The Trend: Part II

"How could you tell what a woman looked like under that thing?"

Quoth a young man in my fashion history class as we discussed and viewed pictures of the Late Victorian exaggerated hourglass figure.

Historical context must always come into play when discussing any trend, which is what a lot of people don't realize. What dictates the trend is often not so much an inspiration from a designer, but what is going on in the outside world as well. Nowadays, the erogenous zone is based on how much skin can be revealed; back in the 19th century, things were different.

People associate "marriage" with "love", "love" with "sex" and "sex" with "being naked" in present times. This wasn't always the case however. It was more like this: "Marriage" "Money" and "Sex" "Prostitutes". People didn't marry for love back then - I know, this is an inCREDIBLY nouveau concept, believe it or not. They married for bank accounts and familial alliances. Marriages weren't so much arranged as they were encouraged - a woman or a man really could have his pick of any woman, as long as she fit the monetary standards desired by the family.

So really, it didn't matter if a man could tell the shape of a woman despite her Gigot sleeves and sickeningly cinched waist - it was the size of her reticule that mattered the most.

Which is why during the 19th century, the trend shifted and changed much more rapidly with women than it did for men. From the 1830s, we see a plateau in menswear with the popularity of the three piece suit. There are of course, variations on a theme - inseam, hem extensions, the length of the frock coat and the pattern of the vest. But comparably to women's clothing, men have been wearing pretty much the same trend since.

Women did not have as many work-related responsibilities as men during these days, and especially wealthier women had too much time than they knew what to do with. Drawing from Marie Antoinette's frivolous use of her time spent creating outlandish designs based off her own boredom (Think: Le Triomphe de la Liberté), once it was cool to be lavish once more women followed suit. They were bored and wanted to see what they could get away with.

Once they started wearing these items of clothing, the brains of men functioned to find other articles of the body desirable. In the early 1800s, it was the scoop of the dress exposing the breasts. In the 1830s, it was the ankle and the neck. 1850s-60s, the waist and 1870s-90s, the ass. The erogenous zone shifts dependent on what's in style at the moment. Simple as that.