Throughout time, clothing fashions have changed tremendously. From long skirts to short shorts, everything from clothing to accessories has changed. We can look at what has changed throughout time. Just by analyzing the clothing women wore, showed that they were treated differently because they had a specific outfit that characterized women as fancy and feminine. They wore long, big, and heavy dresses. Some of the people in the colonial era had financial issues and that would affect what they wore for clothing, and if they have a job maybe they had enough money to buy better clothing. In the colonial period clothing was obviously a mirror image of British clothing. However, did the Indians influence our clothing in any way? I do know that inventions later on made women's clothing evolve. We will also look at the men and children's clothing and how it has not changed as much as women's. Why were the clothes made heavy and what were the materials they used? While researching colonial clothing I found many details that I will further explain.
Throughout history, many things in society, art, music, have influenced people. One of the biggest things that makes us who we are and tells other people what we are all about is clothing. Clothing can say a lot especially about a subject that is still brought up in today's society; Feminism. Women in the colonial era were only allowed to wear certain clothes. They had no leeway and were looked at differently if they refused to wear a dress. If women were not wearing a dress they were known as un-lady like and society looked at them differently. Women were known to stay at home or work in factories so no one saw a need for them to wear pants. There have always been stereotypes about women especially the one that says women should not work and should work around the house and take care of the kids and cooking. Woman would wear exaggerated side hoops, or panniers, to support her wide skirt for a dress occasion, while her undress clothing, although it would appear quite formal to our eyes, had a more modest skirt size that may not have needed hoops at all" .