Nowadays, fashion has become one of the
most important aspects of human’s daily life. From men to women, or the old to
the young, more or less, people have used fashion every day without noticed.
Thoughout the years, fashion has various of types, it has adopted many appearances.
However, today,this paper would concentrate only on one group of people, and
their popular styles along the history, which have a great impact on the world
fashion: teenagers.So first, let discuss slightly about fashion. What
is fashion and when did it begin? As a matter of fact, specifying when did
fashion begin is one of the most challenging tasks to do in this world as
fashion also started when human began wearing clothes. However, there is one thing
that could be justified as it have never ever changed throughout the years.
“Fashion is a form of free speech” (…)  It includes everything from clothing, footwear
to accessories, hairstyle, makeup styles and even body art. Through fashion,
people could signify their features, for example: their occupation, their
social status – wealthy or poor, gender – male or female, and even their
characters… In conclusion, fashion is also another form of nonverbal
communication. What about teenage fashion? Teenage fashion is one of those
branches in fashion world. It could be described as the kind of clothes,
accessories or styles, in general, that belong to teenagers. When fashion is
considered, people normally think only about those clothes that belong to
adults, because adults are thought to be the group, buying and spending most on
clothing. However, not many people know that teenagers are also a potential
group of consumers. “For the under-25 age group,
the average amount spent on clothing was not statistically different from the
amount spent by the 25–34 age group—$1,513 and $1,832, respectively” (…)
 For the majority of teenagers,
especially for girls, appearance is incredibly important. They care about how
they are seen by others and how people judge themselves. That is the reason
why, teenagers are more willing to purchase fashion items. On the other hand, they
also have a large impact on fashion, as they are still young, they have a great
sense of fashion and the high adaptive ability to this changing world.  Though the history of fashion is long, and includes
a lot of trends, styles of look, but with teenage fashion it was only clearly
noticable and widely affected since 1920s until now. (still need to fix)The 1920s was the era reflected the revolution in
almost every facet of human life after the 1st World War. There had
been some changes in economics and also politics, which led to the
transformation in teenager lifestyle and fashion. Firstly, it was the emergence
of booming economy. As the raise in demand for producing more armaments in
North America, employment rate had escalated quickly. This had lead to a
phenomenon in the young: many teenagers had chosen not to finish school because
they did not need a highschool diploma to get a well-paid job, at that moment.
This time also marked an incredible event of America’s politics: the women’s
right to vote. With this policy, women were provided more opportunities to
express themselves, to show their personal point of view. Therefore, fashion
was  affected by this notion. Teen girls
were more prefer the style with shorter dress, in accompany with long stockings.
Together with the popular of jazz music, the image of the young, independent
female called ‘flapper’ were especially prominent in every party during this
time. With a short, sexy but still elegant skirt, accompanied with bobbed hair
and a feather as a hair accessories, the ‘flapper’ had becomed one of the most
iconic style of all the time. Young
men on the other hand, mimickedd pilots’ style with leather jackets and flying
coats. On the next period of time, 1930s, there
were nothing changed much in fashion or teenage fashion, though the economics
at that time, was experiencing a depression. Girls wore dresses that just
bellow their knee, usually used with a belt to show their slim waist and young
boys wore pants and shirts with oversized coat, which is not much different
from those previous periods. Overall, this period was just a small additional
step to a big change after that.The two following periods, 1940s-1950s, experienced
terrible effects of World War II. Teens
became unwilling soldiers as they were sent off to fight for their countries. Younger
people also contributed to their homeland by collecting recycled materials. At
this time, fabrics were in short supply and since France was badly influenced
by war, most Paris designers were unable to do their work. This was the reason
why fashion in these times was pretty simple and  practical. Not only was the length of dresses
shorten but also the details in dresses like hems were reduced. There was no
longer the existence of those fancy, old-style hats. Instead, the girls or
young women enjoyed using the headband, also being called ‘turban’ to keep
their hair back when they worked. However, in the late 1940s, when the war
ended, Paris fashion made a comeback with those fancy, gorgeous ball gowns in
every teenagers’ prom. Moreover, for young men of this generation, zoot suits
became extremely outstanding. This kind of suits made a great impression on
public with its fresh appearance from the ‘fingertips’, a type of jacket that “hung
to the mid thighs and incorporated wide-padded shoulders”, and the pants called
‘drapes’, which “were tight at the ankles but the legs themselves were
ballooned out”(…). In company with this suit were a wide-brimmed hat and a long
watch chain. Another
special thing during this period of time is that this period marked the first
appearance of the word ‘teenager’. **** The 1950s was still an era for people to recover
from the horror of war. For teenagers in America, the only country became
prosperously after WWII, this decade was quite a good era to live. Those first
years of decade started with the “clean-cut college” look. Girls preferred the
style of full skirts, bobby socks, and saddle shoes. Their hair was normally
tied up in ponytails or softly curled. However, after the debut of Marilyn
Monroe, the sex symbol of all the time, young girls started to adopt that sexy
looks by putting on those clothes showing off their figures. In addition, teenage
boys of this decade had made a big change in appearance. Apart from the ‘nice
boy look’ as usual, teenage boys started dressing as a ‘bikers’ or ‘greasers’.
Some also tried to imitate the famous star, Elvis Presley. The 1960s-70s was the
golden era for teenagers. There were a lot of changes in society and politics
that had impacts on the young of America and even for the whole world within
these two decades. For example, the introduction of ‘the pill’, which
encouraged women to seek for a new kind of freedom. Or the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 which led to the increase in curiosity about African culture
as well as other nations… Overall, teenagers in this time experienced a drastic
change in thoughts and belief. Many of them felt pessimistic about this world,
they were aware of what would happen in the future. In the end, this phenomenon
started to be striking when the war in Vietnam broke out, which caused a huge
protested wave from the peace lover, and the young generation. Teenagers tried
every method to find their voice, to express themselves in the society back
when, and fashion was one of the ways. The first trend that should be reminded
was ‘the mod look’. Teen girls who followed this style would wear mini-skirts, geometric
prints, and bright colors, with a thick eyeliner and the popular beehives
hairstyle. The famous model, Twiggy was the icon of this look. Until the half
of 1960s, came up the ‘hippie’ or plus, might call as ‘bohemian style’. ‘Hippie’
is a word to describe not only a fashion trend but also a life style of those
who follow the way of living a natural friendly life. During that period, the
young felt displeased with the current governments and the society where all
people care about was only money. With this reason, they created a new community
of those had a same thought, and followed the motto: “Make love, not war”. This
kind of notion vastly received respond from the young around the world, which
made this life style became more widely known. For the clothes of these
hippies, they dressed in “theatrical costumes, and recycled clothing, often
based on historic costume and folk dress”.(…) There style, however, also had a
little ‘unisex look’ as young men, they grew long hair, wore scandals and women’s
necklace. The next decade’s fashion, the 1970s’, still followed ‘hippie style’,
with the development of a new genre of music, the ‘disco’

With the rise of many famous pop singers like
Madonna or Cyndie Lauper, 1980s witnessed the change in ‘hippie style’ to the
neon clothes and workout clothes. At the same time, denim was also a common
material of the decade. By the
1990s, teenagers began putting aside the sweet and chic look of those pop
singers, and “diving deep into ‘grunge'”. Inspired by the famous rock bands
like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, teens “turned to oversized plaid flannels,
high-waisted stonewashed jeans, and combat boots”.(…)