Stitching Through Time: The Changing Landscape of Women's Fashion
Stitching Through Time: The Changing Landscape of Women's Fashion
by Zarak Tareen, Cooper Affleck, Sam Allen, and Denver Brown
Out of the myriad of mediums that represent art and pop culture of today, none remains so gendered as fashion. The story behind women’s fashion has existed since the earliest days of colonization and has continued to adapt to the times. As a result, the story of women themselves in the United States is often told through the practice of fashion design, as it lays out the lives and expectations surrounding women, as well as how they have shifted over time. For that reason, our exhibit is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to women’s fashion that ranges from the 1800s through the 2010s, given that it is impossible to curate an unbiased and detailed guide for the decade that has not yet completely ended.
This exhibit's significance stems from the fact that women have been victims of a patriarchal system for the past several centuries, and fashion has historically been one of the clearest ways to show the expectations of women's lives and how women have pushed back against them. With men attempting to dictate what is and is what is not attractive. From male designers to opinionated fashion magazine editors, it seems everyone had an idea of what defined female beauty. Fashion and clothing have been cultural parts of American history since the very beginning, and as such, when fashion changes, so does the female experience. The events included represent the colonial era, the revolutionary war, the manifest destiny, pre-WWI, post-WWI, the great depression, WWII, the post-WWII boom, the Civil Rights era, Title IX, and finally ending in the current Information Age,
It is important to acknowledge that even though the United States is far more progressive towards women’s rights as a country than in the past, disparities between male and female treatment is still present not only in daily interactions but in the materials and goods sold. Clothing is one of the unique mediums today that still retains its extremely gendered constructs and qualities from the previous generations, from the harshly divided sections at the mall to the expectation of women’s workplace clothing. Modern definitions of femininity as well as masculinity still revolve significantly around choice of clothing, especially with the ongoing culture wars and backlash against drag culture. What you wear has the power to define how you feel, thus it is vitally important to study the evolution of women’s fashion to understand the gap to equity today. As a closing note, this exhibition was curated by four men in high school, and as such, we strove to remove as many biases as possible, but there are biases that we may not even admit to having that affected our judgment as we could not see every perspective.
