20Th Century Clothes

At the beginning of the 20th century fashionable men wore trousers, waistcoat and coat. They wore top hats or homburgs.

In 1900 women wore long dresses. It was not acceptable for women to show their legs. From 1910 women wore hobble skirts. They were so narrow women could only 'hobble' along while wearing them. However during World War I women’s clothes became more practical.

Meanwhile in 1913 Mary Crosby invented the bra. She used two handkerchiefs joined by ribbon. In 1915 lipstick was sold in tubes for the first time.

In the early 1920s women still wore knickers that ended below the knee. However during the 1920s knickers became much shorter. By the late 1920s they ended well above the knee. In the mid-20th century younger women wore briefs.

A revolution in women’s clothes occurred in 1925. At that time women began wearing knee length skirts. In the mid and late 1920s it was fashionable for women to look boyish. However in the 1930s women’s dress became more conservative.

During World War II it was necessary to save material so skirts were shorter. Clothes were rationed until 1949.

Meanwhile the bikini was invented in 1946. In 1947 Christian Dior introduced the New Look, with long skirts and narrow waists giving an 'hour glass' figure.

During the 1950s women's clothes were full and feminine. However in 1965 Mary Quant invented the mini skirt and clothes became even more informal.

After the First World War men’s clothes became less informal and more casual. In the 1920s wide trousers called 'Oxford bags' were fashionable. Men also often wore pullovers instead of waistcoats.

In the 19th century men's underwear covered almost the whole body, stretching from the ankles to the neck and the wrists. However in the 1920s they began to wear shorts that ended above the knee and sleeveless vests. The first y-fronts went on sale in the mid-1930s.

In the second half of the 20th century fashions for both sexes became so varied and changed so rapidly it would take too long to list them all. One of the biggest changes was the availability of artificial fibres. Nylon was first made in the 1935 by Wallace Carothers and polyester was invented in 1941. It became common in the 1950s.

Ancient Clothing

Clothing was very expensive in the ancient and medieval world, because without engine-powered machines it was very hard to make. So most people had very few changes of clothing; many people probably owned only the clothes they were wearing. Many children had no clothes at all, and just went naked. In the Stone Age most clothing was made of leather or fur, or woven grasses. By the Bronze Age people had learned to spin yarn on a spindle and to weave cloth out of the yarn on looms. Although many clothes, especially coats, were still made out of leather or fur, most clothes were made out of wool (from sheep) or linen (from the flax plant) or cotton. Some rich people wore silk. In the Middle Ages (the medieval period), people invented the spinning wheel, which made spinning yarn go about four times as fast. Clothes were a little less expensive than they had been before, but still most people had only one or two outfits.

People wore different kinds of clothes. Clothes helped to show where you were from, and whether you were rich or poor, and whether you were a girl or a boy.

Around the Mediterranean, in Egypt and North Africa and Greece and the Roman Empire, people mostly wore wool or linen tunics (like a big t-shirt). Women wore long tunics, and men mostly wore short ones. Over their tunic, they might wear a wool cloak, if it was cold.  Further north, in Europe, a lot of men wore wool pants under their tunics - as you probably do today.

In West Asia, both tunics and pants were also pretty common, but they were made out of linen, and then in the Islamic period people began to use more silk and cotton.

In China, too, people wore tunics, and a lot of people wore pants. Their tunics and pants were made out of hemp and ramie and silk, and later out of cotton.

But in India and Africa, people mainly made their clothes without sewing, out of one big piece of cloth wrapped around themselves in various ways, like a woman's sari in India, or her kanga in central Africa. Most people's clothes were made out of cotton or silk.