TED Talks · Small thing Big idea

The 3,000-year history of the hoodie

The hoodie is an amazing object. It's one of those timeless objects that we

Level: B1 · 57 sentences

Transcript

  1. The hoodie is an amazing object.
  2. It's one of those timeless objects that we
  3. Hardly think of because they work
  4. So well that they're part of our lives.
  5. You know, we call them humble masterpieces.
  6. The hoodie has been, even if it was not called so,
  7. But it's been an icon throughout history for good and for bad reasons.
  8. The earliest ones that we can trace are from ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
  9. The Middle Ages, you see a lot of monks
  10. That were wearing garments that were cape-like with hoods attached.
  11. So they're for hoodies.
  12. Ladies in the 17th century would wear hoodies to kind of hide themselves
  13. When we were going to meet their lovers.
  14. And then, of course, there's the legend.
  15. There's fantasy. There's the image of the hoodie connected to the grim reaper.
  16. There's the image of the hoodie connected to the executioner.
  17. So there's the dark side of the hoodie.
  18. The modern incarnation of the hoodie,
  19. A garment that's made usually of cotton jersey
  20. That has a hood attached with a drawstring,
  21. Sometimes it has a marsupial pocket,
  22. Was introduced in the 1930s by Knickerbocker Knitting Company,
  23. And now it's called Champion.
  24. It was meant to keep athletes warm.
  25. Of course, though, it was such a functional, such a comfortable garment.
  26. That it was very rapidly adopted by workmen everywhere.
  27. And then, around the 1980s, it gets also adopted by hip-hop and b-boys,
  28. Skateboarders, and it takes on this kind of youth street culture.
  29. It was at the same time super comfortable, perfect for the streets,
  30. And also had that added value of the anonymity
  31. When you needed it.
  32. And then we have Mark Zuckerberg
  33. That defies convention of respectable attire for business people.
  34. But interestingly it's also a way to show how power has changed
  35. If you're wearing a two-piece suit you might be the bodyguard
  36. The real powerful person is wearing
  37. A hoodie with a t-shirt and jeans
  38. It's easy to think of the physical
  39. Aspects of the hoodie you can immediately think of wearing the hood up
  40. And you feel this warm and this protection
  41. But at the same time You can also feel the psychological
  42. Aspects of it.
  43. I mean, think of donning a hoodie.
  44. All of a sudden, you feel more protected.
  45. You feel that you are into your own shell.
  46. We know very well what the hoodie has come to signify in the past few years in the United States.
  47. When Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American kid,
  48. Was shot by a neighborhood vigilante,
  49. And million hoodie marches happened all over the United States in which
  50. People wore hoodies with the hood up
  51. And marched in the streets against this kind of prejudice.
  52. It doesn't happen that often for a garment to have so much
  53. Symbolism and history and that encompass
  54. So many different universes as the hoodie.
  55. So like all garments, especially all truly utilitarian garment,
  56. It is very basic in its design,
  57. But at the same time it has a whole universe of possibilities attached.