A People’s History Of UK Style

February 25, 2015

A People’s History of UK Style

One argument against the idea of timelessness in style is that everyone looks at least a little ridiculous in old photos (maybe not everyone). Why try to wear trend-proof clothing if it doesn’t really exist? But even if your choices weren’t always wise, a record of what you wore and how you styled yourself can be in retrospect enlightening, even inspiring.

One such record I’ve been enjoying is What We Wore, a crowd-sourced archive of photos–proto-selfies, portraits, passport shots, etc.–that aims to catalog style in the United Kingdom from the 1950s on. Each photo or photoset is accompanied by a vignette explaining what was going on at the time. These personal shots provide a nice, gritty contrast to the more glossy style histories you might glean from magazines or films of other eras. I also appreciate the cultural and temporal cross-section it provides: 1990s ravers share the page with early mods or families in the 1950s. You can tell that most of the subjects though they looked mighty sharp at the time.

Pete


Filed Under: , , , , ,