By fashion, we usually refer to the style of clothes, hair-do, etc. They keep changing and often repeat themselves at regular intervals. To follow the current and modern style of living is termed as fashion. Youngsters are crazier about way than any other person. Generally, new trends are introduced in films, and young people adopt them instantly.
To be fashionable is often a costly affair as it demands the buying of new clothes and accessories at regular intervals. Today’s fashions have changed a lot than in Victorian times. But definitely, it has a lot of influence in the fashion of modern times. Steampunk is one of the historical fashions.
Here you will be introduced to the Victorian Steampunk line of fashion. These will help you know the early fashion sense of the Victorians. Especially the youngsters and those who are always conscious about their styles are going to be benefited by this article. Also, you can develop your ideas of making an attire like a steampunk.
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Victorian steampunk history
By the Victorian era, we mean the times from 1837- 1900. So, in the 19th-century fashion was based on Hollywood movies, but steampunk is not. Steampunk is a science fiction character of the steampunk movement. It is a combination of the Victorian era’s romantic view of science fiction in literature.
So, the term steampunk came around in the ’80s, but it didn’t become famous, but in the late ’90s, steampunk became very popular and it became a fashion trend.
Steampunk fashion contains clothing, hairstyling, jewelry, body, and accessories. This fashion is a fun thing to work with—steampunk in the 1970s used to be very different than today. In fact, it has now. Steampunk came with coats, skirts, boots, gloves, and some materials.
The key element of steampunk is that it was a world that never happened. The industrial revolution took over, and we forgot about how to make things with our hands, where steampunk came with an offer to make things with hands-on their own. Steampunk is no ordinary outfit; instead, it is a very classic historical outfit.
When people say steampunk what they mean is jewelry and costumes. It’s kind of assumed a life outside of the printed page. Steampunk style is a fun style to work with as it combines imagination, machinery, and science fiction.
Women’s steampunk in the Victorian era
To dress steampunk, women started by putting on a classic historical outfit, including things like a corset, a vest, top hat, overcoat, and some leather belt. Then to accessorize their outfit, they included leather straps, gloves, buckles, goggles, etc.
In the 19th century, steampunk had some trends. Steampunk came after the death of Queen Victoria. The dresses were not floor-length but lowered the knee. The traditional attire was made of a corset. The corset was a V-shaped neck and sleeveless. Then a must item used to be a blouse. Without this, no steampunk outfit was complete.
The blouse used to be a full sleeve. For the lower style, they wore a medium-length skirt. Well, underneath the skirt they wore trousers so that the legs were not shown.
Later they felt the necessity of a belt to give the look a little bit of extra gorgeous. Also, to complete the whole outfit, Victorian women used a top hat as a headwear and leather boots for legs. Some of the Victorians seemed to carry an umbrella and wore a pair of glasses with a top hat. The top hat was designed with lace and different patterns.
Now let’s check out the tiny little details of this historical outfit of Victorian women.
Steampunk coat
Victorian women used to wear a handmade cotton frock coat or leather coat. They mostly seemed to wear black or brown coats. At the beginning of the trend, women didn’t wear coats or jackets, but as time passed by, they felt the necessity of wearing a coat or a leather jacket to look more beautiful. The coat was made of leather—the color of the coat used to be black or brown.
Steampunk top
The fashion of top was dominated by short, not flowing. In the beginning, the top ended at the waist and seemed very tight. The top was mainly made of cotton. Later they added some lace and neck design to make it look better. The main fabric of the top was cotton or sometimes silk.
Corset
Because the steampunk movement was so rooted in the Victorian age, it came up their mind that the corset would be a must-have steampunk clothing. It kept the body slim and the waist tight. It was quite impossible to move while wearing the corset. The back of the corset was decorated with some lace, so the back was shown a little. It made the corset more beautiful.
Skirt
The skirts have inspired steampunk fashion the most. At the beginning of the 20th-century skirts became very popular. Usually, the skirts were made of laces.
- Fabrics
For the fabrics, they went for cotton, silk, shiny silk and mostly leather. Among all of these leathers was very popular for most of the clothing items, including the waist belt or vest because of the glam it had. The also used lace along with their steampunk outfit.
- Fitting
During the Victorian era, women used to go for tight-fitting dresses but not too much. Especially the corsets gave the tightest fitting well-shaped body.
- Body
The 19th century was the time when fashion took a leap. Same case with the steampunk fashion. Women used to go with their ideas for steampunk fashion. They could come up with new ideas of patterns and design.
Gloves
During the Victorian era, gloves were made of velvet, fine leather, lace or silk. But the most common steampunk material gloves were velvet.
The Headwear
They used top hats the most as headwear. The steampunk top hat combined the traditional trend of the top head in Victorian times. The top hat was often decorated with materials and designed with alluding to the technological revolution.
Accessories
Any outfit was incomplete without jewellery. As for accessories, women used to wear a simple neckpiece. Sometimes they carried a bag. But not everyone seemed to carry any accessory.
Victorian Steampunk male
Men never had many choices of their own in fashion no matter what the era is. Yet, they had some options throughout the times. To dress steampunk men chose a plain white shirt under the steampunk coat with a bow. The coat was made of leather or shiny leather. For accessories, they wore goggles, leather belts, brace late, top hats etc. Also, some of them seemed to carry a gun.
That was a very classic fashion for men. Apart from that, tuxedos were also another option. Let’s go through some classic detailed looks of Victorians steampunk for men.
Steampunk coat
Steampunk coats were long in the late 19th century. The coat was made of shiny leather and designed with some buttons in the middle as well as in the sleeves. Also, the coat had a collar cutting the design in the neck. Mainly the coat used to complete the whole classic look of a steam
Footwear
As for footwear, the early Victorians wore shoes. Shoes were an attraction in the steampunk look. The trend was to wear a pair of boots which would be noticeable and also caught everyone’s eyes. As you can see, there wasn’t much difference in the fashion of men’s footwear from then till now.
Headwear
When you think about steampunk’s headwear, you think about top hats. Well, there were so many kinds of a top hat such as a high-top hat, squire top hat, belled top hat, low top hat, topper, the prince, 1860 top hat, the cowboy and homburg. There were many decorative top hats, as well as some simple. Some of the Victorian men used to put google on top of the hat just to make it look extra classy. This is how men used to adorn their head to create more of a royal and classy look. Later on, many new looks had been created as well.
Conclusion
Here we have brought the crucial details of the Victorian steampunk fashion of both men and women. We have tried to go through the steampunk’s history from the Victorian era. To give you a better understanding of how the steampunk fashion used to be during the Victorian period. The steampunk fashion is mainly to provide a realistic character in both men and women from science fiction.
It is clear that the fashion sense of steampunk got the most evolution to the time of the Victorian era. Steampunk fashion cannot be ignored since there are many festivals every year over the world where you can dress like steampunk men or women. This article is to give you some information about steampunk history and to go back to the 19th century. Hope you get a clear vision of it.
