ToyaXiomara569

De BISAWiki

Fashion and Beauty - A Historical Perspective

hair - More than 40 000 years back the inhabitants of Western Europe adorned themselves with jewelry of ivory and bone. Clothes, worn to protect their own health from the elements or to provide covering for modesty's sake, came later. The folks of northern Europe probably first slung animal skins around themselves as defense against the cold in about 25000 BC. In the Mediterranean and Middle East, fibers from plants for example flax, and the hair of goats and sheep, were woven to form lightweight fabrics that not only afforded protection up against the Sun's rays but also signified social status. The first of these textiles, made in Anatolia in Turkey, date to about 6500 BC.

dresses - As civilizations developed, so styles of dress also evolved. In Egypt, Greece and Rome, clothes were draped, while the people of northern Europe and the East wore stitched, tubular garments. Inside the classical world the toga, worn not only by rulers but in addition by philosophers and teachers, was viewed as synonymous with civilization. Breeches and tunics, by contrast, were considered usual for barbarian, tribal societies.

makeup - However the idea of fashion, with its ever-changing cycles of styles and trends, first took hold within the mid 1300 in Paris, London and also the Italian city-states, when the elite rejected their flowing garments for tight-fitting clothes decorated to demonstrate the latest tastes. Men's robes, which in fact had previously been ankle-length, now reached across the knee, while female dress was transformed by lacing, buttons as well as the introduction of the décolletage. As people desired to change their silhouettes at regular intervals - a trend that coincided with a growing international textiles trade - so cutting and tailoring developed.

Early fashion belonged towards the elite, who tried to preserve their social superiority with 'sumptuary laws' forbidding tradesmen and yeomen from wearing expensive and lavishly embroidered fabrics. But the French code of dressing, using a fixed social hierarchy and courtly etiquette, was overturned from the Revolution of 1789. Elaborate wigs and powdered hair were abandoned, men's clothes were no longer embellished with embroidery and lace, and ladies adopted the straightforward Empire gown. Style had been a mark of individual freedom, adopted because of its own sake. Will no longer the preserve from the aristocracy, it soon became linked to the avant-garde, Romantic writers and artists, political activists and dandies.

In the uk affordable, mass-produced printed textiles and finishing touches were created available from the Industrial Revolution. These were popular with the center classes, who saw them as a method of expressing their new confidence and success. For males power now lay in operation, not the court. The dark suit had been a male 'uniform', while women paraded the household's status through their very own and their children's dress. Fashion and femininity were inextricably entwined. Women were weighed down by petticoats in addition to their mobility restricted by delicate shoes.

Within the late 1800s attempts begun to make female dress more 'sensible'. But ideals of beauty and fashion held sway, with department stores offering ready-made copies from the newest styles featured in gossip columns, society photographs and, from the early 1900s, the cinema. From all of these beginnings the consumer-orientated 20th-century fashion and sweetness industries were launched.