Student Fashion Timeline

Baggy or tight? Vest or jacket? Cool or nerd? Who knew getting dressed for school could be so complicated? Well, I did. Throughout history, there's been a right way and wrong way to dress for class. The right way was cool, the wrong way was like wearing a "Hi, My Name is Dork" name tag. And it was ever thus. You were what you wore. And it was forever so, as we examine the student fashion timeline:

1,000,007 B.C. - Back then fur was in. It was a "wear-or-be-worn" world. The cool kids wore Saber Tooth Tigers or Wooly Mammoth. The other cavekids, like the Audio-Visual Squad (the ones who painted the cave walls), wore things like Sloth and Saber Tooth Squirrel. What you wore could very well peg you as a hunter or a gatherer.

2500 B.C. Ancient Egypt - Nerds got caught up in the pyramid hat craze along with fuzzy Sphinx slippers. Cool kids were boas…and asps.

400 B.C. Greeks and Freaks - The in-crowd was wearing baggy togas and high platform sandals. The out crowd was wearing baggy togas, too, but they were hand-me-downs that their mom told them they "would grow into." It's a fine line of distinction, but it's there.

10 A.D. Roman Empire - The cool students would attend frat "Suit Parties," ditching their usual togas for suit and ties. The nerds worn "high water" togas made with discontinued patterns and fitted sheets, usually with knee socks.

510 A.D. Middle Ages - In the lunchroom, clothes determined who sat at the round table and who at the squares table. And nothing was hotter than the serf dudes.

849 A.D. - Vikings - Sure, all the real Vikings wore helmets with horns, but the really cool kids had their heads pierced with the horns. Geeks, alas, were forced to wear the head gear picked out by their moms. This usually consisted of helmets with antlers, floppy bunny ears and Mickey Mouse ears.

1247 - Arabia - Chic sheiks took to wearing their kaffiyehs backwards. This often lead to much walking into of walls.

1452 - Renaissance - Nerds were generally caught up wearing flood-pantaloons with suspenders while trying to crack that darn DaVinci code (it was like the Rubik's Cube of its day).

1647 A.D. - While today wearing a shirt with an alligator on it is a status symbol, back then the Seminole Indians of Florida wore actual alligators. This, however keep away as many peers as it attracted.

1692 A.D. Plymouth - The pilgrims practically invented Goth with their black-on-black ensembles. However with their cool, rebel accessories like brooms and cauldrons, it was the witches who were truly dressed to press or burn.

1766 A.D. American Colonies - While the cool colonists wore powdered wigs and tri-corner hats, the less-than hip wore real hair and quad-corner hats..okay, they were shoeboxes and it was really lame. And never mind gold teeth, the hipsters had designer-carved wooden teeth with their initials.

1794 A.D. The American Frontier - Naturally, the happenin' frontiersmen got the best coonskin caps and buckskin suits, the lesser ones had to make do with beaverskin caps and duckskin.

1872 A.D. The Wild West - Instead of tattoos, the cool cowboys got branded. And of course, the cowgirls wore designer spurs.

1920 A.D. The Flappers - What was the height of sleepwear fashion? It was the cats pajamas! No, really. Pajamas made out of cats.

And of course today we know that cool clothes are anything that your parents didn't pick out for you.