Women’s Fashion Throughout The Twentieth Century

7 Pages 1842 Words

“Fashion is the outward and visible sign of civilization, it is part of social history.”
-Amy Latour, “Kings of Fashion”

According to the quote by Amy Latour, fashion is another hard copy of history. Many factors have affected the manner how people dress, and one of those factors is history. World events and historical milestones play huge roles in the contemporary trends of fashion. If it were not for the momentous happenings, especially the historical events of the early twentieth and late twentieth century, the fashion industry would be notably different.
Fashion is closely related to the word clothing. People clothe themselves out of necessity. In early civilizations, climate and the raw materials that were available were important in influencing what styles of dress were adopted.
Clothing is estimated to have first appeared some 25,000 to 50,000 years ago (Payne, 1-2). Neanderthals, who lived in caves in central Europe, have been believed to wear simple clothing. They probably noticed that the fur bearing animals were not bothered by the weather, and so they began wearing animal skins to cover their bodies. They were simply wrapped around the body like large capes with no fastenings or sleeves.
Later, people began to farm and raise varieties of animals to use for food, labor, and of course, clothing. They experienced to use yarns by taking fibers off from flax plant and wools from ships.
The wool and flax yarns were woven into cloth and draped around the body, and with a tie fastened the cloth at the waist. Early Egyptians used these kinds of garments. Along with those garments were kaunakes, meaning, “skin.” Kaunakes cloths were made from textile imitating goat-skin (Boucher, 34). Greeks and Romans wore simple garments. They were draped gracefully over their bodies with borders embroidered or painted.
In addition, between middle Ages and Industrial Revolution, power-driven machinery was int...