1930s Fashion Designers Predict How People Would Dress in the Year 2000

From 1930 to 1941, Pathetone Week­ly ran film clips that high­light­ed ‘the nov­el, the amus­ing and the strange.’ At some point dur­ing the 1930s (the exact date isn’t clear), Pathetone asked Amer­i­can design­ers to look rough­ly 70 years into the future and haz­ard a guess about how women might dress in Year 2000. Appar­ent­ly, fash­ion design­ers don’t make great futur­ists, and the designs fell rather wide of the mark — unless you want to count Lady Gaga’s wardrobe, in which case they didn’t do a half bad job. Or, for that mat­ter, the male con­nect­ed 24/7 to his phone and sundry gad­gets…

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Isaac Asimov’s 1964 Pre­dic­tions About What the World Will Look 50 Years Lat­er — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000


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  • Sasha says:

    If only real­i­ty had fol­lowed clos­er to their pre­dic­tions.
    Instead, both men and women of our age dress — or rather, bare­ly both­er to dress — like slobs and walk­ing bill­board adver­tise­ments for brand logos or inane and vul­gar slo­gans.

    It’s iron­ic that we demand ele­gant and beau­ti­ful aes­thet­ic design from our devices and tech­nol­o­gy, and yet have the low­est pos­si­ble aes­thet­ic stan­dards for them­selves.

    The world has become ugli­er and ugli­er, since its inhab­i­tants have become ugli­er and ugli­er. We are mis­fits in our own beau­ti­ful tech­no-utopias.

    Per­haps we are prepar­ing for our even­tu­al irrel­e­van­cy and extinc­tion, once tech­nol­o­gy super­sedes us com­plete­ly.

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