Whats Fashion

Fashion is something we deal with everyday. In today’s world each and every person is  conscious about what he is wearing ,his looks etc. Every one likes to look good and the only medium for looking good is clothes. A perfect clothing can make any imperfect figure look good.

What is fashion?

Fashion is a very vast term. Fashion is a state of mind. Fashion is a form of free speech.  Fashion talks, it express one's own self. It’s very difficult to define fashion. Most of all fashion is about being comfortable with ones self, translating self-esteem into a personal style. Fashion is a mean of communication. It tells each and every thing about the person who wears it. It indicates the person’s status level. Fashion is about change that is necessary to keep life interesting.

   . There are many deformities in a natural human body. If people are always nude then they will feel ashamed of one another due to many weak points they have e.g. scars on body, full or flat breasts, fat or thin body etc. To cover these defects in a human body fashion is required .It communicates things like social status and sex as well as enhancing attractiveness. Fashion is not only restricted to our clothing but also includes our hairstyles, footwear, jewellery, way we smoke, bodily decoration such as piercing, tattooing etc..

Fashion is not what we wear but how we wear. E.g. a normal pant is not into fashion but ways like folding it from below, making embroidery on it, making some patchwork, opening a slit, cutting the belt etc is in fashion.

Importance of fashion

Clothes indicate occupation, rank, gender etc Fashion is revealing so it can be used to express ones self. People judge others by what they is wearing. Clothes reveal what group’s people are in. Today a personality is judged by what he is wearing and not by his educational qualifications. People will always prefer talking to a guy who is wearing a decent blazer and looking up to date even if he has no educational qualifications. But will avoid talking to a shabby looking scholar.

Fashion is the way of measuring a mood that can be useful in many aspects, culturally, socially even psychologically. A right fashion indicates your occupation. For instance, a businessman might look as a boy with funky clothes, colored hairs and multiple piercing Acceptance or rejection of a style is a reaction to the society we live in.

Occupation, Status and Purpose of Clothing

Clothes protect us from climatic conditions like cold, rain etc. Clothes should be worn according to the climate. One cannot wear a sweater in summer, or a raincoat when it’s not raining. Clothes express your inner feelings. If you are wearing a sweater the opposite person will definitely come to know that you are feeling cold.

Status Symbols

Those with high status occupations will wear the clothes they think others expect them to wear. They will not wish to experience role conflict by wearing the incorrect clothing. Branded and designer wears are in trend if high society today. Even if a renowned designer manufactures a very normal shirt it has a great demand. It’s not the demand of the shirt but it’s the demand of the designers name in the market. People feel proud to say that they are wearing a shirt exclusively designed by  Abhay Samant or whosoever the designer might be.

Birth of fashion.

Evolution: We use clothes to protect our selves from different vagaries of climate, to look good etc but what led to the evolution of clothes since the Stone Age……….

   It is a common belief that clothes came into being to protect one self from the climate but this belief may be untrue as we see through this point.

For protection against climate?

Two thousand years before people in England were not used to wearing clothes and they never felt a need to do so in spite of very cold climate in England. It was certainly not a necessity.

Till the last century tribes in different cold regions used to stay stark nude as they were used to the climatic condition of the region. Several tribes in the hilly and remote region of India and Africa too have the same practice. Particularly Naga and Bali tribes follow the same custom till date.

Even the women folk are bare till waist.

   Though our face is too sensitive we do not cover it, this shows that clothes are not a necessity.

For Self Dignity?

   Different studies revealed that different countries and regions, religions and faith have had their own customs in way of clothing. A few centuries ago when different parts of the world were not accessible to each other each region had its own unique style and code of dressing. With the advent of transport and communication facilities people traveled across the globe, exchanged ideas and exchanged each others style and code of dressing.

   European females felt it below their dignity to be seen bare feet. Even in their houses they have their footwear on but have no hesitation in revealing their cleavage to the maximum.

It is considered common for the fishermen and tribes to wear only napkins around their groins but if any white-collar man does the same it is considered a taboo.

In western countries striptease dance club have a place of pride for mischievous night where women stripe off their costumes one by one till they are completely nude. A few stage shows have women performing nude on stage and mingling in the audience.

The Rio carnival is a tradition followed in Brazil where women have crazy costumes, which are more revealing than covering

So to sum it up all costumes are not necessarily a means of self-dignity.

From above mentioned things we come to a conclusion that need for clothes is more psychological than physical.

   How the clothes came into being

The need for clothes can be traced to the psychological need for looking good and beautiful. Before the clothes came into being, body painting and tattooing were practiced to look good

 Let us have a look at how it changed form

Since Stone Age man started to struggle for looking good let us see how this struggle led to evolution of clothes

Body Coloring: - The Stone Age man started using ash, mud, and different colors of soil to color their body. But this method of coloring was temporary and time consuming. So he started making blocks of different images such as sun, moon, stars, hills, trees etc for looking good

Tattooing: - to make the color long lasting and effective he started coloring his body with different oils extracted from uses of plants and fats of different animals but this color too used to fed in a few days.

So to give a permanent effect man started tattooing his body with the help of fish bones, pointed stones and animal teeth. He used to tattoo his body with the images like flowers animals God sun, moon, hills, trees etc.

The next step was coloring this tattoos with different colors but these colors were also not long lasting, so a process of filling permanent colors during tattooing was evolved Tattooing is practiced even today in various forms. The custom of tattooing was so much accustomed to that each and every body was been colored and people came to know that body looks beautiful when it was decorated.

The stage of evolution in fashion was weaving of rings and garlands made up of flowers fish bone animal bones etc. The ancient people in Brazil and South Africa used to pierce their lips in the center and the Equinox people staying on the bank of the river Mackenzie used to pierce their chicks. People in north America and Samoa in Pacific ocean and Tahiti Islands thought that there was real beauty in broad forehead .So people started making the foreheads broad by applying pressure on the fore head, soon after birth. The females in Hautentaut felt that there was more beauty in big breasts. So they used to pull their breasts, some women pulled their breasts so long that the child strapped to the back suckle the milk right from its position.

Next step was to color different items put on the body with different color shades. Certainly strings made up of plants used to tie up these things together were also colored with different color such as re yellow blue etc.People started becoming fed up of this excruciatingly painful way of looking good. So now they thought of decorating their bodies by using different things. So they used to put different things in the holes pierced in the body. Australians used to put shells on the holes pierced in their nose and Papuans used to put small and rotund bones in the holes of their nose. The Brazilians used to put bones in the holes of their lower lips Even the African used to put feathers on their head. Some tribes used to hang Elephant tusks on their hands and legs.

As time progressed barks of trees were used to decorate the body this led to weaving of different barks of different colors to add variety. This gave birth to the cloth, which was made similar to the mat, by criss – cross weaving. This was cloth in its earliest form.

Different people used this by tying it around the waist or necks, and around their chest. Some even tied it around their head. People in that time used to stay in large groups. This custom was slowly and steadily transformed from one group to the. So after watching each of the tribes started filling ashamed and started practicing the same custom. This custom progressed in such a way that people felt ashamed to show their groin parts and started covering them with clothes. This woven mat like cloth was transformed and improved slowly and steadily into cloth.

The private parts of the body were always covered with cloth and provided protection from the climate .So the body became accustomed to the cloth and thus cloth became a necessity. This is how the cloth, which was evolved for looking good, became an indispensable necessity