The Phenomenon of Fashion
The Phenomenon of Fashion: What Makes People Look Exactly the Same
Many people have come across situations in which one is unable to differentiate between two individuals. This may occur even when the two individuals are at a vast distance from each other. One can move from one continent, say South America, to Europe and encounter a figure that their conscience convinces is similar to an individual that they have seen before in South America. What makes people look the same? Research has indicated that fashion as well as clothing, which contributes to how each and every individual looks, is a major role in defining ones identity.
Clothing and Social Class
Identity and dress are closely related. Clothes display, express and shape identity, imbuing it with a direct material reality. They provide a helpful lens through which to explore the possibly changing ways in which older identities are constituted in modern culture. In most cases, people who look exactly the same belong to the same social class. People in the same category often emulate each other and as a result, their dress closets end up being the same. Through appearance style, individuals announce who they are and who they hope to become. In addition, they express who they do not want to become. Appearance style is a metaphor for identity; it is a complex archetype, which entails physical aspects such as skin, body shape, and hair structure (Barnard, 2000). This metaphor also includes clothing and grooming practices. Since clothing and grooming are susceptible to modification, they are fluctuating and fluid ways of understanding oneself in relation to others within the larger context of fashion change.
Principles and Code of Dressing
Every individual at the time of contact with others, through fashion, chooses the person who they want to be. Dressing is an essential and convenient way to converse one’s principles with particularly rich expressive and psychosocial outcomes. The mode of in-clothing is a mixture of individual appearance and social regulations: dressing controlled by overriding values, social outlooks, socioeconomic standing, and life status along with some of the conditions through which individuals want to guarantee their self-introduction (Craik, 1998). Clothing thus converses shared identity figuratively, that is, the way an individual wishes and seeks to come into view in society. Such may be common across some categories of individuals, hence making them appear the same.
Symbolic Language of Dressing
For a good number of individuals, clothes usually emphasize certain traits of the wearer, though the manner in which information is prearranged is not at all times known and analysis can vary. The uncertainty of the dress system is an outcome of the impermanent and unpredictable nature of style. In contrast, the code is greatly influenced by the framework in which it takes place, and its communications depend on the identity of individuals, their conditions, places, as well as their moods. The code is linked to the societal discrepancy of the relationship flanked by the signified and the signifier. Dressing is seen as an optical text type, comparable to pictures and adverts. Clothing of youthful individual’s subgroups, diverse cultures, primal races as well as gay communities, help to comprehend the way values of precise social identities are articulated (Barnard, 2000).
It is evident that fashion and clothing plays a major role in making different people appear the same. Clothes display, express and shape identity, imbuing it with a direct material reality. People in the same category can emulate each other and as a result, their dress closets end up being the same. Dressing is an essential and convenient way to converse one’s principles with particularly expressive and psychosocial outcomes. The uncertainty of a dress system is an outcome of the impermanent and unpredictable nature of style. The traits discussed are in most cases common across cultures, hence individuals will automatically look the same due to fashion and the resulting clothing.
Barnard, Μ. (2000). Fashion as Communication. New York: Routledge.
Craik, J. (1998). The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. New York: Routledge.