The dress actress Lupita Nyong'o wore to the 86th Academy Awards in 2014 became a story in and of itself.
Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage via Getty Images
Through their media savvy, two consultants were able to make the Oscars as much about the attire as the gold statuettes.
Shutterstock
The average price of a wedding dress in Australia is A$2,385 – but this is just one reflection of their significant cultural and emotional weight.
A British mantua c. 1708.
The Met/Purchase, Rogers Fund, Isabel Shults Fund and Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1991
If you’ve watched many period dramas, you’ve probably seen a mantua. It was worn over a pair of stays (corset) and an often contrasting petticoat. The draping fabric created a front-opening gown.
Dazzle camouflage costume ball at the Chelsea Arts Club in 1919.
Wikimedia
Pyjamas all Christmas day or a jaunty festive silk scarf, these five trends should be brought back this holiday.
PUMA X RIME NYC Luxe Sky Wedge (2013), Ed Reeve, Design Museum London.
Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street is now on at HOTA on the Gold Coast.
Josephine with her hair in the coiffure à la victime style in Napoleon.
LANDMARK MEDIA/Alamy Stock Photo
A shorn haircut known as the coiffure à la victime, paid tribute to guillotined prisoners whose hair was loped off before execution.
Dior Men summer 2023 group shot in front of a Charleston reconstruction.
Brett Lloyd
The Bloomsbury group’s distaste for formality helped to set the foundations for how we dress today.
Top Dog factory for men’s hats, Surry Hills, 1941.
State Library of New South Wales
A heritage-listed hat factory has burned down in Surry Hills. The suburb was once a hub of fashion manufacturing.
Anne Hathaway, Jared Leto and Salma Hayek at the 2023 Met Gala.
EPA-EFE/Justin Lane
At Georgian masquerade parties, participants flaunted their status, taste and wealth through ostentatious and creative dress.
Designs by Denni Francisco at Australian fashion week 2022.
Stefan Gosatti/Getty Images
Wiradjuri woman Denni Francisco will be the first Indigenous designer to have a solo show at Australian Fashion Week.
Portrait of Madame Gely by Frederick Carl Frieseke (1907).
Public Domain Review
From Madame de Pompadour to punks and pussy protest hats, pink has always been the colour of choice for those who dare to make a statement.
Installation view of T he Widows of Culloden collection, autumn winter 2006 - 07 in Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse on display at NGV International from 11 December 2022 - 16 April 2023. Headpieces by Michael Schmidt
Photo: Sean Fennessy
Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse at the National Gallery of Victoria is an important fashion exhibition that makes us consider how all the visual arts are inter-related.
Carla Zampatti middriff top and pants, 1971.
Photograph: Warwick Lawson
Zampatti Powerhouse at the Powerhouse Museum is one of the best-looking fashion exhibition designs Australia has seen.
Remnants of polychrome colouring were scrubbed from recovered ancient Greek sculptures and artists created new all-white marble sculptures seen as continuous with an imagined past.
(Shutterstock)
Western fashion, laundering and style reflected the racialized politics dramatically shaped by profound global transformations bound up with slavery, colonialism and modernization.
Now a symbol of Japanese culture, the Kimono has Chinese roots.
supawat bursuk/Shutterstock
The Kimono is a distinct cultural symbol of Japan and for that reason, it has a complicated reputation around much of Asia.
AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere
Issey Miyake’s clothing is both theatrical and practical. The Japanese designer has died aged 84.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
When Max Chandler-Mather rose to speak in question time, he was criticised for not wearing a tie. But Australian men have been going tie-less for decades.
No baggy shirts and trousers with expanding waistbands, singer Rihanna has chosen form fitting clothing that exposes rather than hides her pregnancy.
Abaca Press/Alamy
The Victorians are to blame for our conservative ideas about how a pregnant body should look
Getty Images/Jeff Kravitz
Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress for five minutes at the Met Gala. That’s showbiz.
Attributed to Pieter Cornelisz van Rijck, Kitchen interior with the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus, c. 1620-20.
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
While men wrote about women “deforming” their bodies in corsets, there is very little writing from women themselves about what the experience was like.