According to “W. Cade Gall”, who wrote in 1893 with pen-in-hand and tongue-seemingly-in-cheek, that’s what the fashions of the 1960s would look like. That guy on the left up there? He’s a policeman, circa 1960. The man in the middle is a soldier.

Gall, in fact, did this for every decade.

In the article, Gall tells the story of an elderly man who comes across a book, The Future Dictates of Fashion. It’s filled with strange costumes and it bears the publication date, suspiciously, of 1993. It speaks, the old man discovers, of the century of fashion that preceded its publication.

He definitely go one thing right, however. Writing in “1993” – so Gall predicted:

“Cigars went out of fashion twenty years ago. Men and yeomen consumed so much tobacco that their healths were endangered. The laws of Nature were powerless to cope with the evil. Not so the laws of Fashion, which at once abated it.”

Gallup says…true story. 1973 was indeed the inflexion point for smoking rates in the United States.

Via The Atlantic for the full fascinating article and lots more illustrations of the future. I mean, the past. I mean…crap. I’m not sure what I mean.