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Fashion

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Everyday life

   The term fashion usually applies to a prevailing mode of expression,
   but quite often applies to a personal mode of expression that may or
   may not adhere to prevailing ideals. Inherent in the term is the idea
   that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole. The
   terms "fashionable" and "unfashionable" are employed to describe
   whether someone or something fits in with the current popular mode of
   expression. The term "fashion" is frequently used in a positive sense,
   as a synonym for glamour and style. In this sense, fashions are a sort
   of communal art, through which a culture examines its notions of beauty
   and goodness. The term "fashion" is also sometimes used in a negative
   sense, as a synonym for fads, trends, and materialism.

   Fashions are social psychology phenomena common to many fields of human
   activity and thinking. The rises and falls of fashions have been
   especially documented and examined in the following fields:
     * Architecture, interior design, and landscape design
     * Arts and crafts
     * Body type, clothing or costume, cosmetics, grooming, and personal
       adornment
     * Cuisine
     * Dance and music
     * Forms of address, slang, and other forms of speech
     * Economics and spending choices, as studied in behavioural finance
     * Entertainment, games, hobbies, sports, and other pastimes
     * Etiquette
     * Management, management styles and ways of organizing
     * Politics and media, especially the topics of conversation
       encouraged by the media
     * Philosophy and spirituality (One might argue that religion is prone
       to fashions, although official religions tend to change so slowly
       that the term cultural shift is perhaps more appropriate than
       "fashion")
     * Technology, such as the choice of programming techniques

   Of these fields, costume especially has become so linked in the public
   eye with the term "fashion". The more general term "costume" has been
   relegated by many to only mean fancy dress or masquerade wear, while
   the term "fashion" means clothing generally, and the study of it. This
   linguistic switch is due to the so-called fashion plates which were
   produced during the Industrial Revolution, showing novel ways to use
   new textiles. For a broad cross-cultural look at clothing and its place
   in society, refer to the entries for clothing and costume. The
   remainder of this article deals with clothing fashions in the
   industrialized world.

Fashion and variation

   Albrecht Dürer's drawing contrasts a well-turned out bourgeoisie from
   Nuremberg (left) with her counterpart from Venice, in 1496-97. The
   Venetian lady's high chopines make her taller.
   Enlarge
   Albrecht Dürer's drawing contrasts a well-turned out bourgeoisie from
   Nuremberg (left) with her counterpart from Venice, in 1496-97. The
   Venetian lady's high chopines make her taller.

   The European idea of fashion as a personal statement rather than a
   cultural expression begins in the 16th century: ten portraits of German
   or Italian gentlemen may show ten entirely different hats. But the
   local culture still set the bounds, as Albrecht Dürer recorded in his
   actual or composite contrast of Nuremberg and Venetian fashions at the
   close of the 15th century (illustration, right). Fashions among
   upper-class Europeans began to move in synchronicity in the 18th
   century; though colors and patterns of textiles changed from year to
   year, (Thornton), 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 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 (a necktie) (see Cravat).

   The pace of change picked up in the 1780s with the publication of
   French engravings that showed the latest Paris styles. By 1800, all
   Western Europeans were dressing alike: local variation became first a
   sign of provincial culture, and then a badge of the conservative
   peasant (James Laver; Fernand Braudel).

   Fashion in clothes has allowed wearers to express emotion or solidarity
   with other people for millennia. 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.

   Fashions may vary significantly 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 term " fashion victim" refers to someone
   who slavishly follows the current fashions (implementations of
   fashion).

   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.)
     * Thornton, Peter. Baroque and Rococo Silks.

   This is an example list of some of the fads and trends of the 21st
   century: Capri pants, handbags, sport suits and sports jackets, ripped
   jeans, designer jeans, blazer jackets, and high-heeled shoes.

          See also: History of Western fashion}

Fashion and the process of change

   Fashion, by definition, changes constantly. The changes may proceed
   more rapidly than in most other fields of human activity (language,
   thought, etc). For some, modern fast-paced changes in fashion embody
   many of the negative aspects of capitalism: it results in waste and
   encourages people qua consumers to buy things unnecessarily. Others,
   especially young people, enjoy the diversity that changing fashion can
   apparently provide, seeing the constant change as a way to satisfy
   their desire to experience "new" and "interesting" things. Note too
   that fashion can change to enforce uniformity, as in the case where
   so-called Mao suits became the national uniform of mainland China.

   Materially affluent societies can offer a variety of different
   fashions, in clothes or accessories, to choose from. At the same time
   there remains an equal or larger range designated (at least currently)
   'out of fashion'. (These or similar fashions may cyclically come back
   'into fashion' in due course, and remain 'in fashion' again for a
   while.)

   Practically every aspect of appearance that can be changed has been
   changed at some time, for example skirt lengths ranging from ankle to
   mini, etc. In the past, new discoveries and lesser-known parts of the
   world could provide an impetus to change fashions based on the exotic:
   Europe in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, for example, might
   favour things Turkish at one time, things Chinese at another, and
   things Japanese at a third. A modern version of exotic clothing
   includes club wear. Globalization has reduced the options of exotic
   novelty in more recent times, and has seen the introduction of
   non-Western wear into the Western world.

   Fashion houses and their associated fashion designers, as well as
   high-status consumers (including celebrities), appear to have some role
   in determining the rates and directions of fashion change.

Quotes

          "Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with
          ideas, the way we live, what is happening." - Coco Chanel
          "Etiquette are for those without manners, in the same way as
          fashion is for those without style." - Coco Chanel
          "We only move style forward if we reflect on the past and
          indulge in the present." - Uriel Saenz
          "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to
          alter it every six months." - Oscar Wilde
          "The only thing that separates us from the animals is our
          ability to accessorize." - Olympia Dukakis

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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