Clothing and Fashion

Bogolan, also known as bogolanfni, is an African textile whose distinctive technique and iconography have been adapted to diverse markets and materials. The textile is indigenous to Mali, where it has been made and worn for generations. The cloth’s bold geometric patterns and rich earth tones make it distinctive and readily adaptable to new contexts. In the past, bogolan was made exclusively by women, who created it for use in specific ritual contexts. During the past two decades, new techniques, forms, and meanings have brought bogolan to international markets even as the cloth continues to be made and used in its original contexts. In North America, where the cloth’s patterns have been adapted to a wide range of products, this textile is marketed as “mud cloth.” (more…)

Body piercing is the practice of inserting jewelry (usually metal, though wood, glass, bone, or ivory, and certain plastics are used as well) completely through a hole in the body. Piercing is often combined with other forms of body art, such as tattooing or branding, and many studios offer more than one of these services. While virtually any part of the body can be, and has been, pierced and bejeweled (for evidence, see the well-known Web site http://www.bmezine.com) widely pierced sites include ear, eyebrow, nose, lip, tongue, nipple, navel, and genitals. (more…)

The twenty-first century body, like those of preceding centuries, is still engaged in the eternal quest for an ideal shape. The modernist body of fashion has made it possible for both women and men to reconstruct themselves by a variety of means, resisting the body’s unruly nature in order to achieve a firm, toned physique that conforms to sexual stereotypes and concepts of beauty. While women in earlier centuries relied mainly on dieting and corsetry to achieve the perfect shape, today’s alternatives include muscular development through weight-lifting, strenuous exercise, and perpetual dieting. Cosmetic surgery has become an accepted method of transforming the body’s natural shape. Many contemporary men rely on strenuous weight training, other forms of exercise, dieting, and cosmetic surgery to achieve bodies that conform to social ideals of masculine appearance. (more…)

Although the term “blouse” now refers to a woman’s separate bodice of a different material than the skirt, the word derives from the French name for a workman’s loose smock and was first used in English for men’s and boy’s shirts. The feminine blouse has its antecedents in the undergarment known as a smock, shift, or chemise, which served the same purposes as the male shirt: worn next to the skin, it absorbed bodily soil and protected outer garments. (more…)

In the spring of 1851, three leading women’s rights activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902), Cady’s cousin, Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822 – 1911), and Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818 – 1894), editor of the Lily, a Ladies’ Journal Devoted to Temperance and Literature, wore similar outfits on the streets of Seneca Falls, New York—ensembles consisting of knee-length dresses over full trousers. In nineteenth-century America, trousers were an exclusively male garment and women wearing trousers in public caused a sensation. The national press quickly linked this dress reform style to Amelia Bloomer, who had been writing articles about it. Soon both the costume and its wearers were popularly identified as “Bloomers.” (more…)

Possibly a development of the nautical reefer jacket, a blazer is a loose-fitting and lightweight flannel sports jacket. Coming in both double- or single-breasted styles, although most are double-breasted, a blazer is generally tailored in either plain navy or black, has brass buttons, two side vents, is thigh length and in many cases has a breast-pocket badge. A well-constructed blazer can make even a pair of jeans appear smart. The blazer is generally considered to be a vital component of the “preppy” or “British look.” (more…)

William Ralph (Bill) Blass (1922-2002) was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1922. At the age of nineteen he left the Midwest and moved to New York City, where he studied briefly at Parsons School of Design. He worked as a sketch artist for a sportswear firm in 1940-1941, but his budding career was interrupted for military service in a counterintelligence unit in World War II. After the war Blass began working as a fashion designer, mainly for the firm of Maurice Rentner, Ltd. In 1970 he purchased the Rentner firm, renamed it Bill Blass Ltd., and saw the company take off as one of the most successful American fashion houses of the late twentieth century. (more…)

Manolo Blahnik (b. 1942) was a designer and manufacturer of what were called “the sexiest shoes in the world”—beautiful, expensive, and highly coveted by many of the world’s most fashionable women. Heir to a tradition of luxury shoemaking epitomized by André Perugia, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Roger Vivier, Blahnik produced shoes—”Manolos,” to the cognoscenti— that became icons of the fashion culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. In the words of retailer Jeffrey Kalinsky, “There’s never been a shoe designer whose reign as No. 1 shoe designer has lasted so long. His hold on the throne has no sign of doing anything but growing” (Larson, p. 6). (more…)

The bikini, a two-piece bathing suit of diminutive proportions, first appeared on the fashion scene in the summer of 1946. Its impact was compared to that of the atomic bomb tests conducted that same summer by the United States at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Islands, which was arguably the source of its name. Both the French couturier Jacques Heim and the Swiss engineer Louis Reard are credited with launching the skimpy two-piece, which they dubbed the atome and bikini, respectively. The French model Michele Bernardini wore the first bikini at a fashion show in Paris. Her suit consisted of little more than two triangles of fabric for the bra, with strings that tied around the neck and back, and two triangles of fabric for the bottom, connected by strings at the hips. (more…)

The bicycle was invented in Europe, but American ingenuity increased its usability and widespread use. Kirkpatrick Macmillan of Scotland is credited with inventing the first mechanical bicycle, while Pierre Michaux and son Ernest of Paris were the first to manufacture bicycles on a large scale in the mid-1860s. The aptly named “boneshaker” or velocipede was quickly followed by the high-wheeler and then the safety bicycle. In July 1865 Pierre Lallement brought the bicycle to America resulting in a wave of bicycle-related patents. The bicycle craze flourished through the end of the century. Clothing specifically designed for wear while bicycling has changed dramatically over the years. (more…)