history lesson

Five Fab Finds and a History Lesson: Lace Edition

Filed under: Apparel

The most beautiful, intricate, and valuable lace is always handmade, created with painstaking care and based on the methods started by women centuries ago. With its beginnings traced back to the darning of tattered fabric hems, lacemaking really gained traction in Europe in the 1500s when weaving it out of cotton, silk, or flax became a prestigious and sought-after skill of high class women as they strove to make themselves and their outfits more beautiful and extravagant. Depending on the method used (by hand, with needles, or by some other variation of technique) it was not uncommon for a single inch of lace to take a skilled woman 2 hours to complete. No wonder it was so expensive!

Today lace is available in every size, color, and pattern imaginable (as demonstrated in our gallery below) but I still love the set of old, yellowing doilies my grandmother gave me the most.

Gallery: 5 Fab Finds: Lace

Christian Louboutin Candy Lace & Patent Spike Pump

Aurélie Bidermann 18-karat gold lace ring

Red Valentino Lace-detailed jersey T-shirt

Tags: 5 fab finds, 5FabFinds, fashion, five fab finds, FiveFabFinds, history, history lesson, HistoryLesson, lace, lacey

Five Fab Finds and a History Lesson: Zipper Edition

by Rigel Celeste (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Apparel

The zipper was first invented, in a rudimentary form called the "Clasp Locker", in the late 1800s by a man named Whitcomb Judson. Many years later, in the early 1900s, it was perfected into the creation we know today by Swedish immigrant Gideon Sundback and was used mostly to fasten boots. The term "zipper" stuck after B.F. Goodrich used it in a name for a pair of boots showcasing the device (because of the "zip!" sound), and then zippers slowly but surely worked their way into the fashion world as a closure technique that's quick, easy, durable, and effective -- particularly In 1937 when in the "Battle of the Fly" the zipper beat out the button as the favored way to close men's trousers.

Today zippers are everywhere, in every house and on most people in some form or another at any given time. And today fashion designers not only commonly use zippers in their collections but often the zipper is the focal point, there as much for looks as function. See the gallery below for some of our favorite examples.

Gallery: Five Fab Finds: Zippers