Talk:Dress

Thoughts about history of this garment

First, there will be some sourcing issues in writing the history of this garment: up until modern times, upper classes (i.e. people with money) are better documented in their habits & customs than the peasants/commoners, despite that the latter formed the vast majority of people.

Second, looking at the German & French versions of this article provide some ideas of how to improve on it. The article fr:Robe (vêtement) notes that "dress" often had the function of limiting a woman's movement. This article also notes "dress" had a unisexual connotation in language use until the 19th century, & the garment itself was worn occasionally by men (& children of upper classes) until early in the 20th century. IIRC the writer Charles Bukowski was dressed in a dress as a child by his mother (it was the custom in their native Germany), which caused predictable problems for him; this is evidence that the custom of having children of both sexes wear dresses persisted into living memory. (FWIW, neither of my daughters wear dresses, so this garment may becoming obsolescent.)

Third, looking at the history of the English language, it seems that women's clothing often was the more conservative form of dress that was otherwise fairly similar. Until the Renaissance, most people in Europe wore some version of a tunic, which is why shirt/skirt both are etymologically related. (The Roman toga was an exception that fell out of usage with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.) Due to practicality, women's garments tended to have longer hems to keep their legs warm while men either wore leggings or trousers to achieve the same end. And up until fairly recent times women's garments were referred to as "skirts" (e.g. "she gathered her skirts"). It would be interesting -- & likely documented -- when the word "dress" came to indicate a garment only worn by women.

I offer these thoughts not as what I believe what this article should say (although I do think I'm correct). They are offered as a series of working theories for contributors to start with, & to research with the intent of either proving or disproving. Research will be what makes or breaks this article. -- llywrch (talk) 18:12, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

@Llywrch: For the Bukowski anecdote, compare Breeching (boys). The photo of young FDR I've always found particularly striking. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:20, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Image

I think the image should show a contemporary example of a dress. The current image could be moved to the History section. 125.160.113.232 (talk) 12:07, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Descriptions

@Toddst1, you reverted some unsourced content that I moved out of Wedding dress. It contains basic definitions such as, in the ===Lengths=== subsection:

Ankle: Characterized by a hemline that hits at the ankle.

Do you have any reason to think that this is original research (i.e., just made up by whichever editor originally wrote it)? Do you have any reason to believe, for example, that an ankle-length dress isn't a dress that's long enough to reach the ankle? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:48, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Do we need to explain that a blue sky is blue? Toddst1 (talk) 19:33, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

@Toddst1, maybe we do? We seem to expend hundreds of words on the color of the sky. More relevantly, the gallery under that includes most of those terms, but doesn't define them. It might be useful for some people to have the definitions. We can't assume that everyone is able to see the little pictures. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

House dress

"House dress, a type of simple dress worn at home for household chores."

I added this to Dress then User:Toddst1 and keeps reverting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dress&diff=1115561269&oldid=1115552126

Do you think this is an improvement? 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 03:30, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Men

Perhaps I'm overlooking, but maybe this article should say something about men wearing dresses? There are even Wikipedia entries about notable dresses worn by men: Black Christian Siriano gown of Billy Porter and Blue Gucci dress of Harry Styles come to mind. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 15:24, 6 May 2023 (UTC)