recreated color plate from Albert Racinet’s History of World Costume
The change of dress from season to season to suit the spirit of the times, the ebb tide of trends, the markers classifying us into the worlds of cool we belong to (or wish we belonged to, or especially do not belong to). Fashion is the game and while many of us might loathe it, it has cemented itself in both our culture and our own personal conceptions of identity. Clothes are not mere extensions of our bodies—more troublesome actually—they are expressions (conscious or subconscious) of who we are, at least who we think we are… for everyone to see, literally worn on the sleeve.
Fashion as we know it today was originally a luxury sport engaged in by only the extremely wealthy. The latest looks, wigs, boots, rings, make-up, trims, ribbons, poses, and other accouterments become folly for the deeply pocketed who used their show of excess to cement their status and to make the hurdle even higher for those who wished to make the jump to high society. It’s not that peasants and proletariats didn’t have their own trends, but practicality and economy were more urgent priorities. The industrial age was the Pandora’s box and as Singer sewing machines, computerized looms, department stores, and mail-order catalogs made clothes easier to produce and much easier to buy it was not long before the once exclusive cultural value disseminated to the masses. And from there begins the fallacy (or hilarity) of democratic fashion.
Wall Street Journal fashion reporter Terri Agins highlighted the effects of mass marketing in her book “The End of Fashion.” She details how designer names became household names; how brands that once sold their wares to the select rich found a way to get their hands into the coffers of the indiscriminate poor. And of course it didn’t help that the late 20th century saw a complete and total end to the sartorial codes of status and class as every youth, sub, and degenerate culture found its own meaning and voice—its own valid message, a recognized mainstream appeal. It enabled everyone and anyone with the raised expectation of fashion.
