One of the main reasons why many clothing items are no longer popular is their impracticality for the lifestyles of students, office workers, and the working class. Mainstream fashion is no longer dictated by the upper class, but by runway fashion (which borrows from subcultures and history), filtered through pop culture, before evolving downstream into an affordable, corner-cutting, milquetoast version through fast fashion.
If a garment hinders work, taking public transport, driving, or carrying a bag, it will be relegated to the niche corners of fashion. Mainstream retailers do not want to stock underperforming designs, thereby limiting consumer choice.
As much as I love a good cape from an aesthetic perspective, I am biased toward clothing with sleeves. My work involves manual labour and carrying heavy loads on my shoulders, so I would rather wear a large, drapey coat that mimics the flow of a cape.
One of the greatest crimes of 20th-century fashion was the death of the cape.
For centuries, people looked at a cape and thought, "Hell yeah." Then modern fashion came along and decided everything had to be jackets, hoodies, and coats. Not even capelets survived the purge. And now if you wear one, people mock you for it.
God, I hate modern fashion.