A step inside the âÂÂSporting Lifeâ exhibit at The Fashion Institute of Technology Museum will give people a glimpse of what people, professional and non- professional wore while being active during the last 150 years.
Separated into three small sections with more than 100 pieces of clothing and accessories, this exhibit represents very well from the clothing and explanations explaining how, the material and style changed over time.
The baseball uniforms resembled what a fireman uniform looked like back in the late 1800s. It was comfortable to wear and had a basic style of striped shirts and tan pants. When compared the baseball uniforms to todayâÂÂs style, nothing much had changed but adding color and having longer pants.
A stand out change of style that is shown in the exhibit is the football uniforms and bathing suits.
Today, football players wear numbered jerseys and pants, which this exhibit explains, used to be wool and now are stretched polyester material. Another interesting fact is that football players wore a jumpsuit that did not have any padded materials.
Not only football players wore one piece, woman wore one piece suits to the beach.
Bathing suits were made out of natural materials such as cotton and heavy wool. There were only a few bathing suits that had long sleeves, but the rest were short sleeves.
This exhibit did a great job by lining up the bathing suits from long sleeves wool, which must have been out in the sun, in the 1925s to two pieces made out of usually spandex with patterns from the years of 1963 than jumping to 1980s.
The “Sporting Life” exhibit also lets people imagine wearing one of the certain outfits since the viewing of the outfits is very close. For example, female tennis players wore long dresses with sleeves and a hat in the early 1900s. It wasnâÂÂt until 1926 that ladies began to wear short dresses.
When people exercised today, they might wear the tight clothing. But in the past people were able to exercise in comfortable puffy pants and a loose top usually long sleeve.
If the âÂÂSporting Lifeâ exhibit is showing exercise outfits, they could have shown more dancing outfits and surfing because those sports would have fit in well with the sporting life. It wasnâÂÂt necessary to have a hunting section since they only shown three pieces of the same clothing. Since they did not give enough clothing, itâÂÂs hard to give an imagination of hunting in the particular outfits.
Jennifer Farley and Colleen Hill who are both fashion designers focusing more on the active wear organized the sporting life exhibit. This exhibit closes November 5, 2011. It is free and located on 7 avenue at 27th street, New York City.