Friday, September 9, 2011

fun fashion facts for your next Trivia game

Fashion may be frivilous to some people, but it is really just a reflection of what look or style the general population is wanting to protray at a particular time. As Karl Lagerfeld said, "Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality."

Here are some fun fashion trivia morsels you can throw out there when you're at your next cocktail party wearing your little black dress. BTW, according to Karl again, "One is never overdressed or under dressed in a Little Black Dress."



  • Before 1850, clothes were hand stitched by those who wore them. Clothes were not made for fashion but rather for commodity.



  • Would you believe the bra wasn't patented until 1914? The bra was created by a young New York socialite named Mary Phelps who grew weary of having her camisole show when she wore a lace blouse. Using handkerchiefs, she designed the first rudimentary bra which she eventually had patented in 1914. Women everywhere loved Mary's new design and the first bra took off in a big way. It was later that a woman named Ida Rosenthal started designing bras with different cup sizes.



  • The year was 1964 and a CANADIAN (woohoo!) company, Canadelle, invented the first Wonderbra. It was designed to "lift and separate" the bust. This line was greatly successful and became modernized by Eva Herzigova's "Hello Boys" ad campaign in 1994. This campaign was ruled indecent by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents because the ads caused many car crashes. Male drivers became distracted. Women were major fans with an estimated sales of 3000 bras every day.




  • Madonna's famous "Bullet Bra" worn during her Blonde Ambition tour in 1990 was designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier and based on an antique breastplate worn by Italian soldiers.



  • Most people think that Whitcomb Judson invented the zipper, but it was really Elias Howe. Elias was so busy inventing the sewing machine that he didn't get around to selling his zipper invention which he called a "clothing closure".

  • When zips in clothing were tentatively introduced to Britain in the 1920's, people were worried about their reliability. To show off the practicality of this device, a huge zip was put on show at the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924. By the end of the exhibition, it had been zipped and unzipped three million times without catching.






  • When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid's right. This tradition has been kept to present day which means women who dress themselves, have the buttons on the left.


  • What is the point on having those small buttons at the end of your jacket sleeve? This tradition was first implemented by Napoleon Bonaparte. He dictated that buttons be attached to jacket sleeves to stop the annoying habit soldiers had of wiping their runny noses on their jacket sleeves.


  • Women across the world started wearing slacks after Marlene Dietrich looked so good in them in the 1930 film, Morocco. The director, Josef von Stenberg, outfitted Dietrich in trousers to emphasize the lesbian tendencies of her screen character.



  • When Clark Gable removed his shirt oncreen to reveal that he wasn't wearing an undershirt, sales of undershirts dropped by 40%.

  • False eyelashes were invented for producer D. W. Griffith. He wanted to enhance Seena Owne's eyes for the 1916 film, Intolerance. The eyelashes were made out of real human hair.




  • The modern thong was supposedly invented after the 1939 NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia became enraged that the city's nude dancers were exposing too much flesh. The thong was developed to keep the NYC dancers covered enough to placate the mayor.



  • An item of clothing is considered vintage if it dates back from 1920 to 1960. Anything after this date is considered retro.



  • In the royal courts of India, blue-blooded women used to change their clothes several times a day. They never wore the discarded garments again but gave them to slaves instead.



  • It was the style of 18 century Englishmen to wear pantaloons so tight they had to be hung on special pegs that held them open, allowing the wearer to jum pdown into them. This was the only way fashionable gemtlemen could get their trousers to fit properly.

I wonder is that is the same as women lying down on the bed in order to zip up their skinny jeans?



"Fashion does not have to prove that it is serious. It is the proof that intelligent frivolity can be something creative and positive." Karl Lagerfeld.


"I wanted to give a woman comfortable clothes that would flow with her body. A women is closest to being naked when she is well dressed." Coco Chanel








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