UNDERSTANDING FASHION - I
Fashion is a popular style or
practice, especially in clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup, body, or furniture. Fashion is
a distinctive and often constant trend in the style in which a person dresses.
It is the prevailing styles in behaviour and the newest creations of textile
designers. Because the more technical
term costume is regularly linked to the
term "fashion", the use of the former has been relegated to special
senses like fancy dress or masquerade wear, while
"fashion" generally means clothing, including the study of it.
Although aspects of fashion can be feminine or masculine, some trends are
androgynous
Clothing Fashion
Early Western travelers, traveling whether to Persia, Turkey, India, or China, would frequently remark
on the absence of change in fashion in the respective places. The Japanese Shogun's secretary bragged (not
completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese
clothing had not changed in over a thousand years. However, there is
considerable evidence in Ming
China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing. Changes in costume often
took place at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient
Rome and the medieval Caliphate, followed by a long period
without major changes. In 8th-century Moorish
Spain,
the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdoba sophisticated clothing-styles based on
seasonal and daily fashions from his native Baghdad, modified by his own
inspiration. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the
Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing
styles from Central
Asia and the Far
East.
The beginning in Europe of continual and increasingly
rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated. Historians,
including James
Laver and Fernand
Braudel, date the start of Western fashion in clothing to the middle
of the 14th century. The most dramatic early
change in fashion was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male
over-garment from calf-length to barely covering
the buttocks, sometimes accompanied with
stuffing in the chest to make it look bigger. This created the distinctive
Western outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.
The
pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women and
men's fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became
equally complex. Art historians are
therefore able to use fashion with confidence and precision to date images,
often to within five years, particularly in the case of images from the 15th
century. Initially, changes in fashion led to a fragmentation across the upper
classes of Europe of what had previously been a very similar style of dressing
and the subsequent development of distinctive national styles. These national
styles remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th
centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly originating from Ancien Régime France. Though
the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence ofearly modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and
even peasants following
trends at a distance, but still uncomfortably close for the elites – a factor
that Fernand Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing fashion
In the 16th century, national differences were at their
most pronounced. Ten 16th century portraits of German or Italian gentlemen may show ten
entirely different hats. Albrecht Dürer illustrated the differences
in his actual (or composite) contrast of Nuremberg and Venetian fashions at the close of
the 15th century (illustration, right). The "Spanish style" of
the late 16th century began the move back to synchronicity among upper-class
Europeans, and after a struggle in the mid-17th century, French styles
decisively took over leadership, a process completed in the 18th century.
Though textile colors and patterns changed from year to
year, the cut of a gentleman's
coat and the length of his waistcoat, or the pattern to which a lady's dress
was cut, changed more slowly. Men's fashions were largely derived from military models, and changes in a
European male Silhouette were galvanized in theaters
of European war where gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of
foreign styles such as the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie.
Though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from
France since the 16th century and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of
fashion in the 1620s, the pace of change picked up in the 1780s with increased
publication of French engravings illustrating the latest Paris styles. By 1800,
all Western Europeans were dressing alike (or
thought they were); local variation became first a sign of provincial culture
and later a badge of the conservative peasant.
Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt
responsible for many innovations, and the textile industry certainly led many
trends, the history of fashion design is normally understood to
date from 1858 when the English-born Charles Frederick
Worth opened
the first true haute couture house in Paris. The Haute
house was the name established by government for the fashion houses that met
the standards of industry. These fashion houses have to adhere to standards
such as keeping at least twenty employees engaged in making the clothes,
showing two collections per year at fashion shows, and presenting a certain
number of patterns to costumers.Since then, the idea of the fashion
designer as a celebrity in his or her own right has
become increasingly dominant.
The idea of unisex dressing originated in the 1960s when
designers such as Pierre Cardin and Rudi
Gernreich created
garments, such as stretch jersey tunics or leggings, meant to be worn by both
males and females. The impact of unisex expands more broadly to encompass
various themes in fashion including androgyny, mass-market retail, and
conceptual clothing. The fashion trends of the
1970s, such as sheepskin jackets, flight jackets, duffel coats, and
unstructured clothing influenced men to attend social gatherings without a
tuxedo jacket and to accessorize in new ways. Some men's styles blended the
sensuality and expressiveness despite the conservative trend, the growing
gay-rights movement and an emphasis on youth allowed for a new freedom to
experiment with style, fabrics such as wool crepe, which had previously been
associated with women's attire was used by designers when creating male clothing.
The four major current fashion capitals are acknowledged to be Paris, Milan, New
York City,
and London, which are all headquarters to the greatest
fashion companies and are renowned for their major influence on global fashion. Fashion
weeks are
held in these cities, where designers exhibit their new clothing collections to
audiences. A succession of major designers such as Coco
Chanel and Yves
Saint-Laurent have
kept Paris as the center most watched by the rest of the world, although haute couture is now subsidized by the
sale of ready-to-wear collections and perfume using the same branding.
Modern Westerners have a wide number of
choices available in the selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to
wear can reflect his or her personality or interests. When people
who have high cultural status start to wear new or
different clothes, a fashion trend may start. People who like or respect these
people become influenced by their personal style and begin wearing similarly
styled clothes. Fashions may vary considerably within a society according to age, social
class, generation, occupation, and geography and may also vary over
time. If an older person dresses according to the fashion young people use, he
or she may look ridiculous in the eyes of both young and older people. The
terms fashionista and fashion
victim refer
to someone who slavishly follows current fashions.
One can regard the system of sporting various fashions as
a fashion language incorporating various
fashion statements using a grammar of fashion. (Compare some
of the work of Roland Barthes.)
In
recent years, Asian fashion has become increasingly significant in local and
global markets. Countries such as China, Japan, India, and Pakistan have
traditionally had large textile industries, which have often been drawn upon by
Western designers, but now Asian clothing styles are also gaining influence
based on their own ideas
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