The first time I saw a choker,
the coolest girl in my class
wore one of those plastic chokers and I was like,
"Oh, my God, what is that?"
I was like, "That can't be comfortable".
Chokers are definitely having a moment,
and it provides us with this really great vehicle
for exploring how trends work.
How do they start, and what determines which ones catch on?
Fashion is cyclical, and right now
a lot of fashion is looping back to the '90s,
but chokers have a pretty amazing history.
The earliest ones we know of are thousands of years old.
In ancient Egypt in Mesopotamia, chokers were seen as amulets,
granting the person wearing it with attributes
like power and strength.
It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.
You neck is a pretty vulnerable area,
so covering it up comes with a feeling of security.
You can see that same idea in the Native American tradition,
where men and women wore chokers
made of leather and bone
as both a ceremonial garment and protective armor.
Chokers have had thousands of years to evolve,
but one thing has remained pretty consistent,
and that's that chokers have a surprisingly royal history.
Anne Boleyn, the former queen of England
is widely credited with bringing chokers
into vogue in the 1500s.
You might be thinking, "Anne Boleyn, I've heard of her,
"she's pretty infamous.
Is that were the sexual connotation comes from?"
Not quite.
You have to jump ahead to the 1800s
to get to the sexy stuff.
Psychoanalyst J.C. Flugel had this theory
that clothing can create shifting erogenous zones.
Even if your clothes are covering something,
they can still draw attention to it in a sexual way.
Hey!
And that's maybe why prostitutes started wearing them.
You can famously see a choker on an escort
in Manet's "Olympia,"
as well as chokers on ballerinas,
who often doubled as escorts
in a handful of paintings by Degas.
So the narrative that chokers are sexual
actually has a little history to back it up.
These two ideas, of royal status and sex appeal,
finally caught up with each other in the '90s
when chokers showed up on the necks of celebrities
with overt sex appeal.
Kylie Jenner or Rihanna wearing a choker on Instagram
is what fashion historians call a "microtrend".
One reason why this microtrend caught on is sheer simplicity.
The choker is cheap, easy to manufacture, and easy to wear.
It can be a ribbon, or a shoelace, or a strip of fabric.
And it's a lot easier to copy
that part of Kylie or Rihanna's outfit
than the $4,000 dress.
What I love about retro trends is we get to revisit
and explore the stories behind these clothes,
and sometimes, we get to add a new twist.
The choker, once a trend for royals,
now a trend for the people.
So I wanna know,
do you think the choker is gonna stick around?
You can let me know in the comments or on social media
using the hashtag #WEWEARCULTURE.
Thank you so much for watching.
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