Predictions of future fashion by illustrators from 1893 are weird
"Fashionwise, it's hard to predict what's going to be a cool look a year from now.
Try a century.
In a new series of illustrations uncovered by the Public Domain Review, illustrators in a 1893 issue of the Strand Magazine imagined how people would dress from every decade up to the 1990s.
The results, as you'll see, are very weird.
The illustrations of fashion spanning 1900 to 1920 weren't too far off, except for the windmill hat.
1920s women would apparently wear bonnets that grew shrubbery.
The 1930s fashion illustrations move farther from reality, featuring men in tights and women in multi-layered gowns.
And children of the '40s would wear tall witch hats.
The closest depiction is the woman from 1950, who sports something that resembles a poodle skirt. But it's too short, so she wears plaid golfer pants underneath.
These are hardly what Don Draper would wear in the '60s.
The '70s illustrations again get it wrong, with an abundance of feathers, extravagant hats, and cloaks.
And the '80s fashion depictions become even more clownish.
Finally, the illustrator’s vision of fashion in 1990s doesn’t look too different from fashion in the 1920s, complete with a funky cone bonnet. If only he could've predicted the snapback. "
