Fashion History
Read together, these show that when the shape of clothing changed, so did rules about bodies, gender and class, and the illustrated plate that spread the news is here too.
Dictionary entry
- Fashion Plate 1770s–1930s / Technique
The illustrated medium that delivered the latest fashion in hand-colored prints, the ancestor of the magazine, the illustration and the style drawing.
- Dandyism 1790s– / Style
A menswear aesthetic that makes a work of the self through tailoring, cleanliness and restraint rather than ornament. From it come the plain suit and a long line of self-assertion through dress.
- Rational Dress 1850s–1900s / Style
A reform movement that refused the corset and the trailing hem and redesigned clothing around health and freedom of movement. In dress it is what functionalism is in design.
- Flapper 1920s / Style
The 1920s woman who made the body's liberation visible in a straight silhouette, a short hem and bobbed hair, wearing the same period spirit that Art Deco gave to geometry.
- Meisen Kimono 1900s–1950s / Style
A popular kimono that carried bold abstract patterns and the bright colors of chemical dye on a cheap ikat technique. It was a Japanese modernism, translating Deco and the avant-garde into everyday dress.
- New Look 1947–1950s / Style
Cinched waists and long skirts of lavish fabric turned away from wartime utility clothing and brought the curve back, opening the golden age of postwar couture.
- Ivy Style 1950s– / Style
The practical menswear system of America's East Coast universities, whose button-downs and blazers taught a broken-in correctness that reached the world through Japan and became the standard of trad.
- Space Age Fashion 1960s / Style
The couture avant-garde of the 1960s translated the optimism of the space race into experiments with material, using metal, plastic and geometric cuts to present the body as an object of the future.
- Black Dandyism 18th century– / Style
A lineage of using tailoring and bearing as self-fashioning, editing back against a racialized gaze. It is not one level of ornament: it knows the codes, shifts the details, and carries dignity, resistance and identity at once.
- Power Dressing 1970s–1980s / Style
Dress that makes workplace authority visible. In the 1980s the sharply tailored, big-shouldered suit became a sign of upward mobility for women and men, enlarging and hardening the silhouette while also carrying the pressure to conform.
- Fashion Deconstruction 1980s– / Style
Exposes seam allowance, lining, raw edge, pattern and asymmetric joining instead of hiding clothing as a seamless whole. It does not merely destroy; it dismantles conventions and builds a different body from their parts.
- Camp Fashion 19th century– / Style
A sensibility that loves artifice, exaggeration, theatricality, parody and excess, enjoying the line between good and bad taste. Its force is not loudness alone but seriousness enlarged until it turns into humor and critique.
- Sportswear as Fashion late 19th century– / Style
The exchange by which mobility, protection and new materials from sport enter everyday dress and fashionable shapes return to athletic clothing. From divided skirts to stretch, nylon and neoprene, functional movement helped form modern casual clothing.
- Glam Rock Fashion 1971–1975 / Style
Early-1970s British rock used glitter, platforms, emphatic makeup, body-fitting clothes and quotations from science fiction and cabaret to turn performers into deliberately artificial stars separated from everyday life.
- Western Wear 19th century– / Style
Western wear developed from ranch and riding utility into rodeo, film and country stage dress, adding embroidery, fringe, studs and emphatic color to functional yokes, snaps, boots and hats.
- Peacock Revolution mid-1960s–early 1970s / Style
The Peacock Revolution released postwar menswear from the dark suit, spreading close tailoring, vivid color, velvet, frills and flowers into young men's street and stage dress while modern dandyism unsettled gender and class rules.
- Op Art Fashion 1964–late 1960s / Style
1960s Op Art fashion moved repeated lines, sharp black-and-white contrast and perceptual vibration into straight mini-dresses, knits and paper clothing, letting the pattern swell, flicker and turn as the body moves.
- Afrofuturist Fashion 1950s– / Style
Afrofuturist fashion reimagines Black history, agency and liberation through space, technology, myth, music and stage dress, answering who gets to inhabit the future with a visible body and persona.
- Boho-Chic early 2000s–present / Style
A fashion style in which 2000s celebrities, festivals, and high-street retail re-edited 1960s–70s hippie and bohemian dress into calculated effortlessness. Flowing cloth, layering, low waist emphasis, worn leather, crochet, and embroidery are balanced by one polished urban piece.
- Crinoline Silhouette mid-1850s–late 1860s / Style
A mid-nineteenth-century silhouette system that joins concentric steel hoops with tapes beneath a skirt, spreading the whole circumference into a bell or dome. The mass-produced structure replaced layers of heavy petticoats and changed both the dress outline and the space a wearer occupied.
- Bustle Silhouette late 1860s–mid-1880s / Style
A late-nineteenth-century silhouette system concentrating pads, horsehair, cages, springs, skirt volume, and trim behind the waist. Front and sides stay comparatively narrow while projection, drape, and train are staged at the back.
- Pannier Silhouette late 17th–late 18th century / Style
An eighteenth-century silhouette system suspending basket-like supports at both hips so width grows laterally while front and back remain flat. Court dress and the robe à la française used this horizontal field to display woven pattern, trim, and frontal gesture.
- Spanish Farthingale Silhouette late 15th–early 17th century / Style
A Spanish court-dress silhouette formed by hoops increasing toward the floor, fixing the skirt into a rigid cone or triangle from waist to hem. It suppresses folds and joins an upright torso, narrow waist, and broad base into one geometry.
- Robe à la Française 1730s–1770s / Style
An eighteenth-century gown style combining a fitted front, triangular stomacher, open overskirt, and two deep box pleats falling unbroken from shoulders to floor. Pannier width and silk surface separate frontal decoration from the long flow of the back.
- Slashing late 15th–17th century / revivals / Technique
A decorative technique making regular cuts through an outer layer of clothing, hats, or shoes to reveal lining, undercloth, or pulled fabric beneath. Cut shape, spacing, direction, and contrasting color turn the surface into a controlled two-layer rhythm rather than random damage.
- 1980s Workout Style late 1970s–1980s / Style
The aerobics and home-fitness boom turned leotards, leggings, leg warmers, high-top shoes, fluorescent layers, and a visibly high waist into a repeatable 1980s workout language that crossed into streetwear and advertising.
- Acubi late 2010s–2020s / Style
A Korean online-retail and Gen Z style that keeps Y2K's slim, low-rise silhouette while muting it into grey, black, white, translucent layers, cropped tops, boleros, and asymmetric seams.
- Twee Style mid-2000s–early 2010s / revival / Style
A mid-2000s indie-pop and vintage style joining Peter Pan collars, A-lines, colored tights, loafers, bangs, records, books, and analog props into a sweet, knowingly performed urban look later revived under names such as Whimsy Twee.
- Buffalo Style 1983–1989 / Style
An authored 1980s London styling language developed around Ray Petri and the Buffalo collective, recombining sportswear, tailoring, military surplus and street dress through purposeful casting, fashion portraiture and challenges to fixed masculinity and high-low hierarchy.