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Fashion and Beauty - A Historical Perspective

style - More than 40 000 years back the inhabitants of The european union adorned themselves with jewelry of ivory and bone. Clothes, worn to guard their bodies in the elements or to provide covering for modesty's sake, came later. The people of northern Europe probably first slung animal skins around themselves as protection from the cold in approximately 25000 BC. In the Mediterranean and Middle East, fibers from plants such as flax, and the hair of goats and sheep, were woven to create lightweight fabrics that does not only afforded protection from the Sun's rays but in addition signified social status. The first of these textiles, produced in Anatolia in Turkey, date about 6500 BC.

hair - As civilizations developed, so types of dress also evolved. In Egypt, Greece and Rome, clothes were draped, even though the people of northern Europe as well as the East wore stitched, tubular garments. In the classical world the toga, worn not just by rulers but also by philosophers and teachers, was viewed as synonymous with civilization. Breeches and tunics, in comparison, were considered usual for barbarian, tribal societies.

Fashion - Nevertheless the concept of fashion, using its ever changing cycles of styles and trends, first became predominant in the mid 1300 in Paris, London as well as the Italian city-states, once 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 and also the introduction of the décolletage. As people wished 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 attemptedto preserve their social superiority with 'sumptuary laws' forbidding tradesmen and yeomen from wearing expensive and lavishly embroidered fabrics. However the French code of dressing, based on a fixed social hierarchy and courtly etiquette, was overturned from the Revolution of 1789. Elaborate wigs and powdered hair were abandoned, men's clothes weren't any longer embellished with embroidery and lace, and some women adopted the straightforward Empire gown. Style was a mark of person freedom, adopted for the own sake. No more used by from the aristocracy, it soon became associated with the avant-garde, Romantic writers and artists, political activists and dandies.

In great britan affordable, mass-produced printed textiles and finishing touches were made available through the Industrial Revolution. These were popular with the guts classes, who saw them as a means of expressing their new confidence and success. For males power now lay in business, not legal court. The dark suit became a male 'uniform', while women paraded the household's status through their particular in addition to 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.

In the late 1800s attempts began to make female dress more 'sensible'. But ideals of fashion and beauty held sway, with department stores offering ready-made copies of the newest styles featured in magazines, society photographs and, from the early 1900s, the cinema. Readily available beginnings the consumer-orientated 20th-century fashion and wonder industries were launched.