Subscribe to Unsung History so you never miss an episode!

Fashion History Episodes

Feb. 12, 2024

The History of Blue Jeans

If you’re like most Americans – or most people on earth – you have a pair of jeans, or maybe five, in your wardrobe. There’s a decent chance you’re wearing jeans right now. These humble pants were invented by a Reno tailor i…
March 27, 2023

The 1968 White House Fashion Show

On February 29, 1968, Lady Bird Johnson hosted the first–and last–White House Fashion Show. The fashion show, intended both to highlight the fourth largest industry in the United States and to promote domestic tourism, inadv…
April 25, 2022

French Fashion in Gilded Age America

Paris has a long history as the fashion capital of the world. In the late 19th Century, American women, like European women, wanted the latest in French fashion. The wealthiest women traveled to Paris regularly to visit thei…
Oct. 25, 2021

Fashion, Feminism, and the New Woman of the late 19th Century

The late 19th Century ushered in an evolution in women’s fashion from the Victorian “True Woman” whose femininity was displayed in wide skirts and petticoats, the “New Woman” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was mod…