Short Stuff: The Style Cycle

The twenty year fashion cycle

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1:30Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and I'm super stressed out. Jerry's there, too, and she's sitting in for Dave, and this is Short Stuff. That's right, about the style cycle, thanks to Popular Science Sartorial Magazine, baracko.com, and not barackobama.com, but baracko.com and earth.com for this information. So the style cycle, if you haven't guessed already, refers to that idea that fashion styles come back in vogue again, to use a fashion term, every 20-ish years. I always thought it was more like 30,

2:05but I think 20 is what most people say. And it's always been this anecdotal observation that most people agree on. But I think recently, I didn't see when the study was conducted, but some researchers from Northwestern University came up with a very clever way to actually study it to see if it's a thing. And they found, like, yes, it is indeed a thing, that fashion exists basically on 20-year cycles, and that fashion designers are very, very lazy by year 20, and they just reach back and start over again.

Studying clothing data over time

2:37Yeah, they did quite a few things for the study. They analyzed 37,000 images of women's clothing, so this is for women's style, from 1869 forward. And this was a big deal. Like, this was presented at the American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Denver. And they didn't just look at pictures, right? They had all those 37,000 images, but that wasn't good enough. No, they found a bunch of runway images from over the decades. They found sewing patterns from the

3:08commercial pattern archive at the University of Rhode Island. So they assembled a ton of images. And then, this is what they did that was so clever. They used data points, starting with the distance from the eye to the neckline, the neckline to the waist, and the waist to the hemline at the bottom of, say, a dress. I think they just studied dresses exclusively. And so, because now they had data points, they were able to quantify this, like how far the neckline plunged or how far

3:44it came up. And so, they were able to watch it over time. And what they saw when they drew each thing in a flip book, it took them forever. And then they flipped through it, you could see the neckline going up and down. You could see the hemline going up and down. And it was about on a 20-year cycle that it did these things, that it repeated, swung back and forth. I'm going to say something that will not surprise you or anyone else listening. My brother used to do flip books when we were a kid. Man, was he good?

4:15Yeah, they were good. They were like stick figure things. Well, that's not true. A lot of them were stick figures. Like, I remember very distinctly a flip book. And of course, I would just eat this stuff up and do my own poor versions afterwards. But like, I remember a stick figure pole vaulter, like running down and pole vaulting. But then, like, my brother was a really good artist. He would, I don't know why, but for a certain period in his younger years, he was drawing like war stuff and people getting blown to bits, like a flip book of a hand grenade, like blowing a guy into pieces.

4:45Yeah, very interesting for such a peaceful guy. For sure. Anyway, that, yeah, just flip book memory. I love, I went to go make one the other day and I was like, forget this. This is going to be hard and take a lot of time that I don't have. So much respect to your brother for that. Yeah, mine were pretty jumpy. So this idea of fashion is that people want to, they want to fit in, but they also want to have their own style. And this also idea with designers that once something

5:16becomes too widespread, that designers are done with it, basically. So it's sort of a give and take idea. It is. So say that, like, mom jeans were a new thing in, like, the 2010s, right? Yeah, they were actually from the 80s and 90s. But to the 2010s, they were like brand new and they were quite revolutionary and daring that somebody would try to rock mom jeans because they've always been looked at as just like frumpy, right? Mom jeans became so prevalent that you could not find women's

5:53jeans that weren't essentially mom's jeans in some way, shape or form. And then eventually the designers are like, we're bored with this. I want to come up with something else. So they do something else, right? That's essentially what you're saying. What this is saying is that the something else they do is jump back 20 years again. Right. And they pull from that. And now all of a sudden, I've just been waiting for parachute pants to come back in, but they won't do it. Yeah, that seems to be one that has resisted. For sure. And I can kind of understand why. But what I'm saying is, it's like the designers,

6:28they come up with new things, but essentially what they're doing is it's like that Shakespeare quote, there's nothing new under the sun. That really applies to fashion design. Yeah, for sure. Should we take a break? Yes, because I'm getting worked up. All right, we'll be right back.

6:58Hey, Chuck. YouTube Premium has become one of those things that makes your everyday YouTube experience a little better, especially if you're a dog owner. Because if you wanted to go find out more about how to train your dog, all you have to do is go on to YouTube Premium, type in dog training videos, and sit back and learn. Yeah, between Gibson and Momo, we're constantly looking up something dog-related, like when Gibson suddenly decided barking at the mailman was his full-time job. Yeah, or Momo likes to chew things a lot. And sometimes it's not always things that she

7:29should be chewing. Yeah, so naturally, YouTube is one of the first places someone might use for training tips. Everything from stopping barking and jumping to getting maybe a little bit better at walking on a leash. But what about dog nutrition, too? You got to know about that these days. And there's an endless world of videos about dog nutrition on YouTube Premium. What foods are actually safe? Is homemade dog food a good idea? Yeah, I mean, look at this one right here. This is veterinarian approved. And look at this. Her name is Dr. Wolf. Are you kidding me? So YouTube has a ton of creators, not just Dr. Wolf, who can help you learn a lot more

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9:12Our mission is 24-7 access to fresh food for all. Hey guys, it's Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know. And that was Jaleah Hemmings. She and her husband created Nourish and Bloom Market. When we decided to open this 24-7 AI grocery store, people thought we were crazy, but our first store was completely community funded. And when your family and your friends bet on you, it hits a little differently. And the city of Atlanta took notice and decided to be a part of the change. But the city actually put dollars behind that change and said if the big box stores won't come,

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Micro trends and fast fashion

10:28And this 20-year rule does have sort of data points that support it at this point because of that study. But they're thinking that that 20-year may be shorter and shorter as we move along. Because starting at a certain point, you know, the five stages, which is you introduce a style, there's a rise, obviously, a peak, then a decline, then it becomes obsolete. But it seems like that cycle is speeding up now, kind of at the rate of people's attention spans almost with the Internet, it seems like.

10:59Yeah, like social media has had a huge, huge effect on this because you can see other people's style. And if other people like that style, they'll pick up that style. And then all of a sudden, there's a trend on TikTok, right? That in and of itself isn't necessarily harmful. It's that fast fashion, like, say, H&M. Well, they have people whose job it is to troll social media, to look for trends. And then H&M designs clothes according to those trends as fast as they can and gets them out to stores.

11:31And the reason they want to do it as fast as they can is because these, what are called micro trends, come in and out in the blink of an eye. So you want to be able to figure out exactly how many you need to make of a thing because you know it's not going to be around very long and you want to get it out to stores as fast as you can. Yeah, and I think one of the ideas is that a micro trend may thwart this 20-year cycle because it doesn't become a really big, huge, widespread thing for a length of time. So we're probably looking at a situation where a TikTok micro trend isn't going to come back in 20 years

12:05because it never even fully registered as a genuine, like, big trend. Right, exactly. The problem is, is the closer and closer we get to a trend reaching back to maybe the day before, when it happens that a trend comes into existence and then comes into existence again as a retro thing, on the same day, the universe will collapse in on itself. That's right. You mentioned fast fashion. This stat is sort of disturbing,

12:36but we produce about 80 billion pieces of clothes a year, and that is a 400% increase from 20 years ago. That's really rough. Yeah, and, like, it used to be very easy to see, like, a 70s look, an 80s look, and it's just becoming harder and harder to pinpoint, like, certainly, like, a decade's worth of look. Yeah, this article points out the Indie Sleaze aesthetic, which is essentially what the Brat Summer aesthetic was based on.

13:08Yeah. And the Indie Sleaze aesthetic only went away from, like, you know, like 10 or so years before, which is way faster than the 20-year rule. I also saw it argued by fashion bloggers that the Indie Sleaze revamp was totally made up by overworked, like, people who have to trawl social media to find new trends, that they just made that up that that was a thing again, and that actually made it a thing. It brought it into existence.

13:38Who knows? But I think that means you have to take that particular example with a grain of salt, because it may or may not prove that things are speeding up too much. I think the other evidence supports it, but that particular trend doesn't necessarily. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, nostalgia drives a certain amount of this. When a new generation comes along, they, a lot of times with its, you know, music or movies and in fashion, they'll look back a couple of decades. Um, but sometimes it comes back in a different form.

14:09Yeah. Like, um, like the, uh, like bell bottoms might come back as bootcut jeans or something like that. So, like, sort of an homage, but not exactly the same thing as it was a couple of decades ago. Yeah, I saw culottes are back in. Is that correct? I don't know. Were they ever in before? I know people wore them, but I don't know that anyone considered them in. Yeah, I don't know. I'm, I'm interested. You're asking the wrong guy.

Nineties minimalism and nostalgic revivals

14:34Yeah, some, uh, some things that have come back, like most decidedly, apparently 90s minimalism is back. And that is, I don't know, it's the best descriptor for it. Cause I went and looked it up and I get what they're saying. Like, it's like kind of basic tees and maybe like cargo pants and, um, just kind of like, uh, like low, uh, low attempt at like dressing essentially. Yeah. I guess that's back in. Yeah. I mean, I think the whole eighties and nineties, uh, I am, uh, maybe shamefully or not into wearing like good clothes when I play golf and like golf fashion.

15:12And there's a trend now there was a trend in golf where like, you know, like tighter pants and, and shirts and things like that. Yeah. But now it's going back to the, the, like baggy pleated trousers and stuff like that. Oh, really? Like this real, real eighties look. Dockers? Uh, I don't know about Dockers, like, uh, but like double pleats even. Wow. Um, apparently denim on denim, the Canadian tuxedo is in. And I've got a little bit of trivia for you. Um, did you know that Bing Crosby invented the Canadian tuxedo, uh, not on purpose, but he showed up at a Vancouver hotel wearing a Canadian tuxedo and, um, was turned away.

15:53Even though he was already Bing Crosby. They were like, you can't wear that. Is that why it became the Canadian tuxedo? I think so. Yeah. Huh. Are you pulling my leg with all this? No, I swear I'm not. That is for real. Cause that'd be a weird one. Yeah. Who could it be? Oh, Chuck will never, uh, doubt Bing Crosby. Yeah. No, it does, it does stink of one of my, um, jokes, but it's true this time. Uh, apparently animal prints are coming back in fashion too. Sure. But have they ever really gone out? No. Again, don't ask me.

16:24Um, and then some things do come back. Lots of stuff does. A lot of stuff doesn't like apparently in the early aughts, um, people were wearing all sorts of nutso neon stuff. I've missed that trend. It looks like a kind of a, a raver thing, I guess. Um, but it wasn't like really in when I was raving. So I think it just, you know, kind of came after that. That they're predicting that that's not going to come back and I can kind of see it. Yeah.

16:54That there's a certain eighties neon thing, puffy neon thing that I don't think I ever really truly saw come back. Remember the, uh, hyper color ones, like the thermal color, like you put your hand on your shirt and it'd leave like a red handprint or something. That was a thing for five minutes. It was. It was very cool though. I never had one of those. No, me neither. Or jams. Did you wear jams? Oh yeah, for sure. My mom made all of my jams. So I had a bunch of different jams. Oh, that's nice. I thought so too. My mom made a lot of my clothes too.

17:26Nice. Because we couldn't afford things from stores. There you go. Whatever the reason, it was still sweet of your mom to not just put a potato sack on you or something. Yeah. And yours. Same. Yeah. Uh, well, since we just both shouted out our moms, uh, fondly, then I think obviously Chuck Short Stuff is out.

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