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Fashion and wonder - A Historical Perspective

dresses - A lot more than 40 000 in years past the inhabitants of Western Europe adorned themselves with jewelry of ivory and bone. Clothes, worn to protect their health from the elements or to provide covering for modesty's sake, came later. Individuals 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 make lightweight fabrics that does not only afforded protection up against the Sunshine but also signified social status. The initial of such textiles, produced in Anatolia in Turkey, date about 6500 BC.

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

style - However the concept of fashion, with its ever changing cycles of styles and trends, first became predominant within 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 exhibit the latest tastes. Men's robes, that have previously been ankle-length, now reached over the knee, while female dress was transformed by lacing, buttons and also 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 for the elite, who attempted to preserve their social superiority with 'sumptuary laws' forbidding tradesmen and yeomen from wearing expensive and lavishly embroidered fabrics. Nevertheless the French code of dressing, using a fixed social hierarchy and courtly etiquette, was overturned by the Revolution of 1789. Elaborate wigs and powdered hair were abandoned, men's clothes weren't any longer embellished with embroidery and lace, and ladies adopted the easy Empire gown. Style had been a mark of individual freedom, adopted because of its own sake. No more the preserve from the aristocracy, it soon became associated with the avant-garde, Romantic writers and artists, political activists and dandies.

In Britain affordable, mass-produced printed textiles and fashion accessories were made available by the Industrial Revolution. We were holding favored by the center classes, who saw them as a way of expressing their new confidence and success. For males power now lay in operation, not the court. The dark suit became a male 'uniform', while women paraded the household's status through their very own as well as their children's dress. Fashion and femininity were inextricably entwined. Women were overwhelmed by petticoats in addition to their mobility restricted by delicate shoes.

In 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 with the newest styles featured in gossip columns, society photographs and, from your early 1900s, the cinema. From these beginnings the consumer-orientated 20th-century fashion and beauty industries were launched.