Fashion Fields Prone To Fashions Fashion And Variation

Fashions are social psychology phenomena common to many fields of human activity and thinking.

Although that concept frequently applies to clothes and other aspects of appearance, it can apply also to:

Fashion exists in the interstices of aesthetics with innovation, coupled with pleasing details and expense.

2 Fashion and variation

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 their personality or likes. When people who have cultural statusStatus is a state, condition or situation. Status" often refers to social status. Status quo Establishment Conservative Status symbol. 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 styleClothing, see Fashion Writing, see style guide Flower part, see Flower Style (manner of address) Chinese courtesy name, see zi Web design, see Cascading Style Sheets Sundials, see sundial See also Manual of Style..

Fashions may vary significantly within a societyA society is a group of people that form a semi-closed (or semi-open) system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group. More abstractly, a society is a network of relationships between entities. A society is an interdep according to ageAge is most commonly used to describe a person's time alive: See ageing for the social, cultural, and economic factors of age and ageing See senescence for the biology and science of ageing. Age can also refer to: a district in Mie. See Age, Mie. a period, social classA social class is, at its most basic, a group of people that have similar social status. The relative importance and definition of membership in a particular class differs greatly over time and between societies, particularly in societies having a legal d, generationGenerations redirects here. For the soap opera, please see Generations (TV series Generation is the act of producing offspring, or procreation. It is also the act of bringing something into being (such as electrical generation and cryptographic code gener, occupationA profession is a specialized work function within society, generally performed by a professional. Definitions In a more restrictive sense, profession often refers specifically to fields that require extensive study and mastery of specialized knowledge, s and geographyGeography is the scientific study of the locational and spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth. The word derives from the Greek words g ("the Earth") and graphein ("to write," as in "to describe"). Geography is also the title of v 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 statement s using a grammar of fashion. (Compare some of the work of Roland Barthes.)

3 Fashion and the process of change

Fashion, by definition, changes constantly. The change may proceed more rapidly than in most other fields of human activity ( language, thought, etc). For some, modern fast-paced change in fashion embodies 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 though 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. 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. The global village has reduced the options of exotic novelty in more recent times.

Fashion house s 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.

4 Fashion and status

Fashion can suggest or signal status in a social group. Groups with high cultural status like to keep 'in fashion' to display their position; people who do not keep 'in fashion' within a so-called "style tribe" can risk shunning (see also peer pressure). Because keeping 'in fashion' often requires considerable amounts of money, fashion can be used to show off wealth (compare conspicuous consumption). Adherence to fashion trends can thus form an index of social affluence and an indicator of social mobility.

Fashion can help attract a partner. As well as showing certain features of a person's personality that appeal to prospective mates, keeping up with fashion can advertise a person's status to such candidates.

"Fashion sense" consists of the ability to tell what clothing and/or accessories look good and what doesn't. Since the entire notion of fashion depends on subjectivity, so does the question of who possesses "fashion sense". Some people style themselves as "fashion consultants" and charge clients to help the latter choose what to wear. Designers show the public what is new and in style by using people who do Fashion Modeling to display the clothing. Image consultants help people revamp or create fashion sense.

Fashion can operate differently depending on gender, or it can promote homogeneity as in unisex styles.

5 Classification of fashions

Ethnically-based fashions:

Modern underground fashion:

6 See also

6.1 Further reading

The chapter on Fashion in Georg Simmel, on Individuality & Social Forms, Selected Writings, Georg Simmel, edited by Donald N. Levine, University of Chicago Press, 1971, hardcover, 393 pages, BooksEnthsiast.com

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1 Fields prone to fashions