Dressing like little kids

Fashion history & identifying trends that depend on when we want to age ourselves up or down

Upon recommendations from my lovely audience, I listened to the 6-part series on American Ivy from Articles of Interest. And while this series is a must-listen for everyone even remotely interested in fashion history, a specific antidote from Episode 5 has stuck with me. In the episode, Avery Trufelman interviews Lorlynn Divita, an associate professor at Baylor University in their Merchandising Department. In the interview, Divita recounts a moment in 1987 when women outright rejected a trend that was being pushed on them by runways, department stores, and advertisers, leading brands like Liz Claiborne and Donna Karen to lose millions of dollars. The trend was called Frou Frou: a hyper-feminine aesthetic featuring mini skirts, corsets, puffy sleeves, and princess-like dresses.

An example of Frou Frou from Jean-Louis Scherrer SS 1988.

This was a radical shift from the strong-shouldered business wear that women were wearing at the time, an aesthetic that can be attributed to Claude Montana in 1979 and that was extremely practical at the time given women’s increased participation in the white collar workforce in the 1980s.

Love some sexy *census data* - but also! I discovered that the most significant increase in women's participation in the US workforce occurred between 1964 and 1974. I had assumed it was in the late 1970s and into early 1980s. This suggests that the androgynous, work-centred silhouettes of the 1980s were a somewhat delayed response to the rise in women's workforce participation, rather than coinciding with it.

In doing research around the Frou Frou debacle I came across a very funny article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1987:

This spring heralds the era of a New Romanticism in fashion. And designers are straight-pinning their hopes on the crush of crinoline, the rustle of taffeta, and the cool of tulle. A veritable fashion frou-frou for all is headed our way. Springtime is high time, proclaimeth style soothsayers, to enjoy being a girl again. Ah, but a decidedly young girl. Practically prepubescent, in fact. The little-girl-lust look of pretty petticoats, flirt skirts, and coquette chic may be tu-tu much for seriously chic women.

"To enjoy being a girl again"? "Coquette chic"? Sound familiar? Fashion trends tend to change very little year-on-year (despite what Fashion Trend TikTok may be telling you), but a significant shift we saw last year both IRL and in RealLife© was coquette’s bows, Miu Miu ballet flats, and Sandy Liang dupes. Several great writers, journalists, and substacks have covered what reclaiming our girlhood in 2023 means on a personal and cultural level (I particularly like this one from The Cut). But the girl-trends that range from girl dinners, to wearing bows in our hair, to blaming our missteps on being “just a girl” via TikTok all point to one thing: our comfort with being girls.

We have two eras here: the 1980s, where women outright rejected girlhood at the expense of numerous marketing efforts, and the 2020s where women are fully embracing it. Another interesting era to reference is the 1960s mod look. This was a trend that began in the UK but quickly spread to other countries throughout the 1960s. This was an aesthetic that outright borrowed from children’s clothing. Prior to the 1960s, shift dresses, coloured tights, and Mary Janes were all reserved for children, but were staples in the mod look. Now why did the 1960s borrow so heavily from children’s clothing? I wasn’t able to find any academic papers or even journalists that dug into this question, but I do have an idea of my own. I can imagine that the girls of the 1960s looked to their moms of the 1950s and thought that the traditional housewife lifestyle was incredibly unappealing, and that, funnily, by dressing like children could act as an act of resistance - extending their childhood meant that they did not yet have to assume the roles and responsibilities of a destitute adulthood. (Now: this is just a thought, please comment if you have found any academic papers or interesting essays on this topic - I am very open to differentiating opinions!)

Could it be that both the 1960s and the 2020s contain adulthoods that are not worth growing up for? Are we too looking to extend our childhoods in hopes of putting off a sad example of adulthood? And is fashion the best way of doing this?

I grew up in the 2010s and was watching Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and Girls at arguably too young of an age. And while I watched these shows years after they had completed their run, despite their downfalls, represented an adulthood that I wanted. I wanted to live in the city, go to glamorous parties, and wear beautiful clothes. At the time, I thought that this was a life that I could achieve if I worked hard and moved out of Rural Village, Nowhere, Canada, N0K 1W0. The barrier to entry for a glamorous adulthood seemed to be on the floor. However, given the state of the world, the isolation we continue to experience from the pandemic, and the cost of living crisis, I am not sure if adulthood now is as aspirational as it was then. Why grow up when the traditional markers of adulthood are unachievable anyway? I say this as someone who is almost a decade into my adult independence, self-sufficient, but who is nowhere near the traditional markers of adulthood (house, kid, a job that allows me save for retirement, etc.). I too, despite not necessarily wearing the extended childhood wardrobe of bows and ballet fats, am also extending my youth well beyond what would be traditionally expected of me.

So - the year of the girl was 2023, but what’s next?

This year we’ve seen a number of trends that involve dressing like lost eras of adulthood. We’ve seen the office siren aesthetic that romanticizes an era of water cooler chats and wearing business casual to your 9-5. We’ve also seen the, arguably, most popular Instagram caption of 2024 being “In my Carrie Bradshaw era” — the most obvious example of our continued obsession with a pre-digital New York City.

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A post shared by @macagarciar

In my next two Substack posts, I will dig into two separate fashion trends that I think will have a major impact over the next year, both of which lean on nostalgia for past versions of adulthood.

But that’s all for now! Thanks for reading.