2,179 articles
Poncho
Poncho: rectangular cloth garment with a central head opening, native to the Americas; evolved from Andean pre-Columbian tunics, popularized by the Mapuche, spread through colonial South America, with the Paraguayan Poncho Para'í on UNESCO's urgent safeguarding list.
Poplin
Poplin, also called popeline or tabinet, is a tightly woven plain-weave fabric with a coarser weft than warp, giving fine crosswise ribs. Originally silk-and-wool from papal Avignon, it is now mostly crisp mercerized cotton for shirts and coats.
Poppy Delevingne
Poppy Delevingne (born 1986) is a British model, socialite, and actress, elder sister of Cara Delevingne. Known for Louis Vuitton SS2012, Chanel ambassadorship, Mango AW2010, and roles in King Arthur and Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
Pork pie hat
Pork pie hat, also written porkpie, a soft hat with a flat low telescoped crown and narrow upturned brim, named for the British pork pie pastry; 1860s women's wear, later Buster Keaton's and jazz legend Lester Young's signature hat.
Pornography in Europe
Pornography in Europe: production, distribution, and consumption of sexually explicit material across European countries, regulated variously through prohibitionism, partial liberalisation, and self-regulation, with EU Digital Services Act enforcement against Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos and rapid adoption of mandatory age verification since 2025.
Postcard
Postcard: rectangular card mailed without an envelope, image on front, message, address, and postage on back; also called post card; first issued by Austria in 1869; golden age 1898–1915; collecting it is deltiology.
Potter's wheel
Potter's wheel: rotating horizontal disk for hand-shaping clay (throwing). Invented 5th millennium BC Near East; simple, kick, belt-drive and direct-drive electric types; speeds 30–240 rpm by stage.
Pottery of ancient Greece
Pottery of ancient Greece: fired-clay vessels from c. 1000 BCE onward, including Attic black-figure and red-figure wares, updraft kilns, three-stage firing, and vase typologies used for dating.
Pounamu
Pounamu, also called greenstone or New Zealand jade, is the treasured nephrite and bowenite stone found only in New Zealand's South Island. Prized by Māori for tools, weapons and adornment, traded nationwide, and owned in its natural state by Ngāi Tahu under the 1997 vesting act.
Pourpoint
The pourpoint (also pour-point) is a close-fitting padded, quilted medieval garment worn beneath armor for cushioning, over mail, or as civilian fashion, fastened to hose by points; famed examples include the Charles de Blois pourpoint in Lyon.
Power loom
Power loom: mechanically powered weaving machine patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785, also called mechanized loom. Weaves cloth roughly 10 times faster than handlooms; dominates Indian cloth output at about 60%.
Prabal Gurung
Prabal Gurung is a Nepalese American fashion designer in New York, founder of his eponymous womenswear label launched in 2009, known for eveningwear and runway activism on immigration and women's rights.
Pre-engagement ring
Pre-engagement ring, also called a promise or friendship ring, is jewelry given before a proposal to signal commitment and intended marriage, worn usually on the right hand, with 16th-century European roots.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) is the earliest subdivision of the Levantine Neolithic, a period of farming villages without pottery defined by Kathleen Kenyon in 1957.
Preppy
Preppy (preppie) is an American informal term for preparatory-school students and graduates and for the classic, neat dress style associated with them, rooted in Ivy League campus wear, peaking in the 1980s, and repeatedly revived since.
PrettyLittleThing
PrettyLittleThing, also known as PLT, is a British online fast-fashion retailer founded in Manchester in 2012 by brothers Adam and Umar Kamani and owned by Debenhams Group.
Priestly breastplate
Priestly breastplate (choshen, חֹשֶׁן; choshen mishpat), one of the eight garments of the Israelite high priest: a folded square pouch of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and linen bearing twelve tribal stones and the Urim and Thummim.
Primark
Primark (trading as Penneys in Ireland) is an Irish-founded international value clothing retailer, part of Associated British Foods, founded by Arthur Ryan in Dublin in 1969, with 500+ stores across 20 countries, a store-led low-price model, and a planned 2027 demerger from ABF.
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Costumes
The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Costumes honors television costume design and supervision by honoring achievements across five current categories, including Period, Fantasy/Sci-Fi, and Contemporary series.
Prince Egon von Fürstenberg
Prince Egon von Fürstenberg (Eduard Egon, 1946–2004), Swiss-born aristocrat and fashion designer, son of Tassilo von Fürstenberg and Clara Agnelli; ex-husband of Diane von Furstenberg; founded his own label in 1977 and debuted in Rome haute couture in 1991.
Protect the Dolls
Protect the Dolls: slogan supporting trans women, from 1980s ballroom slang "dolls," popularized by Conner Ives' 2025 London Fashion Week T-shirt worn by Pedro Pascal, raising funds for Trans Lifeline.
Protective Clothing
Protective clothing, also called chemical protective clothing or CPC, is PPE garments shielding wearers from chemical, biological, heat, and mechanical hazards, classified by standards such as ANSI/AAMI PB70, EN 14126, and ISO Types 1–6.
Provençal quilts
Provençal quilts: French raised-relief whole-cloth quilting, chiefly boutis, piqûre de Marseille, and matelassage, made by cording two fine fabric layers from the reverse; Marseille tradition since the 13th century, inscribed in France's intangible heritage in 2019.
Puce
Puce is a brownish-purple color, French for "flea" (Latin pulex); used in English from 1782, popular in 18th-century French fashion because it did not soil easily, and unrelated to the obsolete color word "puke".
Pueblo pottery
Pueblo pottery is the hand-built earthenware ceramic tradition of the Pueblo peoples of communities like Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and San Ildefonso, practiced for more than 1,000 years.
Punjabi clothing
Punjabi clothing (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਪਹਿਰਾਵਾ), traditional dress of the Punjab: salwar kameez and Patiala salwar, kurta with tehmat and dastar, phulkari and bagh embroidery, and the jutti.
Punk fashion
Punk fashion: the mid-1970s anti-fashion dress style of the punk subculture, centered on Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's SEX/Seditionaries shop at 430 King's Road, defined by ripped clothes, safety pins, bondage trousers, dyed hair, and DIY customization.
Pup play
Pup play (puppy play) is an adult role-play kink in which a person adopts a dog persona, often with a hood, collar, and other gear, guided by a handler; it grew from postwar leather culture into a large organized community with headspace, events, and survey-documented mental-health benefits.
Pupul Jayakar
Pupul Jayakar (1915–1997), Indian cultural activist and writer, led the revival of handlooms and handicrafts, founded HHEC and INTACH, chaired the Festivals of India, and advised and biographed Indira Gandhi.
Purdah
Purdah (parda, Urdu/Persian for curtain) is the South Asian practice of female seclusion and veiling among Muslim and Hindu communities, marked by the burqa, the purdahnashin, and the British pre-election purdah usage.