This Week’s Story is prompted by a vintage piece of lingerie. You can listen to the audio podcast here.

This particular lingerie piece, in a powder blue satin, is more slinky sleepshirt than naughty negligee. With its built-in shoulder pads and double-breasted suit jacket front, this nightie looks more like an oversized power suit jacket than something you’d find in the ladies’ intimates department. It’s oh-so 80s.

vintage 80s double-breasted lingerie with shoulder pads

But the garment’s roots are in the 1940s. Designer Elsa Schiaparelli may have lit the shoulder pad fuse in 1931, but it wasn’t until World War II began that the big bang of shoulder pads in women’s fashions really exploded.

Women’s fashions became steadily militarized, heavy in masculine styles with shoulder pads becoming increasingly bulkier and positioned at the top of the shoulder to create a solid, strong look.

Soon the style was ubiquitous in female fashions, found in all garments except for lingerie.

So leave it to the 1980s, decade of excess, to put shoulder pads in the lingerie.

Fashions of the 80s rigorously borrowed from many previous decades – exaggerating things as it went.

From the 40s – big shoulders and double-breasted suits.

From the 1950s, the 80s took rolled jeans and rocker leather. Those soft 50s pastel angora sweaters were back – now paired primarily with black for higher contrast. And the classic 1950s ponytail become the exaggerated side ponytail.

From 1960s fashions, the 80s took mini-skirts, bold colors, and mod geometric patterns.

Of course, there was a great backlash to all this big, bold, exaggerated 80s fashion too.

Brands such as Laura Ashley & Jessica McClintock’s Gunne Sax surged forward with their fond looks backward towards a softer, feminine, romance associated with prairie and Victorian-styled designs. A time when women were women and men were men. (Of course, leaving out the facts that back in those good old days manly men and womanly women had to use outhouses and chamber pots, as we often do when romancing the past.)

This gender power struggle dynamic displayed in culture as fashion can be seen clearly in the 1980s television show Dynasty. The show’s costume designer, Nolan Miller, dressed his stars, Linda Evans and Joan Collins, in more than just the glamorous gowns of the wealthy. Their wardrobes were built on establishing and displaying the female leads’ authority and power. Big shoulder pads were needed for such big ambitions!

But even as those huge-shouldered power suits represented the power in the new working woman, it was also necessary to show that underneath her “bitch in the boardroom” persona, she was “all woman” underneath. Enter lingerie.

All things silky and lacy were paramount to a woman’s 80s wardrobe. Whether it was underwear as outerwear, a la Madonna, or it was a silky soft teddy beneath that tough power suit, lingerie was an 80s necessity. In the case of this vintage 80s piece, one would balance the “I mean business!” double-breasted, shoulder-padded night-suit by wearing the “Monkey business, baby!” of an all lace bodysuit (typically with stockings) beneath it.

This is the intimates fashion equivalent of Enjolie’s “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan. And never, ever let you forget you’re a man.”

Like I said, classic 80s.

Item details: Available in booth #27 at The FARM. Ladie’s size Medium. Cloth label: Charmeuse, 100% polyester. Machine wash; tumble dry low. Price: $26.95

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Hi, I’m Deanna Dahlsad of Fair Oaks Antiques. This Week’s Story is a little bit different… It’s still about an object, just not one for sale. And it’s also a story for the month, as you’ll see. A reminder: You can listen to This Week’s Story as a podcast!

Due to it being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October is now synonymous with pink. Since 2009, the NFL has pushed the man-enough-to-wear-pink message to encourage men to care about women’s breasts. As if the NFL, its members & fans, need encouragement in that area. It really is an odd ogling message for a league beleaguered with misogyny and the coverup of player health issues. Especially as the movement aimed to reach out and pander to more women. It would have been better for the NFL to punish abusive players and address player health issues. But hoping on the “Pinkwashing” train of commodifying and profiting off of breast cancer was too-too easy – like fraud levels of easy.

Now most of us know how we were exploited in the name of pink merchandise for cancer awareness and now avoid the scams of such a shadow industry. And perhaps this is why the NFL has quietly shifted away from breast cancer awareness to a broader cancer-awareness with its more colorful “Crucial Catch” program.

But the decade-long marriage between the masculine nature of the NFL and the girly pink merch is an interesting one. In 2000, who would have thought that such macho men would be wearing pink? Well, those of us alive in the 80s recall men in pastel pink polo shirts – and they weren’t afraid to tell you they were secure enough in their masculinity to wear pink either. And those of us even older remember men wearing pink too.

Vintage clothing catalogs are filled with examples, such as bright & cheery pink & black cowboy playsuits. Yup, pink shirts and pants with black hats & even holsters to hold silver pistols. For boys too.

In fact, we have a long and documented history of pink being the preferred color for boys. Not only in fashion catalogs and department store ads, but in trade publications and national news magazines, such as Time. Going back as far as the early 1800s, pink was considered the stronger more resolute color, therefore most suitable for boys, while blue, being more delicate and dainty, was best for girls. The Smithsonian has a great article about this gender color phenomenon, if you are interested.

I was reminded of all of this pink business whilst we were restoring our old house, Esmerelda. There in the basement, surrounded by walls painted in that battleship basement grey (which must have been the law at some point because every basement I’ve seen has had at least one coat of that color), our 100+-year-old house sports a brick chimney – and it’s covered in pink paint.

It would seem an odd color choice – unless you knew the history of the color pink. For it is important to keep your chimney strong and clear – it literally keeps your house in the pink.

Tagged with: , , , ,