clothing and fashion - events

c. 1155	England	Women's dress in England is influenced by fashions in France and Italy; trailing gowns with tight bodices become popular.
c. 1750	UK, Europe	As the grand tour of Europe grows in popularity, the influence of European fashions in clothes and furnishings is seen in Britain. Men increasingly wear gold buttons and buckles, and ruffles and embroidered waistcoats are also popular.
1773	America	Fashionable colonial women wear corsets.
1790	France	Women's hairstyles in France become elaborate. Some shapes are known as ‘a reclining dog of a hair cushion’ and incorporate flowers and fruit baskets.
1794	Europe	Powdering of men's hair goes out of fashion, after over 100 years of popularity in Europe.
1798	Europe	The invention of a smallpox vaccination causes the decline of beauty patches – stars, moons, and hearts of black velvet or silk – worn by women in Europe to hide pock marks. The location of the patches had taken on meaning; for example, worn at the corner of the mouth, the patch meant the women was willing to flirt; on the right cheek, that she was married, and so on.
1800	USA	The first shoes in the USA designed specifically for the left and right feet are made by shoemaker William Young, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
c. 1815	USA	Women's fashions adopt the stiff corset, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and full skirts, leading to the hoop skirt later in the century.
1849	France	French tailor M Jolly-Bellin invents dry-cleaning.
1850	Bavaria, USA	The Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss makes the first jeans out of canvas in San Francisco, California. They are originally designed for Californian gold miners.
1851	USA	As the USA becomes increasingly wealthy, women's fashions grow more expensive, with much use of silk and velvet.
1874	USA	The first jeans with rivets are produced by Levi Strauss of San Francisco, California.
1880	UK, USA	Soft canvas shoes, known in Britain as ‘plimsolls’, catch on with the increasing popularity of lawn tennis as a sport.
1889	France	The French corset-maker Hermine Cadolle creates the first bra, which frees women from the restrictions of corsets.
1889	UK	The Fur and Feather group, later to become the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is founded in Britain, largely in response to the fact that birds are being killed for the hat trade.
c. 1890	UK	Bloomers, invented in the USA in around 1850 by women's rights advocate Amelia Bloomer, become fashionable in Britain as more women take up cycling.
1906	United Kingdom	German hairdresser Karl Ludwig Nessler introduces the permanent wave for hair styling in Britain. Because of the expense and awkwardness of the process, it will not really catch on until he moves to the USA, where the bob is popular.
1910	Germany	The synthetic fabric rayon is used in Germany for stockings, the first garment to be manufactured from it.
1916	USA	Northam Warren introduces Cutex, the first liquid nail polish, in the USA.
1917	United Kingdom	The need for British women to cut their hair short for war work in the factories leads to a fashion for the bob.
5 May 1921	France	Chanel No. 5 perfume, created by perfumer Ernst Beaux, is launched.
1922	USA	The US magazine Vanity Fair employs the term ‘flapper’ to denote an independent young woman who does not conform to traditional notions of femininity, dresses in a provocative manner, and smokes. Clara Bow, in the 1927 film It, is subsequently seen as the embodiment of the flapper.
1925	USA	The flapper dress, which features a drop waist, becomes a popular women's style in the USA.
1938	UK, Scotland	Y-fronts are available in Britain, manufactured under licence by Lyle & Scott in Hawick of Scotland.
1939	USA	Warner Brothers' designer Leona Gross Lax in the USA develops the concept of bra cup-sizing.
1942	USA	The T-shirt is produced, designed specifically for the US Navy to allow freedom of movement and to absorb sweat.
December 1946	England	Nylon stockings, the first commercial nylon goods to be manufactured in Britain, go on sale in London, England.
1949	Germany	Adolf Dassler designs the prototype training shoe, which is sold in Germany by Addas (which later changes its name to Adidas).
1 February 1949	UK	Clothes rationing ends in the UK.
1955	North America, Europe	Tight jeans for both men and women are fashionable in North America and Western Europe.
1959	USA	The US clothing manufacturer Glen Raven Mills develops fine nylon tights (pantyhose), originally marketed as Panti-Legs.
1961	USA	Barbara Terry, the daughter of a hairdresser, invents the Afro hairstyle in the USA.
1965	UK	The first miniskirts appear in Mary Quant's boutique, Bazaar, in the King's Road, Chelsea, London, England. Affordable and liberating, they rapidly become fashionable throughout the Western world.
1966	USA	A craze for lapel badges starts in the USA.
1966	USA	The miniskirt becomes fashionable in the USA.
1967	UK, USA	Hippie clothes, as sported at open-air rock festivals, influence mainstream fashion, with Afghan jackets, Paisley patterned fabric and beads all becoming popular.
1971	Europe, USA	‘Hot pants’ – very brief skin-tight shorts – become a popular fashion item for women in the West.
1977	USA	Over 500 million pairs of denim jeans are sold in the USA, with Levi Strauss the largest producer. This represents a huge increase over a decade: sales in 1967 were around 200 million.
1980	UK	The New Romantic look, inspired by glam rock, starts to appear, sported by bands such as Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran.
1984	USA	Stonewashed denim jeans appear on the market in the USA.
1984	USA	Oversized men's clothing is popular in women's fashion in the USA, and used clothing stores experience a boom in sales.
1987	Europe, USA	The miniskirt reappears in the fashion world.
1991	USA	Women's fashions in the USA include longer hemlines for skirts, often reaching to mid-calf.
c. 1992	Belgium	The Belgian fashion designers Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, and Martin Margiela ‘deconstruct’ fashion, producing a range of clothes in drab colours and often unfinished in appearance, in reaction against the over-designed fashions of the 1980s.
1993	Europe, USA	The popularity of grunge music establishes a fashion trend for checked shirts, ripped jeans, and combat boots, the latter often worn with feminine dresses.