Terms Which Have Disappeared

Inkstainedwretch said:

Does a well-dressed person still look "snazzy"?

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Yes.

BobHufford said:

My Grandma used to say "Horse Feathers" (I assume as a stand-in for "Bull S***"). I haven't heard it since.

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No! It stands for Bull Hockey.

Inkstainedwretch said:

Does a well-dressed person still look "snazzy"?

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Only if he going through the front doors of The Fedora Lounge!

Sharp dressers may be a thing of the past, like fedoras. In the UK, they use the term "smart dress," which I take to mean merely dressed up. "Best dress." Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

BlueTrain said:

Sharp dressers may be a thing of the past, like fedoras.

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As much as it pains me to say it...you are correct sir. Add to that the hipster craze that pretty much cleaned out vintage clothing in all the shops in my AO.

Yet hats are still worn, though not as much as yesteryear, nor in the same styles. Even cowboy hats are different. I doubt one could find a ten-gallon hat like was worn in the 1920s or 1930s. Which reminds me of something. A lot of somethings.

When we were in L.A. a few years ago visiting our son, we went to the Gene Autry Museum (and the L.A. Zoo just across the street). Among the things on display were cowboy styles or fashions from over the years. The last one was from the 1980s. Already the 1980s are in museums!

But what I find interesting and almost remarkable is how styles and fashions do not change more than they actually do. It's a bit like the way Popular Mechanics envisions the future but the future never quite gets here. The clothes we wear today wouldn't look terribly out of place fifty years ago or vice versa. In fact, one could say that they only reason so-called vintage clothes can be worn is because they aren't so out of date at all but only a little old-fashioned. In the same way, our grandparents wore clothes that were a little out of fashion when we were little. But my grandparents were born in the 1870s. Their style, such as it was, seems to have stopped evolving sometime in the 1920s.

With some aberrations, there haven't been any real style changes in my lifetime, only variations in the details and to some extent, the materials. One might think that we are more casual than we used to be and to an extent that is true, but if you grew up in a working class neighborhood where no one worked in an office, you probably wouldn't notice. Neckties and lapels and collars have gone through cycles of wide and narrow, as have trouser legs. Many men were still wearing hats when I was little, including my father, but they were not the hats men were wearing 20 years earlier. There were no fedoras, no straw boaters, no derbies and no top hats. There may have been men wearing them somewhere but not where I lived. But we have my wife's grandfather's straw boater, so I guess he wore them. My grandfather's high laced dress shoes were still in the house when I was little, so I guess he was still wearing them in the 1940s when he died. One of grandmother's brothers-in-law was still wearing shoes like that, too.

Basically, what I'm saying is that you can still buy new clothes to look like it is 1965 but probably not 1925.

Typing a post elsewhere on Fedora, I spit these two out (the first for sure, but probably both have been listed here before, but you never know):

Willy-nilly

Putting on the dog

Mollycoddle (yes, I am watching "The Andy Griffith Show"...)

BobHufford said:

Mollycoddle (yes, I am watching "The Andy Griffith Show"...)

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"Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out." - Ty Cobb

BlueTrain said:

Yet hats are still worn, though not as much as yesteryear, nor in the same styles. Even cowboy hats are different. I doubt one could find a ten-gallon hat like was worn in the 1920s or 1930s. Which reminds me of something. A lot of somethings.

When we were in L.A. a few years ago visiting our son, we went to the Gene Autry Museum (and the L.A. Zoo just across the street). Among the things on display were cowboy styles or fashions from over the years. The last one was from the 1980s. Already the 1980s are in museums!

But what I find interesting and almost remarkable is how styles and fashions do not change more than they actually do. It's a bit like the way Popular Mechanics envisions the future but the future never quite gets here. The clothes we wear today wouldn't look terribly out of place fifty years ago or vice versa. In fact, one could say that they only reason so-called vintage clothes can be worn is because they aren't so out of date at all but only a little old-fashioned. In the same way, our grandparents wore clothes that were a little out of fashion when we were little. But my grandparents were born in the 1870s. Their style, such as it was, seems to have stopped evolving sometime in the 1920s.

With some aberrations, there haven't been any real style changes in my lifetime, only variations in the details and to some extent, the materials. One might think that we are more casual than we used to be and to an extent that is true, but if you grew up in a working class neighborhood where no one worked in an office, you probably wouldn't notice. Neckties and lapels and collars have gone through cycles of wide and narrow, as have trouser legs. Many men were still wearing hats when I was little, including my father, but they were not the hats men were wearing 20 years earlier. There were no fedoras, no straw boaters, no derbies and no top hats. There may have been men wearing them somewhere but not where I lived. But we have my wife's grandfather's straw boater, so I guess he wore them. My grandfather's high laced dress shoes were still in the house when I was little, so I guess he was still wearing them in the 1940s when he died. One of grandmother's brothers-in-law was still wearing shoes like that, too.

Basically, what I'm saying is that you can still buy new clothes to look like it is 1965 but probably not 1925.

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You are right, the last monumental change for men, was going from pantaloons to trousers, and for women, the end of the hoop dress! On the other hand, I think right up to the 1980s, if you were wearing pajamas in public, a police officer would at the very least ask what hospital you had escaped from!

Well, I don't know if it was monumental or not or even significant but I think other, later things were equally significant, but not earthshaking. As it were, some old-timers, or so I am given to understand, never switched to trousers. Anyhow, there are a few garments that I believe are never seen anymore, except perhaps in old movies, and even then, they would have been considered dated. Let's see what they might have been.

Do you know what a frock coat is? I think they may have still been seen in public as late as the 1920s, maybe later. But today, it would be exceptional. I've seen a tailcoat (white tie--formal evening wear) but never a frock coat. I've also never seen a formal day wear type of tailcoat, either, but they haven't quite disappeared.

I've actually worn detachable collars and although they look the same as an attached collar, almost, they are undoubtedly rare. But the are definitely still available.

For women, I'd say that it was as late as the end of WWI that the last significant change occurred, which was the rising of the hemline. Before around 1920 thereabouts, one would never have seen any adult woman's dress shorter than ankle length, give or take a few inches. At some point by the beginning of WWII, trousers for women began appearing and that was significant, too.

The trend might seem to have been a general turn to more casual clothing and I tend to think that's true. But we forget that only a few people would have worn fancy, expensive clothing in the past and that holds true today, I believe. The rest of the herd wore very ordinary clothing only generally conforming to the latest in high fashion. It has been a case of first one thing then another slipping down the scale of necessities until it disappears into the back of the closet before being packed away into the attic where 75 years later someone will open the box and marvel at the antique things inside.

There might be high collars of lace, now yellowed, corsets that look like torture devices or some weird restraints (which is exactly what they were), garter belts, white gloves, hats, fancy embroidered handkerchiefs in flat gift boxes that remain untouched because they were too good to use, and stacks of real linen table napkins. The obsolete men's wear might include an old suit that seems incredibly thick and heavy, a funny shirt that fastens in the back, garters for stockings, perhaps even a hat in not very good shape from being carelessly boxed up and maybe a little moth-eaten.

There might even be more boxes in front with bell-bottom trousers, loud double-knit shirts, tie-dyed t-shirts, body shirts, a wide, white belt, a macramé vest and an army field jacket with a peace symbol on the back. Groovy, huh?

Stearmen said:

You are right, the last monumental change for men, was going from pantaloons to trousers, and for women, the end of the hoop dress! On the other hand, I think right up to the 1980s, if you were wearing pajamas in public, a police officer would at the very least ask what hospital you had escaped from!

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Tangentially related, but you can watch a movie from the early '30s and the men's suits and ties, etc., would basically (with some exceptions) look fine for any event today that called for a suit and tie. But the women's dresses are incredibly dated (with some exceptions) as a woman wearing any of those would look like they were wearing costumes today.

Over the following decades, men's clothes had a few quirky moments - ties really short, shoulder pads very wide, hats, etc. - but in general, what men wore for the last 80 or so years would still work today in a suit-and-tie situation, but only very selected outfits for women from that time period would work today.

For that matter most of what women wear *today* looks like costumes. Such is the fashion racket -- it depends for its survival on near-immediate obsolescence. Eilzabeth Hawes wrote hilariously about this in her 1938 book "Fashion is Spinach."

The title of that book, by the way, is a play on a popular saying of the 1930s -- "I say it's spinach, and I say to hell with it." Taken from a famous New Yorker cartoon, this was a way of criticizing any concept that was puffed up into something wonderful by way of marketing, but which in reality was not all it was being puffed up to be.

LizzieMaine said:

For that matter most of what women wear *today* looks like costumes. Such is the fashion racket -- it depends for its survival on near-immediate obsolescence. Eilzabeth Hawes wrote hilariously about this in her 1938 book "Fashion is Spinach."

The title of that book, by the way, is a play on a popular saying of the 1930s -- "I say it's spinach, and I say to hell with it." Taken from a famous New Yorker cartoon, this was a way of criticizing any concept that was puffed up into something wonderful by way of marketing, but which in reality was not all it was being puffed up to be.

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Two things.

One, in my industry, we refer to a position in bonds that is not meaningful - even if you want it to be - as spinach and while I know how to use it, it never made sense to me until this cartoon. And I've asked and no one ever had a good answer. Thank you, a thirty-plus year mystery is solved (I'm not kidding).

Two, my girlfriend (and every girlfriend I had before her - she doesn't allow me to date now) laments the entire female-fashion-cycle nonsense and its offshoot: how much more expensive - item for item / quality for quality - women's clothes are versus men's. To be fair, my girlfriend, with some thoughtful shopping of classic brands and having no interest in being "fashionable," avoids most of the nonsense. And being from old Yankee stock, she grew up with good basic brands, a respect for a dollar and little interest in fashion - but it does take some thought, work and an ability to filter out the Boys From Marketing to not get sucked into the fashion-churn.

I already mentioned this before but older men's dress clothing (suits, that is, as well as odd coats and slacks) were more oriented to either cold weather or warm weather. Today, though, the usual weight of a suit is referred to as "year-round" or all-season, but the reality is, it's a light weight suit. But since we live and work in temperature controlled (but not by us) spaces and ride in cars with efficient heaters and air conditioners, it works well enough. But I doubt you can get a suit with two pair of pants.

The coat and the pants do all of the work but the vest gets all the gravy.

Tell her to read "Fashion Is Spinach." It's still the best book on fashion vs. personal style for women ever written, and Hawes' update, "It's Still Spinach," written in the mid-1950s, is equally good. Hawes is one of my personal heroines for a lot of reasons, and the clarity of her writing and the razor-edge of her wit are two of them.

Inkstainedwretch said:

Does a well-dressed person still look "snazzy"?

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I know I do...

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away".

I paraphrased this in another thread, and its obsolescence (house calls) pointed out, so I promised it here!

LizzieMaine said:

Tell her to read "Fashion Is Spinach." It's still the best book on fashion vs. personal style for women ever written, and Hawes' update, "It's Still Spinach," written in the mid-1950s, is equally good. Hawes is one of my personal heroines for a lot of reasons, and the clarity of her writing and the razor-edge of her wit are two of them.

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Just read a few pages of it on the internet. She (and I) will enjoy it. I will be shopping for an old copy as a "pop-up" gift for her.

You don't hear finif as much anymore for a five dollar bill.

Though two bits still lives on in the door knock jingle.