1990s had different styles. The colour schemes were either pastel or a dramatic feast for the eyes, even if the classic colour was black.

The singleton entered the vocabulary, courtesy Bridget Jones.

Men’s fashion underwent only minor changes, with trouser legs turning slightly loose and vests dropping clean out of the limelight.

The power shoulder was sentenced to life, accessories were escalated, big hair was cut to size and slip dresses came out of the closet.

Isabella Rossellini at 39 and Lauren Hutton at 48 were still faces of glamour.

The 90s resurrected the flares/bootlegs, platform shoes and stretch leggings to replace trousers. Pucci prints were a must have.

The Grunge subculture of the US spawned a new sort of fashion shoot (Kate Moss for Vogue). Elizabeth Hurley stupefied onlookers by arriving for a movie premiere in a Versace dress held together by breath-control and safety pins.

The 1990s saw Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christie Turlington and Tatjana Patitz rule the ramp as supermodels.

About The Author

Kabeer Sharma