Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Shoulder pad (fashion)" in English language version.
...[I]f [French designers] have their way,...women will be wearing big, big, big padded shoulders...[T]he overriding trend from Paris was Retro...On the side of Retro are designers like...Jean-Claude de Luca...
At Andrevie...shoulders were almost three feet wide.
Lagerfeld...has brought back the Merry Widow corselet, whalebone stays and all.
On the Flash Gordon side of French ready-to-wear Retro are such designers as Claude Montana, Thierry Mugler, and France Andrevie....At Montana, it took the form of...Italian fascist gone science-fiction fantasy....At Mugler,...a big-shouldered Flash Gordon jacket...
The only designer who has managed to stay outside of the Retro mainstream is Kenzo...
...[T]he real credit for the whole shoulder-pad revival belongs to New Yorker Norma Kamali...
...[In] the late '70s...really big shoulders reappeared, this time...broader than ever. Reactions to the doorway-wide affairs generally ranged from 'not for me' to 'never!'
...[In] the late '70s...really big shoulders reappeared, this time...broader than ever. Reactions to the doorway-wide affairs generally ranged from 'not for me' to 'never!'
...[S]houlder pads have become a way of life to the fashion-conscious, invading not only the innards of coats and jackets, but sweaters and blouses as well....[T]hey`re showing up in the most unexpected places, including camisoles, teddies and even slips, bodysuits, pajamas, robes, sleepshirts, fashions for lounging and fashions for exercising.
Norma Kamali...designed the pads so that they could be easily removed or returned to their proper place via slim strips of Velcro,
...Kamali slipped oversized shoulder pads into vastly oversized sweatshirts in a collection of sportswear that took off overnight and found women, girls and even kids across the country happily looking like female footballers.
Since then, shoulder pads have become a way of life to the fashion-conscious,...
You can thank costume designer Brenda Cooper...for the spectacle of Nanny Fine's wardrobe....[S]tandouts were by Moschino or Dolce & Gabbana...
'YSL's...mannequin...got ovations every time she sauntered out on the runway in another version of the spencer jacket'.
Then came the war...One popular evening gown of the period was adorned with a huge swooping Air Corps wing of gold Iamé, beginning at one hip and curving upward across the bosom to the opposite shoulder....[G]irls who had no intention of joining the Women's Army Corps wore copies of WAC hats decked out with sequins.
In late 1946, the Orphic couturier [Christian Dior] sketched abundant skirts barely twelve inches from the floor, with unpadded shoulders but stuffed brassieres and shoes and hats that made men gasp.
In the 40's,...shoulder pads were almost always made of stiff cotton batting and covered with felt....The pads looked great until the dress or coat was washed, in which case there were noticeable lumps and bumps.
The Balenciaga coats have wide, well-rounded shoulders. The gray tweed has pads to support shoulders....The Balenciaga suit:...shoulders widened in a sculptured curve...
Givenchy...suits...had good, big, wide shoulders....Most of the sleeves were set in, and it was evident that there must have been a good hunk of shoulder pad lurking underneath each one.
Jacques Heim's collection contained a bit of the rounded, wide shoulder look...Many of his suits appear to have some padding in them...
There was not a square shoulder in sight.
Dior alone went all out for the square and padded shoulder.
Marc Bohan, designer for the House of Dior, sent his models trotting out today with the broad, padded shoulders of a high-fashion football team.
In the 50's, business was 'still good — but down about one‐third from what it was during the 40's.' As for shoulder‐pad business in the 60's, [shoulder pad manufacturer Harold Lopato] simply says, 'It wasn't a particularly good decade for shoulders'.
This year's...Forties...peaked shoulders, platform soles, box pleated dresses, tight black satin and wildly dyed chunky fur jackets turn up in collection after collection...
Yves Saint Laurent was good for a few laughs...An obvious tart...sashayed through the salon. She represented the spirit of the nineteen-forties....The first spurts of laughter were followed by nervous reflection....Was Saint Laurent making fun of the nineteen-forties – or the audience? Or was the whole collection one big parody of fashion?
...Angelo Tarlazzi showed his nineteen‐forties collection in January...before Saint Laurent...
Yves Saint Laurent's...World War II...look...in football shoulders and tight dresses...
Yves Saint Laurent['s]...spring collection...recalled the terrible time of collaborationists in France, bombings in London and wartime austerity in the United States....The forties trend is...inescapable in the Saint Laurent clothes. His shoulders may not be the widest in Paris, but they seemed so.
...Forties...shoulders...turn up [at]...Karl Lagerfeld of Chloe...
...Marc Bohan, the Dior designer, was...showing...the...look of the nineteen-forties...[M]any of the styles have the broad football shoulders that are an earmark of the nineteen‐forties.
If he doesn't bring back wide shoulders, toppers and the hip‐length vests that were called jerkins, he at least may spur the return of the big bands and the Lindy Hop.
...Forties...shoulders...turn up [at]...Jean-Louis Scherrer...
...Guy Laroche is concerned with the nineteen‐forties...[H]e made a big fuss over...broad-shouldered suits, bolero jackets, fluid crepe dresses with crepe capes á la Adrian and lots of other standards of that era.
The part of the nineteen-forties look that Michel Goma has taken to his heart at Patou is the wider shoulder. On the sheerer styles, you can even see the pads.
...Yves Saint Laurent...hard-edged blazers and fluffy fur jackets...have cropped up all over Seventh Avenue....Shoulders are significantly broadened, some of them showing a suspicion of padding.
For fall, Betsey [Johnson] is intrigued with...shoulder pads...
Jean-Louis Scherrer...clothes have a late forties look with squared shoulders...
...Scott Barrie likes...squared-shoulder nineteen-forties suits with plunging necklines worn over no bra and no blouse. It wasn't that way in the forties.
His pitch was the nineteen forties...suits with padded shoulders...and square‐shouldered box coats to go over them.
Jean Louis Scherrer...shoulders were squared...
Daniel Hechter is popular with women in their twenties and thirties. Guess what he's up to? Padded shoulders on boxy jackets and pleated skirts. It's the kind of thing Yves Saint Laurent was hooted at for showing a couple of years ago.
[L]ast season, Scherrer was immersed in the nineteen‐thirties look. Now he's moved on to the forties. Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and all that. Squared shoulders. Padded turbans. Extravagantly beaded evening dresses. Again, glamour gowns for private clients. No guide to the future.
At Nino Cerruti,...[s]quared padded shoulders appeared on everything, the women's styles too.
...[C]ritics...attacked [Yves Saint Laurent's] World War II floozy look...When his mannequins paraded like 1940s streetwalkers..., one critic cried 'hideous' and a...news magazine renamed him 'Yves St. Debacle.'.
After a brief flurry of interest in shorts for day and evening wear in the spring of 1971 on both sides of the Atlantic, women everywhere settled contentedly into trousers for practically all occasions....Blue jeans became even further entrenched as the uniform of the young and experimentation was limited to different toppings for pants.
With a generation of office workers and executives going to work in T-shirts and blue jeans, formality in fashion was becoming a thing of the past....[I]t is possible for a woman to go anywhere, including black‐tie dinners, in a shirt and pants....Simplicity is the rule, and there's no need for a woman to clutter her closets with a lot of clothes...It is part of the simplification of life that comes under the heading of modernity.
[T]he 1970's will be marked by clothes divided into many easy pieces that can be added to or subtracted from, according to the weather, personal preferences and the feeling of the moment....The style of the 1970's is low on artifice, high on a natural look. Casual is the operative word.
Yves Saint Laurent...suits...are severely tailored...No softening agents at all, unless you want to count the chiffon blouses and the high heel shoes....The best woman's style was a glen plaid pants suit with...sharp shoulders.
...[T]hey...joyously applauded a plain gray flannel coat with broad shoulders that wrapped over a pin‐striped tailored suit and a very full smock coat in gray flannel....They love him when he is making mannish tailored suits with padded shoulders...
[Christian Dior]...sports clothes favor knitted tunics and stove-pipe pants, [the] mannish suits have padded shoulders, and harem pants are a leitmotif for evening.
...[T]he first three years of the 1970's...changed fashion and changed the way women wanted to look....'Suddenly more than half the American women were going to work. Their wardrobe requirements changed. They started looking for more classic styles to work in, to go to the office in. And,' [shoulder pad manufacturer Harold Lopato] says, 'more tailored clothes...always signal a more pronounced shoulder'.
...Wall Street women are...wearing the so-called success suit (tailored jacket and skirt...)...
[Woman's Dress for Success Book author John] Molloy...reports enthusiastically on a 'pledge' he says was drafted by women in one corporation: 'I pledge to wear highly tailored, dark‐colored, traditionally designed, skirted suits whenever possible to the office'...
Koko Hashim, vice president of Neiman‐Marcus [says]...'There has been an enormous change in the silhouette, a broadening of the shoulders and narrowing of the hips — what we call the triangle... — that requires a reeducation of the consumer'.
What thousands of fashion followers are muttering as they crisscross [Paris] to see the new fashions for fall and winter...is 'shoulders, shoulders, shoulders'.
Yves Saint Laurent — the most influential fashion designer in the world — is being credited with starting this fall's dramatic shift of silhouette....What Saint Laurent sprang on the fashion world last January when he introduced man‐tailored suit jackets with shoulders squared out with padding...has now become staple fashion in Italy, France and America. As if by magic, wider-shouldered and leaner‐lined clothes have shown up everywhere at every price level. Fashion has taken a new turn.
Yves Saint Laurent's man‐tailored suit, introduced in January 1978, put emphasis on bigger, built-out shoulders. American designers simultaneously backed the built‐up look and started adding shoulder apparatus of their own.
It started on the first day of the spring and summer couture collections, when Jean‐Louis Scherrer sent out his mannequins in...mannish tailored suits.
...[T]he shoulders of the jackets seem particularly exaggerated...
Saint Laurent...is broadening the shoulders and narrowing the skirts...
...[Karl Lagerfeld's] current fall collection is one of the most outrageous in its thrust of broad padded shoulders and aggressive sexiness.
Claude Montana's belted and wide‐sleeved coat in the status 'fabric'- leather- has the broadest shoulders in Paris.
...[Viewers] stared in amazement at the oversized shoulders on Cardin's new creations. 'These styles are Superman styles,' Cardin said of the big, wide shoulders...
Ready‐to-wear designers are...bringing back...formal accessories such as hats, gloves and serious handbags.
Wide shoulders were an even stronger trend among the French designers than the military look their Italian counterparts favored..., but the invaders look as if they came from outer space, not from over the hill[, with]...helmet-and-goggles...accessories...
...Claude Montana's Mongolian Martian Look and Thierry Mugler's Star Trekesque gigantic shoulders....
Along with the giant pads came a kind of mindless toying with military looks...
...Perry Ellis's breezy designs with exaggerated, almost pillow‐padded shoulders...
...[T]he Ellis clothes...look absolutely comfortable and relaxed...Shoulders are padded...Mr. Ellis said he had no compunctions about adding padded coat to padded jacket to padded sweater.
Norma Kamali...has become famous for her parachute dresses, sexy, shirred bathing suits, pegged, draped skirts...and...padded shoulders.
This fall, [Calvin Klein] narrowed [his clothes]...and added a bit of shoulder padding.
Armani's...gift for fall is a long-jacket suit with military shoulders...It accompanies pants, skirts or culottes and it sometimes has epaulets....[S]oftening agents take the curse off the military look....It has broad, padded shoulders...
Today, shoulder pads are...often constructed of foam, nonwoven polyester filler, reprocessed cotton felt, ozite and sanforized or nylon thread...The result is a pad which retains its shape and doesn't disintegrate when washed....Average weight is about one ounce.
Bergdorf Goodman's Leonard Hanken...remark[ed], 'We'll have to train a whole new generation of tailors to put in shoulder pads properly. It's a lost art'.
Saint Laurent['s]...man‐tailored suit jackets with shoulders squared out with padding...looked not only boldly aggressive but startling and totally unexpected...
...[S]houlder pads...big and bulky enough to grace the shoulders of Gargantua.
[Shoulder pad manufacturer Harold] Lopato picks up what looks like a hunk of mattress stuffing...'This,' he pronounces proudly, 'is our three-inch-thick shoulder pad which we worked out with [designer] Bill Kaiserman.'
[Montana's] shoulders...turned up at the ends, like pagoda roofs.
Wide shoulders are obligatory this season. Some...styles...have a fold or flange effect that draws the eye outward.
[T]he new look took — mostly in the less extreme versions, but with a few surprises. Broader shoulders have been accepted, up to a point.
The brisk, capable look of the wide-shouldered silhouette suited the mood of women who wanted to convey just that image: in control and 'together'.
...[S]houlders [are] now [1985] proportioned to sports-page, rather than fashion-page, dimensions...Customers...don't seem to be bothered by the exaggerated shoulders. After all, they make the waist and hips look smaller.
Kenzo goes his own humorous, playful way, creating amusing, young, almost 'toy' fashions.
Emanuel Ungaro...has sent...advance hints of his styles for next fall....Ungaro uses [a brushed silk shirt] as part of a layering plan that involves a matching vest. a skirt in the same fabric but a blending print, and a couple of sweaters....But Mr. Ungaro hasn't forgotten about dresses. One of the prettiest a loose style in flowery wool challis...
Ungaro['s] jackets had...peplums and...puffy shoulders.
Karl Lagerfeld..., Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro and Hubert de Givenchy...continued with their versions of the rather aggressive broad-shouldered silhouette...
...[T]he Big Look...was pioneered in Paris a year ago by Kenzo Takada...with absurdly large skirts and coats....[T]he look features long skirts, dropped shoulders, dolman sleeves and large armholes, blouson jackets, blowing capes, and loose dresses–all laid on with layers of fabric.
[Armani's] career has been punctuated by a series of radical gestures, beginning with the unconstructed blazer of the mid-1970's - his epochal creation....The blazer, a calculatedly rumpled affair, featured sloping shoulders, narrow lapels, baggy pockets and an attenuated line. More importantly, it was endowed with a mobility previously unknown in men's suit jackets, except on Savile Row. It had the kind of comfort found only in sports clothing, which he achieved in part by stripping out much of its cumbersome lining and padding.
Even men who shrug at fashion will probably find themselves in jackets with padded shoulders this fall. Broad shoulders are back...Calvin Klein['s]...shoulders are broad, not extreme, but there is definite padding....Pierre Cardin refers to his new silhouette as 'an upside-down triangle',...designing clothes with broader shoulders...Yves Saint Laurent...is building [shoulders] up again....Bill Kaiserman advocates...'strong but not extreme' shoulders....Lee Wright designs...clothing...inspired by the Italian V-silhouette...
Armani's 1979 jackets are wide at the shoulder with a narrowing at the waist and low button closing.
At the end of the 1970's, Armani altered his style dramatically. Taking his design cues from Hollywood costumes of the 1930's and 40's, he widened the lapels of his suits and extended and padded the shoulders.
Shoulders tend to be padded now or given greater width through puffs at the top of the sleeves...And the peplum jacket is reappearing...It's part of fashion's retro mood that...echoes...the 1940's.
The shape that Paris couturiers seem to have agreed upon for fall is the tightly fitted jacket with a small peplum...[w]ith puffed-top, leg-of-mutton sleeves
...Karl Lagerfeld pronounces, 'Shoulders are the roof of a house'.
(see previous McEvoy citations)
...[S]houlders [are] now [1985] proportioned to sports-page, rather than fashion-page, dimensions...Customers...don't seem to be bothered by the exaggerated shoulders. After all, they make the waist and hips look smaller.
...Wall Street women are...wearing the so-called success suit (tailored jacket and skirt...)...
[Women's Dress for Success Book author John] Molloy...reports enthusiastically on a 'pledge' he says was drafted by women in one corporation: 'I pledge to wear highly tailored, dark‐colored, traditionally designed, skirted suits whenever possible to the office'...
...[C]lothing consultants...are...counseling businesswomen on how to 'dress for power'.
...[I]f you add a padded coat to a padded jacket over a padded blouse, the effect can be grotesque. A lot of grotesque effects were seen on the runways...
[Perry] Ellis said he had no compunctions about adding padded coat to padded jacket to padded sweater.
[M]any people know Ungaro because it was prominent in the '80s and '90s. If you were a snooty boutique owner in Dallas or New York and you couldn't sell an Ungaro dress with the drapery pouring over the breasts and thighs like butter on a hot ear of corn, you had no business being in retail.
As for Emanuel Ungaro, nothing is quite so seductive as a skinny sheath tucked under a big-shouldered jacket or coat. 'It is this contrast of wide on narrow that I love,' he says.
...[J]ackets tend to have large rippling lapels as well as very broad shoulders and peplums over the hips.
Emanuel Ungaro's updated, sexy Edwardian clothes...
Miss Karan says,...'Somewhere in the back of my mind is the figure I always start with - wide shoulders and a shaped body, with round hips'...
...[S]houlders...are padded, but usually not as exaggeratedly as they have been in the recent past.
'The tough shoulders already look a little demodé,' says French designer Karl Lagerfeld.
...[E]very...designer is content to achieve breadth across the top with such devices as leg o'mutton sleeves.
[At Ungaro, a] triangular fold just below the shoulder adds breadth but not bulk to the top of the body.
...Ungaro...leather suits...had soft folds at the shoulders.
Wide shoulders are obligatory this season. Some of the styles shown here have a fold or flange effect that draws the eye outward.
Pierre Cardin...dresses...had cap-like extensions over the shoulders....[T]here are stiff flanges and revers on suits...and wings on the shoulders that seem as if they were about to levitate.
Some of [Perry Ellis's] familiar heathery wool sweaters sport stand-up ruffles at the shoulder.
...[S]houlders, as in seasons immediately past, have been padded slightly, or a bit more so, but rarely with exaggeration.
...[T]he talk is of wide shoulders...Yves Saint Laurent is...working with big shoulders...Valentino...tried to cut down on shoulder padding. Unfortunately, he says, 'Everything looks better with it'.
The mammoth shoulder pads shown a year ago [1978] are one of the disasters. Only Claude Montana has repeated them.
Claude Montana...shoulders extended half a foot on each side by padding and huge shelflike sleeves...
As for Claude Montana, who is to big shoulders what Alexander Graham Bell is to the telephone, fashion is simple: 'Shoulders forever,' he says.
As in other clothes, the shoulders of the chemise are padded...
...Saint Laurent's chemises are the talk of the town....He has added squarely padded shoulders...and shortened the hemlines to clear the knees...
...Hubert de Givenchy...returned to the...chemise shapes promulgated by Balenciaga in 1957....Current versions have wider shoulders and shorter skirts than those of Balenciaga, but still offer a reprise on an earlier style.
Thierry Mugler reminded his audience of just what many of them looked like in the 1960's in their minidresses, wildly colored prints, beads and link belts of plastic disks. Remember those?
Thierry Mugler...is now into the psychedelic 1960's. Miniskirts and maxicoats, bell-bottom trousers, bubble-shaped dresses and Op Art jumpsuits, Afro wigs and short, straight Vidal Sassoon haircuts...
...Thierry Mugler opts for a less dramatic, sloping shoulder. 'But not narrow,' he says.
Many observers claim that Sprouse's sleeveless mini shift dresses, with their flared tent shapes, are cookie-cutter copies of those of Courreges in the 1960's. Yet Sprouse's broad-shouldered, beautifully man-tailored jackets and coats...are selling in the stores.
...the new Long and Strong look - long skirts, shawls, wrap coats and lots of layers.
The clothes have the relaxed, natural look of [Perry] Ellis's first collection in the 1970's. Trousers are important. Colors are muted. Skirts are long and legs are clad in dark, thick stockings above low-heel shoes. Tops tend to be belted at the hips, and shoulders are broad.
Montana seems to have severely tempered his use of shoulder pads, which has been somewhat of a signature for him.
'Shoulder pads...,' [Norma Kamali] said, '[a]re like wearing a padded bra. They give you a certain attitude and strength. They compensate for...physical shortcomings.'...
The padded shoulders, ventless back and slight suppression in the torso that are so prevalent in Italian and French tailoring...may have seemed a bit avant-garde...a few years ago, but no longer.
...[J]ackets with exaggerated shoulders that taper to narrow hips, and side vents placed so that hands can slip into pants pockets without disturbing the line. That is the new shape in men's clothes [Pierre Cardin] showed...
The Armani suit owes much of its shape and swagger to the 1940's, with extremely broad and soft shoulders, very wide lapels and a gorge (that embattled little notch between lapel and collar) that is higher.
The exercise fad of the 1970's has become a fact of life in the 1980's.
Perry Ellis gave the fashion crowd a jolt with an uncharacteristically close-fitting men's and women's collection shown with sizzle by such models as athletic Jeff Aquilon, lithe Lise Ryall, Elle Macpherson, who is so fit she seemed to leap out of everything she wore...
...[O]bserves Ralph Lauren,...'...Men's suits have gotten more shaped because they're working out'....Natural-shoulder suits are now more suppressed in the waist and broader in the shoulders, chest and back.
Guido Petruzzi, president of Giorgio Armani Fashion Corporation, the designer's American manufacturer, says that Mani's V-shaped suit represents 'an extreme,' but he thinks American consumers are coming to accept it. 'All that work and energy,' Petruzzi remarks. 'A suit without shape doesn't show it off'.
The two-button suit is 'the most important,' says Ralph Lauren, because, by showing more of the chest, 'it's more flattering to the body'.
A Shoulder Pad as a Money Hider: Jenna Mitchell of Venice, Calif., has designed a...Velcro-fastened shoulder pad with a...secret...pocket that snaps shut....Ms. Mitchell received patent 5,189,738.
In the '40s, the shoulder shape was what [shoulder-pad manufacturer Harold] Lopato calls 'saddle-shaped,' or sloping in the center. The pads were rigid.
...Elizabeth Simmons, owner of Ardis School of Design[,]...recommends cotton batting-filled pads...because they are more adjustable.
[In 1971, designer Michele Aujard] put huge shoulder pads in her clothes...
...[T]he clothes never sold. 'Women just didn't like it,' [Michele Aujard] said.
These [1977 presentations of spring 1978] collections will give buyers and manufacturers the assurance to keep making these clothes and making them bigger. And often more broad-shouldered.
... Jean-Louis Scherrer...has taken ...squared shoulders, short jackets,...
He explains clearly why he chooses this silhouette: 'Big shoulders give a woman a sense of grandeur and height and presence'.
Did you love the way your mother looked in the 1940s? If you did, you are in luck - because Yves Saint Laurent, clearly the strongest influence out of Paris, has designed a collection of haute glamour clothes for fall with roots in the Joan Crawford, grand-entrance era.
It is back to the history books if you care to comprehend what the Paris fashion designers are up to...[T]here is a heavy dose of the 1940s in the fall designs, with broad-shouldered suits with fitted bodices, tightly nipped waistlines, and peplums, plus a heavy injection of the early 1900s...
...YSL was on this kick in earlier collections, and now he's changed the silhouette slightly...
The revival of the '40s look has brought with it the retro trappings of red lipstick, long gloves, stockings with seams and tiny hats with veils.
...[Pierre Cardin's] space-age shoulder pads...
[Armani's] broad-shouldered, high-neckline jackets and coats are expected to be influential.
In the '40s, the shoulder shape was what Lopato calls 'saddle-shaped,' or sloping in the center. The pads were rigid. Today the shoulder line is straight, says Lopato, and the pads soft and more pliable.
Nowadays, with fewer skilled cutters and tailors, and different fabrics, it just isn't possible or sensible to repeat an old style.
'I'm giving more instruction on how to make and place shoulder pads,' says Elizabeth Simmons, owner of Ardis School of Design.
[B]ig pagoda shoulders...were [Cardin's] favorite silhouette...last March.
The new broad-shouldered, retro-glamor clothes, military looks and black leather that most customers are seeing for the first time are considered quite shocking....Dorothy Vineburgh, an active volunteer in town, [says], 'No way will I wear those shoulder pads....I want to find something elegant and comfortable.' Richard Krolick, staff director of a congressional committee, wasn't quite so kind. 'It's like World War II!,' he said after one benefit this week. 'They have got to be kidding.'...[C]ustomers aren't loving all the clothes and the shows aren't generating large sales...
...[M]any [buyers] had trouble selling exaggerated shoulders...'I can't see women getting into cars with shoulders so broad,' said Wendall Ward, vice president of Garfinckel's...
'If you had tried to sell big shoulders in a store this winter, you wouldn't touch them for spring,' insists Val Cook, of Saks-Jandel, about the padded-shoulder styles, some of which looked like the model had forgotten to remove the hanger before putting on the dress.
...[I]f you thought padded shoulders would pass with the football season, you are wrong. There are various degrees of padding, but clearly the broad-shouldered look has a wide following.
...[A]s the exaggerated showpieces were translated into saleable styles – with the broadened shoulder tapering to the waist and hemline – women responded positively.
Kenzo...intended his showing of 'comic-strip' clothes to poke fun at the pretentiousness of his colleagues and the '[more-]couturier-than-thou' quality of their designs.
...Ralph Lauren...has...sweaters beefed up at the shoulders with pads...
Following the direction women's clothes have taken for the last two or three years, designers expect men to adopt a looser, freer, softer look in fashion...Changes include: Jackets with less inner construction, the built-in features that give a garment its shape. Instead, the clothes are supposed to take on the shape of the wearer and be comfortable, like a sweater. Softer, more loosely woven natural fabrics that allow jacket sleeves to be pushed up and collars turned up to underscore a more casual, even rumpled look. Clothes cut more loosely....American designers...refer to it as 'unconstructed'...
The new broad-shouldered, retro-glamor clothes, military looks and black leather that most customers are seeing for the first time are considered quite shocking....Dorothy Vineburgh, an active volunteer in town, [says], 'No way will I wear those shoulder pads....I want to find something elegant and comfortable.' Richard Krolick, staff director of a congressional committee, wasn't quite so kind. 'It's like World War II,' he said after one benefit this week. 'They have got to be kidding.'...[C]ustomers aren't loving all the clothes and the shows aren't generating large sales...
...[M]any [buyers] had trouble selling exaggerated shoulders...'I can't see women getting into cars with shoulders so broad,' said Wendall Ward, vice president of Garfinckel's...At one point during the five-day marathon of fall ready-to-wear shows, Robert Sakowitz, president of Sakowitz (Houston), asked Val Cook of Saks-Jandel, 'Do you know a good book store in Paris?...I want to buy a stack of Bibles,' he explained. 'I think we will all need to do a lot of praying to sell these clothes'.
...[Dynasty star] Joan Collins sat in the front row of the Valentino show, furiously scribbling notes. No wonder. There were enough skinny, sexy, rich, even tarty clothes on the runway for Collins, her chums on Dynasty and lots of Dynasty aficionados as well.
Nolan Miller, the man responsible for designing the 'Dynasty' look,...his stars are pad-dependent. They'd never give them up, according to Miller....Miller believes in the survival of the shoulder pad
Shoulder pads are on Velcro and can be removed for easy washing.
...[S]houlder pads deformed...in the dryer...
...the sandpaper sensation of Velcro against skin...
...[S]houlder pads...floated like loose slip straps on our shoulders...
...[P]ads shot up near our ears when straddled by a purse strap...
Norma Kamali...in the early '80s took shoulders where they'd never gone before – imagine sweat shirts with sofa cushions in them.
Emanuel Ungaro, who started the bodice-shirring trend two years ago, continues to refine this look that's now being copied all over the world. As anyone who's ever worn one of these drape-front dresses can tell you, the shirring allows freedom of movement in even the narrowest of dresses.
Most of YSL's jackets have big shoulders (though he insists that they are smaller than a season ago)...
Last year's exaggerated football shoulders are gone from just about every collection, and designers have used shaped sleeves to achieve a far more attractive look of width at the top.
Big puffed-out sleeves have been deflated, football-player shoulders have been tamed...
Big shoulders continue, though scaled down from their earliest incarnation...
'I wanted to take the padding out of the shoulder, but I felt it needed something at the top to replace it,' [Perry Ellis] explained. '[Capelet collars] were the answer'.
Perry Ellis...has stashed away his old signature – padded shoulders...[H]e now has...width coming only from the rounded shape of the sleeve...
...French styles...are longer, fuller and more layered once again.
The big news is the appearance of the long skirt...There are voluminous shapes...[M]any of the designers like the look of lightweight layers...
In 1985, Westwood first showed her hooped mini-crini in Paris...[T]he idea caught on in the tonier fashion houses. The shape was refined and repackaged – by Christian Lacroix of the House of Patou...'I was trying to find a way to kill this big shoulder'...
...[S]he says,...'The crinoline thing seemed to me to be the perfect thing to bring to an end...this shape of the inverted triangle, broad at the shoulders and tapered to the hem'.
Christian Lacroix...continues the poufs, puffballs and petticoats that first brought him international attention. New this season are...the simple shawls and fichus of Provence...
...Lagerfeld...says:...'There will be...tiny shoulders....You cannot hide behind the excesses of...huge shoulders'.
'It is wonderful to sell slim arms and natural shoulders again,' said Lagerfeld...
Shoulder pads have collapsed in many of the collections, though Yves Saint Laurent makes it all right with the fashion world to keep on wearing them...
Saint Laurent repeated his successful tunics, but with less padded and more fitted shoulders. In his suits the shoulders appear slimmer as well.
[Gigli's] shape is always narrow through the shoulder...
Shoulder pads have collapsed in many of the collections...
OUT: Shoulder pads. IN: Shoulders.
It's claimed they give women a forceful physical presence and a V-shape...They mask bad posture, it's believed, and sloping, inadequate shoulders.
They make even cheap dresses hang right....'Fabrics are less expensive fabrics now, so they need more support. And we keep a hanger from stretching out a garment in the store,' [shoulder pad manufacturer Harold Lopato] says.
Majestic Shapes, a shoulder pad manufacturing company in the South Bronx, makes 100,000 pairs a day, five days a week, according to its president, Harold Lopato.
'A few years ago, the network [hosting the TV show Dynasty] said no more shoulder pads,' [Dynasty costume designer Nolan Miller] says. 'Both Linda [Evans] and Joan [Collins] almost mutinied'.
Alexander Julian['s]...jacket...shape has changed,...moving toward a broad-shouldered silhouette with wide lapels.
...[S]emiconstructed jackets have slightly padded shoulders that slump nearly off the shoulders.
[Click modeling agency head Frances] Grill uses athletes with shoulders that barely fit into the sports coats they are supposed to be peddling...[like model] Sasha Mitchell,...[in] black pants and shoes and shoulders swollen by 90 minutes a day of lifting weights...
'American men have their own shoulders and don't need any padding,' [Alexander Julian] says.
...[M]any Paris designers who came to prominence in the...Seventies established a style that assaulted the eye with aggressively padded shoulders and hard-edged, grand-scale proportions...Claude Montana, Anne-Marie Beretta and Thierry Mugler were the leaders of this movement.
...Ungaro was continuing to drape dresses and cut suits, giving his designs an international influence greater than any other Paris couturier.
Donna Karan drew her inspiration from the imperious screen goddesses of Hollywood in the Forties,...reinterpreting this spirit for...today.
Vivienne Westwood surprised her audience with...1860s bell-shaped, hoop-skirted dresses, with their layered panels now cut down to mini length.
...[A]t Karl Lagerfeld, shoulder pads were removed from the shoulders and moved down to the hips...
...Mugler broke away from his heroic silhouette to a softer proportioned one....moving away from his heavily padded goddesses...in soft, delicate dresses and transparent gowns...with demure puffed sleeves.
Claude Montana...has lost none of his fierce originality in leaping from his aggressively padded shoulder silhouettes of the past ten years to an unpadded, natural shoulder.
Adeline André designed sloping shoulders, the shape of the new futurists.
Marc Audibet...moved away from the prevailing padded-shoulder...
Marc Audibet...advocates a small, natural shoulder or a dropped, sloping shoulder...that reduces fashion from its current screaming wallop of...heroic padded shoulders to a...whisper
Romeo Gigli represents the avant-garde of Milan.
The single most commanding collection...was Romeo Gigli's...
This viewer [fashion writer Bill Cunningham] was fascinated by an almost puritanical simplicity that was sweeping into many collections...as a reaction against the excessive riches and embarrassing prices...of the Eighties.
A model poses in Pierre Cardin's double-breasted suit with pagoda shoulders during the French men's wear designer fashion show in New York on Oct. 8, 1979.
