The hoodie can be said to be one of the necessary clothing for most people's closet, both casual and fashionable, practical wearability is also very high, everyone loves the hoodie is how it developed.
The origin of hoodie and sweatshirt
Originally, there were two types of sweatshirts: the "crew neck" and the "hoodie". The crew neck sweatshirts originated in 1902, initially as women's and children's underwear. Around 1922, the crew neck sweatshirt began to be favored by athletes because of its design and materials with features such as comfort, sweat absorption and strong athleticism, which was simply tailored for athletes, so this clothing gradually became the standard uniform for athletes, and later evolved into ordinary casual clothing.
The "hoodie", first originated in medieval Europe, close to the hooded sweatshirt we wear now is designed by Champion® in 1930, initially for the New York ice warehouse workers to produce a kind of work clothing, in the cold environment, this clothing can also provide warm protection for the head and ears, comfortable and warm both, a moment of great popularity.
According to Harold Lipson, former president of Champion®, the hats were originally added to keep athletes warm and to protect workers who worked outside from the wind and rain. Workers who had to work in cooler temperatures in warehouses wanted a warm jacket with a hood, not a thermal undershirt. At the time, Champion Products was working with U.S. high schools to make uniforms for students. Eventually, the company produced thick cotton hooded sweatshirts that soccer players and track and field athletes could wear to train when the weather was bad.
Because dapper athletes occasionally give hoodies to their girlfriends to wear, the garments look like they have considerable fashion potential. And the hoodie's popularity among high school students set the stage for its entry into pop culture thereafter. Soon after, sportswear manufacturing companies popularized it.
But before the hoodie became accepted by the masses, only a few types of people would choose it. Unlike the bohemian and punk clothing we've written about before, these people chose hoodies neither because they stank of beauty nor because they wanted to make a stand for identity division. Like the workers and athletes before them who desperately needed hoodies, they were looking at them for their function - to hide their faces.
Hoodie with hip-hop
In the 1870s, hip-hop culture flourished on the streets of New York. Street graffiti artists, who painted on the walls of train and subway stations, but wanted to remain anonymous. Hoodies were popular among them to hide from the police." Hoodies were cheap, easy to clean, and for those who painted for long periods of time, wearing a hat had a warming effect." Says graffiti artist Zephyr, "To 'sneak' around the city and paint, we all want to be invisible ourselves."
The comfortable, warm and durable nature of the sweatshirt has brought it into the hip-pop scene and made it an iconic symbol. The loose-fitting garment, the hood that covers the face, and the pockets on the front of the garment where you can put your hands, make the hoodie a refuge for "street culture". Those "street people" who love graffiti, rap, street dance, and music are both eager to express themselves freely and trying to hide themselves from the police. So, the hoodie becomes a good partner for them.
In the 1980s, hoodie began to be noticed in the fashion field, and designers and big fashion brands gradually added hoodie elements into their designs.
Ralph Lauren® and Tommy Hilfiger® launched hoodies one after another, and since then, sweatshirts have had the opportunity to escape from the context of "street culture" and gradually enter the mainstream of popular culture.
To date, hoodies have become casual clothing that can be worn by everyone, and have evolved into more styles, such as zipper hoodies, turtleneck sweatshirts, short hoodies and so on. In addition to comfort and wearability, they also incorporate more fashionable features and meet the high demands of people's aesthetics nowadays.