Alexandra's Designs, a Fashion Boutique, Incurred the Following in the Month of September:

Did you e'er notice that the buttons on a shirt are on opposite sides for men and women? Curious to find out how World War 2 changed women'due south shaving habits? Ever thought about why men stopped wearing high heels? And what makes the fourth finger on our left mitt the "ring finger"?

These aren't just random happenings or frivolous decisions past fashion magazines. Sometimes, war or other serious considerations influenced how we wearing apparel. In fact, in that location is a fascinating history backside many modernistic manner trends. Read on to get the scoop behind some of our more puzzling manner choices.

10 Why Women Shave Their Legs

Women take not always shaved their legs. Indeed, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who was a trendsetter of her time, women weren't expected to remove torso hair. Instead, the fashion police of that era dictated that women ought to remove eyebrows and hair from their foreheads to make their faces appear longer. Just leg pilus? No need to shave.

So why did that modify?

The simple answer is World State of war II. During the state of war, the The states experienced a stockings shortage as the government redirected the apply of nylon from stockings to war parachutes. For women, the nylon shortage meant having to bare their legs in public. To be deemed socially acceptable, women began to shave their legs. After the war, equally skirts became shorter, the trend stuck around.^[i]

9 Why Girls Habiliment Pink And Boys Article of clothing Blue

We have all been there. At a baby shower, the color of everything—from the tablecloths to the napkins—corresponds to the gender of the baby. Blue is for boys, and pink is for girls. Merely things were not always this way.

For centuries, children younger than 6 mostly wore flowing white dresses co-ordinate to University of Maryland historian Jo B. Paoletti, who wrote Pink and Bluish: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America. "White cotton fiber tin can be bleached," she says, which made information technology a applied choice.

In the 1900s, colors began to be used as gender signifiers. But the colors did not hateful what they practice at present. For instance, a June 1918 article from a pop fashion magazine declared:

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blueish for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more than suitable for the male child, while blueish, which is more fragile and nice, is prettier for the daughter."^[2]

Still, Paoletti says that these trends weren't particularly widespread.

Around 1985, that all changed with the rise of prenatal testing, which allowed parents to make up one's mind the gender of the child. As expectant parents learned the sex of their babies, they began to store for "daughter" or "boy" trade. Retailers noticed and individualized vesture to increment their sales.

For the virtually part, this trend appears to take stuck. But Paoletti warns that information technology presents challenges for children who do not adapt to the colors assigned to their gender.

eight Why Women'southward And Men's Buttons Are On Opposite Sides

Odds are you own a push-up shirt. Take a look at which side the buttons are on. If you're a man, chances are the buttons are on the right. If you're a adult female, you'll likely notice your buttons on the left.

In that location's an interesting historical reason for this. Melanie 1000. Moore, who created women's blouse make Elizabeth & Clarke, explains: "When buttons were invented in the 13th century, they were, like virtually new engineering, very expensive. [ . . . ] Wealthy women back and then did not dress themselves—their lady's maid did. Since almost people were right-handed, this made it easier for someone standing across from yous to button your clothes."^[three]

As for men's shirts, fashion historian Chloe Chapin traces the fashion quirk to the war machine. "Admission to a weapon . . . practically trumped everything," she says, noting that a firearm tucked inside a shirt would exist easier to reach from the dominant side.

vii Why Men Stopped Wearing High Heels

For generations, a pair of high heels has signaled feminine beauty. Merely before then, high heels were a staple in men'south closets.

Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto says, "The loftier heel was worn for centuries throughout the Near Eastward equally a form of riding footwear. [ . . . ] When the soldier stood upwards in his stirrups, the heel helped him to secure his opinion so that he could shoot his bow and pointer more finer."^[4]

Nigh the 15th century, when Farsi-European cultural exchange heightened, European aristocrats adopted high-heeled shoes as a symbol of their wealth. According to Semmelhack, elites have always used impractical clothing to showcase their privileged condition.

Fast-frontward to the Enlightenment era, which ostensibly brought with it an appreciation for the practical, and men began to renounce the impractical high heel. But sexism prohibited women from beingness viewed as rational beings. Semmelhack suggests that the desirability of women was then seen in terms of irrational manner choices like the loftier heel.

6 Why We Paint Our Nails

If you thought the manicure was a new miracle, you would exist wrong. Did you know that the earth's oldest manicure set, made from solid gilt dating to 3200 BC, is over v,000 years old? The ancient Babylonians, who created that set up, were known to have loved caring for their nails.

Ming Dynasty elites were too fans of painted nails, using a mixture of egg whites, gelatin, and rubber to dye their nails ruddy and black. In England, Elizabeth I, a fashion icon of her mean solar day, was widely admired for her manicured nails and cute easily.^[5]

Suzanne Shapiro, a researcher at The Costume Constitute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, says that long fingernails are impractical for hard labor, then they have tended to betoken an elite social status.

But Shapiro admits that nail trends come and go. During the 1920s and '30s, the French manicure was in. Yet, during the 1960s, women preferred a more natural look and rarely painted their nails.

five Why Long Pilus Became A Thing For Women

While hair trends take fallen in and out of fashion, one matter across cultures and millennia has remained fairly constant: the expectation that women would have long pilus. We've seen it from the depiction of a long-haired Aphrodite to St. Paul's letter of the alphabet to the Corinthians, in which he wrote, "If a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her."

Kurt Stenn, author of Hair: A Human being History, says that women almost always accept longer pilus than men. But why?

According to Stenn, a former professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale, hair is highly communicative. It sends letters about sexuality, religious beliefs, and power. In particular, he believes that long hair can communicate wellness and wealth.

"To have long hair, you accept to be healthy," Stenn says. "You lot take to eat well, accept no diseases, no infectious organisms, y'all have to accept good rest and exercise." He adds, "To accept long hair, y'all have to have your needs in life taken care of, which implies you have the wealth to do information technology."^[6]

4 Why Some People Sag Their Pants

In 2014, the Ocala, Florida, city council passed an ordinance banning the practice of sagging (wearing 1'due south pants below the waistline or, in some cases, the buttocks) on metropolis-owned holding. An offender would receive a $500 fine or half-dozen months in jail.

Similar bans take surfaced from New Jersey to Tennessee. The rationale behind this sort of legislation normally goes something like this: Sagging represents a dangerous lack of self-respect and an embrace of gang civilization. It is a symbol of moral decline.

But how did sagging originate?

According to University of Massachusetts historian Tanisha C. Ford, the origins of sagging can't exist definitively traced. But at that place are two leading theories. The first is that inmates, prohibited from wearing belts in prison house, oft sagged their uniforms. Then they continued the way after returning dwelling house. The 2d theory is that convicts wore their pants low as a ways of letting other prisoners know they were sexually available.^[7]

3 Why We Wear Wedding ceremony Bands On The 'Ring Finger'

"With this ring, I thee midweek." The ring is slipped onto the fourth finger of the left paw, and there you have information technology—a bride and groom! But have yous ever asked yourself why we slip our wedding bands onto the "band finger"?

The tradition tin can be traced dorsum to Roman times. The Romans believed that a vein ran directly from the heart to the ring finger. They named it the vena amoris ("vein of dearest"). Naturally, they thought it'd exist fitting to place one's nuptials band on that finger. Quite romantic!

By the way, modern scientific discipline has proven that all fingers have a vein connection to our hearts.^[viii]

2 Why Men Wear Ties

Ties. They don't keep u.s. warm, aren't applied, and are often uncomfortable. So why do men wearable them?

Most neckwear historians agree that the necktie grew in prominence effectually the time of the Thirty Years' War in the 1600s. To fight the war, Rex Louis Thirteen employed Croatian mercenaries who wore a piece of material around their necks.

While these early neckties were largely functional—they tied the tops of their jackets—King Louis Xiii liked them as sartorial adornments. Indeed, he made these early neckties mandatory dress for formal gatherings and named them later the Croatian mercenaries: cravate. To this day, that ways necktie in France.

Curiously, Croatia celebrates national Cravat Mean solar day every October 18. In 2003, they commemorated the holiday by tying an 808-meter (2,650 ft) tie effectually the historic Roman amphitheater in Pula.^[9]

i Why Women Shave Their Armpits

Women and men have had armpit pilus for millennia. So why practice roughly 95 percent of women shave or wax their underarms? Who woke up one day and decided that women with armpit hair are unsightly?

Well, we can give thanks a 1915 Harper's Boutique advert for that. Before and then, women with bushy pits were the norm. Only the ad told women that mod dancing and sleeveless dresses were the next big thing and that "objectionable pilus" was out. The ad featured a photo of a young woman in a sleeveless clothes. Her arms were biconvex over her head, revealing perfectly articulate armpits.

Inside a few years and after an onslaught of advertisements promoting the trend, hairless armpits were a thing and natural hair was something embarrassing. Indeed, a 2013 Arizona Country University study measured disgust triggered by women with armpit hair. It yielded responses like: "I call up women who don't shave are a little gross."^[10]

But natural, hairy pits might be making a comeback. Ane recent study found that ane in 4 millennial women do not shave or wax their pits.

Oscar is a Principal of Public Policy student at the University of Oxford. He is originally from Los Angeles, California.

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