Attention-grabbing headlines constantly alert us to the ills of fast fashion. The multi-billion dollar industry churns out mountains of inexpensive-but-stylish clothing, much of it sewn in sweatshop-like factories in Asia and Latin America and sold by popular brands such as Shein, H&M, and Zara. The industry exploits workers, uses harmful chemicals, and causes environmental damage to the planet. The garments it produces are of poor quality, which means consumers keep coming back for more—and the cycle of harm repeats.

Social and environmental justice advocates taking aim at fast fashion direct their criticism (justifiably) toward big retailers and powerful corporations. But some also point fingers at ordinary consumers, who—with the aid of social media and online trade—play into the wasteful ethos that perpetuates this industry. Meanwhile, defenders of fast fashion claim that its global nature is democratizing, and makes style accessible to the masses.

People understand this debate as the product of the current consumer economy and the impending environmental crisis, but it is not new. The problems of fast fashion, as well as calls for ethical consumption, have characterized the garment industry from its beginning.

The rise of the ready-made industry in the late 19th century, which offered the masses affordable clothes in standardized ready-to-wear sizes, is often celebrated as a great moment in the democratization of fashion.

No clothing item represented this revolution more than the shirtwaist. Modeled after a masculine dress shirt, the shirtwaist was often worn together with a skirt, creating a new style known as the “ensemble.” It replaced custom-made dresses fitted to specific bodies, typically sewn by seamstresses or by the wearers themselves. Marketed as appropriate for business, leisure, and everyday wear, the shirtwaist ensemble quickly established itself as a staple in women’s wardrobes.

The design’s simplicity and the fact that it did not require close fitting made it extremely adaptable to mass production and standardization. While shirtwaists could be sewed at home by following a pattern, most women bought theirs factory-made, whether from department stores or pushcart vendors in the street. Growing rapidly in popularity, the shirtwaist was responsible for the expansion of the women’s ready-made clothing industry, which grew in product value from $13 million to $159 million dollars between 1869 and 1899.

Shirtwaists came in a variety of styles and prices, ranging from mannish-tailored waists with basic lines to elaborately embroidered designs with lacy inserts and frilly ornaments. Each woman could choose her own style according to the event or time of day, but more often it was according to her financial means. Yet even working-class, immigrant women—many of whom worked in the garment industry themselves—could create a seemingly diverse, fashionable wardrobe without spending a week’s pay by pairing a few shirtwaists, each costing less than a dollar, with one skirt. The shirtwaist was instrumental in working women’s assimilation into American society and culture—enabling them to appear as fashionable as their middle-class and native-born peers.

Ironically, these same women could not afford the department store-quality shirtwaists they helped manufacture. As Clara Lemlich, a garment worker and a union activist attested, “The garments we work on are very beautiful, very costly—very delicate. Some of them sell for a hundred and fifty dollars. Such as you could never dream of buying for yourself.” Lemlich and her peers had to compromise on poorly made shirts that often did not last more than a few washes before falling apart.

It was not just the poor quality of inexpensive shirtwaists that exposed the ills of mass manufacturing. Working conditions in many of the garment factories were exploitative. Shifts were often 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, for only a few dollars wage. Workers were cramped into stuffy, dirty rooms with poor ventilation and lighting. And while many of them organized and went on strikes to improve these conditions, employers and the public often ignored their pleas—putting profits and fashion over people.

Days after the Triangle Factory Fire, protesters mourned the victims and demanded better working conditions. Courtesy of author.

That began to change in 1898, when a group of middle-class women sought to use their buying power to bring an end to the harms of fast fashion. Led by social reformer Florence Kelley, the National Consumer League (NCL) launched a campaign to target women consumers, encouraging ethical consumption by creating a “white label” for clothes produced under fair and safe conditions.

Modeled after the idea of the “union label,” the NCL’s white label indicated “clean and healthful conditions” of both the clothes themselves, which were free of hazardous materials, and for the workers who made them. NCL pamphlets such as “The High Cost of Cheap Goods” encouraged shoppers not only to look at bargain prices and popular styles when buying clothes but also to understand what lay behind seemingly great deals.

NCL members appealed to consumers’ sense of justice and called them to be responsible for their choices. “Don’t say… that by buying ready-made clothes at a bargain counter you are aiding in the support of many of your sex,” warned one member. “You are not; you are simply making it possible for the sweatshop to remain open.”

The white label campaign had some successes, but it was only in 1911 that the public became aware of its acute necessity. On March 25, flames engulfed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building, and New Yorkers watched in horror as hundreds of workers burned or jumped to their deaths. The 146 victims, the majority of them young women, offered a stark testament to the deadly cost of the pursuit of fashion.

Shocked by the tragedy, the public demanded action through mass memorials, rallies, and other forms of outcry. In the aftermath of the fire, the New York State legislature created the Factory Investigating Commission, which enacted more than 30 bills addressing sanitary conditions and workplace safety, imposing fire codes and other standards. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which only months prior to the fire organized one of the most impressive strikes in New York City history, more than doubled its membership, and turned into one of the most influential and militant unions in the country.

The fashion industry still suffers from many of the same problems that plagued it over 100 years ago, at the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Yet if it was middle-class consumers’ proximity to the fire that allowed it to spur outrage, today we are detached, both physically and psychologically, from the process by which people make our clothes. If it’s easier today to ignore the harms of fast fashion it is not because the harms are unfamiliar or new. It is because they are happening far away.

“Consumers… can, if they will, enforce a claim to have all that they buy free from the taint of cruelty,” Florence Kelley professed in 1914, believing that organized action and human solidarity could eventually bring change.

The NCL ended its white label campaign a few years later, in 1918, but Kelley’s message is still relevant today. Making the effort and looking beyond the price tag and the instant rush of shopping is our responsibility: to the workers who make our clothes, to the planet, but most of all to ourselves.

The post We’ve Been Fighting Fast Fashion Since the Industrial Revolution appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The pandemic has changed the way women dress; we’re purchasing fewer shoes, dress pants, and makeup, and trading underwire bras for loose bralettes or sport bras, or even choosing to forgo them completely. Yet, as businesses around the country get ready to call their workers back to the office, this life of loungewear might be coming to an end. And as women contemplate their return to formal wear, the return of the bra might be one of the most dreaded aspects of post-pandemic normalcy.

This struggle is not new. Women have long connected clothing with ideas of freedom, and there is a long and strong relation between women’s demand for sartorial comfort and feminist ideas. Indeed, for many women, both in the past and today, discarding bras is not just an act of personal choice but an act of feminist rebellion.

The association of bras, and similar undergarments like corsets, with discomfort, oppression, and distress, goes back to the 19th century. Then, members of the nascent feminist movement sought simultaneously to free themselves from oppressive legal and social systems—and from tight corsets and trailing skirts. “Something of the nature of the American costume … must take the place of our present style of dress, before the higher life—moral, intellectual, political, social or domestic—can ever begin for women,” feminist Elizabeth Stuart Phelps argued in 1873. Phelps called women to burn up their corsets, arguing that by freeing themselves from discomfort they could truly experience emancipation.

And in the second half of the 20th century, burning bras (or corsets)—whether as a real act or as a metaphor—would become one of the most popular images representing a new generation of feminists. Arguing that “the personal is political,” these feminists sought equality in all realms of life, from the home to the workplace, demanding control over their uteruses as well as their clothing choices. No bras were burned in the famous “No More Miss America Protest” of 1968—though some were thrown into a trash can along with lipstick and high heels. But the media was quick to associate bra burning with the radical feminists who protested oppressive beauty standards.

Yet before women’s fraught relationship with their undergarments became a symbol of radical feminists, women sought to liberate themselves through attire. There was, in fact, a similar push a century ago—in the shadow of another global pandemic and the realignment of world order after World War I. Emboldened by the right to vote and the social changes it brought, young women in the U.S. and elsewhere began to reevaluate their position in society as well as their appearance. Funny enough, in doing so they popularized the now-reviled bra.

Pre-World War I, in response to women’s growing involvement in sports and leisure, the fashion industry began marketing lighter, less restrictive corsets and more flexible girdles in an attempt to maintain their profits. Into this atmosphere, a relatively new undergarment emerged as a corset substitute: the brassiere. Although its origins are somewhat unknown, in the U.S., socialite Caresse Crosby patented her brassiere design in 1913.

A Maidenform bra advertisement. Courtesy of Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Women’s growing mobilization into the workforce and social reform during the 1910s only increased the demand for sartorial change. The U.S. entry to the war in 1917 and the influenza pandemic in 1918 also affected changes in fashion. By the 1920s, young women shortened their skirts and hair and discarded their corsets, often in favor of a bra, insisting on wearing comfortable clothing that suited their active lifestyles and to celebrate their sexuality without being reprimanded for it.

“’Let Go’ is the law of the new corset and the corsetless figure,” exclaimed Eleanor Chalmers, fashion editor of the women’s magazine Delineator, in 1922. These new fashions became identified with the image of the modern flapper. But they also became both a visual and symbolic statement of a new feminine presence in the public sphere. By forgoing their corsets, women were also forgoing the ideas that were attached to them: confinement, passivity, and oppression. The corsetless figure became the epitome of women’s social and political freedom and mobility, forging a new beauty ideal that was younger and slenderer.

Some of the first widely marketed bras of the 1920s had a flattening effect that fitted the straight, rectangular silhouette of the flapper ideal. But unlike boned corsets, these bras gave only minimal support, functioning more as an extra layer beneath clothes than a means to mold a woman’s torso.

Taken together, the new flapper dresses and the bras beneath them became a means for women to assert their power as consumers and their rights. “They demanded independence, and they got it … when they went shopping they asked for what they wanted, instead of what they saw,” explained fashion consultant Margery Wells in 1928 as she looked back at the shift in Women’s Wear Daily. Instead of being followers of fashion, women began to actively voice their preference.

The ideal silhouette evolved alongside undergarments—and social reform. Women’s Wear Daily.

By the end of the 1920s, with the coming of the Great Depression, the youthful, leisurely flapper ideal seemed out of touch. Instead, a more mature and curvier silhouette gained popularity. Bras became undergarments responsible for enhancing and uplifting the breasts and creating a more structured shape, similar to the function we chafe against today. Yet the emphasis on comfort, whether imagined or real, continued to be part of the selling message for women.

Over the next four decades, the bra progressed slowly from an item associated with women’s liberation and self-dependency to another confining and restrictive garment associated with women’s oppression. Indeed, it was the meanings that women gave their bras in the postwar, post-pandemic 1920s, more than the design itself, that offered women a sense of liberation. And it was the meanings, not the design, that feminists in the 1970s found so abhorrent.

In the 1920s, fashion was where women turned to convey their new reality. And today, amidst a pandemic, bras once again become a symbol of the limitations on women’s experience in the labor force. As women reevaluate their social position, the sound of rebellion is getting louder. Even if COVID will not bring a wave of bra abandonment, women today are already making fashion choices that will impact our future. And if history is a lesson, we are in for an interesting ride.

The post Bringing Down the Bra appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Summer wouldn’t be summer without textiles.

Blessed with an abundance of cloth, we tend to take textiles for granted, all the more so when we aren’t bundled up against the cold. But textiles are among the oldest, most essential, and most pervasive of human inventions. Their summertime incarnations demonstrate just how central they are to defining who we are. Freed by higher temperatures from most of their protective functions, in the summer textiles reveal their social side, becoming signs of who we are and what we value.

A combination of warm weather and cultural imperatives probably drove humans to invent cloth in the first place. During the last ice age, loose blankets and shawls fashioned from animal pelts no longer provided humans with enough protection from the wind and cold. People began crafting skins into layers of clothing fitted to the body. Complex clothing replaced simple wraps.

Then, as the ice age ended around 11,500 years ago, the climate changed. The weather got warm and humid. Garments made from animal skins became sweaty and uncomfortable, sometimes dangerously so. The obvious solution would have been to get rid of clothes altogether. But that’s not what happened, even in hot climates.

Like Adam and Eve with their fig leaves, people almost everywhere continued to cover at least their genitals with loincloths and girdles. Only in a few places where the climate had never grown cold enough to require complex clothing, such as mainland Australia, did everyday nakedness remain normal until contact with people from colder regions. “After wearing complex clothes for millennia—from at least 40,000 years ago in the middle latitudes of Eurasia—it would seem that casual exposure of the naked body was no longer socially acceptable,” writes Australian archaeologist Ian Gilligan in his 2018 book, Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory.

To meet cultural expectations and climate constraints, people started turning string into cloth.

The oldest archaeological evidence of fabric goes back about 11,000 years—to around the time the world turned warm. Cloth required farming and herding to dependably supply enough fiber to make large quantities of yarn. A typical beach towel contains roughly five miles of yarn. A Roman toga required 25 miles. We owe agricultural settlement at least as much to the social desire for clothes as to the biological need for food.

The earliest surviving archaeological textiles demonstrate that cloth was more than purely functional. Fragments found in the Nahal Hemar cave in Israel’s Judaean desert date back nearly 9,000 years. They show signs of red pigment, as well as decorative stitching and embellishment with tassels, shells, and beads. At the Huaca Prieta mound on the northern coast of Peru, archaeologists have uncovered 6,200-year-old cotton cloth with stripes alternating natural beige with indigo-dyed blue, plus white highlights from a local milkweed plant. Someone went to a lot of trouble to create blue dye and make patterned cloth. Summer’s checked picnic blankets and striped beach towels, designed to do more than merely protect you from the dirt and sand, reflect the same decorative impulse—and the same basic knowledge of how to weave simple patterns.

Of course, textile technologies have changed a lot over the millennia, most of all in the 250 years since the first spinning mills opened in northern England. By making thread abundant, spinning machines changed the world. They reduced the time it took to spin miles of yarn from weeks to minutes—and eventually to seconds. By the turn of the 19th century, the speedy power looms invented in the mid-1880s had joined spinning mills to make textiles abundant for the first time in history, affecting not only clothing but sails and tents, sacks and sheets. These technologies made it feasible for a beachgoer to spread out on a towel whose thick pile of loops consume extra thread—terrycloth dates only to the 1890s—or for a bride to walk down the aisle in a special dress she only wears once.

Even more important for textiles’ cultural role was the development of synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. Beginning with the purple that teenage chemistry student William Perkin accidentally concocted in 1856, dyes made in labs added every conceivable color to the textile palette. Hues that had once been difficult to achieve, such as intense blacks, purples, and greens, became commonplace.

Color not only gives cloth beauty. It imbues it with meaning. Just look at some of the world’s simplest textiles: banners and flags. The red, white, and blue of Independence Day in the U.S. and Bastille Day in France have symbolic meanings—valor, purity, and justice. Equally important, and the likely reason they are the most common colors of older national banners, is that blue and red are also easy to achieve with plant-based dyes: indigo for blue, and madder for red.

It wasn’t until the spread of synthetic dyes that the green and violet in the rainbow flag, and the intense blacks and greens of Juneteenth banners, became widely available.

Before then, greens were usually created by first dyeing with yellow and then with blue. The yellows tended to fade, which is why the medieval tapestries you see in museums often have blue grass. The best blacks, like the ones recorded in Dutch portraits, also required multiple layers of color, often starting with an indigo base. Ordinary people used brownish plant dyes, adding iron salts to deepen the color, to dye fabrics black. But none of these were as true as the blacks adopted as Pan-African symbols in the mid-20th century. Traditional African artisans were (and still are) among the world’s great masters of indigo, but the brilliant colors of African pride are products of modern chemistry.

Every new textile technology opens up new means of cultural expression, as people find ways to make fabrics their own and, through their textiles, to say something about who they are, where they belong, and what they love. In both substance and significance, cloth is remarkably fluid. Fabrics fold and bend and flap in the breeze, switch from two dimensions to three, conform to the contours of bodies and follow the terrain. In the sunny days of summer, especially, they become expressive declarations of identity and joy.

The post How Textiles Became the Fabric of Summer appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Obama had planned to wear a designer outfit that night, but her team advised her to wear J. Crew instead, because Leno was certain to ask what she was wearing. Obama took the suggestion, and sure enough, when Leno greeted her, he looked at her outfit and said, “I’m guessing about 60 grand?”

“Actually,” she was able to respond, “this is a J. Crew ensemble.”

In that moment, recalled New York Times fashion director and chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, Obama had won the room, and recognized “how effective fashion could be as a form of outreach.”

“It really did set the tone for the next eight years,” continued Friedman, who shared the anecdote during the final event in the When Women Vote: A Zócalo/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County series, “Does Power Dressing Have the Power to Change Politics?”

The relationship between politics and fashion is a well-documented one, said Friedman, who moderated the panel. It’s also one, she continued, “that is becoming more important as social media takes over the world, and we increasingly communicate via image, which is the closest thing we have to a universal language.” Nevertheless, she said, kicking off the discussion, “A question I get all the time—often from readers who are not necessarily happy that I’m writing about fashion and politics—is: Why, why are you doing this?”

“I get those same complaints,” said fashion historian and author Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell. “Why are you making fashion political? Well, fashion has always been political. We can go back to the French revolution, and much further back, and look at examples of fashion making political statements,” she said. “Fashion is a tool of communication—whether we realize it or want it to be communicating for us or not. It is fun and it is frivolous, it is escapist, but it can also be very serious and very political.”

Abrima Erwiah, co-founder and president of Studio One Eight Nine, which promotes and curates African and African-inspired content and clothing, pointed out that if people don’t see a connection between power and fashion, then they aren’t looking at the way clothes are sourced, sewn, and sold. “I think about all the people that are impacted within the supply chain from the clothes we wear,” she said. The fashion industry intersects issues around climate change, migration, poverty, women’s right to work, and more.

The final panelist of the discussion, fashion designer Bibhu Mohapatra, said for him “getting into fashion was about being creative and saying something different with my craft.” Thinking about fashion and power, he wondered, “Why do we only talk about fashion or clothing to establish power or social standing?” It can signal so much more, he said.

Often, Friedman pointed out, when people talk about fashion, they focus on women and how their clothes can be used to diminish them. Is that a misconception? She cited Hillary Clinton, who after much resistance came to embrace fashion as a tool. “Suddenly, instead of being a weapon used against her,” said Friedman, it made her more accessible in a way she hadn’t been before. “In some ways,” she said, “I think, women have an advantage if they are willing to engage with it.”

Chrisman-Campbell agreed; women have a lot more options, however, she said, “they also have a lot more opportunities to get it wrong, unfortunately. They can’t retreat to the sober anonymity of a three-piece suit.”

“For a man to make a statement with his clothes he has to do something odd,” Chrisman-Campbell continued, whether that’s congressman Jim Jordan almost never wearing a suit jacket or Andrew Yang’s “Math” lapel pin.

But men’s diminished role when it comes to fashion and politics is not a global phenomenon. In Africa, Friedman pointed out, there’s more of a tradition of male politicians embracing the politics of fashion.

Erwiah agreed, citing President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana’s choices. “He goes out of his way to wear local designers or to wear traditional prints,” said Erwiah, because he understands how what he is seen wearing can impact the people and companies who create, manufacture, and sell the garments.

After talking about the Trump Administration and former First Lady Melania Trump, and the implications of her breaking the long-standing tradition of wearing U.S. designers, the conversation moved to the current administration. Speaking about Vice President Kamala Harris, Friedman said, “You can see how deliberately she chooses her moments,” whether it was the white trouser suit she wore for her victory speech—”it seemed truly a nod to both Mrs. Clinton, the suffragists, what has become an expected understanding of that style”—or her attire for the inauguration, designed by Christopher John Rogers and Sergio Hudson, two young Black Americans, in unmistakable purple, a color often symbolizing the unity of the two parties.

But her regular uniform, said Friedman, is often a dark pantsuit where “the clothes disappear and the focus becomes what her words are.” She posed the question to the panelists: Is that a pattern we’ll keep seeing?

“She’s being judged so harshly, in so many ways,” said Erwiah, “I’m assuming she wants to focus on the work and not have this be what people are looking at her for. But I believe as she moves into her role, we’ll see changes.”

“I think we will see something shift with our VP’s outfits,” agreed Mohaparta. “I’ve seen her wearing saris to celebrate Diwali, and I think she has it in her, and it will come out.”

The conversation moved to Harris’s first Vogue cover, from February 2021, which was criticized for leading with a more dressed-down photograph of Harris in a campaign trail outfit of a jacket, a white t-shirt, pearls, slacks and Converse Chuck Taylors—instead of the more formal shot taken of her in a power suit by the same photographer (Tyler Mitchell, who became the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover in 2018) that her team initially thought would run.

Speaking to the backlash, Erwiah said, “One of the reasons people wanted to see her more done is because of the magnitude of that moment.”

“We don’t see Black women on the cover, we don’t see South Asian women on the cover,” Erwiah continued. “I know there’s been good reasons as to why it was a great cover but some of the feelings was like, we could have done that. Why couldn’t it be more?”

Questions poured in from audience members in the YouTube chatroom. One person wanted to know whether politicians will be able to dress more freely in the future.

“I hope so,” said Chrisman-Campbell, but she said it took until the 1990s for women to be allowed to wear pants in the Senate, and until 2017 for sleeveless dresses to be allowed in House of Representatives. “We are all very impatient for more change. But change has been a long time coming, and it’s only been in relatively recent times that we’ve seen this kind of change.”

Another audience member referred to Biden inaugural day poet Amanda Gorman, who was featured on the cover of TIME in a yellow Greta Constantine gown.

“I think she’s trying to tap into this moment, and I think she’s the future generation of this moment, and she has the power through her words to heighten this, and it’s interwoven into her clothes,” Erwiah said. “I loved the bright colors she’s wearing. I think it says something about our ability to shine through.”

A final questioner wanted to know if there was an outfit that could push policy change: “What can lawmakers wear to promote the minimum wage for all?”

“Making a conscious effort to wear brands where you can trace their supply chain and being conscious about which brands you choose,” said Erwiah. “As we said at the beginning,” she said, “people underestimate power of fashion and don’t give it enough credit considering its size and scale.”

It would be an incredible opportunity, Friedman agreed, if someone asked President Biden or Dr. Biden or Vice President Harris what they were wearing—and they responded with a breakdown of who made the dress and in what factory and what workers were paid to make it. “They could take this question, which is treated to be frivolous or demean them, and make a teachable moment.”

The post From Cleopatra to Clinton, Politics Is Never Out of Style appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It was not a city I thought I’d first move to in my 40s, after 13 years in New York City and a peripatetic decade in academia. Washington is a good town for nerds but tough on freaks, and I have thought of myself as a freak since high school, which wasn’t cured by coming out as a lesbian many years ago. Washington has no shortage of queers, with or without Republicans in charge. But its tidiness extends to its queer life. I never quite got past the floundering stage of when you move to a brand-new town.

One place where I did find myself in Washington, if only for less than an hour at a time, was at Meeps, a vintage store near the bottom of a sharp slope dropping off from the Adams Morgan neighborhood, across the street from a community center and a few doors up from a gay diner. I lived on the same street, a little over half a mile away, and if two things held true—i.e., if I was feeling a little down but was also recently blessed with a payday—I took myself down the hill to go shopping.

Meeps meant a lot to me because I could indulge my passion for clothes, and for clothing history, without catching any cross glances for also being a butch lesbian who is sometimes more or less indistinguishable from a man. This store and the people who work there made me love the way I look.

I wear men’s shirts, ties, vests, sweaters, and jackets. Meeps, which in March closed shop for the time being due to the pandemic, has a sublime collection of men’s vintage, which is hard to find, and carried enough in small sizes to keep me coming back. The finds were often incredible. About two years ago the owner, Cathy Chen, must have come into a serious cache of ’70s pastel-colored ruffle tuxedo shirts. Since every self-respecting butch dandy needs a ruffle tux, I instantly got one in mint green. But more and more colors kept appearing in the months afterward: sherbet orange, sky blue, yellow, pink.

At one point I even saw a tailcoat. I tried it on and miraculously I could have been Astaire, it fit so well. But one of the staff actually talked me out of pulling out my wallet: “It’s beautiful, it looks great on you, but where are you going to wear it?” He was right. I saved my $100 and later bought a sharp 1960s iridescent blue damask smoking jacket whose label said it was hand-tailored by one Charley Chang at the Hong Kong Hilton. I’ve worn it in public exactly once, but it makes me feel like five-part harmony.

The space is tiny and well kept, but the fitting rooms are spaces enclosed by curtains pinned together with binder clips and clothespins. Like a lot of butches, I find fitting rooms difficult. For many years I avoided them altogether, because of the weird combination of gender segregation, body ambivalence, and surveillance they represent. I’ve thankfully gotten past that unease, but still I think it’s all to the credit of the Meeps staff that I always felt like I had a right to see how clothes—elegant, fabulous clothes—looked on my body. If a beautiful garment turned out to fit perfectly, I would parade around the store, one glance over the shoulder into the mirror in the corner, another in the mirror hanging above the bored-boyfriend settee. The staff would enumerate the ways the garment flattered, if in fact it did. If it was borderline, they would never push me to buy it. It was certainly a transactional relationship, but I’m sure they were sincere.

I think most people with experience as a woman know that this is extremely rare. I do have the advantage of having a slender frame, which is easier to fit and which, of course, is more accepted in a culture that shames people with bodies less normative than mine. But preferring to dress against gender expectations is deeply unsettling to many people, including, possibly, one’s own self. I’ve been harassed and assaulted on the street for looking like a man. So finding a public space that is not explicitly queer but is still explicitly affirming gives a warm feeling.

Toward the beginning of the novel Stone Butch Blues, the gender warrior Leslie Feinberg’s main character, 11 years old, finds her father’s starched-stiff shirts and ties and his two suits, one blue and one gray, which he’s told her is all a man needs. She begins to dress her butch body: “I put on the suit coat and looked in the mirror. A sound came from my throat, sort of a gasp. I liked the little girl looking back at me.” She catches a glimpse of how good it feels to express who she is freely, without judgment—but only briefly, as she’s made to feel the weight of her transgression in the coming scenes. Clothes sometimes hide who we are in our bodies. Other times, they expose it, sometimes painfully. Sometimes they protect it. And rarely, all too rarely it seems, they liberate it.

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These once-ubiquitous, one-size-fits-all socks are a product of Americans’ simultaneous love of sports, technological innovation, and nostalgic fashion statements.

The tube sock’s trajectory is knitted into the growth of organized sports in America, particularly basketball and soccer, both of which were popularized around the turn of the century. Basketball was a new and uniquely American diversion, played in YMCAs and school gymnasiums, while soccer was a centuries-old tradition imported by European immigrants. They had a crucial commonality, however: unlike baseball and football, they both required players to wear shorts.

With so many bare, hairy legs suddenly on display, knee-high socks—called “high-risers”—became essential accessories. As Esquire put in in 1955, shorts “look like the devil unless you wear high-rise socks with them. High-risers are usually eighteen inches, but the rule to follow is, get them up to your kneecaps. You can turn over a cuff or not—it doesn’t matter so long as they don’t end halfway down your calf.”

Photos of early basketball stars—like Chuck Taylor, who lent his name to the canvas Converse All Star high-top—show them in knee-high stockings, often with stripes placed midway (or all the way) down the leg. The increased demand for tall socks suitable for these pastimes stretched the ingenuity of the nation’s hosiery industry.

The tube sock was invented by the Nelson Knitting Company of Rockford, Illinois, just over 50 years ago, in 1967—the same year that America’s first professional soccer leagues were established. Founded in 1880 by John Nelson, the inventor of a seamless sock knitting machine, the company widely advertised its “Celebrated Rockford Seamless Hosiery.” The tube sock, though seamed, was no less monumental a technological marvel.

A true tube sock is shaped like a tube rather than, say, a human foot—a configuration so novel that the sock took its name from it. It has no heel, and, instead of a reciprocated (reinforced) toe, the end is closed with a simple seam. Nelson Knitting developed a machine expressly for that purpose, which could do the job in five or six seconds.

Eliminating the shaped heel and toe made the manufacturing process faster—about 30 percent faster than traditional shaped socks—and easier to mechanize. In addition, the tubular shape, combined with the development of new stretch yarns, allowed the sock to be made in a single size, meaning it could be produced in larger, more economical batches. These shapeless socks could be dyed, dried, inspected, and packaged much more simply and efficiently than heeled socks, all of which was reflected in their low cost.

Unfortunately, Nelson Knitting failed to patent its revolutionary design, meaning that it was immediately knocked off. This oversight may explain the style’s omnipresence in American athletic and popular culture in the late 1960s and ‘70s. Knee-high tube socks were made famous by shorts-wearing sports heroes like Björn Borg, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Pelé, and Julius “Dr. J.” Erving. Farrah Fawcett donned tube socks to go undercover as a roller derby player in an episode of Charlie’s Angels; so did Raquel Welch in the 1972 roller derby movie Kansas City Bomber.

Leaving aside its advanced physical properties, the tube sock had (and retains) a powerful emotional pull. This most democratic of accessories shapes itself to the wearer’s foot, making it both universal and intimately personal. Though tube socks have typically been produced in a single color—usually white—the ribbed elastic bands at the tops can be woven with colored stripes, indicating personal taste or group loyalty, such as team membership. Nelson Knitting supplied tube socks to a number of professional sports teams, including the knee-high socks ringed with team colors worn by the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins in the 1973 Super Bowl.

Tube socks became associated not just with American sports, but with American youth, and the country’s much-mythologized landscape of suburban lawns and urban blacktop. They were ideal for growing kids because they continued to fit as children grew. And, as Good Housekeeping magazine pointed out in 1976, “any 2-year-old can put them on without hunting for a heel.” Because there were no fixed stress points, they did not develop holes as quickly as traditional socks.

The tube sock hiked up the fortunes of the American hosiery industry. A 1984 U.S. Department of Labor report attributed strong growth in the sector over the previous two decades to “advances in technology, particularly in regard to pantyhose and tube-type socks” which “reduced unit labor requirements.”

That same year, however, a new government trade deal lifted the sock tariff, opening the market to cheap imports from Honduras, Pakistan, and China. Although sock manufacturing was largely mechanized, some steps required human workers—including the seaming of tube sock toes. Lower labor costs overseas made it impossible for American mills to compete, and several shut down. Nelson Knitting filed for bankruptcy in 1985. Fort Payne, Alabama, was once the sock-making capital of the world; today, that honor belongs to Datang, China.

The Department of Labor report defined tube socks as “hosiery for casual and athletic wear.” Even today, the Fairchild Encyclopedia of Menswear states that they “are worn for athletic activity.” But the tube sock gradually transitioned from sports equipment to fashion item. It became available in a variety of lengths and colors as it was adapted for a wider range of leisure activities.

The tube sock’s transition from sportswear to streetwear was not entirely seamless. In 1996, Vogue called the combination of black shoes and white tube socks “the unofficial male footwear of Catholic grade schools, high schools, and more senior proms than you’d care to imagine.” The tube sock was the trademark hosiery of the TV nerd Steve Urkel, and Anthony Michael Hall in any given John Hughes movie—the telltale sign of a man who was not as cool as he thought or hoped he was. It was used as a visual joke—often a dirty one—in Risky Business, That ‘70s Show, and American Pie.

Over the years, tube socks in some contexts became visual shorthand for in-your-face masculinity, often deployed ironically. In 1983, the rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed a show at an L.A. strip club. For their encore, they took the stage wearing tube socks dangling from their genitals—and nothing else. Though the club’s manager was apoplectic, the “Sock Stunt” has since become one of the band’s signature concert routines—one that would be impossible, incidentally, with a shaped sock.

But sock-time does not stand still. The tube sock was not actually very comfortable to wear—the instep tended to bunch at the ankle, and the slack fit could cause blisters. Just as the humble Chuck Taylor has today been replaced by precisely engineered sneakers, tube socks have been eclipsed by similar-looking athletic socks with shaped heels. But the generic term “tube sock” continues to be used today to describe athletic socks, with or without a heel.

Modern “athletic socks” are more likely to be moisture-wicking and odor-absorbing, with graduated compression and built-in arch support. There are different socks for different sports; the idea of a runner, a shortstop, or a hiker wearing the same socks as a basketball player is anathema. Instead of one size fits all, it’s every man for himself—or every woman for herself, as most of these socks come in versions custom-designed for the female physique.

But the unassuming tube sock endures as a fashion statement for both sexes. Resurrected as street style by Harajuku girls in turn-of-the-millennium Japan, knee-high tube socks emblazoned with colorful athletic stripes turned up (in footless form) in Prada’s Fall 2004 collection. By 2016, the collision of athleisure, the “normcore” trend, and the ‘70s revival prompted Vogue to announce: “Tube Socks Are Back!”

Since then, they’ve been spotted on influencers like Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Kristen Stewart, and Tyler, the Creator; name-checked in raps by Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar; and reinterpreted for the runway by Stella McCartney, Dries van Noten, and Valentino. It’s no stretch to imagine that the tube sock—invented, made, and worn in America—will be around for another 50 years.

The post The One-Size-Fits-All Sock That’s a Democratic Fashion Statement appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The Navajo Nation sued the company for copyright infringement of its name and, after a five-year court battle, the two sides settled. At a 2012 Victoria’s Secret fashion show in New York, model Karlie Kloss wore an extravagant feathered headdress and turquoise jewelry, inciting a backlash that led the company to issue an apology. Two years later, Ralph Lauren used historic photographs of Native Americans confined on reservations to tout his line of rugged, Western-style clothing. He removed those images and expressed his regret after Indian groups and others complained about his insensitivity.

The public debate led by Native American advocates, scholars, and other commentators focused less on the issues of copyright and profits and more on a lack of historical awareness. Feathers, turquoise, and patterned prints might represent superficial and fleeting aesthetic choices, but they also reflect indigenous traditions that have endured centuries under assault. Clothing style may seem innocuous, but it often expresses profound cultural meaning. In the battlegrounds of conquest, dress can become an important weapon when one group usurps the symbols of another. The past that Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret, and Ralph Lauren failed to appreciate was America’s long and troubled history of cultural appropriation in the service of empire.

That history might have begun with buckskin. Perhaps Americans do not equate putting the sueded and fringed jackets on rugged men with draping feathered headdresses on lingerie models or printing Navajo patterns on panties. But the familiarity of buckskin as an emblem of the West—of ’60s counter-culture, and of American manhood—has obscured its native origins.

Indigenous groups across the continent wore garments of treated hide from a variety of species. The abundance of deer, however, led to widespread use of their skins. Native designers adapted it for their specific needs. The characteristic fringe, for example, served as an efficient means to shed water. Narrow strips drew moisture away from the body and allowed it to drip from the ends. By the 17th century, European traders and backcountry settlers recognized its value, and began bartering for buckskin jackets, trousers, and moccasins. During the American Revolution, colonial rebels adopted the style for its utilitarian and symbolic value. According to historian Philip Deloria, “playing Indian” permitted colonial fighters to assert their Americanness by differentiating themselves from Great Britain.

The appropriation continued after the United States established its independence. As the country moved toward a concerted policy of Indian removal, buckskin clothing—with its projection of rugged individualism and ostentatious fringe—became a highly visible tool in the cultural project of territorial expansion. By adorning themselves in the indigenous wear, Anglo-American men symbolically wrested the Native American masculinity that they admired, practicing what ethnographer Renato Rosaldo terms “imperial nostalgia”—the act by which agents of empire replaced guilt and shame with mourning and celebration of the very peoples they had destroyed.

Alfred Jacob Miller, Trappers (1858-1860). Image courtesy of Walters Art Museum/Wikimedia Commons.

As such, during the 1820s through the 1840s, as the United States extended its economic influence into the interior of the continent, removed Eastern Indian groups to lands beyond the Mississippi River, and invaded Mexico, buckskin chic achieved iconic status, ostensibly demonstrating the Western male’s attainment of an imagined Indian-ness. In literature and art, white Americans invented aspects of indigenous cultures—emotional liberation, privileged violence—that they desired to emulate.

In an 1837 account of buckskin-clad Rocky Mountain trappers, Washington Irving noted that it became a “matter of vanity and ambition with them to discard every thing that may bear the stamp of civilized life, and to adopt the manners . . . of the Indian.” When Irving referred to the mountain man’s aversion to “civilized life,” he identified a counter-culture symbolism encoded in buckskin. Many Anglo-American men of this period fled to the West to escape the avarice and heartlessness that market competition and pursuit of profit had created in the East. By dispossessing the Native male of his self-dominion, these interlopers claimed to have embodied an original, essential manliness that contrasted with the materialist dandy of the city.

Authors like Irving, James Hall, and Timothy Flint, and artists like George Catlin, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Charles Deas communicated these ideas to an eager audience. When James Fenimore Cooper first introduced his frontier hero in The Pioneers (1823), he adorned him in “[a] kind of coat, of dressed deer-skin” as well as breeches, from which the character acquired the moniker Leatherstocking. In the popular A Tour on the Prairies (1835), Irving wrote of the rangers Jesse Bean and John Ryan “equipped in character; in leathern hunting shirt and leggins [sic].” Such was the fashion that in an 1833 biography of George Washington, author Mason Weems described the young Virginian as “Buckskin” to set him apart from the British general Edward Braddock.

Buckskin became a fixture of the wardrobes of fur trappers, overland merchants, and volunteer soldiers of the 19th century who sought connection to an ideal of the exceptional American male. For many, careers in the contested regions of the West had promised transformation from inconsequential greenhorns into conspicuous veterans—and grimy, worn, fringed garments attested to the perils and hardships that had forged their vital manliness.

Sometimes newcomers presumed too much, and put on the outfit before they had earned it. In 1839, Francis Lubbock, future governor of the Lone Star State, volunteered for the campaign to remove Cherokees and allied groups beyond the borders of the Republic of Texas. In his enthusiasm, he commissioned a tailor to provide him with “a pair of fine buckskin pants such as worn by frontiersmen.” Unfortunately, while he slept in camp, rain soaked his prized skins, and when he awoke and sought the warmth of the fire, his pants quickly and uncomfortably shrank. “They got tighter and tighter all the time until . . . ,” he recalled, “I had in a manner to cut them off my limbs.”

With the nation’s attention drawn away from the West and toward the controversies between the North and South, the vogue of tanned hides and fringe seemed to have waned by the Civil War. During the decades after, however, it enjoyed a resurgence. During Reconstruction, emasculated Southerners and battered Northerners sought common ground by resurrecting Western manhood, and buckskin served as a ready symbol. During his campaigns against indigenous groups, Lt. Col. George A. Custer wore jackets of that type, one of which is currently on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Buckskin coat, worn by George Armstrong Custer, around 1870. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of American History.

The showman William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody wore the style. So did “Kit” Carson and “Davy” Crockett in the dime novels of the time. Theodore Roosevelt was so enamored with the image and its message of masculine superiority that he famously posed in buckskin for a series of photographs to accompany a book about his experiences out West. By donning the fashion of the Native American, these white men outwardly exhibited their extravagant manliness and celebrated their roles as agents of empire.

Images of buckskin-clad Westerners continued to reassure American audiences during the 20th century. Between 1930 and 1960, for example, John Wayne wore the style in at least eight film performances, including his Custer-esque portrayal of Capt. Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and his turn as Davy Crockett in The Alamo (1960). Along with Fess Parker’s popular Crockett (and whose movie prop coonskin cap made of raccoon is also in the collections of the museum), these iterations of the honest, just, vital, and abjectly American frontiersmen reinforced the perception of the United States as the defender of freedom and democracy during the Cold War—in contrast to its missions of self-serving economic expansion and sponsorship of right-wing dictatorships.

By the late 1960s, counter-culture groups like the hippies emerged to oppose the American mantra of progress, consumption, and power—and they adorned themselves with buckskin anew, this time as a rejection of U.S. materialism and empire. They imagined that the garment endowed them with Indian simplicity and respect for nature. As historian Sherry L. Smith has shown, some hippies actively participated in the Red Power Movement. Others supported ecological causes, but many, if not most, were faddists who followed the superficial chic of the moment without understanding the cultural significance of their adoption of Native American imagery.

The history of the misappropriation of buckskin as an emblem of Anglo-American exceptionalism helps explain the criticism of 21st-century fashion designers’ marketing of indigenous symbols. Fashion houses may believe that the incorporation of feathered headdresses or Navajo geometrics celebrates Indian-ness, but they are mining an unfortunate past in their attempts to achieve a fresh aesthetic for profit. Much like generations of men in the United States who donned buckskin, they disregard the centuries-old project of usurping Native American emblems as a tool for conquest and subjugation.

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Despite this cool factor, Islamic women’s headscarves and clothing retain strong associations with piety and politics, symbolism that is wielded both by the woman in the clothes and the people around her. In countries where Muslims are minorities, as in the United States, merely wearing hijab is seen as a political act, albeit one that can be interpreted in many ways. Shepard Fairey created an image of a woman wearing a flag hijab as a sign of tolerance and inclusivity, while others claim that the scarf is a sign of Muslim women’s repression.

In Muslim-majority countries, however, the symbolism—and the way that women and the state both use hijab to express ideas—is deeper and more interesting. Rather than arguing about whether or not Muslim women should dress modestly, I study how Muslim women dress: what they are wearing and why, and how they use fashion to exert political influence.

Muslim-majority countries have a history of regulating women’s clothing through official dress codes, whether banning headscarves or requiring them. In Iran, for instance, Muslim women’s dress was a political matter long before it became the symbol of revolution in 1979. The shah banned the full-body covering called chador in 1936 as part of his attempt to undermine the authority of the Shia clerics and westernize Iranian women.

Now, of course, Islamic clothing is required for women in Iran by law. Drafted under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s leadership as part of his vision for a public space governed by the principles of Islamic morality, these laws include harsh punishments for inadequate hijab—jail time, fines, even 74 lashes with a whip. Harassment and arrests for violations became commonplace after the revolution.

Despite conditions of discrimination—because requiring a headscarf and modest clothing is discriminatory—pious fashion comes in a remarkable range of styles in Tehran. One option is to wear the floor-length chador draped over the hair and shoulders. The alternative to chador is a coat-like manteaux with some sort of head covering. There are two popular head coverings to pair with a manteaux. One is a sort of balaclava, called a maghneh. But the fashionable women of Tehran wear a rusari—a scarf covering the head and knotted under the chin or wrapped around the neck, personalized by fabric, color, pattern, and style of drape.

In this urban casual look, the hardware on the Dr. Martens boots echoes the studs on the Valentino crossbody bag. The Topshop floral leggings are the stand-out item, made even cooler by being paired with utilitarian items like a black scarf and a military jacket. The graffiti in the background is of a dish-soap bottle. Photo courtesy of Anita Sepehry/the Tehran Times fashion blog.

Though these items represent the building blocks of modest garb, they do not define its expression. Women define what pious fashion looks like when they get dressed every morning—whether they wear structured separates accessorized with designer sunglasses, flowy pastel chiffons embellished with rhinestones, or ripped jeans tucked into combat boots. On the streets of Tehran, in its cafés and places of business, women find ways to use their clothing to make claims about what counts not only as fashion, but also as piety.

Within a regime that has attempted for decades to promote dress codes as a way to craft particular types of Muslim citizens, and in which direct political resistance is dangerous, clothing has become a form of political engagement that is potentially powerful because it can sometimes slide under the radar as a matter of culture versus statecraft.

What sort of power can modest clothing choices have? For one, dress becomes a way to access governmental office. Women hold numerous advisory roles in government. Chador is a requirement of appointment to these positions. But this limitation also creates an opportunity. Women can take advantage of the symbolic meaning of the chador to mark themselves as supporters of the theocracy, independent of their actual political views.

Then there is a more recent popular style integrating traditional motifs and embroidery that is Kurdish, Turkoman, or Indian. Called lebase mahali, which means “local clothing” in Persian, it does not push the boundaries of modesty. But it does something else: It highlights Persian and Asian aesthetics over Islamic and Arabic ones. This Persian ethnic chic undermines current Islamic authority, sometimes unintentionally, simply because it draws on sources of authority that predate the Islamization of Iran.

This power to critique through sartorial choice comes with substantial risk. Since clothing is so strongly linked to character, a bad outfit can be seen as a reflection of poor character. In Iran, there is even a term for this: bad hijab. Bad hijab can be both an ethical failure (too sexy) and an aesthetic failure (not tasteful). It’s a concern of the authorities because bad hijab disrupts the public Islamic space that Iranian theocracy tries to create.

The infamous morality police have often targeted women for what they deem bad hijab, but they are not the only ones. In fact the first time I noticed it was while shopping with my Iranian friend Homa. “Liz, this is a good example of bad hijab for you,” she said when a young woman walked by. Homa was quite happy to elaborate: “Her ankles are showing, her pants are rolled up, they are made of denim and tight. Her manteaux is short, slit up the side, tight, made of thin material, and exposes the back of her neck and her throat. And her rusari, look at her rusari. It is folded in half so that her hair sticks out in front and back and tied so loosely that we can see all her jewelry. Plus, her makeup is caked on.”

This outfit is a glam version of edgy hijab. The Alexander McQueen-style skull-patterned scarf, fur vest, and Givenchy Rottweiler print clutch give the woman a rock vibe. Photo courtesy of Donya Joshani/the Tehran Times fashion blog.

Homa’s determination of bad hijab was based on a number of perceived violations. The first problem was that the woman’s outfit exposed parts of her body legally required to be covered. Homa also disapproved of the woman’s jeans—reflecting a widely held opinion in Iran that denim is improper for women to wear for both aesthetic reasons (as a fabric that is too casual) and political reasons (as a Western fabric that might infect the subject with Western ideas).

Homa spent considerable time describing for me why this woman’s rusari was inadequate. In this case, the violation depended in part on the scarf’s gauzy material, which was translucent. The way the scarf was worn was also a problem: By folding the rusari in half lengthwise, the woman only covered half as much hair as normal. Homa had also judged the woman’s heavy hand with makeup a hijab “failure” because it made her appear more alluring to the opposite sex.

Why so catty? Of course women, even pious ones, can be hard on one other, but there is more to learn from Homa’s reaction. Accusation of bad hijab is an expression of her own concern over sartorial practice. Pious fashion creates aesthetic and moral anxiety. Am I doing it right? Do I look modest? Professional? Stylish? Feminine? Women try to resolve this anxiety by identifying who is doing it wrong. Improper pious fashion is what allows proper pious fashion to redefine itself away from stigma to style: If this mystery woman was wearing bad hijab then surely Homa was a sartorial success.

Homa’s accusation of bad hijab might have helped legitimate her own clothing choices, but it came at a cost. Public shaming of Muslim women’s dress relies on a specific ideology of how women should appear in public, and women themselves are not exempt from promoting this aspect of patriarchy. By policing other women, they accommodate existing ideology to improve their own status.

At the same time, bad hijab is politically potent because it can shift the boundaries of successful pious fashion, sometimes expanding those boundaries, sometimes narrowing them. Homa might have been outraged by what this mystery woman was wearing, but she was violating some of the very same norms: Her own ankles were showing, her hair peeked out from her scarf, she had on foundation, eyeliner, and mascara.

And when everyone is showing her ankles and painting her toes, it sends a very personal signal about how the state’s power to define women’s morality is declining. What are my friends wearing? What are designers producing? What are bloggers posting? These are the sorts of things that influence what Iranian women wear, not only the threat of police surveillance and arrest. Besides, there are not enough police in Tehran on a hot summer day to arrest every young woman wearing capris.

In a surprise public statement last December, Brigadier General Hossein Rahimi, head of Greater Tehran police, admitted as much. He announced that women who are found to be wearing bad hijab will no longer be arrested, but instead sent to morality classes. It is too soon to say if this is a clear sign of a shift in Iranian politics. But if this does signal a positive change, credit goes to women’s sartorial savvy, not the police. And to the public who would undoubtedly react if everyone wearing nail polish was administered the 74 lashes permitted in the penal code.

In recent weeks a few Iranian women have protested the forced dress code directly. They stand on top of utility boxes, take off their headscarves, and wave them on sticks. These protests have resulted in dozens of arrests, proving that in the current political climate bad hijab might be tolerated, but no hijab is going too far. Images of these protests on Twitter include women in full chador waving headscarves in solidarity. This is a good reminder that it is not the wearing of hijab that Iranian women oppose, but rather the government’s attempt to police their bodies. The protesters and the Iranian authorities agree on at least one thing: what women wear matters.

The post How Iranian Women Turn “Pious Fashion” Into Under-the-Radar Dissent appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It seems surprising now, but once the use of cloth feed bags for clothing and household items was a part of mainstream rural American culture—related to a long practice of utilizing all resources that is deeply imbued in the American psyche. Resourceful housewives recycled feed bags from flour, corn, sugar, salt, and even chicken feed into children’s’ clothes, aprons, and dresses.

At the outset, feed bag clothing was strictly utilitarian; in the Great Depression, it became a symbol of thrift and economical household management, and during the war years in the 1940s its use was promoted as part of the campaign for Allied victory. The rise and fall of the feed sack dress tells a story about a culture that once deeply valued both thrift and ingenuity. It is also a story of how commercial interests—cloth makers, feed sellers, bakers, pattern makers, and even newspapers—were keenly aware of the large, if indirect, market for such thrifty clothes.

Starting in the mid-1800s, cloth bags became a recognized resource for clothing. Foodstuffs were packaged in a range of five- to 100-pound sacks; the latter measured 36 by 42 inches. Originally made of burlap or osnaburg—a coarse off-white plain fabric that softens with subsequent washings—they were ideal for men’s, women’s, and children’s undergarments and nightwear as well as utilitarian household accessories.

Feedsack Dress made by Mrs. Dorothy Overall of Caldwell, Kansas, in 1959. Photo courtesy of The National Museum of American History.

In the early 1930s, with the onset of the Great Depression, bag manufacturers added colors and prints, along with the traditional white bag that could be dyed—to attract more farm wives. Their husbands were instructed to buy feed bags in specific colors and prints in order to get sufficient yardage for garments.

Patterns for garments specifically made from feed bags were promoted in advertising pages of newspapers. Companies such as Famous Features in New York City produced numerous patterns with different brand names such as Barbara Bell, Sue Barnett, and others from circa 1923 to 1997. The collaboration was designed to attract the farm housewife to specific products.

In partnership with National Cotton Council, bag manufacturers produced national publications such as “Bag of Tricks for Home Sewing” and even promotional flyers to insert in loaves of bread. Patterns shown in the publications specified the number and size of bags needed to make each garment. These designs were not subject to the latest fashion trends but featured timeless fashions that gave them a surprisingly long lifespan. For example, the pattern for the pajamas that the church ladies presented to President Coolidge was still in circulation in 1945.

I learned details about the feed bag clothing innovation from publications and patterns in the Commercial Pattern Archive at the University of Rhode Island. Daniel Flint, owner of Famous Features, explained in an interview that their styles were basic and intended to last for several years. Not all patterns are tagged specifically for the use of feed bags but many can be used that way.

Enterprising women formed clubs to collect and exchange bags; purchasers sought specific matching colors and a textile design to meet the yardage needs. Bakers realized they could sell their flour bags, so they bought specific dress goods bags and shipped them to millers to be filled with flour. After emptying the bags, they made up home sewing kits with four matching cotton bags, eight buttons, thread, and a pattern book.

One of the most popular garments that could be made from bags was an apron; some designs were simple, while others were fancier. Other popular garments included mother/daughter fashions, infant’s and children’s wear, toys, draperies, slip covers, closet organizers, maternity, and undergarments.

The child’s dress prominently and unusually displays the product logo. Photo courtesy of the Commercial Pattern Archive.

Producers identified their product with company logos on each bag. Ideally these needed to be removed, which usually required soaking the bag overnight in cold water then washing in warm soapy water and possibly boiling for 10 minutes to restore color. Removal of the logos was considered essential to avoid announcing the source of the fabric and any related stigma of poverty and “home-sewn.” On rare occasions, the logo was a feature of the design such as that worn by the little girl (pictured right).

A major contributor to the endurance of clothing from bags during World War II was textile restrictions imposed in support of military needs. The restrictions did not impact feed bag manufacturers because the bags were designated in the “industrial” category. Therefore, the high quality textiles used for feed bags were in abundance for the home sewer. Consequently, feed bag clothing became even more popular during World War II.

According to “Bag of Tricks for Home Sewing,” by the end of the war more than 800,000,000 yards of cotton fabric each year were made into bags. In “Bag Magic for Home Sewing” (1946) the National Cotton Council declared feed bag clothing to be the “warp & woof of daily life, the simple virtues of thrift, ingenuity and skill—the virtues upon which in the last analysis, the future of the country rests.” In addition to recycling the bags, users were encouraged to save the string used to close the bags for crocheting; patterns were included in the booklets.

In the postwar years, the National Cotton Council and the Textile Bag Manufacturers Association concentrated on additional associations with two mainstream pattern companies and expanded the line of textiles to include percale, chambray, cambric denim, toweling, and rayon with a silky sheen. At the peak of the bags’ popularity, textile designers were hired to create exciting prints to attract consumers—both millers and the public. Bag manufacturers issued a wide range of textile colors and designs. In conjunction with Simplicity and McCall’s, they promoted national sewing competitions for adults and teens as well as traveling fashion shows featuring bag clothing through at least 1961.

The demise of feed bag clothing was brought about by the increasing popularity of less expensive paper bags, and in 1948 twenty states forbade re-use of cloth bags for food products. Combined with the increasing popularity of less expensive paper and plastic bags, the decline of farming populations, and increased availability of inexpensive ready-made clothing, this resulted in a low demand for cloth feed bags by the early 1960s. The cultural shift from primarily family-operated farms to large cooperatives resulted in many families moving to urban centers.

Fewer women were providing the family wardrobe, since ready-made clothing was readily available and more affordable. Home-made garments and gifts celebrating economy and thrift were no longer part of the American psyche.

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Who was she? The woman who—simply by wearing all black—makes you feel stupidly ostentatious for wearing anything else. Even in yoga class.

Legs over head, I tried to steal a glance to pinpoint why some women look so good in black that you’d rather look at them than the mountains behind them. How do they look like Paloma Picasso while others like students on a budget? What could be easier than wearing all black?

Like most enviable skills, wearing all black is not nearly as easy as it looks. I covered fashion in New York in the 1990s so I spent a lot of time staring across a runway, studying row after row of women in black. (In those pre-Instagram years, the only person not in black was Anna Wintour.) And I think I’ve come up with the secret to pulling it off: It’s all about the grooming and the accessories.

Wear all black without perfect lipstick and hair and you can be mistaken for someone who just can’t be bothered with dry cleaning bills. The woman next to me at yoga—in gym clothes for crying out loud—had nary a hair out of place. Even in sweats, the black Lycra worked as a backdrop for her simple but stunning earrings.

Which is why the most successful wearers of all black tend to hail from the design industry. They are the kind of people who can find integrity in a chair, or distinguish a deep, rich blue-black (good) from a faded grey-black (bad—a sign of a garment in need of replacing) at 20 paces. They are ruthless in their design aesthetic—and nothing draws attention to good design better than removing anything, like color, that distracts from it. Similarly, the beatniks wore black to underscore their intellectual rigor. Nothing said square like Lily Pulitzer prints.

In matters of wearing black, it seems little has changed in the last 50 years. A recent study by a U.K. T-shirt manufacturer found that people who wear all black are seen as serious and reliable compared to their chromatic brethren. Which explains why it’s so common in boardrooms—even though a shapeless black suit doesn’t have any of the same appeal as the well-tailored pieces worn by the design cognoscenti.

“When you go to the office, a business meeting or networking event, everyone is wearing black, or gray,” says Jacqueline Allen, the founder of Edit-London, a personal styling firm that focuses only on executives. “The net result is that no one looks particularly senior, distinguished, or influential because everyone looks generic. Rather than enhancing the individual it becomes an equalizer and, instead of appearing unique and authoritative, you appear diminished and lacking confidence.”

For those without a personal stylist, black can also seem safe and speedy. Safe, because if you’re not at the top of the corporate ladder, standing out might be more risky than blending in. Speedy, because it limits the number of decisions to be made in the early morning hours. But unless you get the details perfect, you risk fading away into the background.

Outside of corporate life, color and prints are more popular than ever, but need to be worn with care. Standing out is risky business—remember it was Joseph’s coat of many colors that got him into trouble with his brothers.

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