{"id":1574,"date":"2026-08-01T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adesa.test\/three-silhouettes-history-of-the-shoulder\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T22:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:00:07","slug":"three-silhouettes-history-of-the-shoulder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adesa-theme.jkdevstudio.com\/nl\/three-silhouettes-history-of-the-shoulder\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Silhouettes: A Short History of the Shoulder"},"content":{"rendered":"
Fashion history is often told through hemlines, but the shoulder may be the better guide. Where a garment places the shoulder, how wide it makes it, whether it lets it slope or squares it off, says a great deal about what a period thought a body should be and do. Our featured image sets three garments side by side, and together they trace roughly a century of answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The armoured bodice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
On the left, a dark wine bodice of the 1890s: high collar, a long row of small buttons, a sharply cinched waist and sleeves that swell at the top before tightening along the forearm. These were known as leg-of-mutton sleeves, and at their peak in the middle of the decade they grew so large that they needed padding or stiffened linings to hold their shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The silhouette was built, not simply worn. Corset, boned bodice and inflated sleeve together turned the upper body into a sculpture that made the waist look impossibly small by contrast. It was a style of display and restriction at once, and the restriction was part of the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The released body<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In the centre, a dark green dress with a dropped waist, straight lines and a pleated skirt, of the kind that defined the 1920s. The shoulders are narrow and natural; the garment hangs from them rather than gripping the torso. Designers such as Coco Chanel and Jean Patou built reputations on clothes like this, borrowed in part from sportswear and menswear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even more radical in its way was the work of Madeleine Vionnet, who cut fabric on the bias so that it clung and moved with the body without internal structure. Vionnet draped her designs on a small wooden mannequin before scaling them up, treating the dress as a three-dimensional problem rather than a flat pattern. The result was clothing that seemed to have no construction at all, which of course required enormous skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.<\/p>\nAttributed to Coco Chanel<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The questioning jacket<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
On the right, a dusty pink jacket that seems to be coming apart: one lapel folds over the other, the hem drops in a long asymmetric drape, the button sits where you would not expect it. This belongs to the deconstruction that arrived in Paris in the early 1980s, when Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Gar\u00e7ons and Yohji Yamamoto showed collections in black, torn, wrapped and unevenly cut. Some French critics responded with open hostility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the end of the decade Martin Margiela was turning garments inside out, exposing linings, seams and tacking stitches. The shoulder, which had been inflated to huge widths by the power dressing of the same years, became something to question rather than exaggerate. Kawakubo’s collection for spring 1997, Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body<\/em>, padded dresses in unexpected places, giving the body new swellings rather than an idealised line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\t
![\"Unfinished](\"https:\/\/adesa-theme.jkdevstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Sculptors-Workshop-in-Dramatic-Light-1024x576.webp\")