Dressed in meaning

Where did the word “cashmere” come from? Learn 10 cool fashion terms

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Fédora was a Princess, Cardigan was an Earl. Even though all of these garments have evolved over time, their unusual names remain. Sometimes we can’t even pinpoint the language from which they derive. Have you ever asked yourself why we call bikinis, tuxedos, and galoshes exactly that? Where do the words "denim" and "cashmere" come from? In this article, we uncover the origins of 10 items from the fashion industry.

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A couple of centuries before Levi Strauss popularized denim jeans, two cities in Europe were already developing the textile that would become an icon of the future.

In the late 17th century, weavers in Nîmes, France set out to design a sturdy cotton fabric similar to the one that was being produced in Genoa, Italy, which had a distinctive diagonal weave. Laborers and sailors would benefit from using strong, durable clothes. The serge fabric they elaborated came to be known as serge de Nimes, a phrase that time shortened to simply "denim."

What happened to the original textile from Genoa? It was an ancestor of the modern denim, too. In France, people would refer to the foreign fabric as coming from Gênes, as they called the city. When English speakers heard about these clothes from "Gênes", they annotated the textiles as "jeans."

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Fedora, the soft-brim hat that was an icon of American culture in the early 20th century, has an unexpected origin: it was the name of a princess.

A fictional princess, at least. Fédora (1882) was a very successful play by French author Victorien Sardou. In it, the protagonist Princess Fédora Romazoff wore an iconic felt hat that soon women in Paris picked up. At first, this center-creased hat became a symbol for the women's rights movement. Eventually, Edward, Prince of Wales, started wearing a similar one in the 1920s, and the fashion spread among men.

In American society, the hat became an accessory for public courtesy and a symbol of status. History went full circle when, again, the garment became an emblem of cultural icons such as Indiana Jones or Michael Jackson.

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Did you know that, before the fashion industry developed these real-life-sized dolls, women’s clothing was displayed in young male boys?

The first mannequins originated in the 15th century. But before that, in the Middle Ages, young pages were made to wear female clothes to expose the fit for potential buyers. Eventually, the need for dolls was understood, and when these figures were developed, the Flemish called them manneken, meaning "little men."

When the device arrived in Paris, it was written as "mannequen." It wasn’t until the 19th century that female mannequins were introduced.

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Yes, the modern two-piece swimsuit was named after a beach –but the story is more perplexing than one would imagine.

Louis Réard was the French designer who introduced this disruptive garment in 1946. He dressed a young French dancer in it to debut the invention in a Parisian piscine. When asked about the name of the design, he said it was "Bikini." He didn’t add much. Four days prior to this fashion launch, an event had occurred in the South Pacific grabbing the world’s attention: a nuclear warhead had been tried in a small coral reef from the Marshall Islands, called the "Bikini Atoll."

A theory says that this label was a pun he played at Jacques Heim, a fellow French designer who had shortly before introduced a similar small bathing suit he had called the "Atome."

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"Spandex" is the preferred name in the U.S. for the material that in the rest of the world is known as "lycra".

This notably elastic fabric had been developed in 1958 by Joseph Shivers while working for an American company named "DuPont Textiles and Interiors." DuPont decided to launch a sub-brand that would only sell synthetic fiber products. They picked the trade name "Lycra" to market their inventions.

Why "spandex," then? That is the name that was chosen for the fabric without attaching it to any brand. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that "spandex" is an anagram (an alteration of the letter order) of the word "expands."

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One of the most versatile pieces of clothing, bandanas have their origin in the Middle East and South Asia.

The word derives from the Hindi and Urdu word bandhana, "a bond," also related to bāndhnū, which means "tie-dyeing" in Hindi. The most traditional pattern used in the cloth was the Paisley, of Persian origin, which looks like a motif made of curved "tear" shapes.

Another word for the accessory is "kerchief," which derives from the Old French couvre-chef, or "cover head."

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They are not exactly rain boots, and they are not to be confused with Wellington boots. Galoshes are overshoes, usually made of rubber, meant to protect your actual shoes in muddy or wet weather.

A distant relative of this invention is the calopedes. These were wooden clogs or heals used even before the Middle Ages. The word came from the Greek kalopódion, which roughly meant "feet wood". In French, footwear derived from these devices came to be called galoche, which translated in English to "galosh" or "golosh."

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The knitted jacket that is now associated with a cozy, homely look, had its origin in military apparel. Cardigans were named after the waistcoats used by British officers under the command of James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, known by history as Lord Cardigan. He commanded a brigade during the Crimean War in the early 19th century.

Cardigans were sleeveless vests at first, but they evolved over time to include all the versions we know today. Cardigans are characterized by having an open front, as opposed to pullovers which are of similar materials but must be "pulled over" the head of the wearer.

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Back in the 1880s, when white collars and tailcoats were the norm for extremely formal evening wear, the introduction of jackets without tails was considered rebellious.

Originally known as "dinner jackets," these less formal substitutes were an option picked up in the United Kingdom, and popularized after Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, wore one with matching trousers. In the U.S., the tailless coat was quickly adopted in the New York area of Tuxedo Park. For a few years, "Tuxedo" referred only to the jacket, but then its pairing with trousers also caught on, and the term came to name the whole suit. More recently, the piece also became known as "tux."

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One of the rarest and most expensive fibers in the world, cashmere is made from wool sheared from goats. Kashmir, in the high plateaus of the Himalayas, was the region where the wool was originally produced. The soft and luxurious fabric was first spun as early as the 3rd century BC. Kashmiri weavers became known for their high-quality shawls made from this wool.

"Pashmene" is sometimes used interchangeably, although it is a variant of fiber, sometimes mixed with silk. Pashm means "wool" in Persian, and around the 15th century, this fabric was already a sign of wealth for cultures in India, Pakistan, and Nepal.

THINGS TO COME

Retrofuturistic Predictions: 10 Vintage Ideas That Eventually Came True

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Humans love to predict the future. The ability to imagine other possible worlds is probably what makes us human. None of the things we have been able to create throughout history, from pyramids to airplanes, would have been possible without first imagining them. During the 20th century, as the turn of the millennium approached, scientists, writers, and illustrators imagined technological innovations that, if they seemed outlandish at the time, were proven right years later. In this article, we have compiled 10 scientific prophecies that have come true.

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British writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke not only fascinated the world with his science fiction stories but also anticipated with remarkable accuracy some of the most relevant technological advances in history. In October 1945, Clarke published an article exploring the possibility of using artificial satellites as communication stations.

Clarke predicted that one day communications would be carried by a network of three satellites placed at fixed intervals around the Earth's equator. Two decades later, NASA launched one of the first such satellites. Syncom 3 was used to relay images of the 1964 Olympic Games from Tokyo to the United States, providing the first television transmission across the Pacific Ocean.

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Today we couldn’t conceive our lives without the Internet. It allows us to communicate with our loved ones over long distances, learn the news as soon as it happens, and it provide us with entertainment at all hours. Many have claimed to have predicted this invention, however, the one who came closest to describing what we know today as the Internet was Serbian American engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla.

In a 1909 interview with The New York Times, he described it almost perfectly. Although the Internet would not be invented until a few decades later, Tesla told the newspaper that in the future people would be able to listen, broadcast, and share speeches, songs, and images to the most remote parts of the planet through inexpensive devices operated from a single station. Pretty accurate, don’t you think?

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The first smartwatch, as we know it today, was launched in 2004, and it wasn't until 2015 that Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the Apple Watch. However, this device already existed in the minds of people who imagined an interconnected future as early as the 1940s.

In January 1946, the popular comic strip about police detective Dick Tracy first featured the Two-Way Wrist Radio. The newspaper comic series featured Tracy talking through his watch, a concept that was totally revolutionary at the time. The device became an icon of the comic strip and is said it later inspired American engineer Martin Cooper in the development of the mobile phone.

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Between 1899 and 1910, a series of French postcards called "In the year 2000" —generally attributed to an artist named Jean-Marc Côté— attempted to portray what he imagined life might be like in the 21st century.

One of the most accurate predictions was the Cinéma-Phono-Télégraphique, a device very similar to what we know today as video calls. In this illustration, we see the image of a woman projected on a screen while the caller speaks to a receiver.

Throughout the rest of the century, there were several attempts to develop this technology. For example, in 1957, the Hughes company announced the Tonotron, which allowed calls to be made through a sort of television set. In the end, the Tonotron was not commercialized, yet retrofuturism was right in predicting systems such as FaceTime which are now essential to our daily lives.

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Many of the predictions portrayed in the French postcard series depict various forms of air transportation, most likely influenced by the technological developments that were taking place in the early 20th century. From flying policemen and firemen to air tennis and air hunting, many of these inventions have yet to become a reality, but what is close to happening is flying mail.

Well, to be fair, we're not going to see mailmen delivering letters while mounted on some sort of personal flying saddle reminiscent of the Wright Brothers' early airbikes. However, even though today handwritten letters are almost a thing of the past, we are already starting to see the first autonomous drones delivering packages right up to our doorsteps.

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Like flying vehicles, automation is a cornerstone of futurism. Today we have robots that vacuum and scrub our homes and it seems like the most normal thing in the world. But, back in the early 1900s, some masterminds had already envisioned that before the end of the century, we would see electric and almost automatic brooms. These cleaning devices, however, would still depend on a person to give them directions and tell them where they had to clean.

Luckily, technology has surpassed the wildest fantasies of these retro-futurists, and now we can let our trusty vacuum robots do the dirty work while we go out for a walk. Though to be honest, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have a Rosie the Robot who not only cleaned but also talked to us in a Brooklyn accent!

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In 1989, Back to the Future (Part II) showed the world an amazingly accurate version of a VR headset, worn by none other than Marty McFly. Today, virtual reality glasses are becoming increasingly popular and are here to stay. But did you know that different authors had already conceived of this idea in the early 20th century?

For example, Pygmalion's Spectacles is a science fiction short story by American author Stanley G. Weinbaum published in 1935. In it, a professor invents a pair of goggles that display a film that can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted. Not only that, the user becomes part of the story and is no longer a mere spectator. It may not sound like it, but this is not something for a promotional video of Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse; it is a tale imagined 90 years ago.

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In December 1960, Arthur Radebaugh, a famous American futurist illustrator, published his vision of what the classrooms of the future would look like. Teachers would no longer have to attend schools and would impart classes to several groups at the same time from a distant location. Each student would have a device with a camera, screen, and keyboard available to participate and ask questions.

Sixty-five years ago these predictions might have sounded far-fetched; however, remote classes through applications such as Zoom have become a reality, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Today this is a key resource that allows students to receive education even if they are in distant and remote parts of the world.

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"Don't be surprised if many of tomorrow's homes are built on turntables. They would slowly pivot all day long to receive maximum benefit from health-giving sun rays and ensure heat in winter," reads another Radebaugh illustration published in 1959 in Toronto's The Star Weekly.

While the prediction of rotating houses has not come true, the cartoonist correctly anticipated the idea that homes would begin to harvest solar energy. Today many houses have solar panels installed on the roof providing electricity in a more sustainable way.

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In 1938, a few years before the first television broadcast, the British company Gramophone Co. announced its "Television Monocle", an individual device that would allow personal, uninterrupted television viewing. The device projected a 1.5 x 1-inch image from a cathode ray tube, which the viewer could see thanks to two mirrors placed inside at 45 degrees.

Although this invention did not prosper, we can consider it an ancestor of one of the many uses we nowadays give to our smartphones. Who hasn't streamed a film or a video on their phone to kill time during a long trip? We have retro-futurists to thank!