To think people dressed more attractively in the past?

[LaurieFairyCake]

Hats, gloves, tailored outfits - tights, low heels

Now I'm not saying we don't dress more practically with our leggings and our 3/4 linen trousers and baggy t shirts and tops

But only that they don't look as 'smart' as before

I'm trying to imagine the clothes of yesteryear being washed after just a few hours' wear, like so many things seem to be, now.

And the idea of "lovely" hair - which might have been washed once a week. Eurgh. Mine gets properly water runs dark filthy after 2 days and I live in a village with little pollution.

My mum certainly wasn't middle class and neither was there a lot of money around .she grew up in the forties and was beautifully dressed. When she was a young woman of 21 she looked like a film star in beautifully tailored clothes and no it wasn't Hartnell.

She only worked in an office but she had lots of tailored suits, tea dresses, skirts and blouses and coats. So did her sisters.

Clothes were cheaper and made to last. Big stores would lay them away for you till you paid them off. In all of the photos of mum and her friends , everyone was very, very slim. It was impossible to buy lots of junk foods. There was food rationing till well after the war ended.

Ourvye I wash my hair once a week - it's long and dry, washing it is serious effort! It doesn't get filthy either, I think how often you wash it depends entirely on hair type rather than decade!

Yanbu. If I wear a 40s style cotton print day dress people ask if I'm going somewhere nice . As if it takes some massive special effort to bung on a dress!

People should still wear travelling outfits too

My dmum would say YABU as a child of 6 in a poor family in the 40's they had all their clothes off the rag and bone man, had ill fitting shoes or none and went to sleep with their coats on- no bed clothes and they weren't the poorest family around.
Late 50's photos of my mum, when she was married to my dad she wore lovely clothes and looked gorgeous e.g. full skirts, tight tops, nice jacket and peddle pushers.

YANBU about linen 3/4 length trousers or linen trousers of any length- hideous. Everyone can afford to dress reasonably well now too.

YABU using the word "smart" as well. Sounds like my MIL.

By travelling outfit I assume you mean a comfy tracksuit for snoozing on a long plane or train journey

By travelling outfit I assume you mean a comfortable tracksuit suitable for snoozing on a long plane or train journey?

Bikeandrun nooooooo! I was leaning more towards that tweed suit (minus the dead creature!) in Back2Twos post. Of course they'd have to bring back slam door trains too.

My grandad was a ladies tailor in 1930s and 40s and my mum and gran always looked very smart

My mum and Nan always looked smart in their hayday but it took a lot of effort.

Maybe people were more likely to get ready for photos in those days as it was more of a big deal and they weren't able to take 20 shots a minute of people in their everyday attire just walking down the street.

I have travelling outfits. Jeans, t-shirts and jumpers / cardigans. I have hats too - sun hats and winter hats.

The height of fashion am I!

I am in the dress for comfort camp, but dressing for comfort doesn't mean totally lacking in style.

Not cheap, but should be able to be ordered from libraries: John Styles, The Dress of the People, Yale University Press 2008 looks at everyday clothes and how they were worn in the 18th cent, a time when new fabrics - especially washable cottons from India - were transforming British fashions for the wealthier classes, and 'trickling down' to the poor. In the 19th cent, relatively cheap washable machine-spun and woven linens and (more important) cottons from British factories (and new chemical dyes) brought another great change to British dress. Cleanliness was valued by this time, too, even if was not always easy to achive - though 19th century city sanitation, the expansion of commercial laundires and the washerwoman profession (there was a famous washerwomen's strike in the USA in 1881), and institutions such as the Scottish city 'steamie' (communal washouse and informal meeting place for women) did a lot to help.

Poor working people did try to follow fashions, in a limited way, and display (often patronisingly called 'cheap finery') was important in all walks of life. But agree with earlier posters who said that fewer, better quality clothes were the norm because they were expected to last and therefore more economical in the long run - there is the old saying 'only the rich can afford cheap clothes'. As another poster said, clothes were often purchased second-hand, outgrown, out-of fashion or just part worn out, or passed on from one family member to another. It's often not realised just how important second-hand clothing was in the past - employers gave old clothes on to servants, rich people left fancy pieces to friends or favoured servants in their wills, parents' old clothes were cut down for children or stored away for their future use, children's clothes 'handed down', there were market stalls and pawnbrokers selling second hand clothes etc etc. And clothes were often stolen, for immediate use or re-sale.

Don't want to go on, but I think that the OP might also be touching on the whole issue of dress and decorum - what is considered appropriate, tasteful, modest, ladylike, classy, smart, normal and other very, very loaded words, which of course change their meaning over the years...

I've made all kinds of historical clothing for living history (for self and others). Everything from Viking, to medieval, to Tudor, to 17thC, 18thC and early 19thC. Different period corsetry as well. Have to say the late 18thC-early 19th is my absolute favourite to research, make and wear and I had the time of my life hand sewing an 1800 pair of stays. None of the historical clothing we have made over the years works without the foundation garments being accurate for period, as well. Even in the pre-tailoring era, everything was very well cut and often of ingenious construction.

Just restored a Victorian sewing machine and basically all it does is sew in a straight line (couldn't even go backwards to secure seams). When you look at the high end Victorian/Edwardian costume you realise how amazing their skills were, to make them with such basic machines. I also research historical clothing in museums for my work, and so often I look at an 18thC item and the stitches are better than a modern sewing machine can actually manage!

A lot is in the cut and construction, but also clothes simply looked good because women of all classes in the 18thC-19thC, wore corsetry of one kind or another so the clothing hangs better.

Here's my grandma and judging from the badges this will be 1939 or 1940. She made all her own clothes. She had no training in tailoring and she never used paper patterns, just draughted them by hand.

ETA: Oops I cropped someone else off the photo who was wearing a badge to support the RAF, which was from around the start of the War! She will be nearly 40 there.

The little girl in this picture is my grandmother with her grandparents who are going to register her birth when she's about 2.5 years old in about 1921.

They are dressed very well for farmers. Both wearing Tweed suits, I still have the fur wrap.

I think there's been good and bad clothes around for ever.

I do love Edwardian style though – long lean mannish coats, crisp shirts and long hobble skirts.

Also love the Elizabethan look and 1930s and 40s tailoring a la His Girl Friday.

Actually she's about 5 so 1923/1924

Oh and I don't really like grown men in T-shirts and baggy long shorts – you know, dressed the same as their toddler.

But I am queen of the bag-lady comfortable look for working at home: leggings, long T-shirt, random cardigan pulled over it, chunky socks. So I'm just a hypocrite really.

I think it does depend on era.
And as pps have mentioned there are some horrible things as well as lovely ones.

My mum was really stunning in her youth and used to dress up jackie O style with a big beehive of dark hair. But in her downtime or at work she didn't dress like that at all - housecoats and hairnets and lots or nylon.

I love steampunk style and own quite a few things from here
www.pinterest.com/gothicrevival/gothic-revival-the-gothic-clothing-boutique/