Casual Young People Style Fashion Young People
Teenage Fashion History
Since World War Ii, clothing styles adopted past immature people have been a powerful influence on the evolution of fashion in North America and Europe. The postwar growth of young people'due south spending power ensured that the youth marketplace became a crucial sector of the manner business. The styles adopted by young people, moreover, likewise became an important influence on wider fashion trends. Indeed, by the 1990s the "youth" market place had expanded to comprehend not simply teenagers, only also consumers in their twenties, thirties, and older.
"B'Hoys" and "Scuttlers"
Distinctive fashions for immature people were not unique to the twentieth century. During the Victorian era a gradual increase in young workers' leisure time and disposable income laid the basis for an embryonic youth market, with cities in America and Europe seeing the development of mass-produced goods, entertainments, and fashions targeted at the young.
Young people besides used fashion to marker out individual and collective identities. During the 1890s, for example, many working girls in urban America rejected bourgeois modes of feminine clothes in favor of gaudy colors, fancy accessories, and skirts and dresses cutting to accentuate their hips and thighs. Young working men besides adopted distinctive styles. In the mid-nineteenth century, for instance, the Bowery expanse of New York City was domicile to dandified street toughs known as "B'hoys." According to the socialite Abraham Dayton, "These 'B'hoys' ? were the almost complete dandies of the 24-hour interval," and paraded the streets with lavishly greased front locks, wide-brimmed hats, turned-downward shirt collars, black frock-coats with skirts below the knee, embroidered shirts, and "a profusion of jewelry as varied and costly as the b'hoy could procure" (Dayton, pp. 217-218).
Comparable fashions also appeared in Europe. For instance, in his autobiographical account of life in the British town of Salford, Robert Roberts recalled the gangs of immature toughs known as "scuttlers" who, at the turn of the century, sported a trademark style of "spousal relationship shirt, bong-bottomed trousers, heavy leather belt picked out in fancy designs with a large steel buckle, and thick, iron-shod clogs" (Roberts, p. 155).
Flappers and Campus Culture
The 1920s and 1930s saw the youth market place expand farther. In U.k., despite a general economic downturn, young workers' disposable incomes gradually rose, and they were courted by a growing range of consumer industries. In the Usa, the economic boom of the 1920s besides ensured a budding youth market, while distinctive styles became increasingly associated with the young. The image of the young, female "flapper" was especially prominent. With her sleek fashions, brusque bobbed pilus, and energetic leisure pursuits, the archetypal flapper featured in many advertising campaigns equally the embodiment of chic modernity.
Clothing styles geared to immature men also became more distinctive. From the 1890s sportswear became popular for casual attire. Shirt styles previously worn for sports replaced more formal garb equally a new, leisure-oriented artful surfaced within young men'due south way. Indicative was the appearance of the "Arrow Man," who became a fixture of advertisements for Pointer shirts from 1905 onward. A model of well-groomed and chisel-jawed masculinity, the "Arrow Homo" was a youthful and stylish masculine archetype whose virile muscularity guaranteed a fashionability untainted by suspicions of effeminacy. With the expansion of American colleges and universities during the 1920s, an identifiable "collegiate" or "Ivy League" fashion of dress likewise took shape. Wearable firms such as Campus Leisure-clothing (founded in 1922), together with the picture, magazine, and advertising industries, gave coherence to this smart-but-casual combination of push-down shirts, chino slacks, alphabetic character sweaters, cardigans, and loafers.
Bobby Soxers and Teenagers
During the 1940s the economic pressures of wartime drew significant numbers of young people into the American workforce. Every bit a consequence, youth enjoyed a greater measure out of dispensable income, with U.S. youngsters wielding a spending power of effectually $750 million by 1944. This economic muscle prompted a farther expansion of the consumer industries geared to youth. Young women emerged equally a particularly of import market place, and during the 1940s the epithet "bobby-soxer" was coined to denote adolescent girls who sported a new style of sweaters, full skirts, and saddle shoes, and who jitterbugged to the sounds of large-ring swing or swooned over evidence-business stars such as Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra.
The "teenager" was likewise a creation of the 1940s. Since the 1600s it had been common to refer to an adolescent equally being someone in their "teens," nevertheless information technology was merely during the 1940s that the term "teenager" entered the popular vocabulary. The U.South. advertising and marketing industries were crucial in popularizing the concept. American marketers used the term "teenager" to denote what they saw as a new market of affluent, young consumers associated with leisure-oriented lifestyles. Eugene Gilbert made a particularly notable contribution. Gilbert launched his career every bit a specialist in youth marketing in 1945, and by 1947 his market place research firm, Youth Marketing Co., was flourishing. Gilbert was acknowledged as an dominance on the teenage market, and during the 1950s his book, Advertising and Marketing to Young People (1957), became a manual for teen merchandising.
The success of Seventeen mag also testified to the growth of the American "teen" market. Conceived as a mag for college girls, Seventeen was launched in 1944. Past 1949 its monthly circulation had reached two and a one-half million, the magazine'south features and advert helping to disseminate "teenage" tastes throughout America.
The Teenage Marketplace Explodes
During the 1950s the telescopic and calibration of the U.Due south. youth market grew further. This was partly a consequence of demographic trends. A wartime increase in births and a postwar "baby nail" saw the American teen population grow from ten million to 15 million during the 1950s, eventually hitting a superlative of twenty million by 1970. A postwar expansion of education, meanwhile, further accentuated notions of youth every bit a singled-out social group, with the proportion of American teenagers attending high school ascension from sixty pct in the 1930s, to well-nigh 100 percent during the 1960s. The vital stimulus behind the growth of the youth market, however, was economic. Peacetime saw a reject in total-time youth employment, but a rise in youth spending was sustained by a combination of office-time piece of work and parental allowances, some estimates suggesting that teenage Americans' average weekly income rose from just over $2 in 1944 to around $ten by 1958 (Macdonald, p. 60).
During the 1950s, teen spending was concentrated in America'southward flush, white suburbs. In contrast, embedded racism and economic inequality ensured that African American and working-grade youngsters were relatively marginal to the commercial youth market. Yet, African American, Mexican American, and working-class youths generated their own styles that were a crucial influence on the wider universe of youth civilisation. During the 1930s, for example, young African Americans developed the zoot accommodate mode of broad, draped jackets and pegged trousers that gradually filtered into mainstream style. During the 1950s, meanwhile, African American rhythm and blues records began to option upwardly a young, white audition. Reconfigured equally "rock 'northward' roll" by major record companies, the music was pitched to a mainstream market and became the soundtrack to 1950s youth civilization.
The 1950s also saw work vesture incorporated within youth style. Denim jeans, specially, became a stock particular of teen fashion. During the 1860s Levi Strauss had patented the idea of putting rivets on the stress points of workmen's waist-high overalls commonly known as "jeans." By the 1940s jeans were considered leisure article of clothing, but during the 1950s their specific association with youth civilisation was cemented subsequently they were worn by young moving picture stars such equally James Dean and Marlon Brando, and by pop stars such as Elvis Presley. Levi Strauss remained a leading jeans manufacturer, but firms such as Lee Cooper and Wrangler also became famous for their own distinctive styles.
Global Circulation of Teenage Fashion
The growth of the mass media was a crucial factor in the dissemination of teenage fashion. The proliferation of teen magazines, films, and Television set music shows such every bit American Bandstand (syndicated on the ABC network from 1957), ensured that shifts in teen styles spread quickly throughout the Usa. The global apportionment of U.Southward. media likewise allowed the fashions of teenage America to spread worldwide. In Britain, for example, the zoot arrange was adopted by London youths during the 1940s, the fashion subsequently evolving into the long, "draped" jackets that were the badge of 1950s toughs known every bit "Teddy boys." Behind the "iron curtain," too, youngsters were influenced by American style. In the Soviet Union, for case, the 1950s saw a style known as "stil" develop as a Russian interpretation of American teenage way.
Every bit in the U.S., demographic shifts underpinned the growth of the European teen market. In United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, for example, a postwar baby blast saw the number of people aged under 20 grow from three million in 1951 to over four meg by 1966. An expansion of didactics also reinforced notions of immature people as a discreet social grouping. Every bit in America, economic trends were also vital. In Great britain, for example, buoyant levels of youth employment enhanced youth's disposable income, and market researchers such as Marker Abrams identified the rise of "distinctive teenage spending for distinctive teenage ends in a distinctive teenage world" (Abrams, p. 10). The teen market that emerged in postwar Uk, however, was more than working-class in grapheme than its American equivalent. In Britain increases in youth spending were concentrated among young workers, and Abrams estimated that "not far brusque of 90 pct of all teenage spending" was "conditioned past working class taste and values" (Abrams, p. 13).
European youth style fed back into the development of U.Due south. youth culture. During the mid-1960s, for example, America was absorbed by a British pop music "invasion" spearheaded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. American women'south fashion, meanwhile, was transformed past British exports such as the miniskirt and Mary Quant's chic modernist designs. British menswear was also influential. Surveying the fashion scene in "Swinging London," for case, Time magazine was impressed by "the new, way-out manner in young men's apparel" (Time, 15 April 1966). In autumn 1966 a flurry of media excitement also surrounded the arrival in America of British "Mod" fashion-a fusion of fitted shirts, sharply cut jackets, and tapered trousers, which was itself inspired by the smoothly tailored lines of Italian style.
Counterculture, Race and Teenage Style
The counterculture of the late 1960s and early on 1970s had a major affect on international youth mode. A loose coalition of young bohemians, students, and political radicals, the counterculture shared an interest in self-exploration, creativity, and alternative lifestyles. The counterculture's spiritual home was the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, but films, magazines, and tv, together with the success of rock bands such every bit Jefferson Aeroplane and the Grateful Dead, disseminated counter-cultural styles throughout the world. The nonconformity and exoticism of the counterculture leaked into mainstream youth fashion, and hip boutiques abounded with countercultural influences in the grade of ethnic designs, psychedelic patterns, faded denim, and tie-dye.
The 1960s and 1970s also saw African American youngsters go a more prominent consumer group. A combination of civil rights activism and greater employment opportunities improved living standards for many African Americans and, as a result, black teenagers gradually emerged as a pregnant market. This was reflected in the soul music blast of the 1960s and the success of record labels such as Berry Gordy's Tamala-Motown empire. Soul also picked upwards a significant white audition, and the influence of African-American style on the wider universe of youth civilization continued throughout the 1970s-starting time with the funk sounds pioneered by James Brown and George Clinton, then with the eruption of the vibrant disco scene.
The tardily 1970s besides saw the emergence of rap music and hip-hop culture (which combined graffiti, dance, and fashion). Hip-hop showtime took shape in New York's South Bronx, where performers such every bit Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Wink combined pulsating soundscapes with deft wordplay. Hip-hop style was characterized past a passion for brand-proper name sportswear-trainers, tracksuits, and accessories produced by firms such as Adidas, Reebok, and Nike. Rap trio Run-DMC fifty-fifty paid homage to their favorite sports brand in their anthem "My Adidas." During the 1990s rap impresarios even launched their own hip-hop manner labels. For example, in 1992 Russell Simmons (caput of the Def Jam corporation) launched the Phat Farm sportswear range, while in 1998 Sean "Puffy" Combs (head of Bad Boy Records) launched the Sean John clothing line.
The 1990s and Beyond
During the 1980s and 1990s, a rise in youth unemployment, coupled with the declining size of the Western youth population, threatened to undermine the growth of teen spending. By the beginning of the 20-starting time century, withal, demographic shifts and economic trends indicated that youth would continue to be a lucrative commercial market. Despite a long-term turn down in Western birth rates, the youth population was set to increase during the new millennium every bit the "echo" of the "baby boom" worked its way through the demographic profiles of America and Europe. On both sides of the Atlantic, moreover, market place research indicated that teenagers' spending power was all the same growing.
Teenage fashions as well increasingly appealed to other age groups. For instance, manufacturers, retailers, and advertisers increasingly targeted teenage fashions at preteens (especially girls), who were encouraged to purchase products ostensibly geared to older consumers. Teenage fashions also crept up the age scale. By the end of the 1990s, many consumers anile from their twenties to their forties and above were favoring tastes and lifestyles associated with youth culture. "Teenage fashion" therefore, was no longer the preserve of teenagers, but had won a much broader cultural entreatment.
See also Street Manner; Subcultures.
Bibliography
Abrams, Marker. The Teenage Consumer. London: Press Commutation, 1959.
Austin, Joe, and Michael Willard, eds. Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth-Century America. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Dayton, Abraham. The Last Days of Knickerbocker Life in New York. New York: One thousand. P. Putnam'southward Sons, 1897.
Fass, Paula. The Damned and the Cute: American Youth in the 1920s. Oxford: Oxford University Printing, 1978.
Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business organisation Culture, Counter-culture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Fowler, David. The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage-Earners in Interwar U.k.. London: Woburn, 1995.
Gilbert, Eugene. Advertising and Marketing to Immature People. New York: Printer's Ink, 1957.
Hollander, Stanley C., and Richard Germain. Was There a Pepsi Generation Before Pepsi Discovered It? Youth-Based Segmentation in Marketing. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1993.
Macdonald, Dwight. "A Caste, a Culture, a Market." New Yorker (22 November 1958).
Osgerby, Bill. Youth in Great britain Since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Palladino, Grace. Teenagers: An American History. New York: Basic Books, 1996.
Pilkington, Hilary. Russia's Youth and Its Culture: A Nation'due south Constructors and Constructed. London: Routledge, 1994.
Roberts, Robert. The Archetype Slum: Salford Life in the Beginning Quarter Century. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1973.
Rollin, Lucy. Twentieth Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.
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