3 styles that shaped the history of fashion From the "a la garçonne" style to the dandy allure, passing through sportswear
Today style no longer corresponds to a legitimate representation of power or a social class, as it was for Elizabeth I or the aristocracy of the Ancien Régime, but is rather the reflection of an identity inclined to the taste that claims to affirm your unique and individual self.
It is interesting to think of how already in the 1950s fashion magazines began to invite women to discover their personal style and to use clothes to get to know themselves, offering them quizzes to explain how to dress according to a certain type of woman. Sophisticated, exotic, aristocratic or modern, each of them was explained their own style with the addition of advice to emphasize it, often referring to a diva or a character in a film.
Today fashion has become even more a global phenomenon that involves everyone, but in particular - as Franca Sozzani wrote on her Editor's Blog in 2010 - fashion is in a state of total anarchy. Never in any historical period, not even in the hippy movement, has there been so much freedom, so much offer of stylistic proposals that are very different from each other, and so many choices from a thousand price ranges.
Having your own style means having a strong aesthetic identity and being somehow recognizable. Following fashions, reworking them or rejecting them, is part of a process born centuries ago that continues to evolve and assert itself. Here are 3 styles - or fashions - that have shaped the way we dress and that made the history of costume.
À la garçonne
If in the nineteenth century the aesthetics of the bourgeois woman was a sort of artistic production, the twenties instead represented for fashion - and not only - a reaction and a consequence to the First World War. Most of the women found themselves having to work in factories, construction sites and fields, consequently the crinolines were replaced by clothing more suitable for work: the hems were shortened according to the seasons, the breasts began to be hidden and the shapes not to be exalted, the clothes are simplified and the figure lengthens. Beauty also underwent a noticeable change, hair for example shortened - Irene Castle and Gabrielle Chanel were the first women to cut it and express the look of the twentieth century - and Vogue started talking about a certain masculine and chic naturalness. Thus it was that the style à la garçonne took over the bon ton woman and new ideals of beauty were imposed, as well as new roles within society, destined to last over time and to become iconic. The desire for independence and the desire to have habits associated with men led the woman of the twentieth century to take accessories and clothes directly from the male wardrobe, from a simple cigarette case up to the sixties when Yves Saint Laurent introduced one of his most iconic pieces. : the tuxedo, originally reserved for men who wore it in smoking rooms to protect their suits from the smell of cigars. Today the gender discourse on fashion is certainly too broad to be discussed in a few lines, but already in 1984 Suzy Menkes wrote an article in the Times talking about men's undergarments adopted in women's clothing as the latest declaration of a sexual revolution in progress. for some time, opening the doors to genderless fashion and unisex collections.
How to make it contemporary?
Essential: pay close attention to aesthetics and lifestyle to then have elegance as the only goal, and the rejection of bad taste. To remove a bit of boredom, however, I would recommend leaving something imperfect in the look, as Montesquieu also suggested! A simple and natural elegance is better than an overly constructed attitude, valid for both women and men.
