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Most people put on their outfits every day without questioning the history of clothing as they do it. You're clearly not one of these people, since you've landed on this page! Here's a list of things we still wear today and why we started wearing them. The history of clothing is a very strange story with a lot of twists and turns.
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0:00
If you stop to think about it, everything you're wearing right now, from head to toe, was invented by somebody
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Somebody said, my shoulders are cold, I should put something up there to keep them cozy
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And boom, the shirt was born, or at least the shoulder pads
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But most of us never really stopped to think about how it happened. So, today we're talking about the actual origins of everyday clothing
0:23
Okay, time to tuck in that shirt and straighten those shoulder pads, because we're about to get historical
0:28
goal. But seriously, why did big shoulders go out of style? Pants are one of those inventions that seem both distinctly modern and like they've been around
0:40
since the dawn of time. What else are you going to wear on your legs? Hats? The oldest known pair
0:44
of trousers date from between 3,000 and 3,300 years ago and were found in the tomb of two nomads
0:50
in western China. In addition, a pants-wearing mummy known as the Churchin Man, or Churchies
0:56
to his buds, was discovered in China's Tarim Basin, and dates from around 2,600 years ago
1:01
Obviously, these garments provided protection from the cold, but they were also essential
1:05
for horseback riding, and in fact superficially resembled the riding pants of today
1:10
We also have a few primary sources about pants and pants wearing going back to this period
1:14
The ancient Greeks and Romans favored looser tunics, robes, and togas, and saw pant wearing
1:19
as a sign of barbarism. They wrote about other cultures that favored pants in a condescending and mocking tone
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Unlike today, where we appreciate both the flexibility of pants and the breathability of togas
1:31
Clearly, the concept of pants goes all the way back to the ancient world
1:35
But a lot of our modern-day pant technology developed much more recently. Blue jeans, for example, are only about 150 years old
1:42
They're practically cutting-edge, like iPhones for your lower half. In the 1870s, miners in Nevada were looking for pants that were tougher than traditional trousers
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which, while fancy enough for polite society, tended to tear and rip easily while digging underground
1:55
An outfitter named Jacob Davis tried fashioning some pants out of a strong canvas material known
2:00
as duck cloth, and it worked well enough for him to bring in a collaborator named Levi Strauss
2:05
who ran a dry goods store in San Francisco. Together, they developed and patented the first
2:10
ever pair of pants that were fastened and strengthened by rivets. Yeah, rivets. That word
2:15
just feels strong. By 1890, Strauss switched to using blue denim, which provided additional
2:21
flexibility over duck cloth. That year, he introduced the first pair of so-called 501 jeans
2:27
which are still sold today. You may think blue jeans represent pants in their final and most
2:32
advanced form. But cargo pants are an even more recent innovation. They were first introduced as
2:38
part of British Army uniforms in the 1930s, with the additional pockets intended for storing weapons
2:43
ammo, and rations for the busy traveling grunt. As with jeans, these early cargo pants were made
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of thick, heavy-duty canvas material, providing additional warmth and protection and pockets
2:53
American soldiers who saw their British counterparts in cargo pants quickly took up the style themselves
2:58
and they remain an essential component of the standard US military uniform to this day
3:02
Cargo pants became a wider pop culture trend in the 1990s, with Complex Magazine even dubbing them SUVs for your legs Hey they had to fill a whole magazine every month Not as easy as it sounds You might suspect that t are also a relatively modern invention
3:18
And if you're talking specifically about Metallica concert tees, you'd be right
3:22
But actually, the basic idea of a garment that reaches from the shoulders to the hips
3:26
goes all the way back to ancient Rome, which gave us the tunic. Our present-day tees are more direct descendants of what was known in the 19th century as a
3:34
union suit. According to the BBC, these were warm button-down onesies designed to be worn by both men and women
3:40
In warmer weather, people would sometimes cut these long john-style garments in half and tuck the top part into the bottom part
3:47
The Cooper Underwear Company simplified the process by designing a standalone version of the top part, which they called bachelor undershirts in 1904
3:55
Nowadays, bachelor undershirts suggest a lot more nacho cheese stains. By 1913, the U.S. Navy had adopted undershirts as part of the standard Siemens uniform
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The Oxford English Dictionary claims that the name T-Shirt was actually first coined by great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1920 book This Side of Paradise
4:15
Because, you know, it's shaped like a T, and that's why he's a literary genius. As with shirts, men's suits have been with us for many centuries, but have constantly shifted and changed over time
4:29
In the 1700s and early 1800s, European men's clothes retained a strong influence from the French court and were notably colorful and flamboyant
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Common accessories included wigs, powder, perfume, silks, billowy tunics, frocks, and stockings
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Hmm, some of those sound less like accessories and more like an entire additional outfit
4:50
If you indulged in that style, you would be known as a fop. But around the mid-19th century, an Englishman named George Beau Brummel started popularizing
4:59
a less showy style of dress, preferring full-length trousers and matching or subtly contrasting jackets
5:05
He also stopped wearing wigs and perfume in favor of regular bathing
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Can you imagine? What a weirdo. While the French style tended towards billowing fabrics and bedazzled outerwear, Brummel's
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tailored suits emphasized his natural form and far more closely approximated the men's
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suit of today. If you followed Brummel's fashion advice, you would be known as a dandy
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In a way, you could call Brummel the father of the fit. Go ahead, try it out
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He's been dead for 180 years. He can't do anything about it. The earliest bras were little more than strips of fabric tied around the chest
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and fastened in the back with a pin. Greek and Roman women would wear such garments while playing sports
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or doing any kind of strenuous physical activity. Over time, these simple proto-bras got increasingly complex
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Women wore tightly constrictive corsets under the clothes, some held in place with painfully rigid whalebone inserts
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Apparently, Victoria's Secret is a whale skeleton. The modern bra was developed by New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob
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around the turn of the century and was introduced to the public in 1913
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Jacob's design was the first to include cups that separated and supported the breasts
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though her original design was little more than two handkerchiefs joined by a ribbon Still better than a jagged hunk of whale carcass A hot new trend in New York society toward plunging necklines had proved chaotic for her curvy figure
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which prompted her to invent a more supportive undergarment. Other women shared her neckline concerns
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and soon, Jacob and a friend became the first ever bra manufacturers
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Eventually, she changed her name to Caress Crosby and used her earnings to become a famed publisher
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and patron of the arts. There are several entire videos to be
6:48
made about the history of underpants, or drawers to use the scientific term. But for the sake of
6:52
simplicity, let's limit ourselves to what we today think of as briefs or panties, the cotton kind with
6:58
a separate hole for each leg. This style of underpants didn't exist in any form until the
7:02
1600s, and were first designed just for ladies, to help them avoid accidentally flashing people
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particularly when getting on or being thrown from a horse. The only thing worse than getting thrown
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from a horse is flashing your hoo-ha to everybody on the way down. While underwear was originally
7:17
just for women and found its way to men over time, the opposite is true of leggings. They were all
7:22
the rage in medieval Scotland, but exclusively for men. These leggings would not have resembled
7:28
modern athleisure wear. There were no lululemons in the highlands back in those days. Instead
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they were fashioned from leather or chain mail, making them pretty uncomfortable, certainly less
7:37
than ideal for a sweatpants day if they celebrated those in medieval Scotland. Over time, wool started
7:43
replacing the rougher material. And by the Renaissance era, men began wearing leggings
7:48
underneath other garments for warmth. When you're talking about men's fashion, though
7:58
one accessory stands out as particularly curious, the necktie. You can't put your wallet in it
8:03
It just kind of hangs there, showing off its fancy patterns and getting you into certain restaurants
8:08
Neckties first found popularity in Europe in 1636, when King Louis XIV of France enlisted a group of Croatian mercenaries as a new military unit
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These soldiers wore cravats around their necks to protect them from the harsh elements on the battlefield
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and used different materials based on a soldier's rank. Privates wore cravats made of common lace or muslin
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while officers were made of silk and often featured additional ornamentation. When the soldiers visited Paris, their neckwear became all the rage and inspired their local fashionistas
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in particular because wearing fine fabrics was an excellent way to flaunt your wealth
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Silk remains a common material for men's neckties to this day. Lace has faded from view
8:46
Hats go all the way back to the Stone Age and have likely existed since the dawn of humanity
8:52
There's just something universally appealing about a sharp-looking hat. We do know that the earliest drawing of a hat was found in a tube in Thebes, Egypt
9:00
and dates back to around 3200 BC. And the earliest known hat in existence goes back 5300 years
9:06
to a person known as Utzi the Iceman, who was found wearing a bearskin cap that is so Utzi
9:13
Some of the so-called Venus figurines uncovered across Eurasia also appear to possibly be
9:17
wearing hats. And some of these tiny statues are between 23,000 and 25,000 years old
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This would roughly line up with the earliest development of weaving by Paleolithic hunter-gatherers
9:28
which could explain how early hats were made Modern sunglasses on the other hand are a relatively recent invention mainly because we only recently started to truly understand UV light and how to manipulate it And the Matrix didn come out until 1999
9:41
so there wasn't a huge rush. But glasses designed to shield the face more generally
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go back a good deal further than that. In 13th century China, judges wore glasses
9:50
made of a smoky quartz material that would shield their eyes from view. This kept the legal teams from scrutinizing
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their facial expressions during the trial, and probably helped taking a little nap if the testimony got dull
10:01
The Inuit people also used an early version of sunglasses made from whalebone in the late 19th century
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to shield their eyes from the intensely bright reflection of the sun off of the snow that surrounded them
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basically at all times. Whalebones, is there anything they can't do? Online claims that singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett was the inventor of the Hawaiian Aloha shirt
10:27
are simply not true. The tourist favorite was almost certainly designed by a Japanese woman
10:31
living in Hawaii in the 1920s, who repurposed kimono fabric for use in menswear. The style
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caught on in Hawaii first, and by the 1930s, it had spread to the mainland. Hawaiian shirts at
10:42
first were a status symbol, as only the wealthiest Americans could afford a vacation in the islands
10:46
back in those days. During World War II, as American attitudes toward the Japanese shifted
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the designs and patterns moved away from directly kimono-based imagery and toward more
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conventionally Hawaiian shapes like hibiscus flowers and palm trees. Elvis's partiality to
11:02
the shirts, which he wore in a number of memorable 60s films, further enhanced their popularity and
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cultural prominence. High heels were also originally envisioned as menswear, but not as a fashion
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statement. They had a surprisingly practical use, helping men's feet fit more securely into stirrups
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when riding on horseback. Wearing high heels even when not atop a mighty steed became fashionable
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first among the French. But by the end of the 16th century, the custom was spreading across Europe
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As it was difficult to walk long distances wearing high heels, they also became a status symbol
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demonstrating that the wearer was living a leisurely life free of manual labor and walking
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After all, you only wore flats if you were working the fields. Believe it or not, women didn't
11:44
traditionally wear high heels at all until the early 17th century, and we assume those first
11:49
high heels were made from whalebone. Swimsuits did not exist in any standardized, mass-produced way
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until the 19th century, when the dawn of railroads allowed a lot more people to travel to bodies of water
11:59
and go swimming. Even then, the advancement of swimsuit technology was slow going
12:04
The original suits were cumbersome and still essentially covered the swimmer's entire body
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Some women, desiring even more modesty, would use so-called bathing machines, basically a tiny house on wheels that the swimmer would drag
12:15
into the ocean and use to conceal their bodies. I'd like to see somebody surf in that
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It wasn't until the early 20th century that swimwear became more form-fitting and aerodynamic
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But that took a while. Men didn't start bare-chested swimming until the 1930s
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and even Olympic swimmers wore suits that met decency laws of the day. Beaches also had strict rules about how much of a woman's body
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could be exposed by a bathing suit, with guards actually using a tape measure
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to ensure no one flaunted the rules. Can't have people swimming in bikinis
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What would the whales think