Imagining a Future From the Past: The Paradox of Steampunk Fashion
Picture this: a smoky skyline, teeming with airships and mechanical craft that fill the air with noise. Women walk the streets in corsets and petticoats, while men don top hats adorned with dozens of thick-rimmed goggles and gear accessories. Between crowded alleyways, roaring steam trains carry passengers through the skies. This must be the distant future, right? Wrong, this is 1850, the pinnacle of steampunk fashion and aesthetic.
For years, steampunk has stood as a prime example of retro-futurism, an alternate history where industry developed before its time and what we know now as “steam power” was used to take humanity to new heights. Consequently, true steampunk fashion finds itself more rooted in the past than in the year 3000, but is constantly misconstrued as a futuristic statement.
Much of modern steampunk simplifies the fashion to its accessories: pinstripe pants, big goggles, and futuristic instruments. But the history of steampunk dives deep into our past, a past filled with luxury and class-statement clothing.
Real steampunk wasn’t always like this. But when the science fiction genre took off, steampunk was twisted into something far bigger than parasols and petticoats: it became a symbol of human industrialism and progress that transformed into a novelty trend, only to be revived into a staple theme for cosplay and fan creations. Despite its fall off from its Victorian roots, steampunk's dynamic history and recent resurgence shows hope for retro-futurism's relevance, as well as a shift towards a more inclusive fashion community.
I’m no stranger to the paradox of steampunk myself. Back in 2016, all me and my friends wanted was to dress in monocles and gear-adorned skirts. But, stripping back all the glamour from our Halloween costumes, so much of it was built from elements of the distant past. The Victorian era of fashion holds a special place in nostalgia culture, embodying a time when (primarily white) luxury and classism was on display. Women wore multiple layers of dresses and accessories such as pocket watches, parasols, and folding fans were important elements of every outfit. Flounces, extra layers of fabric, filled out dresses and added a decorative element. Every hoopskirt was detailed with lace and ruffles, and, since women in the workforce was uncommon, decidedly impractical and meant as a display of luxury.
As shown in this illustration, fashion was a highly important part of one’s standing in society, even in the rain.
In fact, it was customary to change outfits for different occasions to show off one’s collection (if you had the status and therefore wealth to do so). As art historian Nina Möller put it, there was “the dressing gown, the morning dress, the day dress to receive visitors, the visiting dress to go visit, the afternoon dress, the walking costume, the carriage dress.” This was certainly a contrast from the gritty, industrial reality of steampunk as most imagine it today. So where did the title “steampunk” even come from?
Science fiction is what truly created steampunk as we know it. From Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Victorian-era stories exploded off the press, imagining a life where man could travel to worlds unseen. Most of the literature boom at the time had followed the existing fashion trends of frock and cutaway coats, but little by little, the sci-fi genre began to shift away from Victorain patterning and coloring. The traditional, classy, black overcoats turned brown to match copper machinery. The heels and flat shoes that women wore gave way to leather boots, often knee-highs to compensate for shorter skirts. The late Victorian era also gave birth to the Edisonade genre (named after inventor Thomas Edison). So much of the genre emphasized inventions and working with machinery, spawning this idea of goggles and mechanical elements as an aesthetic.
Thus, we arrive at what most artists describe today as steampunk fashion–burdened down with accessories as equally impractical as their Victorian counterparts, albeit much stranger. Gone are the decorative flounces and delicate footwear. History has turned into fantasy, and since steampunk fashion serves mainly to fit into the aesthetic of a steampunk world (which we do not live in), its role in real life has diminished into that of a gimmick.
But this doesn’t mean that all steampunk has lost all of its “steam,” so to speak. The mid-2000s saw a major milestone; the founding of Steampunk Couture by UK model and steampunk’s poster girl, Kate Lambert.
An outfit from Steampunk Couture features modern twists on Victorian design elements, such as high-low skirts, calf-length boots, and bloomers.
Until recently migrating to DraculaClothing, Steampunk Couture was the first major steampunk company to hold its own. Outfits focused less on machinery and more so on patterning, incorporating multiple textures such as leather and lace. Steampunk Couture reflected the major changes in modern steampunk–a shift away from accessories and a focus on innovating the Victorian dress style. Authenticity is of little importance anymore to a style that finds most of its hold in pop culture fiction.
Indeed, as it stands today, steampunk has very little hold on mainstream fashion. You won’t find steampunk on a New York Fashion Week runway, but you will find it in fan conventions and cosplay, and that doesn’t make it worth any less. In fact, the power it holds in those spaces continues to grow, thanks to a recent resurgence of whimsy and fantasy in popular culture. It’s hard to say whether or not steampunk fashion is a part of nostalgia culture for the 1800s, especially since it has distanced itself so well from its historical roots. But its impact on futurism is telling; the fanciful sense of “pretend” is partly why steampunk is so successful in fiction genres.
In terms of the fashion itself, shows like Arcane fuse the past and the future for striking costume choices that have surged in the mainstream and will no doubt be the face of cosplay for the immediate future. Perhaps the future is better–Arcane and similar media have normalized the role of people of color in steampunk. For a style that, in the 1800s, was virtually inaccessible to people of color and used as a display of “white luxury,” this is a huge step forward. Where we have failed historically , fiction can actually serve as a tool to amend the past, turning what was once an element of segregation into a community for everyone.
Steampunk as a dramatized fiction might live on, but its departure from historical retro-futurism marks a significant, and potentially positive, turning point. The demand for steampunk fashion is mainly regulated to a “theme” trend. However, its reappearance in pop culture, alongside retro-futurism’s continued popularity through trends like ‘90s hacker chic, heralds good news for its relevance. Retro-futurism is for everyone, even when the history it’s built upon wasn’t so welcoming. Perhaps, as the industry continues to expand and diversify, steampunk has fulfilled its overall mission: to create a better future out of the past.