History Main / FashionsNeverChange

* ''Film/TheVillage'' is supposedly set in 1897, and features a Pennsylvania farm village where everyone dresses like it is 1797. Possibly deliberate [[spoiler:because it is actually the 20th century]]. Perhaps the Village's founders discovered it was easier to stay 100% self-sufficient with 18th-century technology, [[spoiler:but their historians knew more about the 1800s and based the community's backstory on that.]]

* There is a Disney comic that parodies ''Literature/{{The Lost World|1912}}'', set in an AlternateUniverse and featuring Scrooge, Donald and Fethry. The interesting thing is that the three are wearing their "normal" clothes (Scrooge's top hat and frock, Donald's sailor outfit and Fethry's sweater and signature cap) while everybody else is wearing Victorian era fashion. Stories set in some kind of alternate past are common in Disney comics, but basically all others have the main characters appear in the appropriate historical clothes.

* ''Film/TheVillage'' is supposedly set in 1897, and features a Pennsylvania farm village where everyone dresses like it is 1797. Possibly deliberate [[spoiler:because it is actually the 20th century]]. Perhaps the Village's founders discovered it was easier to stay 100% self-sufficient with 18th century technology, [[spoiler:but their historians knew more about the 1800s and based the community's backstory on that.]]
* Anton Corbijn's ''Film/{{Control}}'' gets all the changing 1970s fashions right. So the Ian in 1973 goes to see Bowie with guyliner and a fluffy jacket, but by 1979 is wearing the familiar austere Music/JoyDivision outfit.

* In ''Film/AVeryLongEngagement'', which is mostly set in the 1920s, but where many characters still wear ''Belle Epoque'' fashions. This is because the makers of the film saw from studying old photographs that older people and many of those living in the provinces continued to wear their pre-World War 1 clothes. It makes sense since in RealLife, upgrading a wardrobe costs money, and after a war it isn't the main priority of families.

* The ''Literature/TimeScout'' novels very deliberately averted this trope by suggesting that time travel is actually very dangerous and requires meticulous research, because showing up wearing the wrong shirt collar could prove fatal when one deals with superstitious, xenophobic natives.

* Averted in ''Literature/TimeWars''. The Temporal Corps has extremely efficient research and wardrobe departments whose job it is to ensure that the time travellers are not wearing or carrying anything that could mark them as being a non-local. Helped by the fact that the trips are almost always made to a specific time and event (usually a battle). One problem encountered is that many of the veterans are smokers who keep attempting to smuggle cigarettes back with them, even to places and times where tobacco was unknown. One character does note that if you do find up somewhere you're not supposed to be, a 'generic' mud stained peasant outfit will pass in many eras, provided no one looks too closely.

** Played straight in the episode "The Lesser of Two Evils" when they go to Past-O-Rama, which is the 30th century's take on the 20th century. Fry, attempting to steal a car he recognized, gets stopped by a worker in Renaissance Fair garb, says, "Sir, you can't... oh, you work here. I should've known from that ridiculous get up."

* In ''WesternAnimation/StitchTheMovie'' and in [[WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries the subsequent TV show]], the two stranded alien scientists, Jumba and Pleakley, don't quite get "earth culture" and in once scene attend a beach party in {{Old Timey Bathing Suit}}s. While the use of the whole-body bathing suits might be an attempt to disguise their bizarre alien physiques, Pleakley ''has'' been fed a lot of misinformation about E-Arth...

* A suit and tie have been proper formal wear for over 100 years, albeit with variations in color, fabric and things like lapel style. Neckties have been around for almost ''[[UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar four hundred years]].''

* Modern Roman Catholic clerical vestments are directly descended from the secular formalwear of AncientRome. They have evolved, but at a tiny fraction of the pace of the surrounding culture. Eastern Orthodox vestments also remain unchanged since the days of the Eastern Roman Empire with only a few changes during Ottoman occupation.

* The combination of a rugby shirt and deck shoes have been moderately fashionable casual wear for men in the northern US and parts of Canada since at least the 1970s.

* Parodied in the ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'' episode "Roswell That Ends Well"; in an attempt to fit in in 1947 New Mexico, Leela dons a poodle skirt and beehive hairdo, and Professor Farnsworth wears a zoot suit and fedora while swinging a pocketwatch on a chain. Leela also tries to fit in using Fry's 1990s slang, with similar success.

** Dress uniforms have remained very similar to their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in European militaries with long traditions (witness the [[BritishRoyalGuards British Buckingham Palace guards]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Swiss_Guard Pontifical Swiss Guard]], for example). This is because they were designed to [[HighlyConspicuousUniform stand out and make it easier for their commanders to see them]] on a smoky battlefield, and they were also meant [[BlingOfWar to look sharp]] [[JoinTheArmyTheySaid (for recruitment at home)]] and intimidating (on the battlefield, again). So they still look good for showing off at formal events.

** Once [[CombatPragmatist concealment and mobility became more important than high visibility]], "battle dress" or "working" uniforms began to change rapidly and have continued to do so to this day. Militaries continue to try to refine the uniforms for the maximum concealment, practicality, and mobility. Additionally, [[LensmanArmsRace as new technologies are invented, specialized clothing are also needed to adapt]] to new battlefield conditions: hence chemical suits, gas masks, flight suits, ghillie suits, body armor, etc.

* Vexus in ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' seems to think this about teenage culture. In the episode "Queen Bee", while planning a sneak attack on Jenny in her school, she shows up in a disguise reminiscent of TheRoaringTwenties and starts using slang of the time. Jenny exposes Vexus as a fake, and Vexus takes advice from the Crust Cousins on how to pull off a more convincing modern disguise.

* Vexus in ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' seems to think this about teenage culture. One episode shows that she doesn't know the first thing about modern teen fashion. When planning a sneak attack on Jenny in her school, she shows up in a disguise reminiscent of the 1920s and starts using slang of the time. Jenny exposes Vexus as a fake, and Vexus takes advice from the Crust Cousins on how to pull off a more modern disguise.

The main reason for this trope is that people think that fashions didn't change from season to season until the rise of the middle class in the 20th century. This is not the case; there's a lot of evidence showing that fashion has changed with the seasons in Western Europe since at least the 12th century and possibly much earlier. An examination of a timeline of women's fashions in the 19th and early 20th century, for example, will show how styles changed decade by decade from the neoclassical, revealing gowns of the Regency period through the gigantic crinolines of the 1850's and 1860's through the bustles of the 1870's and 1880's to the S-curve silhouette of the 1900's right up to the revival of the neoclassical silhouette circa 1910. There have always been people with enough money to spend on new clothing every year, and there have always been fads. Literature/SamuelPepys writes in his 1660s diaries about how both men's and women's fashions changed so quickly he could hardly keep up -- and because how he and his wife dressed ''really mattered'' with respect to him being thought genteel enough to hold an important post, it wasn't something he could afford to ignore, either.

* Anton Corbijn's ''Film/{{Control}}'' gets all the changing 1970's fashions right. So the Ian in 1973 goes to see Bowie with guyliner and a fluffy jacket, but by 1979 is wearing the familiar austere Music/JoyDivision outfit.
* The World War II soap opera ''Film/InHarmsWay" (made in 1965) is particularly bad with this. All of the women have mid-sixties hairstyles and dresses. Also, much of the military equipment used is of 1960's vintage.

* In an article in the 1970's New York magazine had an article analyzing clothing and fashion styles in movies. They said that you could tell when a movie was ''made'' by those styles, but not really when it was supposed to be set. An example were the hair styles in ''Film/TheGreatGatsby1974'' where Robert Redford and Sam Waterston should have had hair parted in the middle and slicked down, not the 1970's way it was.
* Averted in ''Literature/TimeWars''. The Temporal Corps has extremely efficient research and wardrobe departments whose job it is to ensure that the time travellers are not wearing or carrying anything that could mark them as being a non-local. Helped by the fact that the trips are almost always made to a specific time and event (usually a battle). One problem encountered is that many of the veterans are smokers who keep attempting to smuggle cigarettes back with them, even to places and times where tobacco was unknown. One character does note that if you do find up somewhere you're not supposed to be, a 'generic' mud stained peasant outfit will pass in many eras, provided no one looks to closely.

** A similar thing happened on ''Phil of the Future'', when Phil (from the 22nd century) and his family find they are unable to fix their broken time machine and are stuck in 2003. Phil's parents decide to enroll him and his sister in school, and his father is charged with finding appropriate clothing so they won't stand out. Phil and Pim show up to their local high school dress in clothes stereotypically found in the 1960's. It takes them five seconds of awkward looks and laughing to realize their clothes are a little out of style.

* In this instance, it's not time travel but production values. The producers of ''Series/HogansHeroes'' blew their entire costume budget on those nifty reproduction Nazi outfits, so all the non-Nazi and non-main-character actors had to bring their own outfits. Thus you will see every secondary non-Nazi on the show - which takes place during UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo - dressed in the fashions of the era of the show's production - the late 1960's.
* Subverted on the Series/NewsRadio episode that takes place in a futuristic spaceship. Everybody else wears "space clothes", but Jimmy comes in wearing the same suit he wears in every other show, and Space Dave mocks his ridiculous clothes. Jimmy defends the suit by saying it was the height of fashion in the late 20th century.

* A suit and tie have been proper formal wear for over 100 years, albeit with variations in color, fabric and things like lapel style.
** Neckties have been around for almost ''[[UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar four hundred years]].''

* The mullet. As a comedian once said, they've been 'riding it out since the 70's'.
** Longer than that, much longer than that.

* Modern Roman Catholic clerical vestments are directly descended from the secular formalwear of AncientRome. They have evolved, but at a tiny fraction of the pace of the surrounding culture.
** Eastern Orthodox vestments also remain unchanged since the days of the Eastern Roman Empire with only a few changes during Ottoman occupation.

* Kurt Andersen [[https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201 writes in Vanity Fair magazine]] that modern fashions have barely changed since the early 1990s, thanks to the digital age which has allowed [[{{Retraux}} older fashions to be preserved and enjoyed]].
** Tom Usher of Vice [[http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/we-asked-young-farmers-how-they-feel-about-flat-caps-being-appropriated?utm_source=vicetwitteranz has also observed]] the following:

** Dress uniforms have remained very similar to their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in European militaries with long traditions (witness the [[BritishRoyalGuards British Buckingham Palace guards]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Swiss_Guard Pontifical Swiss Guard]], for example). This is because they were designed to [[Main/HighlyConspicuousUniform stand out and make it easier for their commanders to see them]] on a smoky battlefield, and they were also meant [[Main/BlingOfWar to look sharp]] [[Main/JoinTheArmyTheySaid (for recruitment at home)]] and intimidating (on the battlefield, again). So they still look good for showing off at formal events.
** Once [[Main/CombatPragmatist concealment and mobility became more important than high visibility]], "battle dress" or "working" uniforms began to change rapidly and have continued to do so to this day. Militaries continue to try to refine the uniforms for the maximum concealment, practicality, and mobility. Additionally, [[Main/LensmanArmsRace as new technologies are invented, specialized clothing are also needed to adapt]] to new battlefield conditions: hence chemical suits, gas masks, flight suits, ghillie suits, body armor, etc.

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'' manages to avert, play straight, and play with this trope in multiple ways. The main cast usually avoids this altogether by wearing either [[SchoolUniformsAreTheNewBlack their school uniforms]] or [[MildlyMilitary their Black Knights outfits]]. In some cases, they can be seen wearing either "modern" (by our standards) or completely original fashions (much like SEED). The problem with that becomes apparent when you remember that the Geass-verse exists in as an AlternateHistory to our own and that the equivalent to 2017/18 A.T.B. is roughly 1963 A.D. Thank you, AlienSpaceBats. This is played with (and possibly straight) ''[[SerialEscalation even further]]'' when you get a good look at the fashions of the [[BlueBlood nobles and]] [[DeadlyDecadentCourt the Britannian Imperial Court]]: their fashion tastes seem to have not changed since the Golden Age of European Absolutism... which [[FridgeBrilliance is actually very fitting]]... There's no excuse for [[ImprobableHairstyle Charles' epic curls]].

* Anton Corbijn's ''Control'' gets all the changing 1970's fashions right. So the Ian in 1973 goes to see Bowie with guyliner and a fluffy jacket, but by 1979 is wearing the familiar austere Music/JoyDivision outfit.
* The World War II soap opera "In Harm's Way" (made in 1965) is particularly bad with this. All of the women have mid-sixties hairstyles and dresses. Also, much of the military equipment used is of 1960's vintage.

* In an article in the 1970's New York magazine had an article analyzing clothing and fashion styles in movies. They said that you could tell when a movie was ''made'' by those styles, but not really when it was supposed to be set. An example were the hair styles in The Great Gatsby (1974) where Robert Redford and Sam Waterston should have had hair parted in the middle and slicked down, not the 1970's way it was.

* In ''Film/AVeryLongEngagment'', which is mostly set in the 1920s, but where many characters still wear ''Belle Epocque'' fashions. This is because the makers of the film saw from studying old photographs that older people and many of those living in the provinces continued to wear their pre-World War 1 clothes.

** Played straight in the episode "The Lesser of Two Evils" when they go to Past-O-Rama, which is the 30th century's take on the 20th century. Fry, attempting to steal a car he recognised, gets stopped by a worker in Renne Fair garb, says, "Sir, you can't... oh, you work here. I should've known from that ridiculous get up."

* Vexus in ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' seems to think this about teenage culture. One episode shows that she doesn't know the first thing about modern teen fashion. When planning a sneak attack on Jenny in her school, she shows up in a disguise reminiscent of the 1920s and starts using slang of the time. Jenny exposes Vexus as a fake, and Vexus takes advice from the Crust Cousins on how to pull off a more modern disguise.

* Parodied in ''Discworld/{{Pyramids}}'', where the Tsortian envoy to Djelibeibi dresses in a mishmash of garments from half a dozen periods of that nation's 7000-year history. A footnote compares this to wearing a mix of old Celtic, medieval, and modern British garments to pass as an Englishman.

* Kurt Andersen [[http://web.archive.org/web/20170103221621/http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201 writes in Vanity Fair magazine]] that modern fashions have barely changed since the early 1990s, thanks to the digital age which has allowed [[{{Retraux}} older fashions to be preserved and enjoyed]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/StitchTheMovie'' and in [[WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries the subsequent TV show]], the two stranded alien scientists, Jumba and Pleakley, don't quite get "earth culture" and in once scene attend a beach party in 19th century striped one-piece swimming suits.
** Seeing as Jumba is rather large, and mostly purple, and Pleakley likes to crossdress, not to mention being green skinned and stick thin, the use of the whole body bathing suits might be more for camo than because they just don't get it. Of course, Pleakley has been fed a lot of misinformation about E-Arth...
* Similar to the above, Vexus in ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'' seems to think this about teenage culture. One episode shows that she not know the first thing about modern teen fashion. When planning a sneak attack on Jenny in her school, she shows up in a disguise reminiscent of the 1920s and starts using slang of the time. Jenny exposes Vexus as a fake, and Vexus takes advice from the Crust Cousins on how to pull off a more modern disguise.

** Seeing as Jumba is rather large, and mostly dark gray, and Pleakley likes to crossdress, not to mention being green skinned and stick thin, the use of the whole body bathing suits might be more for camo than because they just don't get it... Of course, Pleakley has been fed a lot of misinformation about E-Arth...

The main reason for this trope is that people think that fashions didn't change from season to season until the rise of the middle class in the 20th century. This is not the case; there's a lot of evidence showing that fashion has changed with the seasons in Western Europe since at least the 12th century and possibly much earlier. An examination of a timeline of women's fashions in the 19th and early 20th century, for example, will show how styles changed decade by decade from the neoclassical, revealing gowns of the Regency period through the gigantic crinolines of the 1850's and 1860's through the bustles of the 1870's and 1880's to the S-curve silhouette of the 1900's right up to the revival of the neoclassical silhouette circa 1910. There have always been people with enough money to spend on new clothing every year, and there have always been fads. SamuelPepys writes in his 1660s diaries about how both men's and women's fashions changed so quickly he could hardly keep up -- and because how he and his wife dressed ''really mattered'' with respect to him being thought genteel enough to hold an important post, it wasn't something he could afford to ignore, either.

* Inverted in this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MissBeatnik.jpg photo of a Miss Beatnik contest]], taken in California in 1959. It goes to show free-spirited youth hairstyles aren't a new phenomenon.

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'' manages to avert, play straight, and play with this trope in multiple ways. The main cast usually avoids this altogether by wearing either [[SchoolUniformsAreTheNewBlack their school uniforms]] or [[MildlyMilitary their Black Knights outfits]]. In some cases, they can be seen wearing either "modern" (by our standards) or completely original fashions (much like SEED). The problem with that becomes apparent when you remember that the Geass-verse exists in as an AlternateHistory to our own and that the equivalent to 2017/18 A.T.B. is roughly 1963 A.D. Thank you, AlienSpaceBats. This is played with (and possibly straight) ''[[SerialEsclaation even further]]'' when you get a good look at the fashions of the [[BlueBlood nobles and]] [[DeadlyDecadentCourt the Britannian Imperial Court]]: their fashion tastes seem to have not changed since the Golden Age of European Absolutism... which [[FridgeBrilliance is actually very fitting]]... There's no excuse for [[ImprobableHairstyle Charles' epic curls]].

** Dress uniforms have remained very similar to their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in European militaries with long traditions (witness the British Buckingham Palace guards, for example). This is because they were designed to [[Main/HighlyConspicuousUniform stand out and make it easier for their commanders to see them]] on a smoky battlefield, and they were also meant [[Main/BlingOfWar to look sharp]] [[Main/JoinTheArmyTheySaid (for recruitment at home)]] and intimidating (on the battlefield, again). So they still look good for showing off at formal events.

-->We don't have the generational identifiers previous decades had: we're not hippies, mods, punks or breakdancers like people were in the olden times. Instead, we're all of those things, mixed up and amalgamated: a pair of flares here, some Stan Smiths there, a jaunty trilby way over there in a Milton Keynes singles night.

* There is a Disney comic that parodies TheLostWorld, set in an AlternateUniverse and featuring Scrooge, Donald and Fethry. The interesting thing is that the three are wearing their "normal" clothes (Scrooge's top hat and frock, Donald's sailor outfit and Fethry's sweater and signature cap) while everybody else is wearing Victorian era fashion. Stories set in some kind of alternate past are common in Disney comics, but basically all others have the main characters appear in the appropriate historical clothes.

* Kurt Andersen [[http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201 writes in Vanity Fair magazine]] that modern fashions have barely changed since the early 1990s, thanks to the digital age which has allowed [[{{Retraux}} older fashions to be preserved and enjoyed]].

* ''CodeGeass'' manages to avert, play straight, and play with this trope in multiple ways. The main cast usually avoids this altogether by wearing either [[SchoolUniformsAreTheNewBlack their school uniforms]] or [[MildlyMilitary their Black Knights outfits]]. In some cases, they can be seen wearing either "modern" (by our standards) or completely original fashions (much like SEED). The problem with that becomes apparent when you remember that the Geass-verse exists in as an AlternateHistory to our own and that the equivalent to 2017/18 A.T.B. is roughly 1963 A.D. Thank you, AlienSpaceBats. This is played with (and possibly straight) ''[[SerialEsclaation even further]]'' when you get a good look at the fashions of the [[BlueBlood nobles and]] [[DeadlyDecadentCourt the Britannian Imperial Court]]: their fashion tastes seem to have not changed since the Golden Age of European Absolutism... which [[FridgeBrilliance is actually very fitting]]... There's no excuse for [[ImprobableHairstyle Charles' epic curls]].