Fashion: Draped in the Past

Benjamin Wild finds that the Middle Ages is inspiring a number of major designers.

 

The newspapers shout, a new style is growing.
But it don’t know if it’s coming or going.
There is fashion, there is fad,
Some is good, some is bad.
And the joke is rather sad,
That it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.

So bellowed Shirley Bassey in her 1997 ballad, History Repeating. Few songs, or clothing commentators, have been as eloquent about the transition of sartorial trends, but it is doubtful that even Bassey, or her collaborators the Propellerheads, knew how prescient these words were.

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