Talk:History of Western fashion

message: These breakdowns by period make sense to me (for example, the New Look is in the post-war '40s but belongs with the 1950's).  Please change them if you write an article that best fits a smaller (or larger) time period.
Please add the :Template:History of Western Fashion to pages in this series.PKM 18:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll get a few of these rolling, but a cut-off date of 1795 makes more sense than 1800. Churchh 01:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: And hardly anything happened fashionwise in 1940-1945 (except some wartime economy measures), while 1900-1920 isn't really a unified period, since there were dramatic and radical changes in the last five years.  I'll rejigger these periods slightly. Churchh 04:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'll probably do something with 1795-1820 and 1820s soon, but I'm having browser problems and getting a lot of "Wikipedia busy" error messages, so I'm kind of tired of fighting it tonight.  See what you think of 1750-1795. Churchh 04:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good stuff!  Yeah I was getting those messages on Monday a lot.  I am probably going to tackle 1600-1650 next.  I have some good info on fabric printing in your periods, may add it when I have time to dig up the refs. PKM 03:43, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Cool, running to look...PKM 04:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I tend to ignore what's in wikimedia commons most of the time.  Extreme granularity and insufficient substance. PKM 01:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I've done more work 1890s; meant to post a note here and forgot. PKM 07:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Getting Started

message: I'd like to see some mention somewhere of the waretime economy measures (especially the restrictions on the amount of fabric in clothing, and the patterns on how to take apart an old man's suit to make a dress, etc.)  That stuff has pretty much been forgotten.  But it can certainly be a footnote to a larger period. PKM 19:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1940s

message: Got a good start on this.  I am collecting material for the men's section, but it may not get written for another week or so.  I have a  good scholarly article on Puritan clothing as well somewhere - trying to dig it up from my files. PKM 19:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1600-1650

message: OK, here is the start of my article.  It isn't complete of course, a lot more needs to be added, such as pictures, materials, etc, but this is the start of it. Imperial78
::Good start indeed. I added the little history-box template to your page. Holler if you need anything! PKM 05:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added an intro for consistency. - PKM 20:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I added the start to my 1650-1700 Fashion Page

message: I started the 1880s because the gap in the timeline was bugging me, but it's just a stub and I am not very inspired at the moment.  Please jump in and do something with it if you're so inclined.  Will scan some things from my 1880s Delineator at some point. PKM 18:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ugh.  How frustrating. - PKM 17:05, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After thrashing things through on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), it's kind of half-fixed now (or as fixed as it's going to be in the near future).  Enough to make use of PNG's in articles anyway... Churchh 02:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1880s

message: I've been a bit MIA - my day job has been interfering with my wiki-time (how rude of it).  Traveling on business for a while, attendance may be spotty, but I am not permanently disappearing. - PKM 20:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I do!!! - PKM 19:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Just a Note

message: "Too Much and Too Little, or Summer Cloathing of 1556 & 1796":
:  Oh, I do!!! - PKM 19:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: You might find this amusing

message: Have finally made a proper article at gown (only took me 5 months to get around to it!) and a new one at polonaise.  Could use a good PD image of an 18th century polonaise - used an 1880s one (and have a couple more I can scan from the same Delineator). - PKM 19:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's an 18th-century pic on page 431 of the 1st edition of Blanche Payne's History of Costume, but in my copy a previous owner scrawled red-lines across this....   Pity, because she's wearing an absolutely huge sack over her huge hair (I kid you not). Churchh 03:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ran across a 1st edition of Payne in an antique store yeterday after I read your comment and decided it was A Sign, so I picked it up. - PKM 18:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The second edition may be sounder for pedagogical classroom use, but the first edition has more of a personal voice... Churchh 16:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Got one!  :Image:Polonaise_1770s.jpg.  - PKM 19:10, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, it took some digging, but I found the source of the sketch in Parry.  Added a couple of other things as well and removed the stub tag. - PKM 18:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Related articles

message: Redingote really needs a pic; I only had a male one... Churchh 19:32, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it took some digging, but I found the source of the sketch in Parry.  Added a couple of other things as well and removed the stub tag. - PKM 18:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: By the way

message: I reorganized 1750-1795 in prep for adding men's fashion, and added some costume details.  I have more pictures as well.  I will also start 1700-1750 soon since the research overlaps and the gap in the history is starting to bug me.  :-) - PKM 20:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Added a bunch of images and started the men's section. - PKM 22:22, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Removed the stub flag, it's certainly long enough now. - PKM 19:07, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Eighteenth century

message: Started 1700-1750.  Just an intro and 3 pictures so far, more soon.  Feel free to jump in! - PKM 18:18, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed the stub flag, it's certainly long enough now. - PKM 19:07, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1700-1750

message: I am thinking of splitting this one into a separate article for each decade before I add men's fashions.  It's getting longish already. And I have more pictures.  Thoughts? - PKM 19:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not set in stone.  The reason I named it as I did was that I was trying to salvage a vandalized stub then named "1841 in fashion", and I wanted to keep the only illustration that was there at the time (of 1841), but I actually had more to say about the 1830s than the 1840s.  I still do find the 1840's to be an oddly shapeless fashion period (with few really distinctive characteristics with respect to other periods in the Victorian), as per my edit summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1840s_in_fashion&action=history ...  Churchh 04:36, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1830s and 1840s

message: Started 1795-1820 in fashion#Empire.2FRegency , though it's not really anything to write home about yet... Churchh 21:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Empire/Regency

message: I've uploaded the caricature "Female Opinions on Military Tactics", which could be helpful, since it shows women of a fairly wide range of social classes.  (Note that some of the older women are wearing out-of-date styles...) Churchh 07:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ooh, there's a good point - we haven't really addressed that in any period older women tend to wear a conservative fashion more typical of their young womanhood (and before modern ready-to-wear, a lot of them were wearing the same gowns). - PKM 17:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have an 1840 illustration of a Johann Nestroy play, showing an older woman wearing something more-or-less 1820-ish, while the younger women show a somewhat corseted and bell-skirted classic Victorian silhouette -- it looks funny now, since the younger women's clothes seem less modern than the older woman's.  Churchh 07:44, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Useful pic

message: I think we should pick one gallery style and stick to it, at least within each article if not within the entire series.  There are two styles in 1795-1820 in fashion and a third one in 1890s in fashion.
Do we want to continue with the captions under each picture, or numbering the pictures and all the captions below? (and if the latter, with the "gallery" command that makes tiny pictures in big frames (hard to see, but quick to load), or with hand-sizing the images?   - PKM 17:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See explanation at Talk:1795-1820 in fashion.  Adding one pic into an already-existing "numbered" gallery is no difficulty, but creating three separate numbered galleries from scratch (with every image having two tags in separate places that have to be correlated, and having to guesstimate an appropriate pixel width for each image thumbnail) was more work than I really felt like taking on when I was creating the Empire/Regency subsection. Churchh 07:27, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am going to standardize on the "gallery" command with detailed captions below, as easiest for multiple people to edit, conservative of space and bandwidth, and easiest to read.  Have started standardizing, will continue over time. - PKM 21:57, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gallery styles

message: Macaroni (fashion) really needs a suitable illustration -- some of the ca. 1760's caricatures I've seen are mind-boggling, but I don't have any as images now... Churchh 17:04, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Got one:  :Image:Macaroni 1773.jpg.  Posting to article now. - PKM 17:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks -- the image itself is usable on Wikipedia, but the whole discussion of it is presumably copyrighted to Yale... Churchh 06:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Gack, I had no intention of posting any of that commentary - my cut and paste must have gotten away from me.  I was just intending to get the three lines down through the date. Absolutely concur, thanks for catching and fixing. - PKM 16:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another pic needed

message: Jodhpur needs a pic, and maybe some editing. Churchh 22:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, meant Jodhpurs .  Churchh 19:01, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would this one do?  (Copyright okay?) - PKM 03:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That link doesn't work for me, but if it was from the 1940s, it wouldn't automatically be out of copyright... Churchh 15:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jodhpur

message: Hi all! 
It's my feeling that we should not choose the names for our categories based on their alphabetization in the next higher category, since that can be changed with little effort.  For example, the :Category:History of clothing (ancient Rome) is categorized in :Category:History of clothing under "Ancient Rome", rather than under "History".  Therefore, it seems like we 
should just choose the category names that are likely to be most intelligible to the average reader and help them find what they're looking for.
People's opinion will differ, but I prefer "Clothing in ancient Greece" to "Greek-era clothing".  The latter is shorter, to be sure, but more ambiguous; I can think of several important "eras" that involved Greeks that might be covered by "Greek-era clothing".  
I hate to delay our recategorization, but maybe we should spend some more time now thinking this through and coming to consensus.  Here's my understanding (which may be grossly wrong!) of our terms.  Nationality to me connotes the citizens of a political entity with well-defined borders, whereas ethnicity to me means a culturally homogeneous and genetically related people that may spill across political borders.  For example, the Polish people were still ethnically Polish, even when they were part of the Swedish, Prussian and Russian nations.  These definitions also seem consistent with the Wikipedia articles linked above.  Culture to me would connote a group of people that share a common viewpoint, even if they're not related genetically, e.g., "goth culture" or "geek culture". There's also possible categorizations by geography (e.g., "Clothing in cold climates" or "Clothing at high altitudes") and by use ("Wedding clothing", "Laboratory clothing", "Clothing for travelling", "Maternity clothing", etc.).  Does it seem reasonable to you all to create these categories as sub-categories under :Category:Clothing, on an equal footing with :Category:History of clothing?
As for "Western fashion", how about "European and American fashion"?  It's long-winded, but it sidesteps the unhappy ambiguity of "Western" and allows for at least a few North American innovations in clothing. ;)  
Finally, regarding "cloak", perhaps we don't need to categorize it by time?  We could categorize it by use (e.g., "travelling clothes") or design catch-all categories (e.g., "Cross-cultural clothing") for such "universal" clothing.   Just an idea. WillowW 20:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In general, article talk pages are for talking about articles.  You might want to use Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories or Wikipedia talk:Categorization or perhaps Wikipedia:WikiProject History instead, and maybe drop a note at the Village Pump.As for the suggestion, I find it excellent.  One thing Wikipedia sorely lacks is sensible categorization.  Personally, however, I would avoid the use of unnecessary punctuation marks: for instance, drop the "(sub)", and say "Design and construction" rather than "Design/construction".  Note that this page is "History of Western fashion" and not "History of fashion (Western)".  :) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Best choices for top-level categories under Category:Clothing?

message: I am still stumbling across missing bits that were not replaced after someone came through and blanked random sections of the History of Fashion series and other clothing articles.  Please watch for these and help me put them back.
I have to say, it was so dispiriting I thought about walking away. - PKM 17:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Great Blanking

message: Started 1900s in fashion.  Still needs expanding, and then we need to tackle 1910s. - PKM 23:35, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 20th century

message: I would like to suggest that we move 1300-1400 in fashion and 1400-1500 in fashion to Medieval costume 1300-1400 and Medieval costume 1400-1500.  I am not convinced that "fashion" as we think of it really applies to European clothing in the Middle Ages.  We can then fill in the earlier medieval periods as we go.
I would like consensus from other editors working on these articles before making the change. 
Can we discuss at Talk:1300-1400 in fashion - PKM 17:42, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Medieval costume

message: An article on WESTERN 1970s fashion should not simply be called "1970s fashion" -- it's misleading and frankly very confusing. I was skimming the article trying to find out about western-African fashion in this time period and only half-way through did it hit me: this is only going to be about the USA and maybe Europe too. 
I really think something needs to be done about the way these naming conventions work.
69.122.65.173 (talk) 05:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Consider this template, for example:
It's called "History of fashion" but, it shows up as "History of Western Fashion" then it links to articles based on time periods ... with no mention in many cases of the western focus. 
Something is very wrong here. 69.122.65.173 (talk) 05:26, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

text: Before the 20th century, clothing styles in non-Western cultures (and also "Die Tracht" or European peasant costumes) tended to be somewhat static in their basic forms (with variations in ornamental details, of course).  The constant cycling back and forth between different basic fashion silhouettes (crinolines to bustles to tight dresses to empire silhouette etc. etc.) was only observed in western fashions, so a treatment based on partitioning the subject into into centuries (or, as the fashion cycle accelerated in Victorian times, into decades) only really makes sense for Western fashions.  For the 20th century, things may be a little different, but if Western fashions influenced non-Western cultures much more than vice versa, then the non-Western fashions should be mainly discussed in their own articles (separate from the main chronological series). Churchh (talk) 00:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The same post was made on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fashion , where there are several responses. - PKM (talk) 02:09, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Titles should reflect the cultural focus of the articles 

message: The entire series of history of fashion articles has names like "1830's in fashion," but the articles are all about European and European-derived fashion and are labeled as part of a series on Western fashion. It seems either the articles need their titles changed or they all need to be globalized tags added. Elliotreed (talk) 18:28, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: See previous section.  If non-western fashions didn't change much from decade to decade around the 1830s, then there is no use writing decade-specific articles about them. Churchh (talk) 14:38, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Globalization of period articles