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Changes In Fashion
By peace | January 8, 2007
How is a fashion born? Today it comes from the need to make money, to offer and sell one thing and then to offer and sell something else. Fashion is invented and destroyed by the logic of consumer spending. In the past, on the other hand, fashions had deeper origins; the motivation was rooted in human nature.
One of the primary causes of fashion, wherever it occurred and whatever the subject, was the desire to be noticed and to express social superiority. Clothes became rich and ostentatious. Fabrics were costly. Even the style was intricate and complicated and could not be worn or imitated by any but the rich. Think, for example, of some of the sleeves of clothes in the Middle Ages: they were very wide and often so long they touched the ground. Someone who had to work could never have worn such clothes. Every aspect of fashion expressed above all wealth and nobility.
Nowadays, any consumer can buy whatever he or she can afford. This has removed much of the discrimination of the past and fashions today appeal to the vanity of all, whatever their positions. It is even directed at the very young, by playing on their desires. If, for example, the television and cinema spread the fashion for robots, many children feel that they want and must have at least one toy. Industry makes the most of the situation, producing both highly sophisticated and very expensive robots as well as small plastic ones costing a few pence. It means that today the need to be noticed is rarely as important as being able to say,”I’ve got one, too.”
Another important cause of fashion in the past, which still applies today, was the search for aesthetics, the pleasure of having something beautiful. This is why from time to time there is an interest in a particular colour, fabric or design.
The search for aesthetic qualities is clearly expressed in clothing. Women have always dressed to look more attractive, or at least more interesting. Girls who, for example, choose to dress as gipsies, with wide flowery skirts, sloppy jumpers and long, tangled hair, are also trying to put over an aesthetic message, to stand out and look flamboyant. If a number of girls adopt the style, it becomes a fashion and they conform to the new idea. People usually want to highlight a particular feature or one part of their body, and this has been reflected in styles which emphasize the bust, waist or legs.
In the twenties, a woman’s body appeared as flat as a pancake. The very short skirts implied more than a current taste: they were also a sign of rebellion, a farewell to the nineteenth century and everything it stood for, the modesty and prohibitions which had characterized a severe and puritanical period. Women’s legs, which it was once a scandal to show, even an ankle, became a symbol of freedom of the new times.
The third cause is the desire to be different from previous generations, in appearance as well as attitudes. After the last war, when Christian Dior’s bell-shaped skirts and stiletto heels appeared all over Europe, the new fashion was given the auspicious and appropriate name of the ‘new look’. The enthusiasm with which it was immediately adopted showed not only that people liked the new style, but that they were glad to abandon the clothes, shoes and hair styles which reminded them of a tragic and miserable past of suffering and deprivation.
What is true of clothing is true of other things, too, such as music, films, or literature. We say,”It’s the fashion” but we could also say, “We like it, we have chosen it because it does not look at all like the things that were popular yesterday.”
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