Writtrn by ANGELLA D’AVIGNON
Power dressing is usually associated with white-collar women of the 1970s and ’80s—women who dressed for success. This look was iconic in its caricature: architectural shoulder pads, big hair, double-breasted jackets, and sensible heels. In film and television, power dressing suggested that hard work and a little feminist ingenuity was enough to propel a woman to the top. She’s Dolly Parton in Nine to Five, Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, Faye Dunaway in Network. She’s Grace Jones on the runway, Elaine Benes with a cigar between her teeth, heels kicked up on J. Peterman’s desk.
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During and following World War I, women became accustomed to a breezier style of dress after stepping in for absent men who were shipped to the front lines. Early in the century, Parisian designer Coco Chanel had stitched a look with wide-legged slacks matched to tailored jackets hewn from sporty materials like jersey or tricot. The classic Chanel suit is a collarless, button-up wool jacket with braided trim, metallic buttons, and fitted sleeves made specifically with women in mind. Coco wore the signature suit herself, a uniform for women at work and at play. The status of public life expanded soon after, and included a limited class of women, mostly white, who smoked in public, won voting rights, and began wearing trousers—all activities previously reserved for men.
The practice spread from work clothes to a whole fashion regime. In the United Kingdom of the 1950s, Teddy Girls appeared—a prototype of the late-1990s punk feminist riot grrrls. Like their counterparts, Teddy Boys, they sported a part-dandy, part–rock ’n’ roll look endemic to disenchanted British working-class teens in postwar London. Originating from the East End, where wartime devastation was most visible, Teds were pure attitude and rejected their economic class status by borrowing the accoutrement of an aristocratic past.
For more read the full of article at The Antlantic
