(Utility Part Of The Trend)

After exploring Futurism, I decided to look at the utility part of my trend. I found on smithsonianmag.com an article named "The Classy Rise Of The Trench Coat". "Utility trenches were first given their name during the war, and now is an iconic garment that remains startlingly current despite being more than 100 years old. The trench coat is, in some ways, emblematic of the unique moment in history that World War I occupies, when everything - from rigidly held social structures to military organization to fashion - was in upheaval; it is both a product of this time as well as a symbol of it." 

Burberry reinvented the trench coat. Thomas Burberry, a 21-year-old draper from Basingstoke, Hampshire, founded his eponymous menswear business in 1856; in 1879, inspired by the lanolin-coated waterproof smocks worn by Hampshire shepherds, he invented “gabardine”, a breathable yet weatherproofed twill made by coating individual strands of cotton or wool fiber rather than the whole fabric. Burberry’s gabardine outerwear, like Aquascutum’s, proved popular with upper class, sporty types, and with aviators, explorers and adventurers. 

Nowadays, it;s endlessly updatable.“Because it’s so iconic, it means that avant garde designers can play with elements of it,” says Steele. Even Burberry, which consciously recentered its brand around its trench coat history in the middle of the last decade, understands this – the company now offers dozens of variations on the trench, in bright colors and prints, with python skin sleeves, in lace, suede, and satin.But as the trench coat has become a fashion staple, on every fashion blogger’s must-have list, its World War I origins are almost forgotten. Case in point: Doyle said that in the 1990s, he passed the Burberry flagship windows on London’s major fashion thoroughfare, Regent Street. There, in huge lettering, were the words “Trench Fever”. In the modern context, “trench fever” was about selling luxury trench coats. But in the original context, the context out of which the coats were born, “trench fever” was a disease transmitted by lice in the close, fetid quarters of the trenches. “I thought it astounding,” said Doyle. “The millions of people who walked down the street, would they have made that connection with the trenches? I doubt that.”