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Fashion Sense ...

Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Kribu:
<font color=yellow>As long as we talk about men, then I agree. As for women - well, I'd say the change in women's general attire has been almost as big as between the 18th and the 19th century. Sure you can say that some women still wear a dress but apart from a traditional-looking wedding dress, not too many women today prefer walking around in such gowns, not to mention the corset, every day. /ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Thank God for equality amongst all! I can't imagine a world without bikini's, tank tops, mini's etc etc!
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Kribu:
<font color=yellow>not to mention the corset, every day. /ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
The corset was truly an invention of torture. And people wondered why these young ladies kept fainting all of the time. It's because they couldn't BREATHE! /ubbthreads/images/icons/rolleyes.gif

Superbob: it is funny to see pictures of the old swim suits, isn't it? The really daring ones that showed a womans ankle. /ubbthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif

The one fashion statement that I'll never learn to appreciate (no matter what great body it's on) is the string-up-the-butt thing. What gives with this? It's hardly sexy IMHO, it must be uncomfortable. /ubbthreads/images/icons/confused.gif
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by hypatia:
<font color=yellow>The one fashion statement that I'll never learn to appreciate (no matter what great body it's on) is the string-up-the-butt thing. What gives with this? It's hardly sexy IMHO, it must be uncomfortable. /ubbthreads/images/icons/confused.gif</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
Since you asked... /ubbthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif First of all, it's good in the summer when it's hot. And it's good when you wear a tight skirt/trousers, as it doesn't leave ugly panty lines. /ubbthreads/images/icons/grin.gif

I wouldn't wear a string bikini though. /ubbthreads/images/icons/grin.gif
 
I really liked the clothing on B5. Such attention to detail! I like detail. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

Tammy
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ChiLlBeserker:
<font color=yellow>Good:The Army of Light uniforms<snip>
Bad:Earthforce Uniforms</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
While the Army of Light Uniforms looked nicer, the EarthForce uniforms seemed less like a costume and more like an actual military uniform. Definitely better than Star Trek. Up until Enterprise, they were all costumes, rather than uniforms, and the Earthforce outfits were more convincing as the regalia of a (fictional) military. At least to me, and I wear an actual uniform on a daily basis. That's not to say I like the fashion sense of the Uniform Board....
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>As long as we talk about men, then I agree. As for women - well, I'd say the change in women's general attire has been almost as big as between the 18th and the 19th century.<hr></blockquote>

Corsets were in use for a relatively short time. Fashions certainly come and go. (100 years from now I doubt women will be injecting botulism to get rid of wrinkles. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif) Nor did most women wear the kind of ballgowns and corsets that you're talking about most of the time. Around the cities, especially in the south, such things were popular. But farm wives and poorer women were wearing dresses not terribly different from what you can buy in stores today. Separate skirts and blouses were already in use. Much of the fashion change since the 19th and early 20th century has been in the social acceptability of women wearing what had previously been "male" attire. Marlene Deitrich wearing slacks and a jacket was shocking in the 1930s. Now women go to work in such outfits. But note that these aren't new fashions - they just adapt what was already being worn by men. The mini-skirt of the 60s would have shocked any previous generation, but it was identifiably a skirt (usually. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif) And since it was followed by the maxi-skirt, if was more of a fad than anything. Fads will certainly come and go, but a major change in the general "look" of clothing (like the switch from tunic to mediaeval gown, or from powdered wig and knee-breeches to trousers and natural hair) happens much more rarely.

Finally there is the simple fact that B5, like all TV shows, is produced for a contemporary audience. With only 42 minutes or so of screen time in which to tell a complex story you can't afford to confuse or distract an audience with a whole new fashion "grammar" and "volcabulary". Military uniforms must be identifiable at a glance, or you have to explain them every time they're shown. The updated version of a business suit must be clearly what it is or the audience won't know at a glance that the person entering the room is a prominent business or government type. Casual clothing must also be recognizable, so that as soon as we cut to Sheridan or Ivanova in their quarters, we know without needing any dialogue that they're about to be interrupted in their off-duty hours.

The Trek shows, which went more in the direction of "costume" for its Starfleet uniforms, kept a recognizable business suit to send the right signal for Earth-based civilians.

Regards,

Joe
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino:
<font color=yellow>(100 years from now I doubt women will be injecting botulism to get rid of wrinkles</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
Botulism?!! I think you mean Botox.
 
Re: Retro!

I think that most of the regular characters looked pretty well dressed for the most part, even when they weren't in their "business clothes".
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino:
<font color=yellow>Marlene Deitrich wearing slacks and a jacket was shocking in the 1930s.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
Indeed, although 1930s is hardly the 19th century. /ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif

The radical change in women's clothing came with/after the 1st world war. The minidresses of 1920s are shockingly different from whatever was in fashion in 1890 or even 1910.

And while I agree that ballgowns were hardly everyday wear (BTW, I assume that you talk about the US in your examples - it might be nice to mention it, the US does not equal the world /ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif and it took me several moments to realize you meant the US South, not Southern Europe for example), the "schoolmistress wear" - blouse and skirt - was still rather different from today's office wear, more so than the men's daily wear - and at least over here, the overwhelming majority of women today do not wear dresses or skirts but jeans/trousers. It might be only an adaptation of men's wear but it's still very unlike the 19th century.

As for the lower classes - well, you could say that the 18th century clothes or even the 15th century clothes of the poor, for that matter, aren't all that different from today's outfits either.

To get back on topic though - as for the Earthforce blue uniforms, then yes, they looked almost like real uniforms, which are hardly ever good-looking. Quite frankly I don't know of any current military uniform that I would call nice. Dress uniforms are occasionally a different matter, but the daily stuff is usually plain ugly. This is why I liked the black uniforms - they looked quite different, very good, but still something that a military person could wear as uniform and be taken seriously, if you don't stick very rigidly to the current notion of what a uniform should be like.
 
Re: Retro!

I'm not one for fashion or costumes (often some period film will come out and people say, "Wow, did you see those beautiful costumes?" No!), but I'm a sucker for leather (easy with the jokes, now, this ain't NC-17) and primitive attire. So, I dig the Narn get-up. It's kinda like what the Klingons wear.

I also like the season 4 Earth uniforms better than the blue ones. I don't know what the deal is with that little grey triangle, but I like it.

As for "butt-floss" panties, my girlfriend claims that they're quite comfortable. Hey, whatever... I'm not gonna complain!
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by GKarsEye:
<font color=yellow>So, I dig the Narn get-up.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

And I love how G'Kar's leather is so tight he has to turn his whole body to look at someone. And the squeak of G'Kar's leather is one of my favorite B5 sounds.
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by StarForBram:
<font color=yellow>And I love how G'Kar's leather is so tight he has to turn his whole body to look at someone. And the squeak of G'Kar's leather is one of my favorite B5 sounds.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
OK, this is getting dangerously close to NC-17 material... **drools** /ubbthreads/images/icons/blush.gif
 
Re: Retro!

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Botulism?!! I think you mean Botox.<hr></blockquote>

"Bo-tox" is short for Botulism Toxin. The stuff is actually derived from the disease organism and works by killing nerve cells. Granted it isn't the pure, full-strength and potentially fatal botulism culture they're injecting, but that's what the stuff is derived from.

Re: Dietrich. I was giving examples from various times, and making the point that fad and fashion as it affects form, not the basic garments, was what was changing. Again, the point was that these changes are nothing like the radical changes in other times.

Re: U.S.-centrism. Newsflash: Babylon 5 is an American TV series, made for American television. Unavoidably the dominant culture depicted therein is a projection of current American culture. This is the case in nearly all future SF made for American audiences. You want your audience to identify with the events in your story. (And on television, which doesn't have the luxury of really establishing an "alternate world" this also applies to series set in the past. Bonanza was as much 1960s America projected into the past as Star Trek was 1960s America in the future.) So naturally I'm going to discuss its costume changes mostly in terms of American fashion history.

But I did make the point, several times, that it is really Western fashion, broadly speaking, that we're talking about here. Even today much of the world does not dress in the style of the U.K., Europe and North America (which are so similar to one another as to make no difference.) Hooped skirts and corsets went out of style in England at much the same time they did in America, well before WWI. While (both) the World Wars made a difference (there wasn't much that the hippies of the 60s did that the flappers of the 20s hadn't beaten them to) much had already changed decades earlier.

You can find pictures and drawings from the mid-19th century on that look pretty "contemporary." The same can't be said of the 18th century, which didn't look like the 15th century, which didn't resemble the 1st century. But for hundreds of years in between there were relatively few changes in the dominant forms of dress in Europe, and the same may be true in the future. Now that women's clothing have undergone such a radical transformation, there may not be much further to go. Or maybe the fashion trendsetters of the 23rd century have started a vogue for late-20th/early 21st century clothes and nobody bothered to tell us. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif
 
Re: Retro!

Something I dont think anyone has mentioned. The uniforms of the PsiCorp. I can hardly remember a uniform that strikes into people in the same way with feelings like RAW POWER! When Bester made his appearanses, he took the entire room. That was in great part due to a great actor. But his clothes just reeked power.

Those black glowes...

/Com
 
Re: Retro!

You can always date a film/show by the female hair.........butWHAT was it with B5 females and all those 80's hair styles lol
 
Worst of all were Gideon's shirts. The brown thing he wore for dinner with Lochley was grim, and as for the green beach shirt he wore in the bullet car tube... There are some people who should never be allowed out of uniform!

The grey Crusade uniforms were probably just about the silliest items in the B5 universe.
 
Re: Retro!

Please allow me to reiterate - when talking of fashion, we usually slide off towards formal clothing worn on special occasions. This leads to error and bias. On formal occasions, people of formal position have often worn exaggerated or outright silly stuff (wigs, corsets, whatever). People whose clothing matters in practical affairs have always worn much more similar clothes. Those have changed much more slowly.
 
Re: Retro!

One of the sources for Star Trek was the Hornblower books. This is the fictional story of a British Naval Officer during the napoleonic Wars. Officers at that time wore a weird uniform including a triangle hat. Privates in the army did wear bright red; now only worn as a ceremonial uniform by the Guards Regiments. The replacement of smoky flint lock guns allowed the army to adopt plain uniform in the early twentieth century. By the 1940s the army was into green camouflage and has kept it.

In the nineteenth century British working class women used to wear dresses down to the floor, even when working in factories. I suspect that it was the invention of bras and knickers that changed things.
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Demon:
<font color=yellow>Worst of all were Gideon's shirts.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

I actually really like his shirts

and that black top sinclair wore to bed
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by LightNZ:
<font color=yellow>I actually really like his shirts

and that black top sinclair wore to bed</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

So did I but then again I've had it pointed out to me that my fashion sense leaves a lot to be desired.
 
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