Article about gloves and fashion ("Why did gloves go out of style?")

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countrylatexglover
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Article about gloves and fashion ("Why did gloves go out of style?")

Post by countrylatexglover »

Thought I would share this hope it hasn’t been posted already.

https://larivierefashion.com/why-did-gl ... -of-style/

Just a little reading on gloves and fashion. Seems they just plain go in and out of style for no reason like hair styles and other things. I do wish they were in style and not just on the runway but hey maybe some day again they will make a come back.
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Re: A little read about gloves and fashion.

Post by devdas5z1 »

countrylatexglover wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 3:28 pm Thought I would share this hope it hasn’t been posted already.

https://larivierefashion.com/why-did-gl ... -of-style/

Just a little reading on gloves and fashion. Seems they just plain go in and out of style for no reason like hair styles and other things. I do wish they were in style and not just on the runway but hey maybe some day again they will make a come back.
I suspect the writer must be young, because there are a lot of inaccuracies in the article.
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Re: A little read about gloves and fashion.

Post by countrylatexglover »

devdas5z1 wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:45 pm
countrylatexglover wrote: Thu Jan 05, 2023 3:28 pm Thought I would share this hope it hasn’t been posted already.

https://larivierefashion.com/why-did-gl ... -of-style/

Just a little reading on gloves and fashion. Seems they just plain go in and out of style for no reason like hair styles and other things. I do wish they were in style and not just on the runway but hey maybe some day again they will make a come back.
I suspect the writer must be young, because there are a lot of inaccuracies in the article.
I am curious to know what they are?
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Re: A little read about gloves and fashion.

Post by devdas5z1 »

countrylatexglover wrote: Fri Jan 06, 2023 4:17 pm
I am curious to know what they are?
The whole article is just a mess. Gloves went out of style the first time (at least in modern times) in the mid-60's due to their association with social conformity and the conservative political values of the 50's and early 60'S. Gloves were associated with femininity and a lack of assertiveness. Just look at the icons of the era known for wearing them: Rita Hayworth, Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly. Women who are still viewed as models of quiet submissive elegance or for serving men's sexual appetites. Wearing them shifted from fashionable choice to a signal (much like masks during covid) of where you stood on women's roles.

Go back and watch movies from the time period. Frequently, when a female is in danger or in distress, she is wearing gloves. That was a deliberate symbolic choice: a person wearing gloves can't effectively fight back. The 70's movie Animal House has a variation on this idea, with some of the characters joking that uptight women wear gloves while giving handjobs because they're prissy and don't want to get their hands dirty. (Oddly enough, the best direct conversation about this phenomenon I've seen was on the Sopranos, when the daughter decided she didn't want to wear white gloves like her mom. Even though the scene takes place decades later, it illustrates that gloves were associated with women being second class citizens.)

What really tipped me off that the writer was writing from guesswork was her comment that Audrey Hepburn's “Breakfast at Tiffany’s" look included long white gloves. Even a casual fashion follower knows that Hepburn wore long black gloves in that movie. And, it's worth noting, despite her elegance and the family-friendly image the movie presents, Hepburn's character is a prostitute, albeit a very well paid one. She's a model of traditional femininity.

French manicures also had a major negative impact on their popularity. During the height of glove popularity (mid-20th Century) women kept their fingernails short, mainly because they simply didn't need to show them off. In the early 70's, french manicures became hugely popular, and the gloves women already owned simply couldn't be worn anymore, because they weren't designed to accomodate the extra space long fingernails required.

Gloves did start to become popular again in the early 80's. but it wasn't because of Madonna. It was because of a few major changes to society: MTV, the popularity of evening soap operas, and the Reagan/Thatcher conservative movement. The 80's were as much of a rebellion against the progressive values of the Civil Rights era and the bad economy of the 70's as the 60's were a rebellion against the 50's. Conspicuous consumption, flaunting wealth, and sayings like "greed is good" and" "whoever dies with the most toys wins" became popular among young wealthy people in the 80's. If you go back and look at 80's fashion, you'll notice the look we all associate with it really didn't start until 1982, which is when the economy in the west started to rebound. Coincidentally, popular soaps like Dynasty and Dallas about wealthy people dressing extravagantly with furs, gloves, and designer clothes became the rage, which fit well with the west's newfound love for material wealth. MTV emerged around this time, and since most of their early videos depended on British new wave and pop artists who dressed in campy, loud outfits with androgynous styles, that style also influenced fashion, so you had fashion icons like Adam Ant, Boy George, Grace Jones and Prince who flaunted gender norms in their style.

Madonna did influence fashion, but it was very risky for every day women to dress like her, because Madonna promoted herself as sexually promiscuous. The implication for any women who chose to dress like her was to signal that they were also promiscuous, so it was risky for women to communicate that to a society that still looked down at women having many sexual partners. Personally I saw more 80's women adopt Pat Benatar and Brook Shield's style. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw people wearing Madonna's look.

The one part the article gets right is the section on fingerless military style gloves. These became popular because the fingerless style were seen as more masculine (frequently they looked as if the finger had been crudely cut off, implying the wearer did not care about appearances. Take note how often comic book adaptations use fingerless gloves to communicate the hero's masculinity or simply a lack of traditional femininity (like the movie version of Captain Marvel, who wore full gloves in the comic, but it was changed to fingerless gloves to emphasize her toughness), and they use regular gloves to communicate the character fits a traditional female archetype (like Catwoman).
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Re: Article about gloves and fashion ("Why did gloves go out of style?")

Post by FancoisGant26 »

I agree that this article seems lost and misstructured. Thanks for the detailed follow up devdas5z1.
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Re: A little read about gloves and fashion.

Post by EyesLikeLenses »

devdas5z1 wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:53 pm
countrylatexglover wrote: Fri Jan 06, 2023 4:17 pm
I am curious to know what they are?
The whole article is just a mess...etc..
The inaccuracies in the article were quite obvious to me as well, especially the part claiming how during WWII, clothing was rationed, and fashion gloves became an unnecessary luxury, which is total rubbish. Gloves were still a fairly common accessory throughout WWII, and became even more common immediately after the war as women were no longer needed to work in factories in place of men. The hippie counter culture of the mid-to-late 1960's put an end, not just to glove wearing, but what was viewed as an outdated conservative style of dress. The trend of casual dress really began during that time period. Beginning at around 1966, the need to dress both elegantly and conservatively gave way to long hair, beards, earth tones and blue jeans. The 1980's were an exception as elegance and conservatism in fashion made a brief comeback, but by 1992, that all ended with Grunge and other trends in music which encouraged youth to dress down again. The one thing that the article gets right is that gloves now remain an accessory relegated to the red carpet, movies and fashion runways, but even then it is becoming more of a rarity. The trend of glove wearing by the general public has long since passed and it is uncertain if things will reverse in the near future.
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