Scented socks and shirts were another novel idea, first launched in the 1950s. A Scotsman invented the masculine-scented shirt in 1953 as a sensory design feature to attract women. The early 1960s brought scented ties onto the market, offering a selection of pleasant aromas such as Mint, Orange, Strawberry and Leather. However, scented apparel could not compete with the innovative boom in male toiletries, and so faded from focus.

Fashion design has also been influenced by interest groups seeking to control the presentation of a "respectable" female image, believing that they had moral authority over codes of dress. Historical artefacts show that women wore bikini-type outfits while exercising, so today's sportswear and beach-gear is really a reversion of the past.

At least these design forms did not physically harm women or cruelly impede their natural physical motion, as did the corset or the "Bum Roll" (a strange fashion apparatus tied round the hips with a tape to create the illusion of ample buttocks). In the 1940s, the pneumatic brassiere was developed to enhance a small bust.

Pockets did not feature much on woman's clothing until the early 20th Century, but today, military camouflage and "cargo" pants with utility pockets are ubiquitous in womens streetwear. In the 1930s, a short-lived fashion accessory for women was the knickers-pocket, used to hold a handkerchief.

During the 1950s, a group of French tailors produced a range of suits without pockets, offering instead a shoulder-bag as a menswear accessory; this idea was largely dismissed as impractical. But in the US, the magazine Esquire promoted an American version of the French male shoulder-bag called the "Side-Kick", describing it as a "saddlebag without the horse". The promotion of the "Side-Kick" did not take off, as men did not want to be seen carrying any bag other than a briefcase.

In this Information Age, though, men and women use a "Side-Kick" of sorts: the backpack is an accessory adopted from the military as a form of everyday wear, and used by students and business executives alike to carry lap-top computers and other items needed to operate a mobile office.

With technology being a major factor influencing the contemporary design of pockets on apparel, fabrics and garments are designed to carry cell-phones, iPods, flash-disks and other wireless communications gadgets such as Global Positioning Systems and radio frequency tags.

Clearly, the future of garment design is in "smart clothing"- blending technology with fashion. But in principle, are we back to the future?

About the Author:

Renato Palmi

ReDress Consultancy-SA

Business Development, Research and Publishing

(Apparel Industries)

PO Box 52006 Berea Road 4007

Durban, KZN, South Africa

Web: http://redressconsultancy.blogspot.com