<story><title>Great Male Renunciation</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Male_Renunciation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>morkalork</author><text>Just what % of the population actually wore those clothes back then? Are we comparing ourselves to what the 1% or 0.1% wore?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it matters quite so much how many; the question is more about what everyone &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; to be. What their aspirations were.&lt;p&gt;The point would be that a mainstream man in 1750 &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; to be wearing colorful frilly things with high heels, even if he couldn&amp;#x27;t afford any of it because he was just a servant. Whereas starting in the 1800&amp;#x27;s, that &lt;i&gt;stopped&lt;/i&gt; being an aspiration, whether you had money or not.&lt;p&gt;Also, while this clothing wasn&amp;#x27;t accessible to servants and laborers, some of it would have been to the growing middle class that consisted of merchants, professors, lawyers, and so forth. Just look at paintings depicting coffeeshop culture in the 1700&amp;#x27;s:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sylviaprincebooks.com&amp;#x2F;blog-list&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;coffee-house-culture-in-18th-century-england&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sylviaprincebooks.com&amp;#x2F;blog-list&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;coffee-hous...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;And coffeehouses were not reserved for the 0.1%, not at all.</text></comment>
<story><title>Great Male Renunciation</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Male_Renunciation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>morkalork</author><text>Just what % of the population actually wore those clothes back then? Are we comparing ourselves to what the 1% or 0.1% wore?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Blackthorn</author><text>This is a really important question! A lot of historical clothing has a survivorship bias component.</text></comment>