Oldest fashion history dates back to prehistoric times

In addition to physical conditions like climate, health and availability of textiles,”costume reflects social factors such as religious beliefs, magic, aesthetics and status,” said fashion scholar Francois Boucher in his book 20,000 Years of Fashion.

Cultures over the century have adopted fashions that are physically uncomfortable – or even painful – in the quest for popular acceptance or individual expression and vanity.

“Some primitive peoples who normally live naked feel the need to clothe themselves on special occasions,” Boucher said.

In the earliest years of clothing, prehistoric humans wore cloth made from vegetable fibers, Boucher said.

Especially in colder climates, humans donned animal skins sewn or knotted around their bodies. They wore jewelry of wood or bone, Boucher said.

Ancient Egyptian aristocrats wore heavy jewelry and painted their eyes and lips, Boucher said.

A trend practiced among the very elite was to fasten a cone of scented grease on top of their heads, said historian Mila Contini in her book Fashion from Egypt to the Present Day.

“In the heat of the Egyptian sun, the grease would melt, covering royal bodies with an oily perfume,” Contini said.

For a time, it was fashionable for women to have elongated heads, so Egyptian princesses began to polish their foreheads,Contini said.

Vanity in Ancient Greece rose to the point that wealthy women sewed their own gowns to ensure what they wore was one-of-a-kind.

In the Middle Ages, young noblemen became esquires when they reached age 14. Their place in the house was identified by their clothing.

Those who worked in their lord’s house wore scarlet, while those who worked in the stable wore blue or brown and white, Boucher said.

Women’s cosmetics at this time included leeches, which they applied to their faces to make them fashionably chalky white, Contini said. They softened their hair by rubbing their scalps with the body of a lizard boiled in oil, Contini said.

Later, a woman’s hat called a “hennin” gained popularity. The hat was cone-shaped, and women hung a light veil from the top. These hats were eventually made so tall architects in France enlarged the doors of the Castle of Bois so their fine ladies could pass through without ducking, Contini said.

Sleeves with slashes were introduced when the Swiss Army, victorious at the Battle of Grandson, attempted to wear the coats of their enemies, and after finding them too tight slashed the sleeves, Contini said.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, women wore “panniers” – metal frames with hoops that made their skirts wider at the bottom. The pannier made dresses large and impractical, but its contemporary, the corset, remained as “the next instrument of torture in the wheel of fashion,” Contini said.

A dramatic change in fashion occurred in America just after World War I, Contini said. Women began demanding rights equal to those of men, and in rebellion to traditional stereotypes cut their hair short and flattened their bosoms with “brassieres,” Contini said.

Also after World War I, a woman named Elizabeth Arden developed a way to scientifically enhance and protect a woman’s beauty– cosmetics, Contini said.

Formerly, women used natural materials like rice powder for their skin and burned matchsticks to darken their eyelids, Contini said.

They pinched their cheeks and bit their lips to make them red.

Now there were nourishing cremes and tonics, Contini said.

“Costumes, as other mediums, are but a material record of the great ideals that swayed the nations at the time of their creation,” said psychologist Frank Alvah Parsons in his book, The Psychology of Dress.

Whether it is a reaction to a religious aspect or a social whim, the costumes of history reflect “an element of personal vanity that has not been left out of any of us,” Parsons said.