Fashion


A fashion consists of a current (constantly changing) trend, favoured for
frivolous rather than logical or intellectual reasons. Although frequently
applying to clothes and to other aspects of appearance, fashion can apply to
music, art, politics and even mathematics and the choice of programming techniques.

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 possible selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to wear
can reflect their 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. A
fashion viction is a someone who slavishly follows the current fashions.

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 fashion brings, seeing the constant change as a way
to satisfy their desire to experience "new" and "interesting" things.

Materially affluent societies 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 since.

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.

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' can be shunned (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 demonstrate a person's status.

"Fashion sense" consists of the ability to tell what clothing looks good and
what clothing 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
them choose what to wear.

Classification of Fashions

Modern Underground Fashion: Cyberpunk fashion, Punk fashion, Gothic fashion,
Death rock fashion, Black metal fashion, Industrial fashion, BDSM fashion.