1. Have you seen those tiny pockets in jeans that are too small to actually function as pockets and sit inside larger, actual pockets? Of course you have! Introduced in the 1800s, they were actually designed for cowboys to keep their pocket watches.
2. The first fashion magazine was published in Germany in 1586. The second one was published in France in 1678.
3. Men’s shirts button on the right, and women’s on the left. The reason for that? Back in the days, women were dressed by servants who tended to be right handed, while men mostly dressed themselves.
4. Children dressed identically to adults until the mid-1800s, when the concept of children’s clothing took off.
5. High heels weren’t intended for women at all. The first elevated pieces of footwear in history belonged to the actors in ancient Greece. They were flat shoes with wooden or cork bases up to four inches thick.
6. The first-ever designer logo was created and manufactured in 1933. It was Lacoste’s little embroidered crocodile.
7. All the ladies should be thankful to Mark Twain (yes, that Mark Twain). He invented the elastic clasp bra strap.
8. What is behind the YKK you see on most zippers? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, the Japanese zipper company, which makes roughly half of all the zippers on earth (or more than 7 billion zippers per year).
9. Fashion dictator: did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte introduced the buttons you see on the sleeves of the jackets?
10. Barbie’s first outfit was a black and white one-piece swimsuit (1959). A few decades earlier, in 1907, a woman was actually arrested in Boston for wearing a formfitting one-piece on the beach.