Period clothing...

[Gareth Hughes]

One more for the ladies, possibly, but this 1957 BBC programme (surprisingly made in colour though there was no means of transmitting it as such at the time) on the history of impracticality in clothing is really quite fascinating, not least for its presumably then-standard presenter, who makes even Brian Sewell sound a bit rough, and the list of participants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSTxIEWAE-w

(worth catching up with part 2, and the others from the same series, available in the sidebar)

 

[LadyArowana]

Thank you Gareth, I loved that ( OK I will admit, particularly the bit about shoes, which all looked quite sensible to me!!! ). Any impracticalities of European dress pale into insignificance when compared to the Chinese foot binding tradition though. Even lower class women were aparently subjected to that, the exception being only communities that lived predominantly on boats.

 

[Moo]

Anyone who found that clip interesting should hunt down a copy of "The Unfashionable Human Body" by Bernard Rudofsky.
He illustrates his thesis with photographs of specially-commissioned models of what the body would be like if the clothes were a true reflection of the underlying anatomy; and a Dureresque drawing of a foot with the big toe in the middle was a particular favourite with our children.

 

[Flyfisher]

Was that Dora Bryan at 2:30?

Interesting that it was made in colour, as Gareth points out, though it would almost certainly have been film because video recording was in its infancy in the 50s. Colour television was still very much at the research stage back then and, although various techniques had been developed, it took a while before a suitable standard was agreed upon, which really cleared the way to colour TV as we know it today - or, more accurately, as we knew it yesterday following the recent advent of the new-fangled digital television wizardry.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Was that Dora Bryan at 2:30?

Certainly was, there's also Ron Moody and Vanessa Redgrave (among others) in that episode, and Benny Hill in another.

 

[Penners]

Dorrris Lengleh Mooah seems to have a thing abight hets.

But surely the revelation that fashion in clothes is invariably silly and pointless is nothing new. I'm quite sure Eve chose a fig leaf not to protect herself from the weather, but to titillate old Adam. And judging by the fact that the human race still exists, she succeeded.