I am a dedicated follower of fashion and a great fan of time. The two are, in every way, linked. It is an unavoidable truth that fashions move with the times. It is as true as it is clichéd, and yet still too many question fashion's value in society and many educated people turn their noses up at what it has to say about the era in which it was conceived.
If you’re like me you’ve probably born the brunt of some scathing put-downs at the hands of those who think that by eschewing fashion and dismissing the whole industry as frivolously irrelevant, they are on the path to enlightenment. Well, they are fools. If they can't see how society and fashion are inextricably linked then they are blind.
After the frugality of WWII, the availability and affordability of luxury items changed the rapidity with which fashion was able to evolve. Since then, cultural and technological advancements have accelerated exponentially. The lives of citizens in those days were full of optimism, and those who could remember the parsimony of war wanted a piece of the prosperity for themselves. Rock and roll music provided the soundtrack to the new-age, and television, which at once made the world a smaller, more immediate place, beamed images of Elvis, and later the Beatles around the Globe. Young men wanted to look like the coiffured King, or the Fab-Four, and young women dreamed of being whisked away in the Triumph Spitfire of some bowl-cut-sporting beatnik. The importance of image exploded, but to think that it was an autonomous beast would be erroneous.
Fashion was then, has been since and still is today, influenced by everything else in society. Look around yourself now – what do you see? Everything in your eye line will smack of an era – of a time encapsulated.
So how do all these things relate to what you're wearing? Well, quite simply, they look the same. The six complete post-war decades are all totally definable by the clothes, the architecture and the mod-cons that emerged during their brief tenures. So stark is the contrast between our retrospective images of the seventies and eighties, one might be forgiven for thinking they were separated by centuries, not seconds.
And talking of time, nowhere are the shifts in taste and cultural mood more apparent than in the study of horology. Have you got a watch? Look at it now. When was it made? What does its appearance tell you about the time in which it was designed? I'd wager a whole lot – no matter its cost.
By comparing horological and architectural design the influences that inspired the clothes of the day are apparent. By looking at a watch from the early 20th century you can see that luxury knew no cost and that materials were readily available and employed where possible to enhance the item's appeal. Fast-forward through the twenties and thirties, during which wristwatches filtered down to the masses and designs became more hip, until you reach WWII and the mood changes. Huge, staybrite faces for easy-reading in the dark trenches; webbed straps for durability and cost-cutting; the absence of precious metals due to rationing; the reduction of moving parts to limit necessary repairs... The avant-garde styles of the seventies – a decade that ushered in soft-lines, bright colours and laid-back vibes contrasted with the social-unrest and baulking of tradition that defined the eighties, which saw the emergence of Swatch as a supplier of affordable and, more crucially, cool watches and the advent of truly digital timepieces is fascinating. When people look back on the latter half of the 20th century, the watches, buildings and fashions will provide an insight into the incrementally different societies that sired them better than anything archaeology has been able to offer in regards to humanity's distant past.
I think a lot of fashion's bad-press stems from the speed at which things become obsolete these days. We seem to be flying through endless metres of cloth and unfathomably depressing bank-statements in pursuit of the perfect look – something so current you could stick it in a blender with a litre of orange juice and be left with two of your five-a-day. When the people who pooh-pooh fashion look at what Queen Victoria was wearing in 1837, they'll likely be more than happy to laud its beauty, refinement and elegance. What they don't seem to get, is that in a hundred years time, her coronation gown might look like rags to the aluminium-plated, self-drying, colour-changing jacket wearing kids of the 22nd century who might well cite the leg-warmers of the eighties as the pinnacle of restrained chic.
So next time you get dressed, just think about what your clothes represent. You may not want to make a statement through fashion, but you don't have a choice. Time speaks through the things that it leaves behind, and those things decided the fit of your trousers and the colour of your shoes, so you'd better listen to what they have to say because, as the self-confessed professor of aesthetics Oscar Wilde said; “It is the shallowest of people who don't judge by appearances.”
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