Fashion and Society Boards

The illustrated boards summarize the evolution of fashion in a social, economic, technological, and cultural context. They detail the important designers and the stages in the evolution of fashion during each period, together with the anti-fashion movements. Project created in 2018 for Fashion and Society.

Victorian Era 1850-1899

During this period, the new middle class that came from the industrialization wanted to fit in higher classes. The Suez Canal, department stores, and domestic sewing machine created accessibility for them to look like higher classes. The Suez Canal made faster, cheaper transportation available between Asia and Europe. Products from Asia could be easily transported to Europe. Department stores allowed middle class to follow fashion. They made lace, ribbons, other fashion goods and even products imported from Asia accessible for middle class women at fair price. The domestic sewing machine allowed women to reproduce fashion of the times and imitate higher classes, also helped by fashion magazines, paper patterns, and products now found in department stores. Fashion became more affordable and a status symbol.

Edwardian Fashion, Poiret, and WWI 1901-1919

King Edward was the king of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. He is Queen Victoria’s son. The period was named after him. He enjoyed outdoor activities. He liked casual wear and led the trend of men’s casual wear. He also contributed to the sporty look, therefore, men’s garment became less formal. People liked him a lot. However, he was not interested in and was not good at dealing with national affairs. His lack of care of the country was one of the factors of WWI. During World War I, women started to go to work. At that time, most of the men went to war and there were not enough workers to keep the society and economy go well. As a result, women needed to go to work. They could do many kinds of work such as nanny, bus driver, and even welders. Women could earn money by themselves. This made them start to have a place in the economy stage.

Jazz Age and Depression 1920-1939

From 1920 to 1939, the society went from one extreme situation to another. In the 1920s, people had a relatively enjoyable life with urban expansion. It was the first time of having more people in the city than in countries. In cities, people got better jobs, better services, and more advanced usage of technology. There was also an economic boom at the same time. In the 1930s, however, Hitler got the power by promising Germany people to make the country great again. He wanted everything to go back to “purity”. Later, he showed ambition of being the emperor of Europe by the time of Berlin Olympics and through the control of a battle happened in Spain, which led to WWII. Similar to social phenomena, the economic situation also changed a lot within these two decades. People went from economic boom to depression. In the 1920s, the economy greatly grew. Mass production led to mass consumerism. Products became cheaper and more available for people and people bought a lot. However, in 1929, Wall street crushed. After this year, the economy stopped growing. Lots of people lost their jobs, savings, and houses. Only very few extremely rich people successfully went through this and got richer by buying other companies at low prices and resell them later. Because of the crash and depression, the latter decade is like a “dust bowl”, which means everything is covered in dust. Some people ended up living in horrible boxed conditions. At this time, people started to question if it was right to work so hard on developing economies, technology…

WWII, New Look, and the Return to Tradition 1939-1959

After WWII, “Baby Boom” happened. The baby boom was not only a normal post-war reaction, but also because of the revive of economic conditions in North America and people wanted to go back to traditional values and lifestyles. It allowed men to work and women to go back home and make babies. Also because of good security and stability, people wanted to buy houses that were affordable at that time. This also made them able to have babies and raise them up. Therefore, we start to see a huge growth of population in 1945-1960s. This huge generation is also noticed as a huge market and they can be seen as lots of marketing opportunities and are followed from their birth to their death. “Baby Boomers” also explains the typical New Look silhouette during that time, which emphasized breasts and hips that represented motherhood. People consumed a lot in the 1950s. TV and adds had contributed a lot to this phenomenon. Marketers showed lots of adds to women who had a lot of free time, encourage them to buy various synthetic fabrics that were seen as modern and fashionable. Also, marketers used TV to reached people and made them consume. From TV, people could not only hear but also see things, this quickly made them addicted to TV and want what they saw on TV. It fit the need of consumerism since the economy goes well at that time in North America. In addition, because houses became more affordable for people, a lot of them bought a house and enjoys in having the latest machinery and facilities in their house. They were crazy about new pieces of machinery in their kitchen, and they change and buy a lot to show their status.