Fashion
Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing (styles and trends) as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.
For other uses, see Fashion (disambiguation). "Menswear" redirects here. For the music group, see Menswear (band).The term 'fashion' originates from the Latin word 'Facere,' which means 'to make,' and describes the manufacturing, mixing, and wearing of outfits adorned with specific cultural aesthetics, patterns, motifs, shapes, and cuts, allowing people to showcase their group belonging, values, meanings, beliefs, and ways of life. Given the rise in mass production of commodities and clothing at lower prices and global reach, reducing fashion's environmental impact and improving sustainability has become an urgent issue among politicians, brands, and consumers.[1][2]
Anthropological perspective
From an academic lens, the sporting of various fashions has been seen as a form of fashion language, a mode of communication that produced various fashion statements, using a grammar of fashion.[131] This is a perspective promoted in the work of influential French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes.
Anthropology, the study of culture and of human societies, examines fashion by asking why certain styles are deemed socially appropriate and others are not. From the theory of interactionism, a certain practice or expression is chosen by those in power in a community, and that becomes "the fashion" as defined at a certain time by the people under influence of those in power. If a particular style has a meaning in an already occurring set of beliefs, then that style may have a greater chance of become fashion.[132]
According to cultural theorists Ted Polhemus and Lynn Procter, one can describe fashion as adornment, of which there are two types: fashion and anti-fashion. Through the capitalization and commoditization of clothing, accessories, and shoes, etc., what once constituted anti-fashion becomes part of fashion as the lines between fashion and anti-fashion are blurred, as expressions that were once outside the changes of fashion are swept along with trends to signify new meanings.[133] Examples range from how elements from ethnic dress becomes part of a trend and appear on catwalks or street cultures, for example how tattoos travel from sailors, laborers and criminals to popular culture.
To cultural theorist Malcolm Bernard, fashion and anti-fashion differ as polar opposites. Anti-fashion is fixed and changes little over time,[134] varying depending on the cultural or social group one is associated with or where one lives, but within that group or locality the style changes little. Fashion, in contrast, can change (evolve) very quickly[135] and is not affiliated with one group or area of the world but spreads throughout the world wherever people can communicate easily with each other. An example of anti-fashion would be ceremonial or otherwise traditional clothing where specific garments and their designs are both reproduced faithfully and with the intent of maintaining a status quo of tradition. This can be seen in the clothing of some kabuki plays, where some character outfits are kept intact from designs of several centuries ago, in some cases retaining the crests of the actors considered to have 'perfected' that role.
Anti-fashion is concerned with maintaining the status quo, while fashion is concerned with social mobility. Time is expressed in terms of continuity in anti-fashion, and in terms of change in fashion; fashion has changing modes of adornment, while anti-fashion has fixed modes of adornment.
From this theoretical lens, change in fashion is part of the larger industrial system and is structured by the powerful actors in this system to be a deliberate change in style, promoted through the channels influenced by the industry (such as paid advertisements).[136]
