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. Their use is particularly associated with clothing of the early 1940s and the 1980s.
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.
Read more about Shoulder Pads (fashion): 1930 To 1945, 1945 To 1970, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s
Famous quotes containing the word shoulder:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)