Future Dictates of Fashion (From The Strand Magazine, June 1893)

[Corky]

Future Dictates of Fashion

From The Strand Magazine, June 1893

"Cigars went out of fashion twenty years ago. Men and yeomen consumed so much tobacco that their healths were endangered. The laws of Nature were powerless to cope with the evil. Not so the laws of Fashion, which at once abated it. It will, however, return in thirty-one years. In 1790 Nature commanded men to bathe. They laughed at Nature. In 1810 Fashion did the same thing. Men complied, and daily cold baths became established. In 1900 it was pushed to extremes. The ultra-sect cut holes in the ice and plunged into the water. The fashion changed. For forty years only cads bathed."



LINK

 

[Fastuni]

Heh. While obviously meant to be satire, it would have been more interesting to see a genuine attempt to imagine future clothing, instead of cartoons of 15th to 17th century costumery.

 

[The Good]

I am not sure what people of the 1890s thought men and women of the future would be wearing, but during the late 1700s or early 1800s, wasn't it Beau Brummell that had popularized frequent bathing? I think he also helped to popularize trousers instead of breeches around the time, so I might have mixed up the two details.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Some remarkable predictions here:

"Cigars went out of fashion twenty years ago." Indeed, tobacco smoking of all kinds went out of fashion about that time, and is confined today to the least fashionable, the poor and the riff raff.

Note the zoot suit on the man of 1908, exaggerated and thirty years too early but...

"Trousers, which had been wavering between nautical buttons and gallooned knees -- or, in the vernacular of the period, a sail three sheets in the wind and a flag at half-mast were the items sacrificed. Knee-breeches enjoyed vogue for a time, but only for a time; for they vanished suddenly "

Oxford bags did resemble a sailor's trousers, and knee pants or plus fours were worn.

" In the Ebullient period it is chiefly distinguished by head-dress and the total abolition of stays. Crinoline, in spite of certain opposition, enjoyed a slight revival in the present day, and in 1897 the divided skirt threatened to spread universally. But it passed off, and nothing of a radical order was attempted in this direction until the revo!ution which brought in trousers for women in 1942. "

Stays did go out of fashion the the twenties in favor of a more natural look. Women did wear trousers in 1942, a wartime fashion inspired by women in the military and in factory work.

"Meantime, in the next plate of a lady's costume, which is dated 1922, we have presented a very rational and beautiful style of dress. The skirt, it is true, is short enough to alarm prim contemporary dames, "

Short skirts were a fashion of the twenties, and did alarm the mothers and grandmothers of the flappers who wore them.

"This skirt seems to have been rather a weak point with our posterity of the female persuasion, for in the next three or four plates we find it rising and falling with the habitual incorrigibility of a shilling barometer. The Oriental influence is easily traced in the fashions from 1938 to 1945, but it cannot but make the judicious grieve to note that trousers seem to have been adopted by the women at the same time that they were discarded by the men. "

This is uncanny. 1938 to 1945 is the exact period when trousers were adopted by women, although not discarded by men (except in Highland regiments).

" in 1970 we notice a distinct change for the better, although personally many of us would doubtless strenuously object to wearing neckties of the magnitude here portrayed"

Wide ties. 1970. Nailed it.

"As to the last plate in the series, we can only remark that if the character of our male posterity after four or five generations is to be as effeminate as its attire, the domination by the fair sex cannot be many centuries distant. "

Emo boys and radical feminist girls?

"the single article of apparel which stands out most silhouetted against the background of the last century's dress is its hard shiny, black head-gear. It is without a parallel. It is impossible for us to conceive of a similar article surviving for so long a period; "

Indeed, hard hats did go out not long into the 20th century, and hats went out of style completely in the 60s.

Lots of fun, and very amusing to find "hits". It goes to show if you make enough predictions some of them are bound to come true.