Print this page A Dress for Every Decade: Mapping the 20th Century

The 20th century brought extraordinary social, cultural and technological change, and fashion recorded it all. This course uses key looks from each decade to explore how Western dress responded to shifting lifestyles, new ideas, industrial change and evolving ideals of identity and modernity. As you move from decade to decade, you’ll build a vivid picture of how clothing reflects the world around it, and how quickly that world can change. The course also invites you to think ahead: in a world still defined by constant change, can we predict what we’ll be wearing in the future?

DELIVERY MODE

Hybrid

(Face to face and online simultaneously)

COURSE OUTLINE

• What is fashion?
• Fashion before 20th century
• A timeline of the history of fashion from the 20th and 21st century
• Context of historical events, inventions, economic factors, style influencers and technology developments that influenced what we wear.
• How do the current trends in sustainability, ‘fast fashion vs slow fashion’, ‘quiet luxury’, and androgenous dressing, influence fashion in the 21st century?
• Can we predict what will be wearing into the 21st century?

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

1. Gain an understanding of the historical events, innovations, economic factors, and social change throughout 20th century that influence fashion and how we dress.
2. Gain an understanding of the style changes that were made in each decade and the degree to which they reflected social change.

COURSE RESOURCES

•  Kimberely Chrisman-Campbell – Worn on this Day, The Clothes That Made History, (2019) Running Press
• Caroline Young – Fashion Quake, The Most Disruptive Moments in Fashion (2022) Francis Lincoln, Quarto Group
• Christopher Breward – Fashion, Oxford History of Art, 2003, Oxford University Press
• Rosemary Hawthorne – The Costume Collector’s Companion, (1998) Arum Press