If there is one, no make that two things I can tell you about fashion, it is that denim
on denim drives me crazy. Sorry Canadian Tuxedo lovers. And two, that fashion throughout history
has always been weird. Put on your crop tops, jeggings and platform sneakers and lets take
a look.
Now if Miley Cyrus wants to get some fashion cred in my book she needs to toss away those
gold grills she has been sporting lately and trade it in for some late 16th century fashion
action with blackened teeth. Oh hey. I'm an Elizabethan era fashion blogger. Some historians
have said that during the Elizabethan era because sugar was so expensive it was a sign
of wealth if your teeth looked like they were rotting because that meant that you could
afford to indulge in expensive sweets, so it was a brief trend for women to black out
some of their teeth in order to look wealthy in the exact reverse of our modern day obsession
with super-bright white teeth. Pretty weird huh? Now moving onto the early 1900s we have
one of my favorite fashionable accessories from history which is the handkerchief holder.
That's right if you were a wealthy fashionable woman of the day you wouldn't carry your own
handkerchief in your hand, no, you would wear a ring which was attached to a little chain
which was attached to your handkerchief. That way you could delicately twirl it around if
you cared to or if you needed to say blow your nose all you had to do was produce your
handkerchief and there it was. [Nose blowing]. Beautiful. And fun side note in addition to
the hanky holder Victorian women also wore skirt lifters which were essentially like
tongs on the end of a chain wallet attached to the waist of their dress so that they could
reach down and pull on the chain and lift their skirt without having to go all the way
down to the ground which would have been very unladylike. Now back in the 1920s real spiffy
gals would get their hair bobbed and wear things called Castle bands named after popular
dancer Irene Castle who popularized these popular headbands which were later called
headache bands because these pearls stretched so tightly along their foreheads that they
gave girls headaches, don't you know? Or maybe it was all that bathtub gin. Ooo boopboopbedo,
boopboopbedo. I have no idea the Great Depression's about to happen. In the 1950s over in England
there were a group of girls who were referred to as Teddy Boy girls aka Judys. Oftentimes
they would wear things like little blazers, kerchiefs, cameo broaches. What these Judys
were all about was spending a lot of time making their own clothes since they were often
working-class girls who couldn't afford a lot of clothes. They would sew these gorgeous
sorts of ensembles which were a bit masculine since they were copying the style of Teddy
Boys at the time who were emulating the fashion of Edwardian Dandies. If you look at pictures
of Judys today they really are quite hip and look like they could be found just congregating
at any Brooklyn bar. Incredible. And then in the 1960s fashion designers started getting
really crazy, probably due to the drugs, and making clothes out of unconventional materials
such as sheet metal and newspapers. And I was thinking about what a newspaper dress
might look like today and this is what I came up with. It's just my iPhone on the New York
Times. It wouldn't cover very much. It could just be a necklace. For the last trend we
have extreme shoulder pads of the 1980s because in that era when women were entering the work
force in unprecedented numbers, we needed to power dress. What better way to look like
a powerful woman than to look like a football player. I wouldn't mess with me. So those
were six of some of the strangest fashion fads in history that I could find but what
about you? What trends from today or centuries ago did I leave out? Leave them in the comments
and don't forget to look stylish.