Valerie Steele on Fashion in the Age of Social Distancing

“I’ve looked at the trends that emerged after major crises in history. I think we can’t generalize because there are different types of crises, but catastrophes tend to exaggerate what happened before. For example, the Black Death emerged in Europe in 1347. In the beginning of the 14th century, clothes had started to become more fitted and more sexually dimorphic. They had buttons and laces and more embroidery. And these trends really took off afterwards. It is not that the plague caused people to get more body conscious and fashion-y. It exaggerated what had already started. As another example, World War I was a bloodbath, completely horrible. A third of the young men in France were killed or were mutilated. If you look at pictures from 1920 you would think that the war transformed everything. But pictures from 1910–1912, before the war started, reveal that women had started to wear brassieres, expose more of their legs, and wear skimpier underwear before the war. The war did not start new styles, it exaggerated the styles that had already begun before the war.” <a href="https://medium.com/@lilia.ziamou/valerie-steele-on-fashion-in-the-age-of-social-distancing-68076f79f3f0">Read More</a>