Research Question: “I am studying the changes in feminine fashion history trends, because I want to find the current events that influenced changes, in order to understand current/future feminine fashion trends and how they coincide with societal changes, such as economics, technological advances, and societal hardships.”
Thesis: This project delves into the relationship between feminine fashion history trends and the cultural outlook, offering insights into how prevailing attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations of a society reflect clothing trends. For example, hemlines were lengthened from the short flapper styles to ankle-length during The Great Depression to symbolize modesty and the lack of celebration at the time, even though longer skirts technically meant more fabric. This relationship between hemline length and economic outlook is known as the “Hemline Index.” By examining the evolution of fashion over time, this project will engage readers who are fascinated by clothing as a form of self-expression and a mirror of societal transformations.
Main Ideas: Each body paragraph will be split into a specific time period; The Great Depression, post WWII, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Ideally, due to their chronological order, each paragraph can build on one another, adding to the reader’s immersion into the topic. Each section will feature specific dates of societal events and the fashion trends that coincide with them, using primary sources of fashion magazines, advertisements, and photographs. I would also like to incorporate quotes from fashion influences of the time, as well as fashion historians and experts, to further substantiate my findings. Academic literature and case studies could also be particularly useful for the pandemic section, as social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok had immense influence on the trends of the time. I also predict that the pandemic paragraph will be the most lengthy and in depth, as I have a passion for talking about micro-trends and more recent fashion-related events that I myself have lived through. I may also use myself as a secondary source due to my guiltiness of consuming previously mentioned micro-trends and the media that surrounds them.