INTRODUCTION TO FASHION
The clothes we wear and the trends we follow are often associated with superficiality and materialism. Fleeting
styles come rapidly into vogue, and then disappear as quickly as they came. But fashion has always been
intrinsically connected to deeper elements of the American experience, from the economy and labor system to
culture, religion, and class. From our underwear to our Levi's to our sneakers, what we wear has, for
centuries, spoken volumes about who we are, what we do, and what we want. Whether Americans have
dressed to make a political statement, to assert their class status, or simply to be irreverent, every style has
carried a certain social meaning. This is in part because our culture has long ascribed great significance to
individuals' public image, and because image has long been intertwined with the American capitalist economy.
As Mark Twain once wrote, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."1
Then again, Twain never lived to see the rise of Playboy. Clothes—or the lack thereof—remain central to
contemporary American culture and integral to our national history.
Why Should I Care?
Whether you've argued with your parents or friends about what you wear, or cringed as you gaze at old
pictures of yourself in once-trendy styles, or judged another person by his or her choice of clothes, you know
that fashion matters in our day-to-day lives. Terms like "white collar" and "blue collar" connote not just a line
of work but a person's class status, and remind us that we tend to make assumptions about a person's
income, line of work, and social position based on the way he or she dresses. Fashion history also extends
beyond the economics of designer profits and class systems; issues of gender, power, and sexuality all
intersect with the clothes we wear. Many people judge a woman's sexuality and values by the way that she
dresses; if her clothes are deemed too revealing or flashy, she might be called a "ho." Regardless of how
exaggerated or contrived these presumptions might be, they continue to pervade our popular culture and
influence the way that we present ourselves in public and even in private. Even society's mavericks—the goths
garbed in black, the hippies with long hair and natural clothing, the nudists—all indicate the importance of
appearances and perceptions by dressing (or not dressing) in order to make a point about who they are and
what they think of social conventions.
Whether you are a slave to fashion trends or proud to flout them, you are about to embark upon a history that
is about much more than evanescent vogues and high-priced brand names; this is the story of class, race, sex,
politics, big business, and popular culture, a story spun through the clothes we wear.
The Long Road to the Closet
Fashion does not simply consist of the clothes we pick out of our closets in the morning. That daily decision
only constitutes the last step of a much larger process, one that involves federal trade agreements, foreign
sweatshops, multi-billion-dollar businesses, celebrities on red carpets, and sophisticated advertising
campaigns. Fashion emerges out of pattern-making and design, the cultivation and production of raw
materials, the manufacturing process, and the distribution of the finished product. Along the way, fashion
generates a publicity blitz that inundates men and women of all ages, constantly conveying cultural standards
of beauty and generating new trends—or old trends re-worked and recycled to become new again—that
become the popularly coveted "look" of a decade or a generation.
How did all of this begin? Apparel manufacturing and trendsetting long predated the European colonization of
North America. When English settlers came to American shores, they brought their fashions with them, and
continued to import manufactured textiles for several generations. At the same time, many settlers adapted
elements of Native American dress, including moccasins, deerskin, and leather leggings. Among the settlers a
nascent domestic textile eventually industry emerged, incorporating the labor of southern slaves (who
cultivated cotton and sewed linen shirts) and northern white women (who made garments for their families
and neighbors). This domestic industry rapidly expanded before and during the Revolutionary War, as the
American colonists mounted boycotts of all British imports—including clothing—to protest Parliamentary policy.
After the Americans achieved their independence, European imports resumed and countries like France
remained the epicenter of fashion trends well into the twentieth century.
Trendsetting and Apparel Manufacture in an Industrial Age
Yet with all of the European couturiers' trendsetting history, the Industrial Revolution of the early nineteenth
century revolutionized the apparel business, made mass manufacturing possible, and centered much of that
manufacturing in the United States. In fields ranging from steel to oil to textiles and department stores,
industrial barons made such profits that America became one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in
the world by the early twentieth century. Cotton picked by millions of slaves became the South's greatest
export, providing the indispensable raw material for the textile industries of the American North and the
English Midlands. Earlier, in the seventeenth century, cotton had been too expensive to use regularly, but the
invention of the cotton gin enabled cheap mass cultivation and production, fueling a market boom. The Civil
War rocked the cotton industry but did not destroy it; even after emancipation, poor black and white families
in the South continued to cultivate cotton as sharecroppers. Once the clothes were made, they needed to be
cleaned; so black women in the South and Chinese families in the West laundered clothes for a living. In urban
centers like New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago, immigrants toiled through twelve-hour days in
sweatshops, or sewed piecework at home in crowded tenements. Manufacturers transported the finished
products to department stores, which revolutionized the American retail scene in the late nineteenth century.
These stores hired attractive white sales clerks to stand at immaculate glass display cases to help sell their
products to customers. For those Americans who did not live in or near cities, the stores devised mail-order
catalogs as a means of showcasing their wares to customers and facilitating the purchasing process. Women's
fashion magazines published the latest dress patterns and styles from Europe, and began to create a niche for
themselves by marketing cosmetics and accessories that claimed to offer subscribers allure, sophistication, and
youthfulness.
Radio, print, and billboard advertisements showcased the newest fashion trends and textile innovations to
customers during the roaring 1920s. By that time, for the first time, most Americans lived in cities, exposing
them to an ever-widening array of marketing schemes and public displays of fashion in crowded urban streets.
The glamour of fashion in film provided a fantasy world for cinema audiences enduring the Great Depression
of the 1930s, and celebrities quickly became trendsetters on and off the screen. The union movements of that
era also galvanized garment workers to band together, and the textile industry began to shift to the South,
where workers were less organized and therefore cheaper. During World War II, Americans were asked to
sacrifice certain luxuries like silk stockings when raw materials were needed elsewhere (such as for parachute
manufacture). Despite the hardships of wartime, swing music, U.S.O. dances, and military uniforms combined
to create a style evocative of the era. Meanwhile, underlying racial tensions in American life manifested
themselves in the rebellious fashions of minority groups like the zoot-suited black and Latino men of Harlem
and Los Angeles. Other minorities asserted their identity as American citizens and patriots by donning military
uniforms and fighting for their country.
Cold War Consumerism
After the war, veterans retained their medals and insignias as records of their service, but most American men
quickly exchanged their khaki uniforms for either the white-collar suits of the middle class or the blue-collar
uniforms of the working class. The Cold War against international communism only escalated the promotional
efforts of the advertising industry, which trumpeted American prosperity and consumerism as a glorious
counterpoint to the Spartan existence of the Soviet economy. Housewives were pressured to appear like the
perfect women who populated the advertisements; alluring for their husbands, always wearing makeup and
pretty dresses, even wearing pearls while cleaning the house. Husbands were advised to "keep up with the
Joneses" by conforming to the clean-cut, clean-shaven corporate ideal if they ever hoped to fit in and do well.
The beatniks of the 1950s rebelled against this conformity and materialism by writing and reading poetry,
seeking out an existence beyond the corporate cubicle, and dressing in black (or otherwise looking unorthodox
and apart from the mainstream style). Teenagers also followed the latest trends, but if they rebelled they
could also help to create rebellious fashions, like the simple white T-shirt of James Dean and Marlon Brando
that had previously been equated with the working class. Or they tried to tear the clothing off of music stars
like Elvis Presley, whose blue jeans and black leather jackets came to embody the youthfulness, restlessness,
and sex appeal of a generation.
At the same time, commercials and fads began to be beamed across the country and into people's living
rooms through the new and wildly popular medium of television. Subcultures embraced specific fashions as
markers of identity. Civil rights protestors in the 1950s and 60s used TV to communicate their demands and
their struggle to the nation and the world. They dressed in the most respectable attire possible: men in full
suits with ties, women in Sunday dresses and heels, showcasing their dignity while exposing the savagery of
racism in the faces of white foes that attacked them with dogs and fire hoses. As the 1960s wore on, a new
generation of young people began to flout convention, questioning every aspect of social tradition and
conformity, including its notions of clean-shaven respectability for men and prim dresses with heels for
women. Suddenly women wore their hair long, rejected makeup, and walked around barefoot; men also grew
their hair long, sometimes donned beards and mustaches, wore casual blue jeans and buttons featuring the
peace sign. Their appearance alone identified them as "hippies" to older, more conservative Americans, who
sometimes felt threatened by the new generation and all it represented. Some minorities who had once
conformed to mainstream standards of dress suddenly made a dramatic departure; their movements for Black
Power and La Raza Unida called for separate and proud racial solidarities that would celebrate their own
history and culture, including new fashions. Rather than buying products to lighten their skin color and
straighten their hair, blacks donned the natural afro style and embraced styles ranging from the traditional
African kente cloth to the iconic black leather jacket. Women of all races who protested for equal rights and
equal treatment condemned the fashion and advertising industries for objectifying them as sexual objects in
order to sell them expensive anti-aging creams and constricting girdles to shape their figures and conform
them to an artificial standard of beauty.
The Popular Culture of Fashion
Music continued to inspire new styles, such as the disco era's notoriously flamboyant men's pantsuits and
women's shiny metallic dresses and glitter. Trends became less racially specific, although certain stereotypes—
like the black urban pimp or the white punk rocker—remained in vogue, perhaps as much for their infamy as
their unapologetic edge and flashiness. Lifestyle trends also affected the fashion industry, as when fitness
celebrities like Jane Fonda popularized the women's workout leotard in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, throughout the second half of the twentieth century, American apparel and textile manufacturers
continued to expand their industries overseas to cut costs and compete effectively with foreign businesses.
Meanwhile, upscale couturiers developed into corporate brand names throughout the twentieth century. Their
logos became status symbols, frequently pirated on the black market and coveted by increasingly younger
customers; especially as rap and hip hop stars began wearing those labels in music videos and magazine
photo spreads. Pioneering hip-hop trio Run-D.M.C. all wore Adidas sneakers almost religiously, and in 1986
they actually wrote a song about "My Adidas" (Adidas returned the favor in 2005 by designing a Run D.M.C.
sneaker that was just like the original, but without the laces).104 More recently, music stars have also moved
from fashion partnerships to fashion moguls; rapper Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter and two his partners launched the
Rocawear clothing company in 1995, and its current annual retail sales surpass $700 million. In 1999, the
rapper/producer/restaurateur/actor Sean John "Puffy" or "P Diddy" or "Diddy" Combs launched the Sean John
clothing line for men. Popular celebrities were increasingly photographed on the red carpet and in tabloid
magazines, donning the latest styles that consumers sought to emulate.
Clothing continues to occupy a central role in our national economy, our popular culture, even our ideologies
of politics and sexuality. The history of fashion is intertwined with almost every major development in
American life since the first European settlement in the early seventeenth century. From the materials
employed in clothing manufacture to the process by which our garments are made to the social values that
dictate what we "should" look like, fashion has surrounded us and consumed us for generations.
ETC Fashion Group Assignment
After reading about the Industrial Age of Fashion, Cold War Consumerism and the Popular Culture of Fashion,
how do you think the past has shaped today’s fashion?
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During the Industrial Age, how was fashion displayed and how did that help the fashion movement during
those times?
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During the Cold War Consumerism, what was considered Rebellious Fashion?
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During the Popular Culture of Fashion, how is fashion portrayed?
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