Years ago at a friends house one of the visiting kids covered herself in juice. The home mom gave her a T-shirt and washed her whole outfit. When she opened the dryer we all saw one of the socks was caught halfway into the lint filter before it could escape.
I happen to know about my late 1800s ancestors in the rural Midwest because they talked about it: they made most of their clothes (except a men's suit, 3-5 dress shirts, and hat) so the women had 7-9 dresses, wearing the oldest ones for everyday including cleaning, gardening, etc. The kids had hand-me-downs as well as newly made outfits 'as needed' so the numbers varied but if a kid showed up to school repeating the same shirt or dress within a week, they were considered 'poor.' Since the wash was done once a week, having just over a week's worth of dress was considered practical. The other way I have of telling how much clothing the ladies had was that I still have their furniture: the chifforobe holds about 7 hanging dresses and 4 stacks of accessories. They also had a 4-door chest of drawers for undergarments, etc.
Our relationship with clothing has drastically changed since the 1960s. My mother and father, both born in the late 1920s were about the same. But as children they had fewer changes. Even in the 1960s, when I was a kid when we came home from school we changed into our play clothes. Here in the northeast we had heavier items for winter as opposed to shorts and short sleeve tops for mid summer. My father usually had one suit and a sport coat with a few dress trousers in addition to his working gear.
@@kitefan1 I was born in 1970. I remember distinctly having a drawer for play clothes that I would wear for playing outside. The clothes I wore to school were casual enough that I could play in the house in them without it being an issue, but if I was going to go out and ride my bike to a park, I would change just because my parents wouldn't want anything to get torn. I distinctly remember we got a Target in my town in the early 80s and after that play clothes/school clothes were virtually the same.
Both my grandmas lived through the great depression. One was from a more well off family and the other was not. The more well off one had a modest amount of clothes. The other did not. At one point she only owned 2 dresses. She called them her good dress and her chore dress. Both were a hand-me-down and sew your own when you can family.
My mom loved to tell the story of her grandmother (my great grandmother), who was born in 1870 and knew how to do every sort of needlework known to humanity. She had trunks and trunks full of, not only her own dresses from the 1880s - the current day, but also her mother’s old dresses. Those old dresses contained huge amounts of yardage! My mom was a teen during the depression. She’d get the movie magazines, show her grandmother the pictures and ask, “Gram, could you make this for me?” And Gram would say, “Oh, Amelia! I couldn’t possibly make THAT!” And then she’d go into her trunks and a week or two later, she’d have it finished and Mom was dressed in a pretty close copy of whatever Jeanne Harlow or Barbara Stanwyck was wearing! ❤
I'm a millenial, but was raised by my grandparents and always changed into "play clothes" when I got home from school. Its something I actually still do, because its really useful for keeping nice clothes nice. I even have nicer t-shirts I save for when leaving the house. 😅 I'm way too prone to get stains and rips in my clothing, and this helps with that.
I change into house clothes because whatever I did outside of my home I probably brought germs from other people and I like to get my outside clothes washed promptly.
I've also started wearing tank tops under all of my shirts and bras so that I can rewear them a few times before chucking them in the wash. Bras are expensive and wear out the more you wash them!
Me too. If I k ow I don’t have to leave the house until I have an event in the afternoon I don’t put on the shirt I want to wear out, because it likely won’t make it that far and still be clean although patterned things hide this better.
I love how this is about looking at data and addressing how we should be cautious of how we interpret it. I’m bored of the “hey did you know every single person in the past did this thing that was mentioned once by a visibly frustrated man?” Thanks for talking about the spectrums of our ancestors and giving them back their singular humanity.
I was in a convent for a few years. We each had 2 summer habits (white dresses). We wore one for a week, then it went to the laundry. This is in the Australian summer with no fans or air conditioning. We had 3 sets of underclothes, including a T-shirt to soak up the sweat and a full petticoat with enormous pockets. These underclothes would be washed by hand to make them last the week, then sent to the laundry. In winter, we had one black dress. One. That we wore every single day for the full 6 months, with changes of underclothes the same as we did in summer. It wasn't unusual for a habit to last for 15 years or more, and all were made by hand.
Wow! So cool to hear about. Do you know the fabric content of the habits? These days choir robes etc in my church are straight polyester, which while cheap and hard-wearing doesn't sound comfortable for everyday.
@@phenomadology23 They were made out of serge. Probably old serge bought 50 years ago or more, because everything was bought in bulk and stored carefully.
Nuns in convents honestly probably held a lot of knowledge about making fine clothing because some monasteries had cottage industries like lace making, cheese making or brewing beer or wine
@@cecilyerker Some were certainly renowned for it. We made lace for altar linens, but it was more for something to keep the hands busy during Recreation, rather than a business model. You can get a lot done in 40 minutes a day and nothing, not even leisure time, was wasted.
It's also remarkable how much less fabric is in our clothing nowadays. Like, I'm currently wearing a t shirt and a pair of shorts. Two yards worth of fabric, maybe? Compared to a full length full skirt, and a petticoat to match, and a shirt with puffy sleeves, and a jacket over that for a 1900 outfit. I could probably get half a dozen outfits easily out of the same quantity of yardage it took to make one.
"We're basically just wearing underwear all of the time" was somehow not how I was expecting this to end. I really should have though, since human underwear through time is something I find very interesting. It also served to emphasize why dressing like a cartoon character (basically the same outfit all the time) has gotten slowly weirder with time. Because it's kind of literally being interpreted as underwear in terms of what it means for your personal cleanliness!
Hunh. I hadn't thought about the cartoon characters. But I had thought about older stories and fiction about some deceased person being identified by their clothing. If a person only had one or two outfits, hand made or repaired by someone, this is pretty easy.
i live in a country where we wear uniforms from kindergarten to A-Levels. so you can tell that we're never sure what to wear to university or a job without a uniform
My grandfather when he came through Elise Island in 1920 at age 10 had a good suit with 2 good shirts, 3 sets of works clothes, a set of night clothes, a pair of work and good shoes, 8 sets of under things, a toiletry set, picture of his parents, a "repair" kit which included shoe needs and knitting needlrs for socks, a writing/school set, a bible and rosery.
Did he come without his parents? The picture and the repair kit made me wonder. One of my ancestors arrived in the US alone at around the same age, because his father had died on the ship.
@@myladycasagrande863 yes, his sister (10 years older) came over with her husband a year before settling in Seattle. Grandfather came by boat to NY then a train to Seattle without immediate family but with other from his region, so not quite alone.
My dad also came over in 1920 on the ship Kroonland from Antwerp. But he was 3 yrs old with family. Also ended up in Seattle region where I was born and raised.
To weigh in on the "poor clergyman's daughter" scenario (as a modern clergyman's wife): clergy are generally expected to fit in with a socioeconomic class far above what their actual income would suggest. Of course this is highly variable by region and denomination, but the community we're in has a large proportion of people who own two homes and they don't quite understand why we can't afford a gardener and something better than an 11-year-old minivan (supporting two young children on a clergy salary and freelancing musician's income). The dynamic of "Though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room" is real and continues today and I am SURE that was a motivating factor behind those two formal silk dresses per year. Not to say that clergyman's family wasn't financially comfortable, just that they may have had a different standard of comparison than other technically middle-class families. If I had more time, I would find actual numbers because I know they're available!
You could get away with buying other things less often. And the dinner dress would have flexible pieces for different sorts of events--dancing, primarily, though if you're old enough, you can get away without it.
Another angle I thought you might mention is the "central heating" aspect. Wearing multiple layers makes sense when heating is not as common ! I know in my grandmother's rural home, the heating was the kitchen stove and a fireplace.
This is very true! People don't realize how much that changes things. The only reasons why you can see people standing outside in the cold in nothing but shorts and t-shirts (however crazy they may seem) is that they have a guaranteed warm place to go back into. Whereas back in the day you could get frostbite from standing in the edge of a room, far away from the stove or fireplace.
There's a joke in the UK (amongst certain social circles) that in the most aristocratic homes you wear your outdoor layers indoors because the heating is atrocious in these old houses, even now
So true! Although I imagine wood stoves were super toasty hot and effective. also putting your fireplace in the center of a room is far more effective than having it alongside a particular wall. But for many traditional homes without the benefit of either of those, people must have gotten used to staying bundled up a good part of the year.
When I started college in 1974 my wardrobe was dramatically different than that of my roommate and suite mates. The sorority pledge had sooooo many clothes. She actually kept much of her clothing in the trunk of her car because there wasn't room for it in our closets. The coolest, hippy vibe girl had lots and lots of things that looked a lot alike. All of her many pairs of low-rise, bell bottom jeans were virtual clones and her many drapey, halter top, poncho tops all gave the appearance of having been stolen from a middle eastern street market. (Turned out that her parents were CPAs with totally suburban style and she had morphed into cool/hippy girl in the summer before university.) Girl 3 was 'normal'. Her style evolved in semester one from double knit to denim with t-shirts from Sears. I was a first generation in college, working class, sewed most of my own clothes - paid for all of them myself so they were very considered choices - 2 pairs of jeans girl. I made super plain basics and added distracting self-crafted accessories.(vests, hats, bags, scarves...) I had plenty of closet space. I even had a powder blue, double knit, shirt/pants/skirt set for wearing to church. I secretly envied their clothes, and they openly envied mine.
I appreciate that you mentioned the time aspect. The average woman back then was probably a bit faster at hand sewing than today, just because of practice from early childhood but there’s still a huge difference between sewing a full garment and, say, repairing a tear or letting doen a hem.
As someone who has tried MANY times to make their entire daily wardrobe, it's nearly impossible. Even with training! And my grandmother (born in the 1910s) was always impressed that I could do that much.
@@NicoleRudolph yep! And my great grandmother was a ranch owner’s wife and then left him and started her own business while being a single mom. So she’d be doing all this sewing when exactly…?
I hand sew most of the time and make most of my clothes and it is hard. The list of things I could adjust because I lost weight or make because I don’t have something or whatever never ends. Add in knitting or weaving or spinning and I think it is more than a full time job.
Having dealt with years of poverty, making the shift from “wants vs needs” to “stuff I need to live” has been a challenge but also healing. Everything is both a want and a need. I need food, but I don’t want to eat rice and beans every day. Most food could be considered a want. I want cotton shirts because polyester doesn’t breathe properly, so I consider this cotton a need, because if I’m uncomfortable or overheated I cannot function as well and it’ll impact work output. I’m sure arguments can be made for both sides, but ultimately it’s okay to have comfort and efficiency and good nutrition and everything without it being considered purely a selfish thing, or to be considered bad for it to be categorized as a want.
Yes growing up poor taught me this too, and everyone wonders why I'm extremely particular about my budget. I WANT to live comfortably, and it's also been hard to LET myself live like that, because i was a child at the worst of our struggles, a lot of wants were ignored, so i continue to ignore my wants, and it leads to a lot of conflicting anxiety over purchases. But i'm great at giving local shopping advice!!! I know where all the best go-to purchases can be made. Can't find a super particular scent? I got so sick of paying $40 at discount price for my favorite perfume, so i found a local place that had all the ingredients and got them for far less, have a stronger profile, and now i smell like strawberries and cream for less than $15! Thinking hard about your budget is very good. Also accidentally started going plastic free in the cupboard lowkey, because i found a market that has all their dry ingredients in scooping bins, so you're expected to bring a container or just have to put it in a plastic bag, the prices are incredibly just, and it's a local business so i talk to the people who's pockets i'm lining when i just need basic food to survive (:
What always comes to my mind when the question of "how many clothing did they own back then" is one section of Les Misérables. Hugo describes how Marius only has two shirts. One that is at the laundry lady, the other one is that he is wearing. This description and others are used to emphasise how utterly poor these characters are! Most of them are the poorest of the poor. (That's why it's also named the miserables.) So yes, unless you were near or actually living in absolut poverty, people owned more than two sets of clothing.
Two sets of visible garments might be reasonable (if less than the average person had), but only having two shirts was as extreme then as it is now. Imagine having only two T-shirts and two pairs of underpants! Sure, it’s possible to get by with so little, but it’s not at all practical.
Human sweat and body oil will rapidly break down a shirt if you only have two in rotation. Even the rate at which it has to be laundered will break it down even further.
in fairness, marius as a character is actually basically cosplaying as poor. we don't get a description of, say, feuilly's wardrobe, who would be a much better indicator of a true poor working class person in that social circle. @@visitingfromsantafe1329
i would not use marius as an indicator of what people normally did. his having two shirts is more to show that he's kind of a dweeb and is portraying his idea of a poor bohemian as, more or less, an act of teenage rebellion. the pontmercys have money, marius just chooses to not use it in order to try and fit in with his chosen social circle - almost none of which are the actual working poor they talk about either. of all of les amis d'abc, only feuilly is an actual labourer... the rest are students of various (and mostly unclear) economic background - not the richest, but definitely not destitute. les amis are Not "les miserables" - they're a bunch of idealistic young guys who are choosing to throw in with and throw down for those who are. what their understanding and estimation of actual poverty and working poor people's lives are like is widely varies in its accuracy. enjolras praises feuilly constantly because of how noble he sees him for being the only one of them who actually comes from the class they're seeking to bring equality to. it's part of why the june rebellion failed - not enough actual working poor were able or willing (for various reasons) to join in the fight, leaving the student organizers vastly overpowered. hence, in the musical, when confronted at the barricade, the army calls out to the revolutionaries that "the people of paris sleep in their beds" and questions why they throw their lives away for those who will not risk standing up with them. so, no, most people, even the working poor, didn't only own two shirts. marius owns two shirts because he is a dork who thinks that's what poor people do, and also a dork who doesn't put much into his personal bearing. i'm pretty sure courfeyrac specifically even gives him shit about not dressing better a few times.
I was a Joann’s a couple weeks ago and a lady in the line asked me if I make clothes. She said making clothes is probably cheaper than buying already made clothes, right? I and another person explained that it actually costs a lot more to make clothes. She was surprised.
The difference is that something I make is not comparable on quality to a cheap import but rather to a higher end brand. At least I am getting closer to that standard!!
BUT, buying clothes that actually fit is more expensive by the time you have it tailored. And good luck if there is not enough fabric for trousers to be long enough.
Right? I can go to the thrift store and find a pair of business pants for under $20 easily, $10 if I'm a common size and not picky. If I find fabric for $8/yd (that would be a good sale) and only need 3 yards (I'm small) that's already more than the thrifted pants plus I still have to do all the work of making them.
...I hold onto clothes a lot longer than is apparently normal. I have still wearable clothing that's...17-18 years old? I've had to mend it, obviously, but my favorite pieces will remain until they literally fall apart.
This reminds me of the Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness from the Discworld book Men at Arms by Sir Terry Pratchett. Sam Vimes is the captain of the City Watch and goes through many pairs of boots. The Boots Theory has been discussed in the news recently by social activists and economists. The theory is based on how poor people spend more money over time on cheap boots that wear out quickly than wealthy people who can afford high quality boots that last for years. It is the most well known part of the discussion on income inequality in the book. However, people often overlook the other half of the theory about Lady Sybil Ramkin, Sam's wealthy fiance. Sam grew up in poverty. His salary in the city watch is basically poverty wages. He is engaged to the wealthiest woman in the city. Sam sees how inherited wealth and reusing high quality clothing and home furnishings makes it easier for Lady Sybil to spend less money than poor people over time, thus maintaining her wealth. You've made this point many times in your videos about how purchasing high quality clothing that lasts longer was a practical economic practice. Thanks for this look into history. I always appreciate your thoroughness, diversity in the people you represent, and citation of sources.
@denisha8596 Yes they do. Pratchett's satirical social commentary is relevant today. I love Lady Sybil. She just DAGF what people think about her. She's kind to everyone.
As someone from a very poor social background, this is exactly true. As a lower class working woman today, this is even more true, you must look fashionable, but not too fashionable. So if you do manage to buy something of good quality you can't keep wearing for 10 years because then you don't look right for your job.
So happy to see what I was thinking already her in the comments - I love that Lady Sybil's fellow dragon rescuers tramped about looking like the local mad woman scarecrow and were however Duchess this and Lady that 😊 Feeling the love for Sir Terry Pratchett.
I did a similar, strictly modern exercise like this a few years ago. I always bought a lower quantity of higher quality clothes. But after about 10 years of "genteel poverty" (very, very low income, but the already purchased inventory of upper middle class), I landed a job that a) paid very well, b) required an "office formal" wardrobe. My "how much things should cost" estimator was set back in the 1980s, so way, way off current pricing. I looked at a lot of those budget spending charts, and found out that if I spent per the charts, I'd buy $2,500 of clothing per year. I then looked at what items I'd need to buy ... and suddenly, spending $200 for a summer dress that could last 3-4 years was NOT too expensive! [I own 3-4 summer dresses for the office, plus skirts, trousers and tops.] This also influenced my fabric purchases for things I sew ... $60 of yardage for a dress is not too much money.
@@inconspicuous-mammalI thrift almost everything and make sure to avoid polyester and poorly constructed clothing as much as possible. It is getting more difficult to do, though!
My mom was born 100 years ago (1924) and can confirm the two dress rule. You wore😢 one dress all week to school and had one better dress for church or dances.
I think you need to consider the possibility that these magazines are telling people to over purchase. I stopped reading magazines years ago. But I remember they tended to give very "aspirational" consumer advice even for people on a budget. For example, magazines from the 00s told you to replace all your bras every year. Something few people actually do.
@@lenabreijer1311 Exactly! My friends are aghast when I tell them that if I can find a well fitting bra for $50 it's a bargain and I'll get three. I definitely wear them until they are no longer serviceable in any way.
@@VeretenoVidsSame with me being a size 36AAA. I think that on average one bra for me is $65.00. I wear them as long as possible. Luckily I don’t have much to support so I can get away with doing that.
@@VeretenoVidsI was lucky that one of the two specialty bra shops in my state was in the city where I lived when I wore an N cup. (Yes. N. They go to P.) If I found something under $75 I rejoiced. And the internet was my friend when I found something that fit, because I would buy that in multiples! Thank god for reduction surgery, but I definitely spent a much higher percentage of my “clothing budget” on bras. I always said if the house was burning down, I would still need to slip into the laundry room and grab all my bras that were hanging up to dry.
@@maryel5398 The back pain you had with an N cup must have been horrendous, unless your back muscles were super super strong and you had a very supportive bra. It hurts to think about it!
I applaud you for driving deep into household incomes and budgets. This world is my day job. Some comments. One major change in household income that is not accounted for by the numbers is that the households in the 1970s and earlier were based on one-wage earners, while later, a growing share of households consisted of two-wage earners. You see the change in the angle of the graph (timestamp 20:47) around 1970. Households have reduced in size over this period as well. Unlike food, clothing is (somewhat) classified as a durable good. You are aware of this because your discussions include stories on recycling fabric. As a child (and oldest daughter), I got hand-me-downs from older cousins. Statistics are good at measuring non-durable goods like food, but the dollars households spend on clothes are closer to measuring the replacement cost of clothes in their wardrobes. Households with children may require a larger budget for clothes unless they have older cousins and their schools have mandatory uniforms. Changes in non-economic characteristics creep into these household cost numbers. Still, this is an excellent summary.
Oh! I like the durable goods concept. There's definitely way more than I could fit into the one video (I desperately want someone to do an entire economic history channel). It feels like every single aspect of calculation changed over the last century! All of this has at least really helped me refocus some of the other research I've been doing on consumerism and class. I was fortunate to take one proper Econ class in grad school at least (and it helps that I love numbers and math).
You are reminding me that expected.lifespan changes dramatically affected household sizes. In 1900 I believe a man's life expectancy was 45 and a woman's life expectancy was 35 due to mortality associated with child birth. Also, pre- penicillin childhood disease child mortality by the age of 5 was about 50%. Yellow fever, Spanish flu, 1957 and 1967 flu epidemics and COVID impacted household size and redistributions of wealth. Social/cultural changes like women working, divorce rates, single mother heads of households also tremendously affect household sizes and budgets. Housing shortages of war time and depression eras, recessions put pressure on household size and budget.
@@eileencarroll6418you might double check what’s represented by the life expectancy numbers. They tend to skew low based on childhood mortality. Iirc, if you survived to 5 years old, you could probably expect to reach at least 50 for most of human history
@@Leigh-says-stuff Here what's close to what I was remembering. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4984780/#:~:text=In%201900%2C%20the%20estimated%20life,women%20it%20was%2033.5%20years.
I know right, I felt that... my current clothing budget per month is around 2 - 5% depending on food costs etc. The rest almost all goes to housing, insurance, internet, etc... :S I try to save a lot to buy new quality items such as a winter coat or shoes, but it's tough. Thrifting helps, but jeez it cost a lot of energy to find good things these days that aren't broken/stained/overpriced etc... I don't have the time to spend every weekend in the thrift shops in the hope to find something :S Some clothes can last you 20+ years, but at some point the clothes don't match the age you know :S I had a lot of clothes from my teens that still looked great, but come on! I can't be taken seriously in some of those when i'm over 30! Plus bodidly changes etc. Having less spending freedom is very tiring these days :(
And %5 on medicine, I'd have to work at least a full day at $15 an hour, just to cover the copay on my prescriptions, and my parents are paying for good insurance. Also, do these people understand how expensive food is? I genuinely can't tell if food is actually overpriced or I just expect it to be free.
What surprises me most is that they show the rich spending almost as much on food as the poor. Even if that includes things like chefs, bakers, kitchen staff, etc., you can still only eat so much!
Some of the budget manuals mention how much more “entertaining” happens as you go up in income so I assume it’s related. Also feeding all of said staff!
Another thing to emphasize how cost has changed is how much fabric is used in the garment! Like you said, fabric is the main cost in garments back in the day. You need 7-9 yards of fabric to make the average "non working" dress back in the 19th century. (And I'd gander a guess at 4-6 for working dresses) But by the 1930s you only need 3-5. I'd say that that nowadays you need 1-5 yards of fabric for that, because we just cover less. Underwear is much more minimal to. We need probably about a quarter to half of a yard to make your average panties, whereas in the 19th century you'd need like 2 or 3 to make underthings. Plus, the corset. We also have simplified the clothes so you need less notions. Surging ranges supreme. No bias tape, boning, fewer to no linings, no horsehair and less modern day interfacing. Clothing has also gotten simpler and easier to make (on average) too. Sweat pants, leggings and t-shirts have become our "at home and working/relaxing" clothes, and those are very simple to make. But even our public clothing is simpler, though it can get more complex. I'd say the average most complex thing we have in our daily wardrobe nowdays is bras, which can get VERY expensive. Especially for plus sized people. That, with fabric costs going down with the rise of synthetics and knit fabrics, I would argue- clothing *is* cheaper than it was in the past. But we are spending about the same because it wears out quickly, and like you pointed out, we spend more on outerwear because the underwear has become so minimal. Thus our wardrobes *seem* bigger, but really we just have different proportions on what we need to function in society. Honestly, I'd love to see more of a balance. I think that more people investing in quality pieces of clothing is great, especially for staples, but having that cheap available clothing is nice too, especially for those of lower income. Of course, this isn't considering how the people who are making these clothes are being paid and treated... which is a whole other mess.
Our relationship with clothing has drastically changed since the 1960s. I have a copy of a 1940s sewing book (reprinted from US Government.) It talks about how to reverse collars, set waists on women's dresses and so on. If you read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (late 1800s), she talks about what they had. They had one nice dress for Sundays, a second pretty good one as adults and work or house dresses. In the Wilder books, they make Mary a wardrobe for her going away to school. They got patterns from Ladies books as you said. The stay at home wife did a lot of the basic sewing. Makes sense that the woman would get the patterns from the dress maker. The dressmaker was probably on-board with it because she probably had enough people to do plain sewing for her. I also have the idea that you could sell your clothing that no longer fit, at least in Europe As always a wonderful video.
The Ingalls family was very poor. Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser has some good actual numbers (and is a great read overall), but Laura's childhood memories edited for the sake of a children's novel with a very clear, almost-propaganda moral should not be taken as a norm for most of middle-class America.
In the 1940s, not only was WWII being fought so there was rationing, but they had endured the Depression before that. My great-grandmother made each of her 3 granddaughters crazy quilts that re-used dresses made from flour sacks when they were girls. I remember my mom & my aunts reminiscing about the original dresses used to make the quilt design.
@@ericajacobs-perkins8036 Thanks for the book suggestion. Yes, I had realized they were pretty poor. If you compare the Ingalls to the Wilders in "Farmer Boy" it was obvious. As I grew older I didn't think so much of Charles "Pa" Ingalls. But I also know that in the Mid-West and South people really did make clothing out of printed flour sacks. I have a flour sack quilt from the unpatterned variety. Fairly prosperous middle-class men didn't have seven suits.
This makes me realise that despite my continous interest in fashion, I have likely always had a quite limited wardrobe because I've been thinking about clothing as something that I don't want to replace frequently. By neccessity, because I have a non-standard body shape, but still there's definitely a conscious choice there. It also makes me more conscious of how I think about my wardrobe. Now to go think on that some more.
You mentioned a woman who sewed her clothes, but had the dressmaker do the fitting, and I actually do something similar! When I make gowns or long skirts, I leave the hemming to a local seamstress. She does beautiful alterations for primarily wedding dresses so she has the space set up for getting the right length and then making the right hem for the fabric I used. It gives my gowns that professional touch I don’t have the space or capability to give.
I'm 45 and grew up in rural Portugal. It changed rapidily but when I was a kid, most folks had the same clothes situation. One good outfit for sunday mass and parties. Usually made at the local seamstress. One good pair of shoes to match. Because in my area Winter wasn't harsh, add a good jacket for Winter. It didn't even need to be that warm. Take a bath, get ready to church, come back and remove the clothes. They weren't washed often, unless visibly dirty or smelly. The shoes were used untill I outgrew them or they no longer looked good. Then they would become school shoes. Later stay at home shoes. Shoes were the most expensive item, and the one we had in fewer quantities. The sunday mass shoes, the shoes for school, a pair to use at home and maybe another pair to work in the fields. Clothes were used and repaired untill no more. Then they would become rags for cleaning or transformed into rag rugs. But despite all this, I had a lot of clothes. Why? Because other than sunday mass clothes that we bought or had it sewed, I got lots of stuff from older cousins. Up untill when I was a young teen, I was still receiving hand me downs. Which really helped, because my parents only had to worry about shoes. I learned to hem pants, repair tears, sew a button. All by hand. This has been an awesome skill that saved us a lot of clothes over the years.
It was pretty much 90% rental (even some of the richest families rented their town property) and building costs and residential land values were pretty low in the C19th and early C20th. Domestic building stock wasn't seen as an especially good investment, most people looking to invest in property put their money into infrastructure like railways, agricultural land and factories, not housing. The other reason was that getting a mortgage on a residential property was almost unheard of, so the market couldn't rely on inflated house prices being carried by the banks (mortgages worked the opposite way to now, you could normally only mortgage a house if you already owned it outright and were trying to liquidate capital)
@@jakecavendish3470 Thank you for the thorough explanation. Still kind of blows my mind how cheap rent must have been. I feel like I spend 40+% of my monthly income on rent.
@@kirstenpaff8946 The number given in the seventies and eighties for budgeting was a third of your income for housing. (I think that was meant to include electric, heat and water.) Decades ago I went to look at an apartment complex and they had a chart of how much they thought I could spend on rent to live there. It was about half my income. This would have meant no savings, retirement, or car bailout fund. I went to a different property.
It is a bit complicated, but here are a couple of things I do know from extensive history research and US Census research from the late 1800s up to about 1950. Here are a few reasons: 1- The fact that we now have 30yr mortgages makes it possible for us to buy houses that are significantly overpriced. If you lived in 1910--30s the mortgage term would only be for 1-5yrs. Usually a down payment of as much as 50% was required too. If you had to pretty much buy a house outright, it could not be as overvalued. 2- We used to not pay income taxes...taxes as a whole were WAY less intrusive and cheaper back then. Think about a middle to upper middle class family now...they pay 30-37% in income taxes alone. You add up other taxes and an average person is losing 50% or more of their income now to taxes. Imagine if overnight you had 50-70% more money added to your pay? That would sure help in being able to pay for things. 3- The gold standard: We used to have the dollar backed by gold. So for every $1 printed there needed to be $1 of gold in that bank vault or in Fort Knox etc. We began weaning off the dollar standard a wee bit in the 30son, and went totally off the dollar standard in 1971...now the Federal Reserve can print fake monopoly money out of thin air. If you take a peek at historical charts related to the value of gold to the value of the dollar, you will see DECADES where there was no inflation or barely any...unlike recent decades and years where the dollar slips daily. If you can maintain the value of your dollar, you can afford more for less. 4- There was more space and newly settled places for folks to fan out too...more availability of housing which drives prices down. Same thing goes for supplies. Old growth wood and quality materials were ubiquitous at prices folks could afford.
Finally, some good effing data 😤 This is genuinely one of the best essays on fashion history I have ever seen. Your work continues to amaze, Nicole! In addition to budgets and how we're essentially "wearing underwear as outerwear" now, I am also interested in how our architecture, work, transportation, and even means of communication affect our clothing. Like the theory that car travel reduced the time that men wear structured brimmed hats. Or how I can't practically wear Japanese traditional clothing in most Western buildings because the sleeves get caught on door handles!
It blew my mind, when I seriously got into historical costuming, that this has been the case for the past 100 years. And then I realised that that's around the time that central heating becomes widespread beyond the richest households.
Since I basically wear a T-shirt and drawstring pants every day now, the answer is a resounding "yep". I'm too old to care about anything but comfort anymore. Well, besides color. I make sure the colors of my "underwear" are fabulous.
My Nana had 2 nice pant suits, 2 out of the house wearing dresses , 2 house dresses (made by her), 4 pairs of shoes- flats, mules, snow boots, sneakers. 2 blouses, 1 winter coat, 1 light jacket for Spring/Fall, 1 tweed jacket, 2 button down sweaters, 1 pair of pedal pushers, 2 pairs of walking shorts, 4 summer tops- 2 cotton, 2 dressier, 2 sets of pj's, 1 bathrobe, 1 pair of slippers, 9 sets of bras and panties, 1 slip. 1 pocket book, 1 fancy clutch, 2 bandanas to wrap her hair when she set it, 4 pairs of earrings, 2 necklaces, wedding ring set, grandmother's ring, When she passed, this is what I remember her wearing for years and it's what we cleaned out of her home. It fit into a medium sized suitcase, minus the shoes and winter coat.
People talk about the size of the closet in terms of how big the wardrobe was, but commonly worn items would be hung on pegs, and there was probably a trunk or drawers that stored things as well.
Homes built into 40's 50's had very small closets. There used to home economists guide on how much clothing a person needed. Usually a marriage trousseau has a number of garments.
Most clothing was stored in chests and other furniture! Only a few suits and dresses needed to be hung up. Underwear, jeans, shirts, etc all were folded and pressed before wearing if needed.
The old 30s wardrobes in my family are about half shelves, half hanging inside. They're each a bit different but roughly that. They're extremely deep though but not much wider than modern wardrobes which so often seem to be too shallow to hang properly. The swallow a lot of clothing.
@@jamespolivka7756 My grandmother would keep out of season clothing in the attic because they lived near a river so the basement would flood. But she told me they would pretty much put away the whole seasons clothing and bring down the next set. They lived in northern Wisconsin so it was pretty cold and the coats were pretty big and they didn't have a ton of room so it was just easier to store what wasn't being worn.
@@krystelhardesty9960 We still do this because our house was built in the 1910, so there are only two closets in the whole house and we haven't had the $$ to buy period appropriate armoires/wardrobes for each bedroom.
I always wear a thin silk* knit, long-sleeved tee-shirt under my wool and cashmere dresses, tops and sweaters, so I seldom have to wash or dry-clean them. It also helps them look nice for longer, deodorant and sweat can damage yarns and alter colors and the body oils and skin cells we shed will soil them. It’s so much easier to throw a silk tee into my machine’s delicate cycle, hang it up and have it dry overnight than to hand-wash woolies. I wear a clean, fresh one every day in winter and often, silk Long John pants, too). I have very bad back pain and just can’t really hand-washing my woolies since this injury, and they take at least two days and a lot of flat space to dry. So, when mine need it, I take them to the dry-cleaners. I steam them, air them in front of my big fan, and spot-clean them as necessary to keep them fresh. Here in California, we have much more eco-friendly dry-cleaning processes than ever, most are really “wet cleaning”, chemical-free ones (PCE is completely banned here, too). But, it’s still expensive, uses gas to drive there, and is a hassle, so I try to keep my dry-cleaning to a minimum. *Silk because I can’t wear synthetic fibers and cotton is too hot. A silk/rayon blend, as some Amazon ones have, work ok, too, they’re very breathable and rayon is not a plastic (to which I’m allergic).
Hiring clothing was also a big business in the C18th and C19th. Even members of the English upper classes actually rented their finest clothes. In fact there are C18th portraits of entirely unrelated upper class women wearing precisely the same dress which means they either rented them from the same shop or it was a stock prop in the painter's studio
Great video! 👍 Having a ”cleanliness” layer is so underrated. I’ve started wearing basic, white cotton tees under my nicer tops, and they last so much longer. I don’t have to wash the nice ones every week, but can air them out and wear several times. Also, I have a wool winter coat that I bought in the fall of 1999. It’s still going strong. There’s an interesting example in my country: a local woman who was mistress of an estate. She owned over 60 chemises, so they didn’t need to do laundry as often. 😄
It’s so interesting to see this from the perspective of someone who dresses for 4 seasons! Living in a tropical country like Indonesia, the female traditional attire of my area (Java) has just always been very similar in purpose to a shirt (kebaya) and skirt (jarik) with only one inner layer (kemben) and no other underwear between it. If you go back far enough, women and men of all social classes went topless. Thus our outfits are generally more focused on using cloth efficiently, the wrapped skirt did not chafe enough to get damaged so soon. We didn’t really have that distinction of attire we must replace often vs less often. Seniors from the early 20th century would have approximately single or lower double digit amounts of work outfits and several fancy outfits for events.
Thank you for explaining this! That’s so interesting and even though I’ve only worn modern clothing it’s more relatable to how I dressed in the subtropical climate I grew up in. It was somewhere in between the two approaches. Most items in our wardrobe can be worn all year. We do have warm layers to add in winter and cooler clothes for summer but they’re most often combined with the clothes we wear all year to make an outfit
the level of joy i feel when u post a new historical fashion deep dive is unmatched. you are an INCREDIBLE script writer and researcher. i am obsessed with how u present information!
My family has always worked with a budget. My Grandmother’s budget, which I have framed in my office, is my guide. My Grandfather was a Senior Military Officer and my Grandmother owned an Interior Decorator Company. The budget I have has nothing about clothing, but I knew my Grandmother always had a fine wardrobe. Her monthly income was $300. This is 1940’s. The top line was on Temple Dues (Tithe) $30. The next line was Savings and Stock at $30. Her favorite stock was AT&T. Household budget was $50, which was food, wine, entertainment fund and “children’s needs”. She also spent $75 to buy items for her supplies and items for her Interior Decorating Company. After these major budget lines, was just set aside for future use. My current budget may have larger numbers as income (based on inflation) but the %’s are still the same. I don’t buy AT&T, but I still do invest. My family has always tried to avoid debt, which has made generations live comfortably. We were never ashamed to admit we could not afford XYZ, and stuck to our budgets.
fun fact about modern incomes... if you remove the top 10 individuals (not 10%, just ten people!) from the calculation of average income, the total drops by about ten thousand dollars, and drops by almost half with the top 1000 individuals removed from the sample. i'd be curious to see equivalent figures shown for other decades, and how that might impact our understanding of how much people were spending on various things compared to how much they had to spend
it's good that you point out that inflation calculators are of very limited use in this, and that now to then isn't really comparing apples to apples. firsthand observance of older relatives in my youth would suggest that we do own more clothing at any given time, and also replace our clothing more rapidly. i had one comfortable middle class grandmother and one who was very well to do. the rich granny owned more clothing by far than the other one, and she replaced garments to follow fashion far more often. even so, her daily and formal clothing all fit into her (large for the time and place) walk-in closet plus a large chest of drawers. that excludes her winter coat(s) and furs, which were in a separate coat closet, and accessories such as hats, gloves, etc. mid-class granny had all of her clothes in an armoire except her coats (1 summer, 1 winter) and her undergarments and night clothing, which were in a chest of drawers also. so, despite very different incomes and lifestyles, not that different storage capacity. the real difference between them lay in numbers of specialised attire (sportswear and formal gowns), and in how frequently each updated and/or replaced garments. my wealthy gran changed things out seasonally, a couple of times per year. my other gran wore her things until they couldn't be mended or altered to fit anymore or became shabby. as children, my wealthy gran's clothing was bought bespoke and/or tailored. middle class gran wore homemade frocks and aprons, and some catalog clothing mainly. but at any stage, all of their main clothing fit basically into a wardrobe and dresser. and over a lifetime, the more typical middle class grandmother probably could have tallied up the number of say, pairs of shoes or suits she had owned; i doubt if many of us today could do the same readily. i couldn't tell you how many shoes i have right now, let alone over my life, and i daresay i have functionally replaced my entire wardrobe many times over, even after giving up fast fashion and trends.
As a person who wore hand-me-downs, patches, and home made items because I was raised poor and who does well enough for herself now that those same techniques while a money saver are also a comfort as well as hobby, I appreciate this video deeply. While patching or making my clothing is more of a bragging right these days, I love the idea of repurposing fabrics and wearing layers so as to wear out the undergarments first. In fact, I just bought a used flat sheet today at the local thrift store to make pillow cases as one set I have has worn to the point of holes and needs to be replaced. The thirft store didn't have any two matching pillowcases, so I chose to purchase the sheet and do the sewing myself. Plus, there will be extra fabric with which to make something else. Perhaps, I can use it to create a t-shirt or maybe a skirt.
My time-blindness is so bad. I saw the notification for this video and started watching it, but then realized I had to leave for something. Now RUclips tells me it's 3 weeks old?!? I swear that had just happened yesterday, but apparently it was 3 weeks ago. Glad I found my way back to it as this was something I was just discussing with a friend. I feel like we put people from the past on a pedestal, but the truth is that they were just humans that had to do the same sweaty, dirty tasks like laundry as the rest of us! It makes sense they'd have more than a single work dress and a single going out dress and a single ballgown, etc. Thank you for all the research that went into this!!
This was so interesting! I've never been a good judge of how much clothing I need because my dad was a retail exec at a department store so growing up we always had many clothing choices. I never thought I had a lot of clothes but friends who saw my closet in college thought so. I took care of my clothes so they lasted a long time so after I left home I didn't need to buy much clothing for myself.I appreciate how lucky I was!
I love the want vs need aspect of clothing finances! I live in PA so there is no tax on clothing. Makes so much sense, like you said, cannot function in society without it!
This is nerdy as fuck in the best possible way! Just came across your channel and I'll be watching more. Also your greens are *chef's kiss*, especially that eye shadow, which I've never figured out
Anecdotally, my mother was a sharecropper’s youngest daughter during the Great Depression. One dress for work, one for school, one for Sunday. And work and possibly school dresses could have been hand me downs. Worked fine, until she grew taller than both her sisters. 😅. My dad was one of thirteen children. I don’t think he paid attention. Lol
I am curious how knitting and crocheting fit this scenario. I know that women knitted and crocheted much more than now and often made many elaborate garments. I have come across gorgeous lacy dress patterns from 1920s, knit skirt and sweater sets from 1940 and 50s, not to mention a plethora of crocheted accesories like purses, hats, scarves, lacy gloves and even jewelry. All women in my family knitted and crocheted clothes using the patterns in the magazines. I recently talked about this to my grandma, and she said that in the 50s and 60s women knitted and crocheted large parts of winter wardrobe for the whole family, and every woman she knew had this skill, which blows my mind.
As the daughter and grand daughter of knitters and a knitter myself, I would say that in my family all the socks and stockings that weren't hosiery (nylons), hats of the beanie/touque type (IE for warmth, not fashion), mittens and winter gloves not made of leather, all sweaters (male and female) were made at home.
I love how you demonstrate how complex and nuanced figuring out the research, the graphs, the reasoning on why a question like do we own more clothing now can be. Most people want simple "obvious" answers...
My mother was born in 1913, in hindsight all her clothes, could easily fit into one medium sized suitcase. She was a teacher prior to marrying my father. My parents shared a small wardrobe, though she had a dressing table with two draws, and mirror as well as a separate full length mirror, he had a chest of drawers. All the clothing they owned easily fitted into three pieces of furniture, with considerable room to spare. I still have a wooden trowser press handed down from my father's father, along with a top hat. My mother sewed many items herself. Winter coats were made from tweed which came from a woolen mill in Cumbria in the north of England managed by her aunt. Everything she had, was of high quality and lasted for many years, the same with shoes. As a child, I had one pair of lace-up shoes for school, a pair of school sandals with crepe rubber soles, and a pair of white summer sandals for best. I also had a pair of sheepskin boots for winter. It was common for people to have a Sunday Best outfit, and to always change into old clothes before doing what were considered 'dirty jobs', thus making clothes need washing less, and made them last longer. I always changed from my school uniform as soon as arriving home. Clothing was always handed down from one sibling to the next, what nolonger fitted, was passed on to friends. Adult clothing was often cut down and material used to make clothes for children. Nothing was ever wasted. My father almost always wore a three piece suit, even to walk the family dog, which he did frequently, several times a day. My mother wore suits, even if she was just going shopping, formal felt hats were very popular. All the curtains in our house were made by my mother, even beautiful red velvet ones with ornate pelmets. It was common for the women of the house to knit as they sat around the coal fire of an evening, mending clothes, and darning socks was also done then. As cardigans and sweaters wore out, they were unravelled and the wool used to knit new items. All this is quite shocking as I consider the vast amount of clothes, shoes, bags and accessories I have by comparison. That said, I tend to buy good quality classic styles that last for many years. I really enjoy viewing videos by Marie-Anne Lecoer who teaches how to dress like a Chic French Lady. She is a fan of having fewer items, but always of high quality, and keeping clothes for years. The mother of a friend, lived in London during the Blitz. She worked for the Police, sending emergency crews to bomb sites. Unexpectedly, she said that when she went home for lunch she would always change her entire outfit. As was common at the time, her wedding dress was made from the silk of a parachute. She lived well into her nineties, and never lost her love of fashion, though her clothing choices were picked from catalogues, rather than shopping in person. As a school girl, I learned what was called, 'Domestic Science,' where the class learned cooking skills, an equal amount of time was spent learning sewing skills. Boys did woodworking, and sometimes metal work. Roles were clearly defined in those days, and career choices were also divided by sex for the most part. As a little girl I considered being a nurse, but not a doctor, because 99% of the time, only men were doctors. Girls, were expected to prepare for marriage and motherhood, rather than careers, though they took on many jobs that were considered non-traditional during wartime, and of course, what they wore to perform those tasks reflected those needs. One of the reasons people had few clothes was, because during and after WWII there was rationing. Babies wore clothing made from bright yellow/orange wool, because traditional white, pink or blue wool was not available at the time.
Great overall conclusions. I did have trouble comprehending the impacts of war time scarcities and rationing in the data. Reusing and remaking fabric made a lot of sense, but the concept of hand-me-downs, especially for siblings in large families seemed to be mysteriously absorbed in budgets. Perhaps it was so universal that everyone assumed passing around children's clothing within families was too normal to mention. As a younger sister I mostly received new panties, shoes and socks up until I started high school when I got a job and bought my own clothes. In 7th and 8th grade, my sister bought me one full school outfit at the beginning of the school year and my parents bought me one school outfit and one Christmas outfit each year. In 7th grade, I received a windfall of clothing abandoned at a family dry cleaners (lots of nice quality wool skirts). In high school, I learned to sew and creatively raided clothes my parents had grown out of to repurpose and re-sew. I could sew a pair of high waist, wide leg trousers in two hours if I had fabric and a zipper in 1974. Between earning money for fabric and brand new bras learning sewing skills made the world of difference to my self esteem. I was motivated to make a new dress for each high school dance. Simultaneously, Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened up trade that reduced clothing prices over the following decades through our current era of fast fashion. When I graduated from college in 1979, I struggled to find a work dress for under $200 in the clearance racks. Still in 2024, it's easy to buy a dress for under $100 that can be worn to an office job. And it's a shame that so few women learned to sew during that period. If trade with China changes due to trade tariffs, war over Taiwan or more shipping glitches, the cost of clothing could change dramatically. OR, are clothing budgets more determined by funds available after necessities are paid for? E.g., as gas prices go up, do clothing budgets take the hit to compensate? Are clothing budgets more a reflection of expendable income? I wonder if the increase in the 1920s is more a measure of prosperity than inflation. Certainly the smaller clothing budgets after the Great Depression made sense. Flour sack dresses speak to the skills and ingenuity of women compensating for available cash being sparingly spent on necessities. My mother's family ate oatmeal three times a day when they had to. They made all their own clothes, window coverings, table linens, hats. Old shoes were repaired and worn to shreds. Coats Were worn to threads. By the time WWII rationing came around, my mother was wearing shoes made of cardboard and sewing dresses from tablecloths and sheets. Thread pulling was a common decorative technique. Women also crocheted tiny lace doilies, collars and cuffs from cotton string. My grandmother crocheted floor rugs from string. She also used a yard stick, cotton string and cut up strips of pillow ticking and fabric scraps to weave rag rugs. She only hand-sewed two quilts. I am proud of the resourcefulness and skills of the women in my family. They found a way to compensate for lack of cash to fill the fairly constant need for clothing. Gosh, I had not intended such a long comment and I appreciate this space to think things through . I have been thinking about how our relationship with China might change in the future and how that might impact how we budget. Thanks for such a stimulating video . ❤❤❤
I forgot to mention all the sweater, hat/scarf/mitten and blanket knitting and crocheting that was done. And when clothing was beyond wearing, buttons, zippers and other clasps were removed and reused.
Not just China, from the 1970s you're seeing major opening up of global markets so people can take advantage of cheaper labor + things like spread of shipping containers massively lowers the cost of moving both finished goods and raw materials around the world. I suspect that this is probably a big part of the reason the price of clothing starts taking up a smaller proportion of incomes from the 1980s onwards in the chart around the 20:00 mark.
When clothing was made in the USA, the sewing operator, paid state, federal tax, into social security, and spent their income here, all of those funds all lost going over seas. To me price did not go down but profit margins wet up. Not to mention impact of pollution of Cargo ships, UN-inspected cargo harboring deadly drugs.
@@proudtobeanamerican After Nixon's negotiation, the claim was that Chinese goods provided enough savings to Americans' cost of living that trade with China had a net effect of stimulating the American economy with lowered costs. There was no foresight to the effects of fast fashion, lack of sustainability or the creation of consumer-entitled expectations to satisfy an insatiable thirst for more cheaper everything and removing the motivation for learning sewing and other skills that were once common to every household.
I am 43 years man, I still remember that my mom had to mend everything including socks because we were poor, our parents used to buy us 1 set of new clothing (a shirt and a pant) twice a year to wear them on big holidays. When clothes got smaller on me they were then given to my younger brother to wear. I remember that I got many comments at school from my peers on still wearing same outfits I wore last school year. Moral of the story if you were poor you owned very little and since 94% of people back then were poor I think they had same experience as I did.
What I'm greatly struck by is how TINY rent expenses were. And one of the first budgets you showed gave amounts for either rent or mortgage (principle and interest), with rent being something like 16% of the total budget and mortgage being under 2%. WTF? That seems like it would be utterly impossible today for anyone who isn't a multi-millionaire.
During my career, which began in the early 80s, an adequate wardrobe for my corporate office was considered to be ten outfits. This meant each outfit would be worn twice each month to the office. But, never having enough basic apparel until I finished university, I always want more. I had to manage throughout my childhood, teen and college years with one each: pair of jeans, pair of shoes, nightgown, thin sweater, and three t-shirts. I never had a jacket or coat, robe or slippers, swimsuit, shorts, sandals and many other things I really needed. Winter and summer I suffered from inadequate clothing, and trying to keep my few clothes clean was nightmare, I was only allowed one small cold-water laundry load per week. (I was a full-time live-in maid, cook and child-sitter 24/7 just for room and board, as a teenager). So, I had to wash my only jeans, single bra and nightie on alternate weeks. I didn’t have enough socks and underwear to go a week, either. This kind of long-term material deprivation leaves a lasting void that almost no amount of weather-appropriate, pretty wardrobe items can ever fill. For the first time in my life, age 64, I can finally afford new things. I was a full-time career professional, but my ex-husband didn’t work, so money was always too tight for more than a very minimal wardrobe. When I hear “minimalism” being so vaunted everywhere, I know it’s the very last thing I’ll ever want.
The depth and nuance of your videos are always such a refreshing standout in a world of "shorts" and reels and attention-grabbing but often simplified at best, inaccurate at worst content. Love your work, Nicole. (and the way your hair, shirt, and the lighting on the back wall all match! Rock that arsenic Scheels green 😁)
The comment of a fridge being possibly part of minimum comfort threw me. My German 1952 school cookbook chastises high school age girls with such lofty dreams as marrying someone who would provide them with a kitchen that had such lavish things as a fridge. (This 3 paragraph guilt trip was followed by advice on how to store raw meat up to ten days in a household pantry.)
I remember my Mom describing to me her first apartment with my Dad. It was essentially 2 rooms, a kitchen just big enough for a two person table where they'd play cards and listen to the neighbors fight, a closet, and a bedroom. I said, where did you put all your clothes?! She chuckled and said, ""well, kid, we didn't have that many clothes back in those days. That one closet contained everything we owned".I picture them climbing onto the bed to get to their dressers, etc. They were lower middle class, high school educated, Depression babies. By the 1960s, they had a walk-in closet, same 2 dressers, a winter coat closet and a dresser for winter sweaters, scarves, etc. 2 sisters shared a dresser and my 4 brothers shared another as well as a closet. I remember being able to scare up a Halloween costume or a dressup outfit at any time, and all the sweaters were wool, mohair, cashmere. Few things, but they lasted forever.
had in-laws visiting over the weekend and a little buzz in the back of my head for TWO days was "Nicole has a new vid!". hurrah, i watched it today... two days late! it was excellent as always.
My parents had an old pair of matching wardrobes. My mum still has them. I think they were made in the 1930s. Sometimes I think about how physically huge and deep they are and how big the chest of drawers they also had were. I think in practice they had similar amounts of storage to my modern fitted wardrobes so it makes sense that they had a similar amount of clothes to store as we do now. We just change the kind of clothes we buy.
I don‘t know if anyone else has pointed out geographical differences, but I don‘t think English people had much, according to my granny (1916-2017). My grandparents had his/hers wardrobes, hers being even smaller than his already modest-sized one… the assumption being a man has broader shoulders, I guess. The „hers“ wardrobe accomodated about 7-8 light hanging garments (hung facing rather than sideways) and shallow shelves on either side held accessories (hats, bags). In the early 80s this is what I stuffed my jeans/tshirt teen wardrobe into. There was also a chest of drawers for foldables (sweaters cardigans) and my grandad‘s shirts and underwear and a low dressing table with 2 drawers for granny‘s underpinnings. Personal belongings were also kept in these drawers, mementoes etc. And some home linens… So they didn‘t have much! Granny did sew all their clothing until the 1960s but continued the lifelong habit of sewing, altering, cutting down etc. until she was 95.
@@Woeschhuesli Interesting. My parents are English but I think things accumulate even for those who didn't spend a lot each year. Just going on the fact that my 83 year old mum still has just about every item of clothing she's bought since the 1970s and her wardrobe is bursting at the seams. She was used to not having a lot of spare money for clothes so everything got kept. Most of it is from the time she was still working and she just hasn't got rid of it. I can imagine someone who followed fashion a little more got rid of things that were no longer in style might only have a small amount of each season. We did have a little wardrobe in one room that had front to back hanging with a small shelf in the bottom. That was a lot shallower and slimmer but I think must have been used in addition to other storage as it was too small to accommodate more than a few dresses. My dad bought it, probably in the 50s but never used it as a wardrobe until it ended up in our bedrooms as kids.
@@Nettietwixt Ah yes, and the same generation as my mom rather than my granny (b. 1916), wartime added to the psychological effect. I think from the 70s onwards when things became a lot cheaper and there was often a bit more disposable income, people who had grown up with little began to over-compensate. And my generation grew up with buying something new almost every week, unfortunately. My own mother didn‘t keep so much bc we moved quite frequently, giving her the opportunity to declutter, while my granny lived in the same small house for 78 yrs… Two of my daughters are also high consumers, one isn‘t and I‘m something of a reformed character lol
I was surprised at how similar my thoughts on clothes are to people in the 19th century. Especially with dresses. At one point all I wore was dresses because it was practical. A single dress cost less than two pieces and I looked more put together. I had cardigans of varying fanciness to dress up my dresses and simple practical shoes one or two pairs one for special occasions and one for everyday. When a dress got old, torn, stained or I just didn’t like it that much anymore it would become my lounging and cleaning dress.
I'm currently rereading the Anne of Green Gables series and the way in which new clothes are diccussed, and fashion in general, has suggested to me the 'they only owned three dresses' back than narrative is not quite true. For instance, when Anne goes to collage, or when her friend character gets married, they seem to have most pieces of new wardrobe made in prepation, which isn't something you would neccesarily do today. Characters also fairly frequantly dicuss getting a new dress thoughout the book, and it seems to be a point of pride and reputation to make sure you and your family and well dressed.
My grandmother had a winter coat a lightweight summer/fall coat a hat, three dress and jacket outfits a pair of slippers, a pair of court shoes and evening shoes a nightie a dressing gown and her hairnets and summer and winter gloves.
My parents were married in June 1935 ... the middle of the Great Depression. At that time, my mother only had TWO dresses. One for everyday wear and one for special occasions. Needless to say, she wore her Sunday Best on her wedding day.
on the topic of wearing more under layers in prior periods, to keep the outerwear fresh…today there are still plenty of expensive fashion items that are difficult or impossible to clean thoroughly, but we now wear them next to our skin. this has put the wearing of hugely detailed garments firmly in the realm of people who can afford to wear an expensive item only a few times before it is soiled. is this making fashion even less equitable across socioeconomic groups?
I'm a capsule wardrobe fan, and know exactly how many socks I have, but that's because I don't want to think a lot about getting ready in the morning. So the "fewer, but nicer things" mentality works well for me. I also have quite limited space, so I generally live that way with most of my items. Generally speaking, 2 coats, a vest, a few options for footwear, and then 12 of each other category is my sweet spot. I also have a smaller capsule wardrobe for costumes for things like Ren Faires and similar events. It only has enough to have a bit of variety in both style and weather. Some of the items also double into my main wardrobe for things like sleep or hanging out at home. For reference, I'm a working class person.
I'm going to be teaching a class in the fall on visible mending (I work in the arts department of my city), and I'm curious to see what kind of participation we end up with. The lower quality clothing is, the harder it can be to mend it and have that mending extend the life of the garment for a decent amount of time (a lot of stretchy fabrics have that problem), but basic repair can still make a big difference for quite a few things.
Today's median income is skewed by the massive rise in income of the "1%." Remove them and median income drops below $40,000 by most calculations. So there's that. Also, housing costs have skyrocketed in the last few decades, to the point that nearly all the young, single people that I know (and I teach college so I know a lot) can't afford even a small apartment on their own. That 25% in the pie chart applied when I was young (back in the Paleolithic, uphill in the snow both ways, all that), when a single person even on minimum wage could get a small apartment for 25-35% of their income. Those days are long gone, and housing can eat up 50% or more for folks struggling on the true median income (minus that handful of billionaires).
Yes, average is affected heavily by the extreme. Median is 50% of the population is above and 50% is below. So a very tiny fraction of a percentage that make billions won't skew it because it's not enough people. Agreed that the numbers are absolutely insane for managing a decent life today and economists have not kept up, though.
I'm fascinated by the percentages of how much different items in a budget cost in different eras... Sure we spend a much smaller perportion of our income on clothes now, but in the pie charts you offer, they spent under 15% on rent in 1919... Now you're lucky if you're only spending a third, and in my area it's not uncommon to spend 50-70% of your total takehome pay on housing
It matters a lot if we are talking pre or post industrial revolution. For most of history, the main cost of a fabric, by orders of magnitude, was in the fabrics since they took so incredibly long to make and usually went through many hands before they were sold to customers. Factory produced yarn and cloth brought those prices down massively. We have wills and inventories from the 16th century, and people might have genuinely only had two or three shirts or shifts and changed them weekly. But that wasn't a matter of choice, if they could have they would have had enough shirts so they could change every day. If you were rich enough, you did. But there is only so much cloth a person can produce by hand in a year, and that has consequences.
When we see the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's", we see the beautiful Audrey Hepburn wear the same Givenchy dress 4 times. Every time it is "fashioned" into 4 completely different styles, and the accessories change with the style. You just don't notice it at the time. When looking at the past records that Nichole displays, it is sad to see that rent (over 100 years) was about 15 % of income.
This reminds me so much of my fashion history classes! I just graduated uni and took a minor in fashion, and I learned so much. I realised that fashion history is my passion but idk how to get a job in it haha. But love the video!
Growing up in the 70s/80s I was raised in the way that my mother was raised, in that my mother would show me an outfit in a catalog, then order the pattern and make it herself . I am very familiar with tailoring shears and measuring tape . all of which was kept hidden away to the point where when we had visitors, no one would suspect that my mother tailored most of our clothing unless one had a keen eye to the quality of fit or asked me to turn my shirt collar to see that were no labels. All traditions are kept until this day, especially the practice of wearing linens under my suits..
For me one of the things that this highlights the most, probably bc it's a personal peeve, is you can see the exact moment at which the nation or at least its lobbyist turned against wealth tax. That moment in the 1960s where the average working class family went from 4% taxes to 13% taxes. And that even in the industrial period there was a concept of the living wage for "minimal comfort." It's a more honest phrasing IMO--"if you pay people less than this, you are denying them comfort," vs minimum wage that says "you're generous if you pay more than this."
I remember back in the latter 1970's reading Seventeen's college issue. Glamour's too. It was full of amazing fall clothing and you just wanted it all.
All through the 1970s our clothing always had that ILGWU tag, was made in the U.S. and very expensive. We had a few school outfits, a couple pairs of loafers, and play clothes. We wore everything until it wore out or we outgrew it. Grandma sewed us our special clothes!
The video aesthetics are beautiful I must say. I love how you have the matching greens against black with hints of dark red from the backlighting, your clothes and your hair. It is visually appealling. Couldn't help but comment. 🙏
Wearing 18th century working class today ■ my grandson approached me outdoors in my meadow garden and said, "Your clothes you are wearing look 'finer than all' of your clothes/other combined." He stated this attire appeared to be farming clothes; I added they were/are for washing dishes and clothes, and for vegetable and flower gardening/gathering. M
How wonderful ❤ Do you like working in your 18th century clothes? I find that our ancestors often had more practical solutions for garments and handiwork than we often do.
@@kagitsune Adding piece to piece ■ I now know what 'pulling strings' is about. I have personally chosen to add these clothes to my homelife; do consider if applicable away from home in the future. It is a quality and design that I choose to share in my life with others. I do very much enjoy wearing these garments; learning how to [b]it the stay..."stay put" makes since now! M
I think what people deem being a holiday suitcase ( 6 tops, 3 bottoms, 3 dresses for women and 1-2 suits for men, one pair of sneaker and one special shoe) was probably the normal size of a wardrobe back in earlier time in the West. Keep I mind fashion used to essentially revolve around new accessories and occasionnally an affluent person would come up with a fancy new outfit
I thank you for bringing up the CW estate inventory search! I have never come across that before and will be a big help in my research and understanding in that regard.
Simple ..... It depends on how wealthy you were. A working class bride in the 1880's might have nothing while an upper class wealthy bride would have a full trousseau. My Grandmother was a professional designer and tailoress in the 1920's. Her books show 8-10 evening gowns per season for the Society clients ..... Mostly silks or fine lawns. She also listed clothing she made for herself or family and friends. As a middle class woman, she did have dance dresses but you definitely notice the simple day suits but often with two different skirts to one jacket. I remember looking in her wardrobe as a child ..... It was a 6' wide full wardrobe ..... It wasn't crammed full but she commented .... "I do have far too many clothes! And I currently have EIGHT hats!".
I call them leggings and wear them under most of my skirts. I also made loose linen sort of a slip but really trousers that I also wear in the summer and it is super comfie.
My dad grew up in the 1940's in a poor family in the American Midwest. His mom sewed their clothes. He had 2 shirts, 2 overalls, 1 pair shoes, 1 pair boots, 1 heavy coat, mittens, socks, a hat, 1 pullover sweater, 1 cardigan. His mom sewed the clothes in the late summer. At the end of the school year his shirts got made into short sleeves and the overall got chopped into shorts unless it was the right size for little brother. Dad was the middle brother so he got hand me downs. Oldest brother got the new clothes
My mom got blessed with a build that was not like her older sisters, so she got new clothing as the hand-me-downs didn't fit her. Being seven years younger than my sister, I didn't wear hand-me-downs either.
I was born in 1955 and until high school, I had school clothes, play clothes, and good (church) clothes. Also school shoes and play shoes. We usually got a pair of sandals for summer.
Same for my family.. we had 1 new church dress every fall,(and hope we didn't grow out of it before the end of spring) and wore that exact same dress along with all the other kids, and this was a fairly well off area.
I remember doing an analysis on clothing in Jane Eyre a long time ago and IIRC she had two black dresses (one silk for best, one wool for every day), a grey silk, and some kind of generic crappy work type dress for messy jobs. That doesn't count cloaks, shawls, chemises etc.
A thought that comes to mind about the 1920's women's clothing spike vs mens is the changing styles at that point. It's true that you can track men's suits and see different cuts every five years, or so, possibly even shorter times at certain points, but men can easily wear a suit for ten years, or longer without being embarrassingly out of date. For women though, especially between around 1910 and 1930, dresses were almost totally different every two years, or so, and it would have quickly become embarrassing to not be wearing the proper hem length. So women had to virtually replace their whole wardrobe and fewer things could be remade or updated than in the decades before.
It certainly makes sense that the fashion revolution of the 1910s-1930s meant that women had a great incentive to replace their wardrobes. However, they tended to have fewer outer layer gaments, and I suspect a lot of dresses started to look worn after a few boiled washings.
@@Velostigmat That's very true, although I suspect that many 20's dresses, partucularly high style ones had to be hand washed. Those fabrics were much to thin and fragile for boiled washing. Even men's cotton/linen shirts back then wear much heavier than ones today.
Imagine how much easier things would be if rent was 15-20% of your income and taxes were like 4%. The economist predictions for the future were based around that and honestly are so depressing just how great they thought everything would be. Including a 6 hour work week.
@@NicoleRudolphWhat do taxes in the USA go to? Like we have taxes in my country, but that pays for OK public education and OK public Healthcare.... what do you get for your taxes if you don't get public Healthcare?
@@courtneyquinn3188the defense budget, social security payments and government subsidized healthcare programs are the top three things US taxes go towards.
@@courtneyquinn3188 Also, taxes in the US go towards rebuilding infrastructure (roads, bridges), schools, town services (including things like libraries), etc. Now, whether or not there is waste involved is a whole nother bundle of coconuts!
Watched up to about 28 minutes of this, got distracted and rant-daydreamed to myself for about an hour, remembered this existed and finished it, and I can confidently say that I thoroughly enjoyed this video and will probably watch more of your stuff after I go to bed cause it is currently 1:45 am :]
I remember as a child my friends laughing at me because I had 3 school dresses and they had at least 5. My mom did wash clothes mid-week, so they were clean, but 5 dresses seemed extravagant. Especially since, as growing kids, we did outgrow them pretty quickly. And, yes, I did immediately change into play clothes when I got home from school.
The two things that made me think about this question growing up were Gogol and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Even now I find it challenging to grasp that The Overcoat is decades earlier, I guess since it's urban and so concerned with work and bureaucracy. But I've also read 20th century stories where people pawn suits and that too seems wild. We have Buffalo Exchange and fancy consignment shops but nobody is taking out loans on their clothing AFAIK.
We mere mortals are not meant to know how many socks we have. The cosmos keeps shifting them in and out of existence to confound us.
😂😂😂
You must be talking about the sock eater. The creature that is the reason for odd numbers of socks in the dryer after washing and drying clothes.
I attribute all my lost socks to The Borrowers…where else would they go? I only take my socks off at home
🧦😂😂
Years ago at a friends house one of the visiting kids covered herself in juice. The home mom gave her a T-shirt and washed her whole outfit. When she opened the dryer we all saw one of the socks was caught halfway into the lint filter before it could escape.
I happen to know about my late 1800s ancestors in the rural Midwest because they talked about it: they made most of their clothes (except a men's suit, 3-5 dress shirts, and hat) so the women had 7-9 dresses, wearing the oldest ones for everyday including cleaning, gardening, etc. The kids had hand-me-downs as well as newly made outfits 'as needed' so the numbers varied but if a kid showed up to school repeating the same shirt or dress within a week, they were considered 'poor.' Since the wash was done once a week, having just over a week's worth of dress was considered practical. The other way I have of telling how much clothing the ladies had was that I still have their furniture: the chifforobe holds about 7 hanging dresses and 4 stacks of accessories. They also had a 4-door chest of drawers for undergarments, etc.
That's absolutely brilliant, thank you! A very interesting insight
Our relationship with clothing has drastically changed since the 1960s. My mother and father, both born in the late 1920s were about the same. But as children they had fewer changes. Even in the 1960s, when I was a kid when we came home from school we changed into our play clothes. Here in the northeast we had heavier items for winter as opposed to shorts and short sleeve tops for mid summer. My father usually had one suit and a sport coat with a few dress trousers in addition to his working gear.
Interesting how kids still think that repeating the same shirt within a week makes you poor
@@kitefan1 I was born in 1970. I remember distinctly having a drawer for play clothes that I would wear for playing outside. The clothes I wore to school were casual enough that I could play in the house in them without it being an issue, but if I was going to go out and ride my bike to a park, I would change just because my parents wouldn't want anything to get torn. I distinctly remember we got a Target in my town in the early 80s and after that play clothes/school clothes were virtually the same.
Both my grandmas lived through the great depression. One was from a more well off family and the other was not. The more well off one had a modest amount of clothes. The other did not. At one point she only owned 2 dresses. She called them her good dress and her chore dress. Both were a hand-me-down and sew your own when you can family.
My mom loved to tell the story of her grandmother (my great grandmother), who was born in 1870 and knew how to do every sort of needlework known to humanity. She had trunks and trunks full of, not only her own dresses from the 1880s - the current day, but also her mother’s old dresses. Those old dresses contained huge amounts of yardage! My mom was a teen during the depression. She’d get the movie magazines, show her grandmother the pictures and ask, “Gram, could you make this for me?” And Gram would say, “Oh, Amelia! I couldn’t possibly make THAT!” And then she’d go into her trunks and a week or two later, she’d have it finished and Mom was dressed in a pretty close copy of whatever Jeanne Harlow or Barbara Stanwyck was wearing! ❤
What a sweet story!
I love your story
Your great grandma sounds like an amazingly sweet woman. Her skills are actually something I hope I can develop proficiently someday. 😊❤
Love it!
What happened to them? I am guessing sadly thrown out over the decades....
I'm a millenial, but was raised by my grandparents and always changed into "play clothes" when I got home from school. Its something I actually still do, because its really useful for keeping nice clothes nice. I even have nicer t-shirts I save for when leaving the house. 😅 I'm way too prone to get stains and rips in my clothing, and this helps with that.
I do this too! As soon as I get home from work, I switch from business casual work clothes to "house clothes" which never leave my apartment.
I change into house clothes because whatever I did outside of my home I probably brought germs from other people and I like to get my outside clothes washed promptly.
I am gen X; I had play clothes, sleep clothes, school clothes and Sunday clothes. This explains why my closet is always overflowing.
I've also started wearing tank tops under all of my shirts and bras so that I can rewear them a few times before chucking them in the wash. Bras are expensive and wear out the more you wash them!
Me too. If I k ow I don’t have to leave the house until I have an event in the afternoon I don’t put on the shirt I want to wear out, because it likely won’t make it that far and still be clean although patterned things hide this better.
I love how this is about looking at data and addressing how we should be cautious of how we interpret it. I’m bored of the “hey did you know every single person in the past did this thing that was mentioned once by a visibly frustrated man?” Thanks for talking about the spectrums of our ancestors and giving them back their singular humanity.
Or the "medevil peasents only worked 61 days a year." Simple cooking would be more labor intensive than what most people do daily.
Yes!!!
Mee too!
I was in a convent for a few years. We each had 2 summer habits (white dresses). We wore one for a week, then it went to the laundry. This is in the Australian summer with no fans or air conditioning. We had 3 sets of underclothes, including a T-shirt to soak up the sweat and a full petticoat with enormous pockets. These underclothes would be washed by hand to make them last the week, then sent to the laundry.
In winter, we had one black dress. One. That we wore every single day for the full 6 months, with changes of underclothes the same as we did in summer.
It wasn't unusual for a habit to last for 15 years or more, and all were made by hand.
Wow! So cool to hear about. Do you know the fabric content of the habits? These days choir robes etc in my church are straight polyester, which while cheap and hard-wearing doesn't sound comfortable for everyday.
@@phenomadology23 They were made out of serge. Probably old serge bought 50 years ago or more, because everything was bought in bulk and stored carefully.
Nuns in convents honestly probably held a lot of knowledge about making fine clothing because some monasteries had cottage industries like lace making, cheese making or brewing beer or wine
@@cecilyerker Some were certainly renowned for it. We made lace for altar linens, but it was more for something to keep the hands busy during Recreation, rather than a business model. You can get a lot done in 40 minutes a day and nothing, not even leisure time, was wasted.
@@gray_maraWool? My first thought was, “Australia has so many sheep. At least the winter habit must be of wool.”
It's also remarkable how much less fabric is in our clothing nowadays. Like, I'm currently wearing a t shirt and a pair of shorts. Two yards worth of fabric, maybe? Compared to a full length full skirt, and a petticoat to match, and a shirt with puffy sleeves, and a jacket over that for a 1900 outfit. I could probably get half a dozen outfits easily out of the same quantity of yardage it took to make one.
WWII and its consequences...
We wear underwear.
@@clarkwhite998The New Look came close to us dressing properly, but I honestly think that the rise of central heating and AC put paid to this.
@@kikidevine694what do you mean by ‘the New Look came close to us dressing properly’?
"We're basically just wearing underwear all of the time" was somehow not how I was expecting this to end. I really should have though, since human underwear through time is something I find very interesting.
It also served to emphasize why dressing like a cartoon character (basically the same outfit all the time) has gotten slowly weirder with time. Because it's kind of literally being interpreted as underwear in terms of what it means for your personal cleanliness!
Hunh. I hadn't thought about the cartoon characters. But I had thought about older stories and fiction about some deceased person being identified by their clothing. If a person only had one or two outfits, hand made or repaired by someone, this is pretty easy.
i live in a country where we wear uniforms from kindergarten to A-Levels. so you can tell that we're never sure what to wear to university or a job without a uniform
@@anonymousperson4214 We used to have beautiful fabrics when I was younger. Not this flimsy stuff we have today.
My grandfather when he came through Elise Island in 1920 at age 10 had a good suit with 2 good shirts, 3 sets of works clothes, a set of night clothes, a pair of work and good shoes, 8 sets of under things, a toiletry set, picture of his parents, a "repair" kit which included shoe needs and knitting needlrs for socks, a writing/school set, a bible and rosery.
Did he come without his parents? The picture and the repair kit made me wonder.
One of my ancestors arrived in the US alone at around the same age, because his father had died on the ship.
@@myladycasagrande863 yes, his sister (10 years older) came over with her husband a year before settling in Seattle. Grandfather came by boat to NY then a train to Seattle without immediate family but with other from his region, so not quite alone.
@@tjeanvlogs9894 thanks for filling in the story!
Just reading that I can tell his parents loved him very much and provided well for him 😊
My dad also came over in 1920 on the ship Kroonland from Antwerp. But he was 3 yrs old with family. Also ended up in Seattle region where I was born and raised.
To weigh in on the "poor clergyman's daughter" scenario (as a modern clergyman's wife): clergy are generally expected to fit in with a socioeconomic class far above what their actual income would suggest. Of course this is highly variable by region and denomination, but the community we're in has a large proportion of people who own two homes and they don't quite understand why we can't afford a gardener and something better than an 11-year-old minivan (supporting two young children on a clergy salary and freelancing musician's income). The dynamic of "Though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room" is real and continues today and I am SURE that was a motivating factor behind those two formal silk dresses per year. Not to say that clergyman's family wasn't financially comfortable, just that they may have had a different standard of comparison than other technically middle-class families.
If I had more time, I would find actual numbers because I know they're available!
You HAD to have a winter and summer formal dinner dress EVERY year to be middle class unless you were in the more unfashionable countryside.
You could get away with buying other things less often. And the dinner dress would have flexible pieces for different sorts of events--dancing, primarily, though if you're old enough, you can get away without it.
Rosings 😂
Another angle I thought you might mention is the "central heating" aspect.
Wearing multiple layers makes sense when heating is not as common ! I know in my grandmother's rural home, the heating was the kitchen stove and a fireplace.
This is very true! People don't realize how much that changes things. The only reasons why you can see people standing outside in the cold in nothing but shorts and t-shirts (however crazy they may seem) is that they have a guaranteed warm place to go back into. Whereas back in the day you could get frostbite from standing in the edge of a room, far away from the stove or fireplace.
There's a joke in the UK (amongst certain social circles) that in the most aristocratic homes you wear your outdoor layers indoors because the heating is atrocious in these old houses, even now
So true! Although I imagine wood stoves were super toasty hot and effective. also putting your fireplace in the center of a room is far more effective than having it alongside a particular wall.
But for many traditional homes without the benefit of either of those, people must have gotten used to staying bundled up a good part of the year.
Um, a lot a people are doing that new out of necessity ☹️
@@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999 Like pit fires, I expect fireplaces are most toasty on the side facing the fire.
When I started college in 1974 my wardrobe was dramatically different than that of my roommate and suite mates. The sorority pledge had sooooo many clothes. She actually kept much of her clothing in the trunk of her car because there wasn't room for it in our closets. The coolest, hippy vibe girl had lots and lots of things that looked a lot alike. All of her many pairs of low-rise, bell bottom jeans were virtual clones and her many drapey, halter top, poncho tops all gave the appearance of having been stolen from a middle eastern street market. (Turned out that her parents were CPAs with totally suburban style and she had morphed into cool/hippy girl in the summer before university.) Girl 3 was 'normal'. Her style evolved in semester one from double knit to denim with t-shirts from Sears. I was a first generation in college, working class, sewed most of my own clothes - paid for all of them myself so they were very considered choices - 2 pairs of jeans girl. I made super plain basics and added distracting self-crafted accessories.(vests, hats, bags, scarves...) I had plenty of closet space. I even had a powder blue, double knit, shirt/pants/skirt set for wearing to church. I secretly envied their clothes, and they openly envied mine.
Okay not sure if you’ll reply now but may i ask how exactly you made the accesories?
So many fascinating stories in the comments!
Good for you!!😊
I appreciate that you mentioned the time aspect. The average woman back then was probably a bit faster at hand sewing than today, just because of practice from early childhood but there’s still a huge difference between sewing a full garment and, say, repairing a tear or letting doen a hem.
As someone who has tried MANY times to make their entire daily wardrobe, it's nearly impossible. Even with training! And my grandmother (born in the 1910s) was always impressed that I could do that much.
@@NicoleRudolph yep! And my great grandmother was a ranch owner’s wife and then left him and started her own business while being a single mom. So she’d be doing all this sewing when exactly…?
@@NicoleRudolph but a lot of people did not do their own clothing, especially the middle class and richer ones
I hand sew most of the time and make most of my clothes and it is hard. The list of things I could adjust because I lost weight or make because I don’t have something or whatever never ends. Add in knitting or weaving or spinning and I think it is more than a full time job.
@@archervine8064 wow!!
Having dealt with years of poverty, making the shift from “wants vs needs” to “stuff I need to live” has been a challenge but also healing. Everything is both a want and a need. I need food, but I don’t want to eat rice and beans every day. Most food could be considered a want. I want cotton shirts because polyester doesn’t breathe properly, so I consider this cotton a need, because if I’m uncomfortable or overheated I cannot function as well and it’ll impact work output. I’m sure arguments can be made for both sides, but ultimately it’s okay to have comfort and efficiency and good nutrition and everything without it being considered purely a selfish thing, or to be considered bad for it to be categorized as a want.
Yes growing up poor taught me this too, and everyone wonders why I'm extremely particular about my budget. I WANT to live comfortably, and it's also been hard to LET myself live like that, because i was a child at the worst of our struggles, a lot of wants were ignored, so i continue to ignore my wants, and it leads to a lot of conflicting anxiety over purchases.
But i'm great at giving local shopping advice!!! I know where all the best go-to purchases can be made. Can't find a super particular scent? I got so sick of paying $40 at discount price for my favorite perfume, so i found a local place that had all the ingredients and got them for far less, have a stronger profile, and now i smell like strawberries and cream for less than $15! Thinking hard about your budget is very good. Also accidentally started going plastic free in the cupboard lowkey, because i found a market that has all their dry ingredients in scooping bins, so you're expected to bring a container or just have to put it in a plastic bag, the prices are incredibly just, and it's a local business so i talk to the people who's pockets i'm lining when i just need basic food to survive (:
What always comes to my mind when the question of "how many clothing did they own back then" is one section of Les Misérables. Hugo describes how Marius only has two shirts. One that is at the laundry lady, the other one is that he is wearing. This description and others are used to emphasise how utterly poor these characters are! Most of them are the poorest of the poor. (That's why it's also named the miserables.)
So yes, unless you were near or actually living in absolut poverty, people owned more than two sets of clothing.
Two sets of visible garments might be reasonable (if less than the average person had), but only having two shirts was as extreme then as it is now. Imagine having only two T-shirts and two pairs of underpants! Sure, it’s possible to get by with so little, but it’s not at all practical.
Human sweat and body oil will rapidly break down a shirt if you only have two in rotation. Even the rate at which it has to be laundered will break it down even further.
And yet, he could afford to pay the laundry lady who was poorer yet.
in fairness, marius as a character is actually basically cosplaying as poor. we don't get a description of, say, feuilly's wardrobe, who would be a much better indicator of a true poor working class person in that social circle. @@visitingfromsantafe1329
i would not use marius as an indicator of what people normally did. his having two shirts is more to show that he's kind of a dweeb and is portraying his idea of a poor bohemian as, more or less, an act of teenage rebellion. the pontmercys have money, marius just chooses to not use it in order to try and fit in with his chosen social circle - almost none of which are the actual working poor they talk about either. of all of les amis d'abc, only feuilly is an actual labourer... the rest are students of various (and mostly unclear) economic background - not the richest, but definitely not destitute. les amis are Not "les miserables" - they're a bunch of idealistic young guys who are choosing to throw in with and throw down for those who are. what their understanding and estimation of actual poverty and working poor people's lives are like is widely varies in its accuracy. enjolras praises feuilly constantly because of how noble he sees him for being the only one of them who actually comes from the class they're seeking to bring equality to. it's part of why the june rebellion failed - not enough actual working poor were able or willing (for various reasons) to join in the fight, leaving the student organizers vastly overpowered. hence, in the musical, when confronted at the barricade, the army calls out to the revolutionaries that "the people of paris sleep in their beds" and questions why they throw their lives away for those who will not risk standing up with them.
so, no, most people, even the working poor, didn't only own two shirts. marius owns two shirts because he is a dork who thinks that's what poor people do, and also a dork who doesn't put much into his personal bearing. i'm pretty sure courfeyrac specifically even gives him shit about not dressing better a few times.
I know most people just want a fast exciting answer, but I live how nuanced this description of history is. 💖
I was a Joann’s a couple weeks ago and a lady in the line asked me if I make clothes. She said making clothes is probably cheaper than buying already made clothes, right? I and another person explained that it actually costs a lot more to make clothes. She was surprised.
Even when buying cheap fabrics, it still ends up more expensive. You can tell she clearly didn't make her own 😅
Turns out, the upcharge and overhead on getting raw fabric to you isn't much different than finished clothing. And you don't get the bulk discounts!
The difference is that something I make is not comparable on quality to a cheap import but rather to a higher end brand. At least I am getting closer to that standard!!
BUT, buying clothes that actually fit is more expensive by the time you have it tailored. And good luck if there is not enough fabric for trousers to be long enough.
Right? I can go to the thrift store and find a pair of business pants for under $20 easily, $10 if I'm a common size and not picky. If I find fabric for $8/yd (that would be a good sale) and only need 3 yards (I'm small) that's already more than the thrifted pants plus I still have to do all the work of making them.
...I hold onto clothes a lot longer than is apparently normal. I have still wearable clothing that's...17-18 years old? I've had to mend it, obviously, but my favorite pieces will remain until they literally fall apart.
LL Bean for the win!
Right! I have an old shirt my partner can't believe is still wearable hahaha
Same.
Could be why the midwife had 10 dresses.
Me and my 6-7 year old tops and skirts say hi
This reminds me of the Sam Vimes Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness from the Discworld book Men at Arms by Sir Terry Pratchett. Sam Vimes is the captain of the City Watch and goes through many pairs of boots. The Boots Theory has been discussed in the news recently by social activists and economists. The theory is based on how poor people spend more money over time on cheap boots that wear out quickly than wealthy people who can afford high quality boots that last for years. It is the most well known part of the discussion on income inequality in the book. However, people often overlook the other half of the theory about Lady Sybil Ramkin, Sam's wealthy fiance. Sam grew up in poverty. His salary in the city watch is basically poverty wages. He is engaged to the wealthiest woman in the city. Sam sees how inherited wealth and reusing high quality clothing and home furnishings makes it easier for Lady Sybil to spend less money than poor people over time, thus maintaining her wealth. You've made this point many times in your videos about how purchasing high quality clothing that lasts longer was a practical economic practice. Thanks for this look into history. I always appreciate your thoroughness, diversity in the people you represent, and citation of sources.
Discworld novels just keep giving.
@denisha8596 Yes they do. Pratchett's satirical social commentary is relevant today. I love Lady Sybil. She just DAGF what people think about her. She's kind to everyone.
As someone from a very poor social background, this is exactly true.
As a lower class working woman today, this is even more true, you must look fashionable, but not too fashionable. So if you do manage to buy something of good quality you can't keep wearing for 10 years because then you don't look right for your job.
Being poor is very expensive!
So happy to see what I was thinking already her in the comments - I love that Lady Sybil's fellow dragon rescuers tramped about looking like the local mad woman scarecrow and were however Duchess this and Lady that 😊 Feeling the love for Sir Terry Pratchett.
I did a similar, strictly modern exercise like this a few years ago.
I always bought a lower quantity of higher quality clothes. But after about 10 years of "genteel poverty" (very, very low income, but the already purchased inventory of upper middle class), I landed a job that a) paid very well, b) required an "office formal" wardrobe. My "how much things should cost" estimator was set back in the 1980s, so way, way off current pricing.
I looked at a lot of those budget spending charts, and found out that if I spent per the charts, I'd buy $2,500 of clothing per year. I then looked at what items I'd need to buy ... and suddenly, spending $200 for a summer dress that could last 3-4 years was NOT too expensive! [I own 3-4 summer dresses for the office, plus skirts, trousers and tops.]
This also influenced my fabric purchases for things I sew ... $60 of yardage for a dress is not too much money.
I'm still poor, I just use threadup now and search by fabric type. 😅 Its helped to improve my wardrobe a lot.
@@inconspicuous-mammalI thrift almost everything and make sure to avoid polyester and poorly constructed clothing as much as possible. It is getting more difficult to do, though!
@@inconspicuous-mammal Me too! But Poshmark instead of Threadup.
@@faeriesmakthrifting gives me really cool stuff from the 80s that just absolutely eats and lasts forever
My mom was born 100 years ago (1924) and can confirm the two dress rule. You wore😢 one dress all week to school and had one better dress for church or dances.
And the really poor pawned the good dress on Monday and got it back on Friday when they got paid.
Thanks, my mom was a few years younger. A child of the depression and the third of three.
I think you need to consider the possibility that these magazines are telling people to over purchase. I stopped reading magazines years ago. But I remember they tended to give very "aspirational" consumer advice even for people on a budget. For example, magazines from the 00s told you to replace all your bras every year. Something few people actually do.
Which means if you are well developed that is your entire clothing budget. A 34 H costs a lot more then a 38C assuming you can find one.
@@lenabreijer1311 Exactly! My friends are aghast when I tell them that if I can find a well fitting bra for $50 it's a bargain and I'll get three. I definitely wear them until they are no longer serviceable in any way.
@@VeretenoVidsSame with me being a size 36AAA. I think that on average one bra for me is $65.00. I wear them as long as possible. Luckily I don’t have much to support so I can get away with doing that.
@@VeretenoVidsI was lucky that one of the two specialty bra shops in my state was in the city where I lived when I wore an N cup. (Yes. N. They go to P.) If I found something under $75 I rejoiced. And the internet was my friend when I found something that fit, because I would buy that in multiples! Thank god for reduction surgery, but I definitely spent a much higher percentage of my “clothing budget” on bras. I always said if the house was burning down, I would still need to slip into the laundry room and grab all my bras that were hanging up to dry.
@@maryel5398 The back pain you had with an N cup must have been horrendous, unless your back muscles were super super strong and you had a very supportive bra. It hurts to think about it!
I applaud you for driving deep into household incomes and budgets. This world is my day job. Some comments. One major change in household income that is not accounted for by the numbers is that the households in the 1970s and earlier were based on one-wage earners, while later, a growing share of households consisted of two-wage earners. You see the change in the angle of the graph (timestamp 20:47) around 1970. Households have reduced in size over this period as well. Unlike food, clothing is (somewhat) classified as a durable good. You are aware of this because your discussions include stories on recycling fabric. As a child (and oldest daughter), I got hand-me-downs from older cousins. Statistics are good at measuring non-durable goods like food, but the dollars households spend on clothes are closer to measuring the replacement cost of clothes in their wardrobes. Households with children may require a larger budget for clothes unless they have older cousins and their schools have mandatory uniforms. Changes in non-economic characteristics creep into these household cost numbers. Still, this is an excellent summary.
Oh! I like the durable goods concept. There's definitely way more than I could fit into the one video (I desperately want someone to do an entire economic history channel). It feels like every single aspect of calculation changed over the last century! All of this has at least really helped me refocus some of the other research I've been doing on consumerism and class. I was fortunate to take one proper Econ class in grad school at least (and it helps that I love numbers and math).
You are reminding me that expected.lifespan changes dramatically affected household sizes. In 1900 I believe a man's life expectancy was 45 and a woman's life expectancy was 35 due to mortality associated with child birth. Also, pre- penicillin childhood disease child mortality by the age of 5 was about 50%. Yellow fever, Spanish flu, 1957 and 1967 flu epidemics and COVID impacted household size and redistributions of wealth.
Social/cultural changes like women working, divorce rates, single mother heads of households also tremendously affect household sizes and budgets.
Housing shortages of war time and depression eras, recessions put pressure on household size and budget.
Yes, two income middle class households changed a lot of things. And I wore non-cheap clothing, not designer but well-made, in my 20s.
@@eileencarroll6418you might double check what’s represented by the life expectancy numbers. They tend to skew low based on childhood mortality. Iirc, if you survived to 5 years old, you could probably expect to reach at least 50 for most of human history
@@Leigh-says-stuff Here what's close to what I was remembering. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4984780/#:~:text=In%201900%2C%20the%20estimated%20life,women%20it%20was%2033.5%20years.
The idea of having a dressmaker make and fit a pattern custom to you is genius!
Love how the modern chart shows 25% for housing when most people I know are spending more than half.
And 5% for charity. Like .... ok, I'll get right on that.
I know right, I felt that... my current clothing budget per month is around 2 - 5% depending on food costs etc. The rest almost all goes to housing, insurance, internet, etc... :S I try to save a lot to buy new quality items such as a winter coat or shoes, but it's tough. Thrifting helps, but jeez it cost a lot of energy to find good things these days that aren't broken/stained/overpriced etc... I don't have the time to spend every weekend in the thrift shops in the hope to find something :S Some clothes can last you 20+ years, but at some point the clothes don't match the age you know :S I had a lot of clothes from my teens that still looked great, but come on! I can't be taken seriously in some of those when i'm over 30! Plus bodidly changes etc. Having less spending freedom is very tiring these days :(
Yeah I cried a bit at that pie chart
And %5 on medicine, I'd have to work at least a full day at $15 an hour, just to cover the copay on my prescriptions, and my parents are paying for good insurance. Also, do these people understand how expensive food is? I genuinely can't tell if food is actually overpriced or I just expect it to be free.
What surprises me most is that they show the rich spending almost as much on food as the poor. Even if that includes things like chefs, bakers, kitchen staff, etc., you can still only eat so much!
Some of the budget manuals mention how much more “entertaining” happens as you go up in income so I assume it’s related. Also feeding all of said staff!
The quality and price of the food would change dramaticaly. Lobster not herring, steak not cows heels.
@@rosemarielee7775 ironically going down in nutritional quality and sustainability
Another thing to emphasize how cost has changed is how much fabric is used in the garment! Like you said, fabric is the main cost in garments back in the day. You need 7-9 yards of fabric to make the average "non working" dress back in the 19th century. (And I'd gander a guess at 4-6 for working dresses) But by the 1930s you only need 3-5. I'd say that that nowadays you need 1-5 yards of fabric for that, because we just cover less. Underwear is much more minimal to. We need probably about a quarter to half of a yard to make your average panties, whereas in the 19th century you'd need like 2 or 3 to make underthings. Plus, the corset.
We also have simplified the clothes so you need less notions. Surging ranges supreme. No bias tape, boning, fewer to no linings, no horsehair and less modern day interfacing. Clothing has also gotten simpler and easier to make (on average) too. Sweat pants, leggings and t-shirts have become our "at home and working/relaxing" clothes, and those are very simple to make. But even our public clothing is simpler, though it can get more complex. I'd say the average most complex thing we have in our daily wardrobe nowdays is bras, which can get VERY expensive. Especially for plus sized people.
That, with fabric costs going down with the rise of synthetics and knit fabrics, I would argue- clothing *is* cheaper than it was in the past. But we are spending about the same because it wears out quickly, and like you pointed out, we spend more on outerwear because the underwear has become so minimal. Thus our wardrobes *seem* bigger, but really we just have different proportions on what we need to function in society.
Honestly, I'd love to see more of a balance. I think that more people investing in quality pieces of clothing is great, especially for staples, but having that cheap available clothing is nice too, especially for those of lower income. Of course, this isn't considering how the people who are making these clothes are being paid and treated... which is a whole other mess.
Our relationship with clothing has drastically changed since the 1960s. I have a copy of a 1940s sewing book (reprinted from US Government.) It talks about how to reverse collars, set waists on women's dresses and so on. If you read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (late 1800s), she talks about what they had. They had one nice dress for Sundays, a second pretty good one as adults and work or house dresses. In the Wilder books, they make Mary a wardrobe for her going away to school. They got patterns from Ladies books as you said. The stay at home wife did a lot of the basic sewing. Makes sense that the woman would get the patterns from the dress maker. The dressmaker was probably on-board with it because she probably had enough people to do plain sewing for her.
I also have the idea that you could sell your clothing that no longer fit, at least in Europe
As always a wonderful video.
The Ingalls family was very poor. Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser has some good actual numbers (and is a great read overall), but Laura's childhood memories edited for the sake of a children's novel with a very clear, almost-propaganda moral should not be taken as a norm for most of middle-class America.
In the 1940s, not only was WWII being fought so there was rationing, but they had endured the Depression before that. My great-grandmother made each of her 3 granddaughters crazy quilts that re-used dresses made from flour sacks when they were girls. I remember my mom & my aunts reminiscing about the original dresses used to make the quilt design.
@@ericajacobs-perkins8036 Thanks for the book suggestion. Yes, I had realized they were pretty poor. If you compare the Ingalls to the Wilders in "Farmer Boy" it was obvious. As I grew older I didn't think so much of Charles "Pa" Ingalls. But I also know that in the Mid-West and South people really did make clothing out of printed flour sacks. I have a flour sack quilt from the unpatterned variety. Fairly prosperous middle-class men didn't have seven suits.
This makes me realise that despite my continous interest in fashion, I have likely always had a quite limited wardrobe because I've been thinking about clothing as something that I don't want to replace frequently. By neccessity, because I have a non-standard body shape, but still there's definitely a conscious choice there.
It also makes me more conscious of how I think about my wardrobe. Now to go think on that some more.
You mentioned a woman who sewed her clothes, but had the dressmaker do the fitting, and I actually do something similar! When I make gowns or long skirts, I leave the hemming to a local seamstress. She does beautiful alterations for primarily wedding dresses so she has the space set up for getting the right length and then making the right hem for the fabric I used. It gives my gowns that professional touch I don’t have the space or capability to give.
I'm 45 and grew up in rural Portugal.
It changed rapidily but when I was a kid, most folks had the same clothes situation.
One good outfit for sunday mass and parties. Usually made at the local seamstress. One good pair of shoes to match. Because in my area Winter wasn't harsh, add a good jacket for Winter. It didn't even need to be that warm.
Take a bath, get ready to church, come back and remove the clothes. They weren't washed often, unless visibly dirty or smelly.
The shoes were used untill I outgrew them or they no longer looked good. Then they would become school shoes. Later stay at home shoes.
Shoes were the most expensive item, and the one we had in fewer quantities. The sunday mass shoes, the shoes for school, a pair to use at home and maybe another pair to work in the fields.
Clothes were used and repaired untill no more. Then they would become rags for cleaning or transformed into rag rugs.
But despite all this, I had a lot of clothes. Why?
Because other than sunday mass clothes that we bought or had it sewed, I got lots of stuff from older cousins.
Up untill when I was a young teen, I was still receiving hand me downs. Which really helped, because my parents only had to worry about shoes.
I learned to hem pants, repair tears, sew a button. All by hand. This has been an awesome skill that saved us a lot of clothes over the years.
16.6% of a budget on housing? This blows my 2024 mind. How was housing so cheap?
It was pretty much 90% rental (even some of the richest families rented their town property) and building costs and residential land values were pretty low in the C19th and early C20th. Domestic building stock wasn't seen as an especially good investment, most people looking to invest in property put their money into infrastructure like railways, agricultural land and factories, not housing. The other reason was that getting a mortgage on a residential property was almost unheard of, so the market couldn't rely on inflated house prices being carried by the banks (mortgages worked the opposite way to now, you could normally only mortgage a house if you already owned it outright and were trying to liquidate capital)
@@jakecavendish3470 Thank you for the thorough explanation. Still kind of blows my mind how cheap rent must have been. I feel like I spend 40+% of my monthly income on rent.
@@kirstenpaff8946 I know, mine is basically 50% of my income 😪
@@kirstenpaff8946 The number given in the seventies and eighties for budgeting was a third of your income for housing. (I think that was meant to include electric, heat and water.) Decades ago I went to look at an apartment complex and they had a chart of how much they thought I could spend on rent to live there. It was about half my income. This would have meant no savings, retirement, or car bailout fund. I went to a different property.
It is a bit complicated, but here are a couple of things I do know from extensive history research and US Census research from the late 1800s up to about 1950. Here are a few reasons:
1- The fact that we now have 30yr mortgages makes it possible for us to buy houses that are significantly overpriced. If you lived in 1910--30s the mortgage term would only be for 1-5yrs. Usually a down payment of as much as 50% was required too. If you had to pretty much buy a house outright, it could not be as overvalued.
2- We used to not pay income taxes...taxes as a whole were WAY less intrusive and cheaper back then. Think about a middle to upper middle class family now...they pay 30-37% in income taxes alone. You add up other taxes and an average person is losing 50% or more of their income now to taxes. Imagine if overnight you had 50-70% more money added to your pay? That would sure help in being able to pay for things.
3- The gold standard: We used to have the dollar backed by gold. So for every $1 printed there needed to be $1 of gold in that bank vault or in Fort Knox etc. We began weaning off the dollar standard a wee bit in the 30son, and went totally off the dollar standard in 1971...now the Federal Reserve can print fake monopoly money out of thin air. If you take a peek at historical charts related to the value of gold to the value of the dollar, you will see DECADES where there was no inflation or barely any...unlike recent decades and years where the dollar slips daily. If you can maintain the value of your dollar, you can afford more for less.
4- There was more space and newly settled places for folks to fan out too...more availability of housing which drives prices down. Same thing goes for supplies. Old growth wood and quality materials were ubiquitous at prices folks could afford.
Finally, some good effing data 😤
This is genuinely one of the best essays on fashion history I have ever seen. Your work continues to amaze, Nicole!
In addition to budgets and how we're essentially "wearing underwear as outerwear" now, I am also interested in how our architecture, work, transportation, and even means of communication affect our clothing. Like the theory that car travel reduced the time that men wear structured brimmed hats. Or how I can't practically wear Japanese traditional clothing in most Western buildings because the sleeves get caught on door handles!
I love that the conclusion of this is basically "we wear underwear as outwear now".
It blew my mind, when I seriously got into historical costuming, that this has been the case for the past 100 years. And then I realised that that's around the time that central heating becomes widespread beyond the richest households.
Since I basically wear a T-shirt and drawstring pants every day now, the answer is a resounding "yep". I'm too old to care about anything but comfort anymore. Well, besides color. I make sure the colors of my "underwear" are fabulous.
My Nana had 2 nice pant suits, 2 out of the house wearing dresses , 2 house dresses (made by her), 4 pairs of shoes- flats, mules, snow boots, sneakers. 2 blouses, 1 winter coat, 1 light jacket for Spring/Fall, 1 tweed jacket, 2 button down sweaters, 1 pair of pedal pushers, 2 pairs of walking shorts, 4 summer tops- 2 cotton, 2 dressier, 2 sets of pj's, 1 bathrobe, 1 pair of slippers, 9 sets of bras and panties, 1 slip. 1 pocket book, 1 fancy clutch, 2 bandanas to wrap her hair when she set it, 4 pairs of earrings, 2 necklaces, wedding ring set, grandmother's ring, When she passed, this is what I remember her wearing for years and it's what we cleaned out of her home. It fit into a medium sized suitcase, minus the shoes and winter coat.
People talk about the size of the closet in terms of how big the wardrobe was, but commonly worn items would be hung on pegs, and there was probably a trunk or drawers that stored things as well.
Cedar chests were common to every household for storing all wool clothing up until the 1970s.
Homes built into 40's 50's had very small closets. There used to home economists guide on how much clothing a person needed. Usually a marriage trousseau has a number of garments.
Most clothing was stored in chests and other furniture! Only a few suits and dresses needed to be hung up. Underwear, jeans, shirts, etc all were folded and pressed before wearing if needed.
People had armoires and wardrobe racks. Seasonal items were stored in basements.
The old 30s wardrobes in my family are about half shelves, half hanging inside. They're each a bit different but roughly that. They're extremely deep though but not much wider than modern wardrobes which so often seem to be too shallow to hang properly. The swallow a lot of clothing.
@@jamespolivka7756 My grandmother would keep out of season clothing in the attic because they lived near a river so the basement would flood. But she told me they would pretty much put away the whole seasons clothing and bring down the next set. They lived in northern Wisconsin so it was pretty cold and the coats were pretty big and they didn't have a ton of room so it was just easier to store what wasn't being worn.
@@krystelhardesty9960 We still do this because our house was built in the 1910, so there are only two closets in the whole house and we haven't had the $$ to buy period appropriate armoires/wardrobes for each bedroom.
I always wear a thin silk* knit, long-sleeved tee-shirt under my wool and cashmere dresses, tops and sweaters, so I seldom have to wash or dry-clean them. It also helps them look nice for longer, deodorant and sweat can damage yarns and alter colors and the body oils and skin cells we shed will soil them. It’s so much easier to throw a silk tee into my machine’s delicate cycle, hang it up and have it dry overnight than to hand-wash woolies. I wear a clean, fresh one every day in winter and often, silk Long John pants, too). I have very bad back pain and just can’t really hand-washing my woolies since this injury, and they take at least two days and a lot of flat space to dry. So, when mine need it, I take them to the dry-cleaners. I steam them, air them in front of my big fan, and spot-clean them as necessary to keep them fresh. Here in California, we have much more eco-friendly dry-cleaning processes than ever, most are really “wet cleaning”, chemical-free ones (PCE is completely banned here, too). But, it’s still expensive, uses gas to drive there, and is a hassle, so I try to keep my dry-cleaning to a minimum. *Silk because I can’t wear synthetic fibers and cotton is too hot. A silk/rayon blend, as some Amazon ones have, work ok, too, they’re very breathable and rayon is not a plastic (to which I’m allergic).
I normally don't comment but have to applaud you on the level of economic research that went into this video. PhD worthy and very impressive. 👏
Hiring clothing was also a big business in the C18th and C19th. Even members of the English upper classes actually rented their finest clothes. In fact there are C18th portraits of entirely unrelated upper class women wearing precisely the same dress which means they either rented them from the same shop or it was a stock prop in the painter's studio
James Tissot's stock clothes are easy to spot!
you can rent clothes today also! i love to do that for an event where im not likely to need another formal outfit for a couple of years
Great video! 👍 Having a ”cleanliness” layer is so underrated. I’ve started wearing basic, white cotton tees under my nicer tops, and they last so much longer. I don’t have to wash the nice ones every week, but can air them out and wear several times. Also, I have a wool winter coat that I bought in the fall of 1999. It’s still going strong. There’s an interesting example in my country: a local woman who was mistress of an estate. She owned over 60 chemises, so they didn’t need to do laundry as often. 😄
It’s so interesting to see this from the perspective of someone who dresses for 4 seasons! Living in a tropical country like Indonesia, the female traditional attire of my area (Java) has just always been very similar in purpose to a shirt (kebaya) and skirt (jarik) with only one inner layer (kemben) and no other underwear between it. If you go back far enough, women and men of all social classes went topless. Thus our outfits are generally more focused on using cloth efficiently, the wrapped skirt did not chafe enough to get damaged so soon. We didn’t really have that distinction of attire we must replace often vs less often. Seniors from the early 20th century would have approximately single or lower double digit amounts of work outfits and several fancy outfits for events.
Thank you for explaining this! That’s so interesting and even though I’ve only worn modern clothing it’s more relatable to how I dressed in the subtropical climate I grew up in. It was somewhere in between the two approaches. Most items in our wardrobe can be worn all year. We do have warm layers to add in winter and cooler clothes for summer but they’re most often combined with the clothes we wear all year to make an outfit
the level of joy i feel when u post a new historical fashion deep dive is unmatched. you are an INCREDIBLE script writer and researcher. i am obsessed with how u present information!
My family has always worked with a budget. My Grandmother’s budget, which I have framed in my office, is my guide. My Grandfather was a Senior Military Officer and my Grandmother owned an Interior Decorator Company. The budget I have has nothing about clothing, but I knew my Grandmother always had a fine wardrobe. Her monthly income was $300. This is 1940’s. The top line was on Temple Dues (Tithe) $30. The next line was Savings and Stock at $30. Her favorite stock was AT&T. Household budget was $50, which was food, wine, entertainment fund and “children’s needs”. She also spent $75 to buy items for her supplies and items for her Interior Decorating Company. After these major budget lines, was just set aside for future use. My current budget may have larger numbers as income (based on inflation) but the %’s are still the same. I don’t buy AT&T, but I still do invest. My family has always tried to avoid debt, which has made generations live comfortably. We were never ashamed to admit we could not afford XYZ, and stuck to our budgets.
fun fact about modern incomes... if you remove the top 10 individuals (not 10%, just ten people!) from the calculation of average income, the total drops by about ten thousand dollars, and drops by almost half with the top 1000 individuals removed from the sample. i'd be curious to see equivalent figures shown for other decades, and how that might impact our understanding of how much people were spending on various things compared to how much they had to spend
That’s why I stuck with median instead of average- looks to where the bulk is rather than adding in billionaires!
it's good that you point out that inflation calculators are of very limited use in this, and that now to then isn't really comparing apples to apples. firsthand observance of older relatives in my youth would suggest that we do own more clothing at any given time, and also replace our clothing more rapidly. i had one comfortable middle class grandmother and one who was very well to do. the rich granny owned more clothing by far than the other one, and she replaced garments to follow fashion far more often. even so, her daily and formal clothing all fit into her (large for the time and place) walk-in closet plus a large chest of drawers. that excludes her winter coat(s) and furs, which were in a separate coat closet, and accessories such as hats, gloves, etc. mid-class granny had all of her clothes in an armoire except her coats (1 summer, 1 winter) and her undergarments and night clothing, which were in a chest of drawers also. so, despite very different incomes and lifestyles, not that different storage capacity. the real difference between them lay in numbers of specialised attire (sportswear and formal gowns), and in how frequently each updated and/or replaced garments. my wealthy gran changed things out seasonally, a couple of times per year. my other gran wore her things until they couldn't be mended or altered to fit anymore or became shabby. as children, my wealthy gran's clothing was bought bespoke and/or tailored. middle class gran wore homemade frocks and aprons, and some catalog clothing mainly. but at any stage, all of their main clothing fit basically into a wardrobe and dresser. and over a lifetime, the more typical middle class grandmother probably could have tallied up the number of say, pairs of shoes or suits she had owned; i doubt if many of us today could do the same readily. i couldn't tell you how many shoes i have right now, let alone over my life, and i daresay i have functionally replaced my entire wardrobe many times over, even after giving up fast fashion and trends.
As a person who wore hand-me-downs, patches, and home made items because I was raised poor and who does well enough for herself now that those same techniques while a money saver are also a comfort as well as hobby, I appreciate this video deeply. While patching or making my clothing is more of a bragging right these days, I love the idea of repurposing fabrics and wearing layers so as to wear out the undergarments first. In fact, I just bought a used flat sheet today at the local thrift store to make pillow cases as one set I have has worn to the point of holes and needs to be replaced. The thirft store didn't have any two matching pillowcases, so I chose to purchase the sheet and do the sewing myself. Plus, there will be extra fabric with which to make something else. Perhaps, I can use it to create a t-shirt or maybe a skirt.
My time-blindness is so bad. I saw the notification for this video and started watching it, but then realized I had to leave for something. Now RUclips tells me it's 3 weeks old?!? I swear that had just happened yesterday, but apparently it was 3 weeks ago. Glad I found my way back to it as this was something I was just discussing with a friend. I feel like we put people from the past on a pedestal, but the truth is that they were just humans that had to do the same sweaty, dirty tasks like laundry as the rest of us! It makes sense they'd have more than a single work dress and a single going out dress and a single ballgown, etc. Thank you for all the research that went into this!!
This was so interesting! I've never been a good judge of how much clothing I need because my dad was a retail exec at a department store so growing up we always had many clothing choices. I never thought I had a lot of clothes but friends who saw my closet in college thought so. I took care of my clothes so they lasted a long time so after I left home I didn't need to buy much clothing for myself.I appreciate how lucky I was!
I love the want vs need aspect of clothing finances! I live in PA so there is no tax on clothing. Makes so much sense, like you said, cannot function in society without it!
This is nerdy as fuck in the best possible way! Just came across your channel and I'll be watching more. Also your greens are *chef's kiss*, especially that eye shadow, which I've never figured out
I agree!
Anecdotally, my mother was a sharecropper’s youngest daughter during the Great Depression. One dress for work, one for school, one for Sunday. And work and possibly school dresses could have been hand me downs. Worked fine, until she grew taller than both her sisters. 😅. My dad was one of thirteen children. I don’t think he paid attention. Lol
I am curious how knitting and crocheting fit this scenario. I know that women knitted and crocheted much more than now and often made many elaborate garments. I have come across gorgeous lacy dress patterns from 1920s, knit skirt and sweater sets from 1940 and 50s, not to mention a plethora of crocheted accesories like purses, hats, scarves, lacy gloves and even jewelry. All women in my family knitted and crocheted clothes using the patterns in the magazines. I recently talked about this to my grandma, and she said that in the 50s and 60s women knitted and crocheted large parts of winter wardrobe for the whole family, and every woman she knew had this skill, which blows my mind.
As the daughter and grand daughter of knitters and a knitter myself, I would say that in my family all the socks and stockings that weren't hosiery (nylons), hats of the beanie/touque type (IE for warmth, not fashion), mittens and winter gloves not made of leather, all sweaters (male and female) were made at home.
I regularly look at my pile of laundry - clothes, undies, outerwear, blankets... - and think wow that's a lot of cotton (and plastic)
I love how you demonstrate how complex and nuanced figuring out the research, the graphs, the reasoning on why a question like do we own more clothing now can be. Most people want simple "obvious" answers...
My mother was born in 1913, in hindsight all her clothes, could easily fit into one medium sized suitcase. She was a teacher prior to marrying my father. My parents shared a small wardrobe, though she had a dressing table with two draws, and mirror as well as a separate full length mirror, he had a chest of drawers. All the clothing they owned easily fitted into three pieces of furniture, with considerable room to spare. I still have a wooden trowser press handed down from my father's father, along with a top hat. My mother sewed many items herself. Winter coats were made from tweed which came from a woolen mill in Cumbria in the north of England managed by her aunt. Everything she had, was of high quality and lasted for many years, the same with shoes. As a child, I had one pair of lace-up shoes for school, a pair of school sandals with crepe rubber soles, and a pair of white summer sandals for best. I also had a pair of sheepskin boots for winter. It was common for people to have a Sunday Best outfit, and to always change into old clothes before doing what were considered 'dirty jobs', thus making clothes need washing less, and made them last longer. I always changed from my school uniform as soon as arriving home. Clothing was always handed down from one sibling to the next, what nolonger fitted, was passed on to friends. Adult clothing was often cut down and material used to make clothes for children. Nothing was ever wasted. My father almost always wore a three piece suit, even to walk the family dog, which he did frequently, several times a day. My mother wore suits, even if she was just going shopping, formal felt hats were very popular. All the curtains in our house were made by my mother, even beautiful red velvet ones with ornate pelmets. It was common for the women of the house to knit as they sat around the coal fire of an evening, mending clothes, and darning socks was also done then. As cardigans and sweaters wore out, they were unravelled and the wool used to knit new items. All this is quite shocking as I consider the vast amount of clothes, shoes, bags and accessories I have by comparison. That said, I tend to buy good quality classic styles that last for many years. I really enjoy viewing videos by Marie-Anne Lecoer who teaches how to dress like a Chic French Lady. She is a fan of having fewer items, but always of high quality, and keeping clothes for years.
The mother of a friend, lived in London during the Blitz. She worked for the Police, sending emergency crews to bomb sites. Unexpectedly, she said that when she went home for lunch she would always change her entire outfit. As was common at the time, her wedding dress was made from the silk of a parachute. She lived well into her nineties, and never lost her love of fashion, though her clothing choices were picked from catalogues, rather than shopping in person. As a school girl, I learned what was called, 'Domestic Science,' where the class learned cooking skills, an equal amount of time was spent learning sewing skills. Boys did woodworking, and sometimes metal work. Roles were clearly defined in those days, and career choices were also divided by sex for the most part. As a little girl I considered being a nurse, but not a doctor, because 99% of the time, only men were doctors. Girls, were expected to prepare for marriage and motherhood, rather than careers, though they took on many jobs that were considered non-traditional during wartime, and of course, what they wore to perform those tasks reflected those needs. One of the reasons people had few clothes was, because during and after WWII there was rationing. Babies wore clothing made from bright yellow/orange wool, because traditional white, pink or blue wool was not available at the time.
Great overall conclusions. I did have trouble comprehending the impacts of war time scarcities and rationing in the data. Reusing and remaking fabric made a lot of sense, but the concept of hand-me-downs, especially for siblings in large families seemed to be mysteriously absorbed in budgets. Perhaps it was so universal that everyone assumed passing around children's clothing within families was too normal to mention. As a younger sister I mostly received new panties, shoes and socks up until I started high school when I got a job and bought my own clothes. In 7th and 8th grade, my sister bought me one full school outfit at the beginning of the school year and my parents bought me one school outfit and one Christmas outfit each year. In 7th grade, I received a windfall of clothing abandoned at a family dry cleaners (lots of nice quality wool skirts). In high school, I learned to sew and creatively raided clothes my parents had grown out of to repurpose and re-sew. I could sew a pair of high waist, wide leg trousers in two hours if I had fabric and a zipper in 1974. Between earning money for fabric and brand new bras learning sewing skills made the world of difference to my self esteem. I was motivated to make a new dress for each high school dance.
Simultaneously, Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened up trade that reduced clothing prices over the following decades through our current era of fast fashion. When I graduated from college in 1979, I struggled to find a work dress for under $200 in the clearance racks. Still in 2024, it's easy to buy a dress for under $100 that can be worn to an office job. And it's a shame that so few women learned to sew during that period.
If trade with China changes due to trade tariffs, war over Taiwan or more shipping glitches, the cost of clothing could change dramatically.
OR, are clothing budgets more determined by funds available after necessities are paid for? E.g., as gas prices go up, do clothing budgets take the hit to compensate? Are clothing budgets more a reflection of expendable income? I wonder if the increase in the 1920s is more a measure of prosperity than inflation. Certainly the smaller clothing budgets after the Great Depression made sense. Flour sack dresses speak to the skills and ingenuity of women compensating for available cash being sparingly spent on necessities. My mother's family ate oatmeal three times a day when they had to. They made all their own clothes, window coverings, table linens, hats. Old shoes were repaired and worn to shreds. Coats Were worn to threads. By the time WWII rationing came around, my mother was wearing shoes made of cardboard and sewing dresses from tablecloths and sheets. Thread pulling was a common decorative technique. Women also crocheted tiny lace doilies, collars and cuffs from cotton string. My grandmother crocheted floor rugs from string. She also used a yard stick, cotton string and cut up strips of pillow ticking and fabric scraps to weave rag rugs. She only hand-sewed two quilts. I am proud of the resourcefulness and skills of the women in my family. They found a way to compensate for lack of cash to fill the fairly constant need for clothing.
Gosh, I had not intended such a long comment and I appreciate this space to think things through . I have been thinking about how our relationship with China might change in the future and how that might impact how we budget.
Thanks for such a stimulating video . ❤❤❤
I forgot to mention all the sweater, hat/scarf/mitten and blanket knitting and crocheting that was done. And when clothing was beyond wearing, buttons, zippers and other clasps were removed and reused.
That was a fantastic comment. Thanks for sharing!
Not just China, from the 1970s you're seeing major opening up of global markets so people can take advantage of cheaper labor + things like spread of shipping containers massively lowers the cost of moving both finished goods and raw materials around the world. I suspect that this is probably a big part of the reason the price of clothing starts taking up a smaller proportion of incomes from the 1980s onwards in the chart around the 20:00 mark.
When clothing was made in the USA, the sewing operator, paid state, federal tax, into social security, and spent their income here, all of those funds all lost going over seas. To me price did not go down but profit margins wet up. Not to mention impact of pollution of Cargo ships, UN-inspected cargo harboring deadly drugs.
@@proudtobeanamerican After Nixon's negotiation, the claim was that Chinese goods provided enough savings to Americans' cost of living that trade with China had a net effect of stimulating the American economy with lowered costs. There was no foresight to the effects of fast fashion, lack of sustainability or the creation of consumer-entitled expectations to satisfy an insatiable thirst for more cheaper everything and removing the motivation for learning sewing and other skills that were once common to every household.
I am 43 years man, I still remember that my mom had to mend everything including socks because we were poor, our parents used to buy us 1 set of new clothing (a shirt and a pant) twice a year to wear them on big holidays.
When clothes got smaller on me they were then given to my younger brother to wear.
I remember that I got many comments at school from my peers on still wearing same outfits I wore last school year.
Moral of the story if you were poor you owned very little and since 94% of people back then were poor I think they had same experience as I did.
What I'm greatly struck by is how TINY rent expenses were. And one of the first budgets you showed gave amounts for either rent or mortgage (principle and interest), with rent being something like 16% of the total budget and mortgage being under 2%. WTF? That seems like it would be utterly impossible today for anyone who isn't a multi-millionaire.
During my career, which began in the early 80s, an adequate wardrobe for my corporate office was considered to be ten outfits. This meant each outfit would be worn twice each month to the office. But, never having enough basic apparel until I finished university, I always want more. I had to manage throughout my childhood, teen and college years with one each: pair of jeans, pair of shoes, nightgown, thin sweater, and three t-shirts. I never had a jacket or coat, robe or slippers, swimsuit, shorts, sandals and many other things I really needed. Winter and summer I suffered from inadequate clothing, and trying to keep my few clothes clean was nightmare, I was only allowed one small cold-water laundry load per week. (I was a full-time live-in maid, cook and child-sitter 24/7 just for room and board, as a teenager). So, I had to wash my only jeans, single bra and nightie on alternate weeks. I didn’t have enough socks and underwear to go a week, either. This kind of long-term material deprivation leaves a lasting void that almost no amount of weather-appropriate, pretty wardrobe items can ever fill. For the first time in my life, age 64, I can finally afford new things. I was a full-time career professional, but my ex-husband didn’t work, so money was always too tight for more than a very minimal wardrobe. When I hear “minimalism” being so vaunted everywhere, I know it’s the very last thing I’ll ever want.
The depth and nuance of your videos are always such a refreshing standout in a world of "shorts" and reels and attention-grabbing but often simplified at best, inaccurate at worst content. Love your work, Nicole. (and the way your hair, shirt, and the lighting on the back wall all match! Rock that arsenic Scheels green 😁)
The comment of a fridge being possibly part of minimum comfort threw me. My German 1952 school cookbook chastises high school age girls with such lofty dreams as marrying someone who would provide them with a kitchen that had such lavish things as a fridge. (This 3 paragraph guilt trip was followed by advice on how to store raw meat up to ten days in a household pantry.)
Written just as the economic miracle was about to kick off.
This video is so well researched, I absolutely love all of the statistics you managed to pull together, it makes every point a lot more compelling
I remember my Mom describing to me her first apartment with my Dad. It was essentially 2 rooms, a kitchen just big enough for a two person table where they'd play cards and listen to the neighbors fight, a closet, and a bedroom. I said, where did you put all your clothes?! She chuckled and said, ""well, kid, we didn't have that many clothes back in those days. That one closet contained everything we owned".I picture them climbing onto the bed to get to their dressers, etc. They were lower middle class, high school educated, Depression babies. By the 1960s, they had a walk-in closet, same 2 dressers, a winter coat closet and a dresser for winter sweaters, scarves, etc. 2 sisters shared a dresser and my 4 brothers shared another as well as a closet. I remember being able to scare up a Halloween costume or a dressup outfit at any time, and all the sweaters were wool, mohair, cashmere. Few things, but they lasted forever.
had in-laws visiting over the weekend and a little buzz in the back of my head for TWO days was "Nicole has a new vid!". hurrah, i watched it today... two days late! it was excellent as always.
My parents had an old pair of matching wardrobes. My mum still has them. I think they were made in the 1930s. Sometimes I think about how physically huge and deep they are and how big the chest of drawers they also had were. I think in practice they had similar amounts of storage to my modern fitted wardrobes so it makes sense that they had a similar amount of clothes to store as we do now. We just change the kind of clothes we buy.
I don‘t know if anyone else has pointed out geographical differences, but I don‘t think English people had much, according to my granny (1916-2017).
My grandparents had his/hers wardrobes, hers being even smaller than his already modest-sized one… the assumption being a man has broader shoulders, I guess. The „hers“ wardrobe accomodated about 7-8 light hanging garments (hung facing rather than sideways) and shallow shelves on either side held accessories (hats, bags). In the early 80s this is what I stuffed my jeans/tshirt teen wardrobe into. There was also a chest of drawers for foldables (sweaters cardigans) and my grandad‘s shirts and underwear and a low dressing table with 2 drawers for granny‘s underpinnings. Personal belongings were also kept in these drawers, mementoes etc. And some home linens… So they didn‘t have much! Granny did sew all their clothing until the 1960s but continued the lifelong habit of sewing, altering, cutting down etc. until she was 95.
@@Woeschhuesli Interesting. My parents are English but I think things accumulate even for those who didn't spend a lot each year. Just going on the fact that my 83 year old mum still has just about every item of clothing she's bought since the 1970s and her wardrobe is bursting at the seams. She was used to not having a lot of spare money for clothes so everything got kept. Most of it is from the time she was still working and she just hasn't got rid of it. I can imagine someone who followed fashion a little more got rid of things that were no longer in style might only have a small amount of each season. We did have a little wardrobe in one room that had front to back hanging with a small shelf in the bottom. That was a lot shallower and slimmer but I think must have been used in addition to other storage as it was too small to accommodate more than a few dresses. My dad bought it, probably in the 50s but never used it as a wardrobe until it ended up in our bedrooms as kids.
@@Nettietwixt Ah yes, and the same generation as my mom rather than my granny (b. 1916), wartime added to the psychological effect. I think from the 70s onwards when things became a lot cheaper and there was often a bit more disposable income, people who had grown up with little began to over-compensate. And my generation grew up with buying something new almost every week, unfortunately. My own mother didn‘t keep so much bc we moved quite frequently, giving her the opportunity to declutter, while my granny lived in the same small house for 78 yrs… Two of my daughters are also high consumers, one isn‘t and I‘m something of a reformed character lol
(and my parents had a German 6-door monster wardrobe!!)
I was surprised at how similar my thoughts on clothes are to people in the 19th century. Especially with dresses. At one point all I wore was dresses because it was practical. A single dress cost less than two pieces and I looked more put together. I had cardigans of varying fanciness to dress up my dresses and simple practical shoes one or two pairs one for special occasions and one for everyday. When a dress got old, torn, stained or I just didn’t like it that much anymore it would become my lounging and cleaning dress.
I'm currently rereading the Anne of Green Gables series and the way in which new clothes are diccussed, and fashion in general, has suggested to me the 'they only owned three dresses' back than narrative is not quite true. For instance, when Anne goes to collage, or when her friend character gets married, they seem to have most pieces of new wardrobe made in prepation, which isn't something you would neccesarily do today. Characters also fairly frequantly dicuss getting a new dress thoughout the book, and it seems to be a point of pride and reputation to make sure you and your family and well dressed.
My grandmother had a winter coat a lightweight summer/fall coat a hat, three dress and jacket outfits a pair of slippers, a pair of court shoes and evening shoes a nightie a dressing gown and her hairnets and summer and winter gloves.
My parents were married in June 1935 ... the middle of the Great Depression. At that time, my mother only had TWO dresses. One for everyday wear and one for special occasions. Needless to say, she wore her Sunday Best on her wedding day.
Your colour composition - your clothes, hair, makeup, and set - is perfect and gorgeous!
on the topic of wearing more under layers in prior periods, to keep the outerwear fresh…today there are still plenty of expensive fashion items that are difficult or impossible to clean thoroughly, but we now wear them next to our skin. this has put the wearing of hugely detailed garments firmly in the realm of people who can afford to wear an expensive item only a few times before it is soiled. is this making fashion even less equitable across socioeconomic groups?
I'm a capsule wardrobe fan, and know exactly how many socks I have, but that's because I don't want to think a lot about getting ready in the morning. So the "fewer, but nicer things" mentality works well for me. I also have quite limited space, so I generally live that way with most of my items. Generally speaking, 2 coats, a vest, a few options for footwear, and then 12 of each other category is my sweet spot.
I also have a smaller capsule wardrobe for costumes for things like Ren Faires and similar events. It only has enough to have a bit of variety in both style and weather. Some of the items also double into my main wardrobe for things like sleep or hanging out at home.
For reference, I'm a working class person.
I'm going to be teaching a class in the fall on visible mending (I work in the arts department of my city), and I'm curious to see what kind of participation we end up with. The lower quality clothing is, the harder it can be to mend it and have that mending extend the life of the garment for a decent amount of time (a lot of stretchy fabrics have that problem), but basic repair can still make a big difference for quite a few things.
Today's median income is skewed by the massive rise in income of the "1%." Remove them and median income drops below $40,000 by most calculations. So there's that. Also, housing costs have skyrocketed in the last few decades, to the point that nearly all the young, single people that I know (and I teach college so I know a lot) can't afford even a small apartment on their own. That 25% in the pie chart applied when I was young (back in the Paleolithic, uphill in the snow both ways, all that), when a single person even on minimum wage could get a small apartment for 25-35% of their income. Those days are long gone, and housing can eat up 50% or more for folks struggling on the true median income (minus that handful of billionaires).
Yes, average is affected heavily by the extreme. Median is 50% of the population is above and 50% is below. So a very tiny fraction of a percentage that make billions won't skew it because it's not enough people. Agreed that the numbers are absolutely insane for managing a decent life today and economists have not kept up, though.
I'm fascinated by the percentages of how much different items in a budget cost in different eras... Sure we spend a much smaller perportion of our income on clothes now, but in the pie charts you offer, they spent under 15% on rent in 1919... Now you're lucky if you're only spending a third, and in my area it's not uncommon to spend 50-70% of your total takehome pay on housing
It matters a lot if we are talking pre or post industrial revolution. For most of history, the main cost of a fabric, by orders of magnitude, was in the fabrics since they took so incredibly long to make and usually went through many hands before they were sold to customers. Factory produced yarn and cloth brought those prices down massively. We have wills and inventories from the 16th century, and people might have genuinely only had two or three shirts or shifts and changed them weekly. But that wasn't a matter of choice, if they could have they would have had enough shirts so they could change every day. If you were rich enough, you did. But there is only so much cloth a person can produce by hand in a year, and that has consequences.
When we see the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's", we see the beautiful Audrey Hepburn wear the same Givenchy dress 4 times. Every time it is "fashioned" into 4 completely different styles, and the accessories change with the style. You just don't notice it at the time. When looking at the past records that Nichole displays, it is sad to see that rent (over 100 years) was about 15 % of income.
This reminds me so much of my fashion history classes! I just graduated uni and took a minor in fashion, and I learned so much. I realised that fashion history is my passion but idk how to get a job in it haha. But love the video!
Growing up in the 70s/80s I was raised in the way that my mother was raised, in that my mother would show me an outfit in a catalog, then order the pattern and make it herself . I am very familiar with tailoring shears and measuring tape . all of which was kept hidden away to the point where when we had visitors, no one would suspect that my mother tailored most of our clothing unless one had a keen eye to the quality of fit or asked me to turn my shirt collar to see that were no labels. All traditions are kept until this day, especially the practice of wearing linens under my suits..
For me one of the things that this highlights the most, probably bc it's a personal peeve, is you can see the exact moment at which the nation or at least its lobbyist turned against wealth tax. That moment in the 1960s where the average working class family went from 4% taxes to 13% taxes. And that even in the industrial period there was a concept of the living wage for "minimal comfort." It's a more honest phrasing IMO--"if you pay people less than this, you are denying them comfort," vs minimum wage that says "you're generous if you pay more than this."
I remember back in the latter 1970's reading Seventeen's college issue. Glamour's too. It was full of amazing fall clothing and you just wanted it all.
All through the 1970s our clothing always had that ILGWU tag, was made in the U.S. and very expensive. We had a few school outfits, a couple pairs of loafers, and play clothes. We wore everything until it wore out or we outgrew it. Grandma sewed us our special clothes!
The video aesthetics are beautiful I must say.
I love how you have the matching greens against black with hints of dark red from the backlighting, your clothes and your hair. It is visually appealling. Couldn't help but comment. 🙏
Wearing 18th century working class today ■ my grandson approached me outdoors in my meadow garden and said, "Your clothes you are wearing look 'finer than all' of your clothes/other combined." He stated this attire appeared to be farming clothes; I added they were/are for washing dishes and clothes, and for vegetable and flower gardening/gathering. M
How wonderful ❤ Do you like working in your 18th century clothes? I find that our ancestors often had more practical solutions for garments and handiwork than we often do.
@@kagitsune Adding piece to piece ■ I now know what 'pulling strings' is about. I have personally chosen to add these clothes to my homelife; do consider if applicable away from home in the future. It is a quality and design that I choose to share in my life with others. I do very much enjoy wearing these garments; learning how to [b]it the stay..."stay put" makes since now! M
I think what people deem being a holiday suitcase ( 6 tops, 3 bottoms, 3 dresses for women and 1-2 suits for men, one pair of sneaker and one special shoe) was probably the normal size of a wardrobe back in earlier time in the West. Keep I mind fashion used to essentially revolve around new accessories and occasionnally an affluent person would come up with a fancy new outfit
I thank you for bringing up the CW estate inventory search! I have never come across that before and will be a big help in my research and understanding in that regard.
Simple ..... It depends on how wealthy you were. A working class bride in the 1880's might have nothing while an upper class wealthy bride would have a full trousseau.
My Grandmother was a professional designer and tailoress in the 1920's. Her books show 8-10 evening gowns per season for the Society clients ..... Mostly silks or fine lawns. She also listed clothing she made for herself or family and friends. As a middle class woman, she did have dance dresses but you definitely notice the simple day suits but often with two different skirts to one jacket. I remember looking in her wardrobe as a child ..... It was a 6' wide full wardrobe ..... It wasn't crammed full but she commented .... "I do have far too many clothes! And I currently have EIGHT hats!".
22:07 a laundry layer maybe we need more of those for modern clothes like a slip for trousers that can washed?
I use Numi t-shirts for similar reasons! I wish there were more brands and styles like that.
I call them leggings and wear them under most of my skirts. I also made loose linen sort of a slip but really trousers that I also wear in the summer and it is super comfie.
Boy short underwear and 3 finger tanks are my go to underlayers
Nice research. Thanks for sharing
My dad grew up in the 1940's in a poor family in the American Midwest. His mom sewed their clothes. He had 2 shirts, 2 overalls, 1 pair shoes, 1 pair boots, 1 heavy coat, mittens, socks, a hat, 1 pullover sweater, 1 cardigan. His mom sewed the clothes in the late summer. At the end of the school year his shirts got made into short sleeves and the overall got chopped into shorts unless it was the right size for little brother. Dad was the middle brother so he got hand me downs. Oldest brother got the new clothes
My mom got blessed with a build that was not like her older sisters, so she got new clothing as the hand-me-downs didn't fit her. Being seven years younger than my sister, I didn't wear hand-me-downs either.
I was born in 1955 and until high school, I had school clothes, play clothes, and good (church) clothes. Also school shoes and play shoes. We usually got a pair of sandals for summer.
Same for my family.. we had 1 new church dress every fall,(and hope we didn't grow out of it before the end of spring) and wore that exact same dress along with all the other kids, and this was a fairly well off area.
I remember doing an analysis on clothing in Jane Eyre a long time ago and IIRC she had two black dresses (one silk for best, one wool for every day), a grey silk, and some kind of generic crappy work type dress for messy jobs. That doesn't count cloaks, shawls, chemises etc.
A thought that comes to mind about the 1920's women's clothing spike vs mens is the changing styles at that point. It's true that you can track men's suits and see different cuts every five years, or so, possibly even shorter times at certain points, but men can easily wear a suit for ten years, or longer without being embarrassingly out of date. For women though, especially between around 1910 and 1930, dresses were almost totally different every two years, or so, and it would have quickly become embarrassing to not be wearing the proper hem length. So women had to virtually replace their whole wardrobe and fewer things could be remade or updated than in the decades before.
It certainly makes sense that the fashion revolution of the 1910s-1930s meant that women had a great incentive to replace their wardrobes. However, they tended to have fewer outer layer gaments, and I suspect a lot of dresses started to look worn after a few boiled washings.
@@Velostigmat That's very true, although I suspect that many 20's dresses, partucularly high style ones had to be hand washed. Those fabrics were much to thin and fragile for boiled washing. Even men's cotton/linen shirts back then wear much heavier than ones today.
Facts are always more interesting and sometimes surprising than you expect. Thanks for diving in yet again to separate truth from fiction. ♥️
[weeping in modern rent costs]
Imagine how much easier things would be if rent was 15-20% of your income and taxes were like 4%. The economist predictions for the future were based around that and honestly are so depressing just how great they thought everything would be. Including a 6 hour work week.
@@NicoleRudolphWhat do taxes in the USA go to? Like we have taxes in my country, but that pays for OK public education and OK public Healthcare.... what do you get for your taxes if you don't get public Healthcare?
@@courtneyquinn3188the defense budget, social security payments and government subsidized healthcare programs are the top three things US taxes go towards.
@@stephgreen3070And good luck ever seeing that social security pension or that subsidized healthcare when you actually need it 🙃🫠
@@courtneyquinn3188 Also, taxes in the US go towards rebuilding infrastructure (roads, bridges), schools, town services (including things like libraries), etc.
Now, whether or not there is waste involved is a whole nother bundle of coconuts!
Watched up to about 28 minutes of this, got distracted and rant-daydreamed to myself for about an hour, remembered this existed and finished it, and I can confidently say that I thoroughly enjoyed this video and will probably watch more of your stuff after I go to bed cause it is currently 1:45 am :]
I remember as a child my friends laughing at me because I had 3 school dresses and they had at least 5. My mom did wash clothes mid-week, so they were clean, but 5 dresses seemed extravagant. Especially since, as growing kids, we did outgrow them pretty quickly. And, yes, I did immediately change into play clothes when I got home from school.
The two things that made me think about this question growing up were Gogol and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Even now I find it challenging to grasp that The Overcoat is decades earlier, I guess since it's urban and so concerned with work and bureaucracy. But I've also read 20th century stories where people pawn suits and that too seems wild. We have Buffalo Exchange and fancy consignment shops but nobody is taking out loans on their clothing AFAIK.
Fantastic topic and research. I appreciate the visuals, too. wonderful deep-dive. TY!