Timing Is The New Black

James Laver was a British historian of art and fashion design born on the cusp of the 20th century. This is the model he devised to depict the changing social perceptions of women’s fashion:

Indecent: 10 years before its time

Shameless: 5 years before its time

Daring: 1 year before its time

Smart: Current Fashion

Dowdy: 1 year after its time

Hideous: 10 years after its time

Ridiculous: 20 years after its time

Amusing: 30 years after its time

Quaint: 50 years after its time

Charming: 70 years after its time

Romantic: 100 years after its time

Beautiful: 150 years after its time

In Tastes and Fashion: From the French Revolution Until Today (published 1937), Laver wrote:

The modern young man can contemplate without emotion the entire area of the female leg and a considerable portion of the stomach. In the nineteen-twenties, for the first time in many hundreds of years, the female leg was exposed to general view. The bust, however, also for the first time in many centuries, was not supposed to exist at all, and women who did not mind in the least exposing their lower limbs would have been embarrassed if called upon to wear a deep decolletage.

In short, the female body consists of a series of sterilized zones, which are those exposed by the fashion just going out, and an erogenous zone, which will be the point of interest for the fashion which is just coming in. This erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever actually catching up. It is obvious that if you ever really catch it up you are immediately arrested for indecent exposure. If you almost catch it up you are celebrated as a leader of fashion.

Maybe it's because I'm in the business, but I find it interesting to look at theory behind it.