1790s: Sans Culottes French revolutionaries who rejected the knee breeches of the aristocracy and adopted long trousers in solidarity with the peasants and craftsmen. The first step in eliminating class distinctions through styles of clothing.
1860s: Artistic Dress Inspired by artist and designer William Morris’s dictum “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,” artistic dress favored clean lines based on the natural form of the body, as opposed to the corsets and crinolines that were popular at the time.
1943: Cab Calloway wears a zoot suit in Stormy Weather In the words of fashion historian Ted Polhemus: “The curtain parts and Cab Calloway makes his entrance. He is, in a sense, that ‘clown’ whom Malcolm X saw as undermining African-American dignity. But in his immaculate zoot suit, feathered fedora and spotless white shoes, he is also undeniably magnificent. As such, he and his fellow Zooties constituted a direct, much needed challenge to that white, Western prescription that dignity and a resplendent, stylish appearance are incompatible elements of masculinity.”
