Get Boston Uncommon: Revolution And Evolution In Dress

Beyond the production side, the information and communication technologies gave rise to new business models, such as fast fashion and e-commerce (Abnett, 2016). As a result, companies such as Inditex, H&M, and Amazon emerged as top retailers.

Although the Revolution did not introduce new forms of fashionable dress, it strongly influenced attitudes towards clothing and reinforced the trend that emerged in the previous two decades favoring informality and simplicity.

With the coming of the French Revolution the symbolic role of clothing continued, and men and women relied on their outfits to make statements about their support or rejection of the principles of the era. Color became a particularly important vehicle for showing one's political sympathy.

Starting in the mid-18th century, innovations like the spinning jenny (a wooden frame with multiple spindles), the flying shuttle, the water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier. Producing cloth became faster and required less time and far less human labor.

More militant revolutionaries completed the spectrum of anti-aristocratic radicals. They were called sans-culottes—literally, “without knee breeches”—and wore loose-fitting, coarse cotton trousers typical of the laboring class and a symbol against the impractical breeches commonly donned by the aristocracy.

The impact of the Industrial Revolution on fashion can be seen in the improvement and introduction of new types of dresses. During this time, the lengths of the clothes become shorter. Moreover, people began wearing corsets with a tightly laced hourglass style.

Production was limited by reliance on the spinning wheel and the hand loom; increases in output required more hand workers at each stage. Invention dramatically changed the nature of textile work. The flying shuttle, patented by John Kay in 1733, increased the output of each weaver and led to increased demand for yarn.

The clothes that small artisans previously woven for their respective fiefdoms began to be produced by factories and then marketed. Thus reaching an even greater part of the population of the time. It is important to highlight that the manufactured parts were cheaper and standardized, there were many of the same.