Does Not Illustrate: Outdated Outfit

The current image shows Sonny Crockett in eighties gear from Miami Vice. But the outfit wasn't outdated when the show was on, just stylized and exaggerated the way things tend to be on TV.

The sixth image at this link seems more illustrative, showing Stacy Keach as a forties/fifties Mike Hammer among eighties starlets.

edited 27th Oct '14 8:49:06 AM by TrustBen

We've had two previous threads about this one which have both clocked out. I can't look at the suggestion right now...one thing that I don't recall mentioning before is that the current is really grainy.

Didn't realize it had been under discussion before. The link has one suggestion. If anyone else has others I'd be happy to hear it.

That's not a good image. He's in a suit and tie, which has never gone out of style, and he takes up so much of the image that you can't really see the style of the women's dress.

Here's a screencap from the episode of Futurama where the crew travel back in time to 1947 and miss the fashion mark by a few decades in their attempts to blend.

I wish it were otherwise, but a lay reader probably can't tell they're not in period appropriate outfits given that there's no on-screen year. The salesman and the stove are kinda generic old, so they aren't enough to really conclusively date it. And even were that the case, not a lot of us (myself included) are decade fashion savvy enough to make that work without a caption.

I think the current image is much worse in that respect (not to mention, it's blurry).

It's kind of hard to tell that outfit is outdated.

I wish I had this movie on disc, but I don't, so I can't screen-capture it. I'm thinking of the film adaptation of H G Welles The Time Machine, in which quantum mechanics professor Alexander Hartdegen constructs a time machine in the 19th century, and journeys forward to the late 21st century. There, still in 19th century garb, he gets a comment from a cute blonde: "Nice retro look." In this case, since it's noted in-universe, this might be a worthy possibility.

Austin Powers... If someone can shrink it.

5 looks actually good to me - I don't associate that kind of clothing with the 1990s.

Everything in 5 looks like it could have existed in the early 50s.

The Austin Powers idea idea is good.

It's 1947, Professor Farnsworth is dressed in a 20's style zuit suit, and Leela is dressed in a 50's poodle dress.

zoot suits were common and fashionable in the 40s so its accurate according to Wikipedia (and it has a 1942 picture of people in Zoot Suits).

So leelas the only one with an outfit from you he wrong time period except shes not an example because its not outdated, it's from the future.

But its not set in the 90s. Its set in 1947.

edited 28th Oct '14 10:54:23 AM by Ghilz

They still hung around in the early 50s too, that range (as they were called back then) could easily be a 50s era appliance too.

Seriously everything in that image just screams early 50s to me.

That's the whole problem with the Futurama image: it's not clear what the time period is supposed to be, and which characters are out of date. Even if one or two of them look dressed inappropriately, it looks more like Disco Dan than this trope.

The Futurama picture is not an example of this trope. The reason the old threads were having problems is because this trope is not just about people wearing outdated fashion, it is about how a character that has been around for a long time will often not update their look. Like how the gang in Scooby-Doo is really 60s looking, even in new incarnations, because they have Iconic Outfits now so they never get changed more than a little. Jugheads hat is another example, a lot of people do not even recognize it for what it is but when Archie first came into being it was in style.

Some of the examples are more like reference to that, like The Venture Brothers example is not because the show has been around very long but because the are parodying this trope and that is fine, but anything with time travel is not an example.

That just jolted this memory.

Scooby Doo And The Cyber Chase has the gang find virtual replicas of themselves as AI NPC's. There's a scene where they compare outfits. Here's the group◊ and both Daphnes◊.

which one is suppose to be outdated?

If we wan to use Scooby-Doo, Fred is better choice than Daphne. The shirt and ascot combination that was time-accurate at the beginning of the series became more and more outdated.

But I would imagine that there might be even better examples in other comic-strip long-runners.

Fred is why people know what an ascot is.

Yes, but they are not current fashion. When's the last time you saw someone wearing that combination in real life, who wasn't trying to make some sort of a statement about how unique they are?

No one used one even when the original show was made.

In 1969, at the very beginning of the show? Yes, it was still fashionable.

My evidence:

1: a 1969 catalog◊

2: 1969 J.C.Penney catalog, the fellow in pink.◊

3: Jon Voight in Film/MidnightCowboy, released in 1969◊

4: Fashion photo, 1969◊

5: Levi's ad, 1969

Do I need to go on?

edited 29th Oct '14 3:24:14 PM by Madrugada