History Through Clothes
NPR has a great article, The Feminine Mystique, Expressed In Silks And Satins, about the history of women through clothing.
The author noted, “An exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art examines how American women — and their clothing — have evolved over the years. The show, which closes Sunday, is called “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” and it features everything from gowns to riding habits to a woolen bathing suit — clothes created between 1890 and 1940 that show the gradual emancipation of the American woman, and her rise as an international symbol of style and beauty.”
Of course, much of this history could also be found in the women’s sections of newspapers which documented fashion.
I am working on the history of women through the wearing of pants. It was a literal and symbolic liberation for women. I am presenting a paper on the New York Times coverage of the topic at the NCA convention in November.
I am also collecting information on Houston fashion writer Judy Lunn – who wrote the above article about pants. Her articles ran in the women’s pages.
One Comment
Charles
Most females born since 1975 may not know there was ever a time when their gender was prohibited from wearing pants. They may not know that women in pants were once followed by mobs in the streets tossing apple cores at them; that they were arrested; that newspaper editors called for them to be treated at "hospitals for the insane." All this and much more is in the New York Times. No less meaningful is what they don't know about men–that they wore skirts as men, not as female impersonators, for thousands of years; and that to campaign for rights for half of society while simultaneously holding a stance of opposition for corresponding rights for the other half, in the end becomes self defeating, because injustice of any kind always results in consequences to perpetrators.