What is it about the shoulder pad? Fashion for the recession and for revelry. This year in the fashion circuits of New York, Paris and Milan, the shoulder pad or angular shaping of a garment’s shoulder cut is reappearing as a distinguishing feature. The most recent memory we have of square shoulders, sometimes aggressively jutting outward, is of the mid-1980’s and the era of big-spending after the short recession that ended in 1983. Interestingly, we are entering a period that is somewhat distant from the materialistic, impulse-driven 80’s– so why the return to the hallmark look of the age of expenditure?
During and after World War II, the fashion for men’s and women’s clothing were restricted for war-time manufacturing reasons as well as a general cultural inclination for stricter lines and less ornament or flounce. Shoulder pads, echoing the clean lines of a military cut, and accentuating a geometry of containment, were markers of a time of economic austerity. 
The more contemporary interest in shoulder padding, as seen in the fashion of the 1980’s and again today, can be said to underlie a general need to assert something strongly. The shoulder pad or the general pronouncement of rigid forms in garments are conventions of the times and assert, as in the 1980’s, a general profligacy or, as in 2009, a strength of character and intention despite economic hardship.
A brief history of eyeglasses from 1000 C.E. through the Middle Ages and to the Present. At about the turn of the first millenium, a Muslim scientist referred to in Latin as Alhazen, wrote a treatise titled The Book of Optics which became a foundational text in the study of, among several things, optics and experimental physics. He is thought to be the first person to have written about the use of a magnifying tool for improving vision through the convex shaping of glass. The use of glass or crystals to improve clarity of vision existed in various rudimentary forms from earlier points in history but was only documented and described in a more technical manner in the early part of the 11th century.
By the end of the 13th century this early evidence of corrective glass called a reading stone (often held at a distance from the eye, for example pressed directly against text to be enlarged) gave way to the first spectacles to be used on the face. These first quartz crystal lenses would be set in frames linked by a bridge to hold on the nose but did not have framing to hold the spectacles to the face so that ribbon or some other make-shift device would be devised to keep them in place.
It was not until the 1700’s that hinged side-bars were attached to the glass frames in order to secure them and it was also towards the end of this century that variations in lens appeared in the form of monocles (a single lens) and lorgnettes (two lenses held up with a handle at the side.) The bifocal, invented by Benjamin Franklin, also emerged in the late 1700’s. By this time, glasses as a necessity as well as a distinguishing mark for the wearer, were indicative of innovation and learning. Typically, glasses were more accessible to the upper classes because of expense but as they became more widely produced they also became more accessible. Nevertheless as features of style, beyond their practical purpose, glasses remain accessories and the variations one can find in eyeglasses and sunglasses today, demonstrate this clearly in the history of fashion.
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The infamous pirate that we associate with danger and daring on the high seas is a strong presence in the imagination of children and adults alike. Piracy has existed for as long as seafaring vessels have existed but the glorified history of piracy as we know it reached a peak in the period known as the Golden Age of Piracy, between 1690 and 1730. The pirates preyed on merchant vessels, mostly in the Atlantic and Caribbean, and created an aura about them that instilled fear and trepidation in anyone who came across the iconic Jolly Roger. Piracy was most closely associated with this symbol of entertainment with death; lore about the pirates’ customs as well as costume rose with the prevalence of the Jolly Roger at sea.
Pirates took a firm place in the legends and stories of 17th and 18th century Europe, in novels such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Lord Byron’s poem, The Corsair. The description of the pirate in literature and legend may not have matched the reality of the hard-bitten and tattered fighter at sea, but became vivid enough to last through the centuries in a picturesque make-over. The pirate we envision is festooned with his flintlock pistol and trusted cutlass at either side and dons a tricorn hat as he ascends his ship’s masthead with telescope in hand to sight the next ship to be looted. The tricorn was a hat with its three sides turned up in a triangle when looked at from above– it was typically made of wool felt and came in basic colors such as brown and black, though sailors and pirates would adorn their hats in any number of ways. The clothing pirates wore was not different from that of their contemporary sailors and would have consisted of canvas doublets and breeches, linen shirts, and stockings– items designed to be somewhat consistent with the requirements of manning a ship.
