Newer Than They Think / Dress and Costume

• The iconic plague doctor beak mask was invented in the late 17th century, long after the Black Death and the Middle Ages.
• Any work which has knights in full plate armour should also include hand-held guns, which were developed around the same time.
• Pants in Europe are both this and Older Than They Think. While they date back to the Bronze Age in Asia and Iron Age in Europe, they were largely abandoned in Europe from the High Middle Ages to the 17th century in favor of hosen — separate leggings tied to a belt or underpants (braies).
• The hennin headwear for women. A hennin is a high conical hat with veil attached, resembling an upside-down ice cream cone. While it is considered as the quintessential female headwear in the Middle Ages, it appeared only in the 1430 in the court of Burgundy, and went out of fashion in 1490s.
• The obligation for Sikhs to wear a turban (dastar) only dates from 1699. (Sikhism itself was founded c. 1500) Relatedly, the strict regulations on headgear and facial hair in the US military that essentially barred Sikhs from service^note The official reason for the regulations is that facial hair interferes with gas masks. There are reasons to wonder about the sincerity of this claim, but that can be discussed elsewhere. were only imposed in the 1980s. Before that, many Sikh males volunteered for or were drafted into the military.
• The "tradition" of the white wedding dress originated in 1840, when Queen Victoria of Britain wore a white satin gown to her wedding. Before then, a rich bride would wear a gown that could be blue (like the Virgin Mary), red (the most popular choice before Queen Victoria), purple, or any other color, and was embroidered and brocaded with white and silver threading. A poorer bride might choose her best Sunday dress if she couldn't manage that. Although Vicky wasn't the first royal to wear white (as it was considered a very conservative and prudish color before then, as well as the color of mourning) she made it immensely popular, and women around the country styled it to be the color that emphasized girlish purity and innocence. At the time, white clothes couldn't be cleaned easily, so wearing a white dress was like saying "I can afford a dress that will be completely ruined if someone touched me with so much as a dirty hand." Until more commercial methods of cleaning and laundering became available, white was the upper-class choice. After then, everyone could dress like a princess or a duchess by wearing white.
  • In Sweden the traditional color for a wedding dress was black. That didn't change until the 1920s.
  • White was the primary color of wedding gowns in the early 1800s, although probably owing to the fact that evening gowns of that era were also primarily white. Silver was sometimes used, especially after the wedding of Princess Caroline of Wales in 1816.
    • In fact a younger woman's best clothes, if she were comfortably off, would almost always be white in this period, and probably made of fine cotton. A poorer (but not so poor she owned only work clothes) woman's 'Sunday' clothes would still usually be pastels or print-on-pastels.
• Mink was colored only brown (and possibly black) until the mid 20th century, when breeding brought out mutation colors, like white and silver. If you see a woman wearing white mink in fiction before the late 1940s, either the costumer didn't know the facts about mink, or they didn't have the time or budget to use white ermine, which is what would have been worn.
• Pink and blue weren't always considered to be "girl" and "boy" colors, and the other way around was acceptable until recently. Until the 1920s there was no association between pink and any gender — at least not in the US. In Little Women, Meg's twins are distinguished by colored ribbons: "Amy put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French fashion".
• Widespread use of gender-specific clothing for babies and young children did not exist before the early 20th century. Parents simply dressed their young children in gowns, regardless of sex. This makes a lot of sense, given that clothing had to be made by hand via a work-intensive process, thus it would be a waste of precious resources to make a pair of pants for a toddler who would have outgrown them after a few months. "Breeching," the occasion when a boy received his first pair of breeches or pants, was something of a rite of passage and could occur at various ages depending on the time and place.
• Cassocks were not historically the traditional streetwear of Catholic priests in the United States, even before the Second Vatican Council. They were worn during liturgical or sacramental functions (typically as an undergarment) but not in public for fear of anti-Catholic reprisal in the 19th and early 20th Centuries (unlike in most of the rest of the world, where cassocks were widely worn in and out of church). The black frock coat with collar was worn as streetwear in the US instead. Cassocks didn't become common streetwear for priests in the US until the New Liturgical Movement in the 1990s, yet period pieces set in the US before the 1960s or so often show priests in cassocks.
• While the kilt in its general form is one of the oldest known garments in human history, the Scottish kilt is a pretty recent invention:
  • The clans of Scotland all being identified with a particular tartan is an idea that only stems back to the beginning of the 19th century, and originated in Victorian England, not Scotland. Its use in Scotland is an example of back-adoption. Scotsmen didn't wear kilts until the 16th century, well after the time of Braveheart: William Wallace's men wore saffron, not plaid. Now that would have been a movie!
  • The Scottish kilt developed over a period of about 200 years, from a simple cloak made from a single length of wool cloth which started out wrapped, then belted, then gathered, then finally pleated about the waist. There is also evidence that this style of dress did not, in fact, originate in Scotland, but was adopted from Norse invaders (who formed the primary genetic origin for the Highland Scots).
  • Tartan plaids developed in the early to mid 16th century, and did not become common until the late 18th century. Prior to this, plaids were symbols of wealth (the ability to afford the widest range of dyes, particularly blue dyes, and more complex and labour-intensive patterns), and the most common colours for cloaks and kilts were saffron and brown. Even as the tartan patterns were developed, most people who wore them couldn't afford to keep them pristine, and the dyes available were usually neither long-lasting nor lightfast. You didn't look at the specific colors to work out what it was, you looked at the width and pattern of the stripes, and the relative brightness and color values secondarily.
  • Or rather, kilts standing for the whole of Scotland is Newer than they Think. Before the battle of Culloden, 'Highland Dress' was associated with, yes, Highlanders — the Catholic, Gaelic-speaking, tribal(ish) part of Scotland — who were despised by the English-speaking, Presbyterian, city-dwelling, breech-wearing lowland Scots. Hence the fact that the force beating the Highlanders at Culloden had far more men from this community than Englishmen. Only 50 years after the real Highland culture had been almost comprehensively trampled was it resurrected in a sentimentalised form and identified with by the whole country.
    • Even the "resurrection" of Highland culture did not originate in Scotland, but rather as a fad after George IV's visit in Scotland and later in the Victorian era, as part of a larger obsession with the idealized image of the "Noble Savage" (which the Highland Scots epitomized in their view).
• Corsets: although similar undergarments had been worn since the late Middle Ages, up until the late 18th century they were distinctly conical in shape and only extended below the waist with separated tabs. This was replaced by a lightly boned style, designed primarily for lifting the bust, during the Classical/Regency era. The hip-hugging, waist-reducing style most commonly associated with the word "corset" nowadays was only developed in the mid-19th century when narrow waists and wide skirts came back to fashion. And the word itself was only introduced to English around that time, the traditional word being "stays" (which incidentally some people continued to use well after corsets stopped being commonly worn).
• The first black belts for Judo were awarded in the 1880s. The colored belt system of rank found in most modern martial arts was founded during the 20th century. This was due to a large number of injuries that was occurring during sparring. The different colored belts meant that you could tell who was at what level of skill in a single glance.
• The gi uniform and its variants which are associated with martial arts was not created until the early 20th century for use in Judo.
• Underpants:
  • Panties as we know them were only invented a bit over a century ago. While there are some examples of women's underpants from the 16th century, women's dress in most of Europe since antiquity had been an overdress over a shift, a long unfitted garment rather like a full-length nightie. Long drawers were first commonly worn in the 1850s; they had existed since circa 1800 but were considered rather racy (as, unlike the more conventional 'shift' they would have shown a faint outline of the wearer's legs through the fine fabric of the gowns of the period! However, a long version was adopted for little girls, so that they could wear a slightly shorter skirt.) Women started wearing them in the mid-nineteenth century because the new-fangled crinoline hoop had an embarrassing tendency to lift up in high winds, and so the wearer would be at least spared the embarrassment of revealing her legs. These drawers would have been open at the crotch (because it's extremely hard to pull them down to pee when you're wearing a hoop and corset) until about 1875, when the hoop was firmly out of fashion. And now you know why the can-can was considered obscene.
  • Men's underpants appeared (or re-appeared, see below) at roughly the same era; before this, they would have had their shirts made long and loose, and wrapped the 'tails' round under their crotch — a shirt was essentially underwear, and all men would have worn something over it — in fact, a gentleman would only show the collar and cuffs, covering it with a cravat and a sleeved waistcoat (vest). Only in extreme cold weather would he have worn woolen drawers under his breeches. This is only part of the story, though; men wore underpants as early as in medieval times, but they seem to have fallen out of fashion with the extremely tight legwear of the late 18th century.
  • And speaking of underwear: surprisingly, the thong wasn't invented until sometime between the mid 1970s and early 1980s, despite strippers having worn the similar G-string since time immemorial. In fact, it was a modern development of the loincloth which was mostly worn by men in ancient times.
• As for the Vikings' horned/winged helmets, they were made up in the 19th century. See also below.
• Women's clothes did not have attached pockets until the late 18th century. Early "pockets" were separate garments tied to the waist beneath the skirt, accessed via slits (the nursery rhyme "Lucy Locket lost her pocket" is from this era). The Regency's narrow skirts drove these bulky pockets out of fashion. This change also brought about another standard piece of feminine attire—the handbag, originally called a 'reticule' (sometimes spelled 'ridicule' for some reason). Prior to this, women had had no need of special bags—their pockets were surprisingly large (6" by 12", flat, but usually in pairs, seems to be quite standard; the heroine of Pamela practically fits a whole change of clothes into hers in an emergency), and if a female needed to carry anything bigger, a common woman could use a basket and a lady would have a servant.
  • While men had sewn-in pockets earlier, these still only date to the 17th century. Before that, the major innovation was having a vertical slit cut in the outer layer of clothing to allow access to a pouch worn inside, keeping it safe from cutpurses. Even this only dates to around the 13th century.
• The classic cowboy hat commonly associated with the Old West didn't become prevalent in America until afterward (c. 1910s). The cowboy hat's design originated in Texas, influenced by the "Boss of the Plains" and Mexican-style hats which had a wide brim. In the 2010 version of True Grit, only one character in the entire movie is seen with a cowboy hat, and he is from Texas.
  • Another classic piece of cowboy attire, the bolo tie, wasn't invented until the late 1940s. They're recent enough that the father of country music, Hank Williams, was never photographed wearing one prior to his death in 1953.
  • Not until near the end of the 19th century did cowboys begin to wear what are now thought of as cowboy boots. From the 1860s-1880s your typical cowboy boot was more like a generic leather wellington, with the distinctive features of the modern version such as Cuban heels becoming common piecemeal and slowly.
• The bikini. Although the two-piece bathing suit has officially been around since the late 1940s (and earlier, Dolores del Río had sported a proto-bikini in 1933's Flying Down to Rio), for several decades it was regarded mainly as fetish appeal (since it is, after all, really nothing more than a bra and panties to be worn in the water) and was almost never sported by women who wished to be taken seriously, especially if they were athletes. (Surprisingly, it wasn't even until the 1990s that the bikini became standard in the Miss America pageant, and even then there was controversy over its inclusion.) Only within our own generation has the bikini become so ubiquitous than an Action Girl can wear one without fear of any but the horniest males leering at her.
  • The bikini is also Older Than They Think, as evidenced by a similar two-piece garment being worn by ancient Roman women during an exercise session in this 4th-century mosaic.
• The zipper was invented by Gideon Sundback in December 1913 (though similar-style slide fasteners were patented by Whitcomb L. Judson in the 1890s). This means Victorian men could never have had their flies down but only open, since they only could have buttons before then. The fly itself is a modern development too: it was only introduced in Europe by the Turks in the 18th century, and for decades it was considered immoral in the West because it allowed men to have intercourse without undressing, and thus was considered to encourage rape.
  • It's impossible to know, but it seems less likely that he'd forget anyway, at least before the mid nineteenth century, as his fly (at least the part he'd open most often) would usually be horizontal, not vertical (that is, there would be a vertical opening at the waist, as now, to let him pull them on, and below it a sort of trapdoor/flap that could be lowered separately.)
• So-called traditional clothes of China (qipao) and Vietnam (ao dai) were actually introduced in the early 20th century. That's not to say they didn't exist before but the modern versions look wildly different from their predecessors.
  • The Chinese queue was introduced (and made mandatory) by the conquering Manchus in the 17th century. That's why it makes no sense to depict Chinese men with it in the Ming dynasty or earlier, unless the character is actually from Manchuria.
  • Likewise, Han Chinese clothing prior to the Qing dynasty looked quite different, indeed more like Japanese clothing (which it influenced) to the modern eye.
• The word kimono (literally "thing to wear") as used today dates to the mid-1800s and the opening of Japan. Previously, the garment was generally referred to as a kosode,^note Lit. "small sleeve", for its wrist-sized sleeve opening with several more specific terms applicable to certain variations in style.
• "Tie-dye" clothing is so commonly associated with the hippie subculture (thanks to countless cartoons, Halloween costumes, and the like) that it can be surprising to learn that the fad didn't catch on in America until the late 1960s, by which point the hippie movement was beginning to fade away. Real hippies (as opposed to poseurs who wanted to dress the part) usually wore much more drab (or at least solid) clothing, much as the beatniks had done. Furthermore, the tie-dye style, in general, is Older Than They Think, having existed in various Asian cultures for centuries.
• Cut gemstones. The first records of successful attempts to cut them in facets came from the late Middle Ages. Prior to that gemstones were polished◊. The round brilliant cut we are all familiar with first appeared in the 17th century at the French royal court.
• Modern-looking heeled shoes fitted to the left and right foot were rare and expensive prior to the mid-19th century. Before then, difficulties in the manufacturing of paired shoes with heels meant that most people wore shoes made on a straight last. When you first got them, either one would fit on either foot, although the leather would mold to your feet with wear. Before that, from about the 15th century back, paired shoes were more common, but would have had low or no heels.
• Although the earliest recorded usage of the word "supermodel" dates back to 1891 and was used on and off by the mainstream press since the 1940s, the use of "supermodel" to mean "a successful fashion model who has reached the status of a celebrity" only dates back to a 1967 New York Times article on English model Twiggy (née Lesley Hornby) and was only popularized by an editorial for the January 1990 issue of the British edition of the fashion monthly Vogue, photographed by Peter Lindbergh and featuring Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford, and Christy Turlington.
• T-shirts in their current form as a slip-on, buttonless garment didn't exist until the 1900s. Wearing t-shirts without an overshirt didn't really catch on until after World War II. (Marlon Brando helped with that.)
• The transitional style of tricorner hat, with its front corner tilted up and shorter than the other two on its way to evolving into the bicorne, was popular by the third quarter of the 18th century. If it existed at all during the Golden Age of Piracy (which ended no later than 1730 by the most generous estimates, Blackbeard being twelve years dead by then), it was pretty uncommon. But compared to tricornes that actually were worn back then, it's much better-shaped for slapping a big skull and crossbones across the front.
• The scrunchie was invented in 1987 by nightclub singer Rommy Hunt Revson.
• Tagless t-shirts were first produced in large quantities in 2002, with Hanes being the first brand to make the switch. Before then, t-shirts always had a tag at the back collar, just like any other shirt.

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