Stripes

Stripes may be one of the oldest ideas in clothing, partly because once human beings figured out weaving, a stripe was almost sitting there waiting to happen. A loom has two basic systems of thread. The warp, running lengthwise, and the weft, crossing back and forth through it. Put a band of differently colored or differently spun yarn into the warp and you get a lengthwise stripe. Change the weft for several rows and you get a crosswise stripe. 

Textile technology itself is enormously old. At Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia,(Not the state in the U.S.) archaeologists found wild flax fibers roughly 30,000 years old, including fibers that had been spun, dyed, and knotted. These are fibers, not surviving woven cloth. 

Actual woven cloth appears much later in the archaeological record. Some of the earliest known woven textiles from the Near East and Europe come from Neolithic Catalhoyuk in Anatolia. A surviving pieces of ancient clothing is the Tarkhan Dress from Egypt. Radiocarbon testing dates it to approximately 3482 - 3102 BC, making it the oldest surviving woven garment currently known. It is linen actual flax linen and UCL describes it as being made from three pieces of sturdy hand woven linen containing a natural pale gray stripe. So by more than five thousand years ago we have direct surviving evidence of a striped woven garment. The Natural History Museum in Vienna says that colorful checks and striped patterns were popular during the Hallstatt period, roughly the Early Iron Age, around 800 - 450 BC. Weavers alternated yarn spun in opposite directions, because those yarns reflected light differently, the cloth appeared striped. They also produced colored stripes and tablet woven striped decoration. 

Sometimes stripes have meanings for instance, the ancient Romans  tunics could carry vertical bands called clavi. These weren't just decoration. ancient Roman clothing  presence or absence of the bands, along with their width and ornamentation, could indicate status. Specific widths and colors of clavi could distinguish rank. So here the vertical stripe becomes a social signal, this cloth is telling you something about the person inside it. Stripe as identification will keep returning for the next two thousand years. Military uniforms, schools, clubs, sports teams, prison clothing and eventually neckties all use repeated bands because stripes are instantly recognizable at a distance. A stripe doesn't merely decorate. Yemeni tiraz fabrics used resist dyed ikat techniques that produced striped designs, while tiraz textiles more broadly could be robes of honor associated with political allegiance, court rank. 

Stripes were also international merchandise. Between 1500 and 1800 the textile trade connected India, Europe, Africa and the Americas on an enormous scale. West African merchants specifically sought fine Indian cottons with woven stripes and checks. By the middle of the eighteenth century, European manufacturers were making imitations for the Atlantic trade.

Vertical stripes have repeatedly been associated with rank, order and formality. Roman clavi are an ancient example.  Visually, vertical stripes also emphasize the upright architecture of tailored clothing.

Horizontal stripes picked up one of their strongest modern identities through naval clothing. The French Navy officially adopted the horizontal blue and white marinière, or Breton shirt, in 1858. It improve the visibility of sailors who fell overboard. That uniform escaped the navy and became one of the most persistent motifs in civilian fashion, so horizontal blue and white stripes can now communicate sailor, seaside, casual clothing, summer.

And then there are diagonal stripes, where the stripe becomes almost heraldic.

 Stripes, some point you have to wonder if you're actually looking at a pattern at all, or if you're looking at a kind of social code. A striped shirt might just be a striped shirt, sure, but a certain arrangement of colors and lines can also mean, I belong to this group. Regiments did it. Schools did it. Universities, clubs, rowing societies, sports teams, all kinds of organizations did it. Stripe isn't just decoration, sometimes. It can be identification. That means two people can look at the exact same tie and see two completely different things. One person sees a nice striped tie. Another person sees a regiment, a university, a club, maybe some old association with a long history behind it. Some  groups with some kind of private visual language. I wouldn't assume every striped shirt means somebody belongs to some mysterious organization, obviously, but the basic idea is real enough. Clothing can carry information that only certain people recognize. Colors, stripe direction, width, spacing, combinations those things can function almost like a badge without actually looking like one. You can be walking through a room thinking you're looking at fashion, when every once in a while you're actually looking at membership. The stripe can quietly say, I belong here.

The British regimental tie may be the purest modern example of stripes functioning as membership rather than decoration. 

On a traditional British regimental style tie, the stripe runs from the wearer's left shoulder downward toward the right hip.

The classic American tie convention reverses it, from the wearer's right shoulder downward toward the left hip.

British regimental ties used the British stripe direction and that, in 1902, Brooks Brothers deliberately reversed the stripe when it introduced its American version. Brooks calls this the "Americanization" of the  tie. The British striped tie says, historically, "this pattern belongs to my regiment, school or club." Brooks Brothers takes the concept, flips the stripe, and the American  tie eventually becomes part of Ivy League and collegiate style. Brooks says its ties have been part of classic American collegiate dress for more than a century.

Stripes go deep. I love them. It’s wild to think they can have all these little weird meanings hiding inside them, because most of the time I just look at stripes and think, well, stripes. They look good. You can have a completely solid shirt with stripes running across it and that’s it. Done. Bang. It says everything it needs to say. Less is more. Turns out that really is true. Then you’ve got horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and suddenly you're making decisions. Vertical stripes somehow feel a little more like, alright, I’ve got some professional business to take care of. Horizontal stripes feel more like I’m headed toward the beach and I may or may not have anything important planned for the rest of the day. It’s crazy that just turning the same line ninety degrees can change the whole feeling of something. I think that might be one of the hardest things about making anything. You’re staring at the blank page, hesitating, wondering where to start, and then finally you put down one line. Is that enough? Should I add another one? Does it need something else? Is this too simple?

No.

You did it.