Over the years, we inevitably see strange trends come and go that always leave us questioning, “Where on earth did that come from?” However, we don’t always look back to the trends of earlier years to really appreciate the hits and misses, the impractical styles, and the "WTF" moments. We thought it’d be fun to take a peek at the history of fashion for a few of the nutty trends that, after really thinking about it, left us with cocked heads and raised brows in amusement. These weren't mere made-only-for-the-runway oddities --people actually rocked these trends! Here are a few trends that veered off from fashionable to just weird:
As we all remember, the big hair atop of women’s head under a very large and in charge hat was always the look for women of the early 1900’s however, after looking into how they created it, the whole idea seems a bit absurd! Not all women had the large amount of volume in their hair to create this style, so to improvise they would sweep their waved hair over horsehair pads, which at the time were called “rats” and tied it in a knot on top of their heads. It worked in the past, but we can’t see women wrapping their hair in something called a “rat” these days!
In the early 1900’s (yep, Gibson Girl is guilty again!), around 1910 to be exact, the hot new fashion trend for women was the hobble skirt. Though it seems like a nice style, the practicality of it is questionable. We can understand why this look would be called the “hobble skirt” with the tight ankle-length hemlines that made it almost impossible for women to walk- there was obvious emphasis on the ‘hobble.' Cute style; questionable logic behind the design.
Fur has been a trend for many years. However, why was it ever appealing to women of the early 1900's into the ‘20s to wear the entire animal carcass around their neck as a way of exuding luxury? To us, it looks more like a Huckleberry Finn went hunting for food and kept the remains to keep warm. Faux or real fur is a definite do, but wearing an animal with everything still intact doesn’t sound too tempting to us!
Along with Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli was a couture fashion designer with a name that became big during the '30s and '40s. She started in knitwear, and later gained much attention for her abstract millinery. The strangest trends that came from her during this time period was the shoe hat as well as the cone hat. Large, luscious headwear filled with feathers and bows soon evolved into an abstract trend of odd shaped hats. We love avant-garde designs, but aside from those extremists like Lady Gaga, who knew that women during a fairly conservative era would be wearing this on the 'regs?
This trend was exactly what it sounds like; a style of glasses you would picture on your grandmother. So why exactly did the “bad boys” of the 1960’s pick this up as a cool trend? Good question! We understand the interesting shades of the 1960’s from the cat-eye that rolled in from the 50’s to the circular specs we saw on so many, but we still cannot understand where the thin, rectangular frames came into play in the '60s or why they were such a big hit!
We couldn’t complete the strange styles that took place throughout the 20th century without discussing the man skirts created by Jean Paul Gaultier in the mid-1980’s. Once the designer started to push the envelope with more extreme forms of fashion, the sky was the limit and he went for it: A high-fashion man skirt. We applaud him for pushing the gender boundaries and proving an amazing amount of creativity but again, what would you say if your date walked in wearing a man-skirt? Need we say more?
Out of all of the peculiar styles and trends of the 20th century, the weirdest still took place in the 1990’s thanks to the hip-hop duo, Kris Kross. The backward clothing trend started with the Mac Daddy and Daddy Mac, and spread not only to other hip-hop musicians, but also boys watching and listening everywhere! This look was weird, impractical, and definitely one we’d like to ‘kris kross’ off the list of any predictions for future trends.
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