Fashion is a general term of a term for a popular style or practice,
especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to
anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person.
The prevailing style in behavior as well. The more technical term,
costume, has become so linked in the public eye with the term "fashion"
that the more general term "costume" has in popular use mostly been
relegated to special senses like fancy dress or masquerade wear, while the term "fashion" means clothing generally, and the study of it. For a broad cross-cultural look at clothing and its place in society, refer to the entries for clothing, costume, and fabrics. The remainder of this article deals with clothing fashions in the Western world.
Clothing Fashion
Early Western travelers, whether to Persia, Turkey or China
frequently remark on the absence of changes in fashion there, and
observers from these other cultures comment on the unseemly pace of
Western fashion, which many felt suggested an instability and lack of
order in Western culture. The Japanese Shogun's secretary boasted (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.[2] However in Ming China, for example, there is considerable evidence for rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing.[3] Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change (such as in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate), but then a long period without major changes followed. This occurred in Moorish Spain during the 8th century, when the famous musician Ziryab introduced sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily timings from his native Baghdad and his own inspiration to Córdoba in Al-Andalus. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the Middle East from the 11th century, following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.
The beginnings of the habit in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated to the middle of the 14th century, to which historians including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of Western fashion in clothing. The most dramatic manifestation was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment, from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes accompanied with stuffing on the chest to look bigger. This created the distinctive Western male outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.
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| Marie Antoinette was a fashion icon |
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 and changing. Art historians
are therefore able to use fashion in dating images with increasing
confidence and precision, often within five years in the case of 15th
century images. Initially changes in fashion led to a fragmentation of
what had previously been very similar styles of dressing across the
upper classes of Europe, and the development of distinctive national
styles. These remained very different until a counter-movement in the
17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly
originating from Ancien Régime France.[9] Though the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants
following trends at a distance sometimes uncomfortably close for the
elites—a factor Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing
fashion.
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Ten 16th century portraits of German or Italian gentlemen may show ten entirely different hats, and at this period national differences were at their most pronounced, as Albrecht Dürer recorded 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 end of the 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.[11]
Though colors and patterns of textiles changed from year to year,[12]
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 largely derived from military
models, and changes in a European male silhouette are galvanized in
theatres of European war, where gentleman officers had opportunities to
make notes of foreign styles: an example is the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie.
The pace of change picked up in the 1780s with the increased
publication of French engravings that showed the latest Paris styles;
though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from France as
patterns since the 16th century, and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of fashion from the 1620s. By 1800, all Western Europeans
were dressing alike (or thought they were): local variation became
first a sign of provincial culture, and then a badge of the conservative
peasant.[13]
Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations before, and the textile industry certainly led many trends, the history of fashion design is normally taken[by whom?] to date from 1858, when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first true[weasel words] haute couture
house in Paris. Since then the professional designer has become a
progressively more dominant figure, despite the origins of many fashions
in street fashion. For women the flapper
styles of the 1920s marked the most major alteration in styles for
several centuries, with a drastic shortening of skirt lengths, and much
looser-fitting clothes; with occasional revivals of long skirts forms of
the shorter length have remained dominant ever since. The four major
current fashion capitals are acknowledged to be Milan, New York City, Paris, and London. Fashion weeks
are held in these cities, where designers exhibit their new clothing
collections to audiences, and which are all headquarters to the greatest
fashion companies and are renowned for their major influence on global
fashion.
Modern Westerners have a wide choice available in the selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to wear can reflect that person's personality or likes. When people who have cultural status
start to wear new or different clothes a fashion trend may start.
People who like or respect them may start to wear clothes of a similar
style. This style is created by many fashion designers around the world.
Fashions may vary considerably within a society according to age, social class, generation, occupation, and geography
as well as over time. If, for example, an older person dresses
according to the fashion of young people, 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.)
Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is a product of the modern age. Prior to the mid-19th century, most clothing was custom made.
It was handmade for individuals, either as home production or on order
from dressmakers and tailors. By the beginning of the 20th century—with
the rise of new technologies such as the sewing machine, the rise of
global capitalism and the development of the factory system of
production, and the proliferation of retail outlets such as department
stores—clothing had increasingly come to be mass-produced
in standard sizes and sold at fixed prices. Although the fashion
industry developed first in Europe and America, today it is an
international and highly globalized industry, with clothing often
designed in one country, manufactured in another, and sold world-wide.
For example, an American fashion company might source fabric in China
and have the clothes manufactured in Vietnam, finished in Italy, and
shipped to a warehouse in the United States for distribution to retail
outlets internationally. The fashion industry has long been one of the
largest employers in the United States, and it remains so in the 21st
century. However, employment declined considerably as production
increasingly moved overseas, especially to China. Because data on the
fashion industry typically are reported for national economies and
expressed in terms of the industry’s many separate sectors, aggregate
figures for world production of textiles and clothing are difficult to
obtain. However, by any measure, the industry accounts for a significant
share of world economic output.
The fashion industry consists of four levels: the production of raw
materials, principally fibres and textiles but also leather and fur; the
production of fashion goods by designers, manufacturers, contractors,
and others; retail sales; and various forms of advertising and
promotion. These levels consist of many separate but interdependent
sectors, all of which are devoted to the goal of satisfying consumer
demand for apparel under conditions that enable participants in the
industry to operate at a profit.
Courtesy of fashionmagazine.com
Video Fashion: Sarah Elisabeth Blais
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