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Short Stuff: The Style Cycle · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and I'm super stressed out. Jerry's there, too,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and she's sitting in for Dave, and this is Short Stuff.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: That's right, about the style cycle, thanks to Popular Science
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Sartorial Magazine, baracko.com and not barackobama.com, but baracko.com and earth.com
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: for this information.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: So the style cycle, if you haven't guessed already, refers
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to that idea that fashion styles come back in vogue again,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to use a fashion term, every 20-ish years. I always
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: thought it was more like 30, but I think 20
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: is what most people say. And it's always been this
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: anecdotal observation that most people agree on. But I think recently,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't see when the study was conducted, but some
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: researchers from Northwestern University came up with a very clever
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: way to actually study it to see if it's a thing.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And they found like, yes, it is indeed a thing
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: that fashion exists basically on 20 year cycles. And that
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: fashion designers are very, very lazy by year 20. They
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: just reach back and start over again.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they did quite a few things for the study.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: They analyzed 37,000 images of women's clothing. So this is
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: for women's style from 1869 forward. And this was a
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: big deal. This was presented at the American Physical Society
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Global Physics Summit in Denver. And they didn't just look
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: at pictures, right? They had all those 37,000 images, but
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: that wasn't good enough.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: No, they found a bunch of runway images from over
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the decades. They found sewing patterns from the Commercial Pattern
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Archive at the University of Rhode Island. So they assembled
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a ton of images. And then this is what they
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: did that was so clever. They used data points starting
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: with the distance from the eye to the neckline, the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: neckline to the waist, and the waist to the hemline
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of, like, say, a dress. I think
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: they just studied dresses exclusively. And so because now they had, like,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: data points, they were able to quantify this, like how far–
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the neckline plunged or how far it came up. And
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: so they were able to watch it over time. And
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: what they saw when they drew each thing in a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: flip book, it took them forever. And then they flipped
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: through it. You could see like the neckline going up
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and down. You could see the hemline going up and down.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: And it was about on a 20-year cycle that it
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: did these things, that it repeated, swung back and forth.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say something that will not surprise you
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: or anyone else listening. My brother used to do flip books.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: When we were a kid. Man.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Was he good?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were good. They were like stick figure thing. Well,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: that's not true. A lot of them were stick figures. Like, uh,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I remember very distinctly a flip book. And of course
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I would just eat this stuff up and do my
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: own poor versions afterwards. Uh, but like, I remember a
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: stick figure pole vaulter, like running down and pole vaulting. Uh,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: but then like my brother was a really good artist.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: He would, I don't know why, but for a certain
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: period in his younger years, he was drawing like, like
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: war stuff and people getting blown to bits. Like, A
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: flipbook of a hand grenade like blowing a guy into pieces. Yeah,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: very interesting for such a peaceful guy.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Anyway, just flipbook memory.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I went to go make one the other day and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, forget this. This is going to be
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: hard and take a lot of time that I don't have.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: So much respect to your brother for that.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, mine were pretty jumpy. So this idea of fashion
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: is that people want to They want to fit in,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: but they also want to have their own style. And
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: there's also an idea with designers that once something becomes
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: too widespread, that designers are done with it, basically. So
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: it's sort of a give-and-take idea.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: It is. So say that mom jeans were a new
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: thing in the 2010s, right? Yeah. They were actually... From
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the 80s and 90s, but to the 2010s, they were
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: like brand new and they were quite revolutionary and daring
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: that somebody would try to rock mom jeans because they've
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: always been looked at as just like frumpy, right? Mom
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  Speaker 1: jeans became so prevalent that you could not find women's
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  Speaker 1: jeans that weren't essentially mom's jeans in some way, shape
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: or form. And then eventually the designers are like, we're
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: bored with this. I want to come up with something else.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: So they do something else, right? That's essentially what you're saying.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: What this is saying is that the something else they
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: do is jump back 20 years again.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And they pull from that. And now all of a sudden,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I've just been waiting for parachute pants to come back in,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: but they won't do it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be one that has resisted.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: For sure. And I can kind of understand why. But
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying is it's like the designers, they come
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: up with new things. But essentially what they're doing is
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: it's like that Shakespeare quote, there's nothing new under the sun.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: That really applies to fashion design.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Should we take a break?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, because I'm getting worked up.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: All right. We'll be right back. uh okay we're back
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: everybody and this 20-year rule does have sort of data
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: points that support it at this point because of that
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: study uh but they're thinking that that that 20-year may
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: be shorter and shorter as we move along. Because starting
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: at a certain point, you know, the five stages, which
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: is you introduce a style, there's a rise, obviously, a peak,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: then a decline, then it becomes obsolete. But it seems
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: like that cycle is speeding up now, kind of at
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the rate of people's attention spans almost with the internet,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: it seems like.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like social media has had a huge, huge effect
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: on this because you can see other people's style and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: If other people like that style, they'll pick up that style.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden there's a trend on TikTok, right?
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: That in and of itself isn't necessarily harmful. It's that
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: fast fashion, like say H & M. Well, they have
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: people whose job it is to troll social media, to
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  Speaker 1: look for trends. And then H & M designs clothes
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: according to those trends as fast as they can and
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: gets them out to stores. And the reason they want
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: to do it as fast as they can is because these,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: what are called micro trends, come in and out in
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the blink of an eye. So you want to be
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: able to figure out exactly how many you need to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: make of a thing because you know it's not going
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to be around very long and you want to get
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it out to stores as fast as you can. Yeah.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the ideas is that a
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: micro trend may thwart this 20-year cycle because it doesn't
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: become a really big, huge, widespread thing for a length
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: of time.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: So it's... We're probably looking at a situation where a
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: TikTok micro trend isn't going to come back in 20
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: years because it never even fully registered as a genuine, like,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: big trend.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Right. Exactly. The problem is, is the closer and closer
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: we get to a trend reaching back to maybe the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: day before, when it happens that a trend comes into
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: existence and then comes into existence again, As a retro thing,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: on the same day, the universe will collapse and not itself.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: That's right. You mentioned fast fashion. This stat is sort
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: of disturbing, but we produce about 80 billion pieces of
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: clothes a year. And that is a 400% increase from
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: 20 years ago.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: That's really rough. Yeah.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: And it used to be very easy to see a
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: 70s look, an 80s look. And it's just becoming harder
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: and harder to pinpoint like certainly like a decade's worth
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: of look.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This article points out the Indie Sleaze aesthetic, which
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: is essentially what the Brat Summer aesthetic was based on.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: And the Indie Sleaze aesthetic only went away from like,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you know, like 10 or so years before, which is
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: way faster than the 20 year rule. I also saw
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it argued by fashion bloggers that the Indie Sleaze revamp
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: was totally made up by overworked people who have to
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: trawl social media to find new trends. They just made
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: that up that that was a thing again. And that
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: actually made it a thing. It brought it into existence.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Who knows? But I think that means you have to
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: take that that particular example with a grain of salt,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: because it may or may not prove that things are
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: speeding up too much. I think the other evidence supports it,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: but that particular trend doesn't necessarily. Yeah, I agree.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, and you know, nostalgia drives a certain amount of this. Um,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: when a new generation comes along, they, a lot of
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: times with its, you know, music or movies and in fashion,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: they'll look back a couple of decades. Um, but sometimes
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: it comes back in a different form.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Like, um, Like the like bell bottoms might come back
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: as bootcut jeans or something like that. So like sort
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: of an homage, but not exactly the same thing as
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: it was a couple of decades ago.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw culottes are back in. Is that correct?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Were they ever in before? I know people wore them,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: but I don't know that anyone considered them in. Yeah,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm interested.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: You're asking the wrong guy.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Some some things that have come back, like most decidedly,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: apparently 90s minimalism is back. And that is, I don't know,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it's the best descriptor for it because I went and
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: looked it up and I get what they're saying. Like
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: it's like kind of basic teas and maybe like cargo
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: pants and just kind of like like low, low attempt
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: at like dressing essentially. Yeah, I guess that's back in.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the whole 80s and 90s,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: I am maybe shamefully or not into wearing, like, good
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: clothes when I play golf and, like, golf fashion. And
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: there's a trend now. There was a trend in golf where, like,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: you know, like tighter pants and shirts and things like that.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: But now it's going back to the, like, baggy pleated
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: trousers and stuff like that.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Like this real 80s look.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Dockers?
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know about dockers, like, but, like, double pleats even.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Wow. Apparently, denim on denim, the Canadian tuxedo is in.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And I've got a little bit of trivia for you.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Did you know that Bing Crosby invented the Canadian tuxedo,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: not on purpose, but he showed up at a Vancouver
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: hotel wearing a Canadian tuxedo and was turned away?
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: No way.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Even though he was already Bing Crosby. They were like,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: you can't wear that.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Is that why it became the Canadian tuxedo?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I think so, yeah.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Huh. Are you pulling my leg with all this?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: No, I swear I'm not. That is for real.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Because that'd be a weird one. Who could it be?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Chuck will never doubt Bing Crosby.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: No, it does stink of one of my jokes, but
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it's true this time.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Apparently animal prints are coming back in fashion too.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Sure. Have they ever really gone out?
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Again, don't ask me.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And then some things do come back. Lots of stuff does.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: A lot of stuff doesn't. Like apparently in the early aughts,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: people were wearing all sorts of nutso neon stuff. I
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: missed that trend. It looks like a kind of a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: raver thing, I guess. But it wasn't like really in
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: when I was raving. So I think it just, you know,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: kind of came after that. They're predicting that that's not
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: going to come back. And I can kind of see it.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a certain 80s neon thing, puffy stuff. neon
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: thing that I don't think I ever really truly saw
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: come back.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Remember the hyper color ones, like the thermal color, like
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: you put your hand on your shirt and it'd leave
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a handprint or something.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: That was a thing for five minutes.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: It was. It was very cool, though. I never had
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: one of those.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: No, me neither.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Or jams. Did you wear jams?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: My mom made all of my jams. So I had
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a bunch of different jams.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's nice.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I thought so, too.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: My mom made a lot of my clothes, too. Nice.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Because we couldn't afford things from stores.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: There you go. Whatever the reason, it was still sweet
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: of your mom to not just put a potato sack
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: on you or something.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And yours. Same.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, since we just both shouted out our moms fondly,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: then I think, obviously, Chuck short stuff is out.
• 13:06
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• 13:09
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• 13:13
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