Shoulder pads (fashion)

Shoulder pads are a type of fabric-covered padding used in men's and women's clothing to give the wearer the illusion of having broader and less sloping shoulders. In men's styles, shoulder pads are often used in suits, jackets and overcoats, usually sewn at the top of the shoulder and fastened between the lining and the outer fabric layer. In women's clothing, their inclusion depends by the fashion taste of the day. Although from a non-fashion point of view they are generally for people with narrow or sloping shoulders, there are also quite a few cases in which shoulder pads will be necessary for a suit or blazer in order to compensate for certain fabrics' natural properties, most notably suede blazers, due to the weight of the material. They were popular additions to clothing (particularly business clothing) during the 1940s, 1980s, and late 2000s/2010s.

Shoulder pads originally became popular for women in the 1930s when fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli included them in her designs of 1931, and the following year Joan Crawford wore them in the film "Letty Lynton". In the beginning, they were shaped as a semicircle or small triangle, and were stuffed with wool, cotton or sawdust. They were positioned at the top of the sleeve, to extend the shoulder line. A good example of this is their use in "leg o' mutton" sleeves, or the smaller puffed sleeves which were revived at this time, and were based on styles from the 1890s.

After World War II began in 1939, women's fashions became increasingly militarised. Jackets, coats, and even dresses in particular were influenced by masculine styles and shoulder pads became bulkier and were positioned at the top of the shoulder to create a solid look. Soon the style was universal, found in all garments excepting lingerie but tapering off later in the decade after the war was over and women yearned for a softer, more feminine look.

During the late 1940s to about 1951, some dresses featured a soft, smaller shoulder pad with so little padding as to be barely noticeable. Its function seems to have been to slightly shape the shoulder line.

By the 1950s, shoulder pads appeared only in jackets and coats—not in dresses, knitwear or blouses as they had previously during the heyday of the early 1940s. By the early 1960s, these slowly became less noticeable and midway through the decade, shoulder pads had disappeared.

Shoulder pads made their next appearance in women's clothing in the early 1970s, through the influence of British fashion designer Barbara Hulanicki and her label Biba. Biba produced designs influenced by the styles of the 1930s and 1940s, and so a soft version of the shoulder pad was revived. Ossie Clark was another London designer using shoulder pads at the time. These styles did not, however, reach mainstream acceptance, and so the popularity was relatively short lived.

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