“I don’t know anyone who wears pants anymore”

During the last few weeks of my 20^th century fashion history course, we got into some pretty heavy discussions about fashion theory and postmodernism. Besides the fact that that sentence is totally proof that grad students are the WORST, I’m sure a lot of you are trying to imagine what on earth constitutes “heavy fashion theory” and what postmodernism means in this context (or any context…really).

Well, before the 1960s each fashion era had a distinct set of rules. In Marie Antoinette’s day you dressed with various levels of formality for different settings. In the 19th century there were rules about what you wore for different times of day. In the first half of the 20th century, designers created head-to-toe looks where nothing was superfluous and everything went together. But in the postmodern era all the rules have been thrown out the window or turned upside-down. In the 1950s you wanted everything to match—your bag, shoes, gloves, and sometimes your dress and hat would all be the same color. But today, it is wrong if everything goes together too well. One of the favorite put-downs of the Project Runway judges is that an outfit is too “matchy-matchy.” Fashion magazines offer advice like “balance a soft, flowy dress with an edgy leather jacket.” Fashion today is all about putting things together that don’t belong and putting things with specific meaning into a different context.

Ok, so where am I going with this? Well kids, now we are going to talk about pantlessness. That’s right, postmodern fashion theory provides an intellectual context in which discuss the fact that an increasing number of women seem to be under the impression that leggings, tights—and in severe cases—pantyhose, can be substituted for pants. The trend has been around for a while, but it is going strong and has a pretty firm grip on the FIT undergrad population. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, Go Fug Yourself has a helpful tag called Look Into Pants.

The fancy grad school explanation is this: before the postmodern era each piece of clothing had a function. You had undergarments and outer-garments. You wore a dress or separates. If you wore separates, you would choose a skirt or pants. But in our upside-down postmodern fashion world you have underwear as outerwear (corset tops, slip dresses, shirts designed to look inside-out), too many layers (dress over pants), or too few (no pants). Everything is taken out of its original context and repurposed and re-imagined. This also explains why we seem to be stuck in an endless cycle of retro revivals. Postmodern fashion loves plucking things out of the past and using them again in a slightly different way. The result is an intentional discordant jumble.

My fashion history professor clearly hates postmodernism. You should have heard the way she coldly referred to dresses over pants as a “violation of genres.” But if you hate it too, there is hope. We’ve been in the clutches of postmodernism for a long time—over 40 years at this point. Chances are, something very different is just around the corner.