The future of clothing

Tag : Mens Pants

By: Joseph Coates


Clothes Are A Conundrum For The Futurist. They are nearly universally worn and a worldwide industry spendstons of money to present the new, must-have stuff to would-becustomers.


The history and the anthropology of clothes are in good shape, butwhen one looks out a decade or more, the situation is worse thananyones guess, it is a matter of complete indifference. The movieand television industry, which have nearly unlimited money to putinto making high-quality films, reflect the same lack of insightinto the future. Consider the characters on Star Trek; they alldress in metalized long johns. Films of combat in the future arebarely more than comic parodies of medieval knights in theirmetallic clothing speckled with fantastic gimcracks and pushbuttons of uncertain functions. Let us explore this intellectuallyarid landscape to look at what is shaping the future of clothing.


First of all, there is the question of fashion. Fashion andclothing are so intimately linked that we must consider them astwins joined at the hip. Fashion may move rapidly or slowly, butalways in the context of culture, which moves at a far slower pace.Culture is an especially potent factor in clothing, and is in turn,influenced by climate, the annual cycle of weather change, andlocal raw materials. In the modem era, changes in clothing occurredwith cultural transitions from the 18th to the 19th and from the19th to the 20th centuries. For example, clothes associated withdeath and funerals were invariably black and worn for a very longtime. In the 18th century, a middle-class widows weeds were wornfor 21 months. Then, during the 19 th century and the early 20th century, there were black armbands formen that announced bereavement.


Those cultural elements marking the end of a life have, in theUnited States, almost disappeared except that one wearsconservative clothes and most, if not quite all, people dress intheir Sunday best for a funeral. As part of culture there is theinevitability of social change.


Womens entry into the workforce on a large scale has happened twicein the lifetime of many readers. The first in WWII when all of theRosie the Riveters adopted mens industrial coveralls and overallsand made only one significant concession to femininity, a coloredbandana to keep their long hair out of harms way. That did notsurvive the war. The need to celebrate victory and to enjoy theemerging prosperity of the country made womens clothes more lavishand generous in fabric, in ways not seen for 30 years. The moredrastic change in womens dress as well as in young mens began inthe 1960s when middle-class women entered the work force in massivenumbers.


Now, they are in the workforce almost in parity of numbers withmen. The new jobs for women were not primarily blue-collar butwhite-collar and office work, which commits them to more formalclothes. Clothes distinguish a woman who has a white-collar jobfrom those who do not and further mark the upwardly mobile in theirdress for success. On the other hand, social changes going onrather dramatically in the last three decades made even more commondressing down, rather than dressing up, especially outside work.


Steadily, however, leisure and recreational garb are making it ontothe business scene. Today, Forbes , Fortune , and Business Week show the few surviving new tycoons of Silicon Valley in extremelyrelaxed garb. Changing attitudes toward a more congenial,stress-free workplace has given us dress-down Friday. That has notescaped corporate regimentation.


All clothiers at noticeable cost provide the new regimentedgarments suitable for dress-down Friday, making it barely a stepahead toward loosening up the workplace.


The trend toward more comfort and informality will move men to wearshort pants during the summer season and at other times, inwhite-collar work. The trend toward working at home, particularlyfor those people who spend some time in a conventional office andsome time at home, will push more informality and comfort at bothplaces.


Pants for woman have now become acceptable in all work contexts.


More significant is the radical reduction of age differences inchoice of clothes. Most old people, i.e., over 50, function as ifthey were 10 years younger than they are chronologically. Theirbetter health also contributes to their dressing in the clothes ofa younger crowd. Older women are dressing in stylish pants liketheir younger sisters, and in many regards like their adultchildren. At the other age extreme, small children are now dressingmuch like adults, except for both girls and boys on formaloccasions when they tend to dress as everyone did in an earliergeneration.