Total Culture Shock!

To help my drawing skills, I picked up a couple of books about clothing styles throughout the 20th century. Total culture shock! I’ve learned two lessons from this.

Styles change but run in about 20-30 year cycles. Don’t believe me? 1900-20 meet the ‘sack trousers’ wide leg pants sometimes with cuffs sometimes without; 1930s ‘Wide leg denim’ pants come in; 1960s-70s Say hello to ‘bell bottoms’; 1990s-present you know them as ‘wide leg’ carpenter jeans.

Shoulder pads were seen in the 1920s, 1940s & 1980s. Remember the non-flattering ‘babydoll dress’? Go back a few more years. You’ll know them as ‘smocks’ and ‘sack dresses’ during previous portions of history.

Fabrics and some details may change. But the feature remains the same.

Lessons 2 is that the clothing that we consider ‘old folks clothes’ today was what young people wore back then. High waists were popular as was many other things that we consider ‘old’.

I think this is the real reason why a resurgence in 80s style is happening. We, the 80s kids, are getting older and we want our old stuff back.

Wow, the thought of our wrinkly butts running around in faded out, rolled up stonewashed denims as ‘old folks clothes’ is kinda creepy.