CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY,GHARUAN

UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF DESIGN

DEPARTMENT-FASHION&DESIGN

Submitted by-DILPREET KAUR

UID-20BFD1029
Section-a
SEMESTER-5th
Subject-Aesthetics of costumes
Importance of clothing on different
social and cultural aspects
 Clothing

• Clothing is a item worn on the body to cover and protect against hot and
cold conditions, it also provides a hygienic barrier.
• Clothing can be made of textiles, animal skin, or manufactured by thin sheet
of chemical materials.
• Type of clothing can be worn depend on the body type, social, and seasonal
considerations. It can be gender specific also.
• Clothing is also worn for decoration, as a fashion. People from
different cultures wear different clothing, and have different beliefs and
customs about what type of clothing should be worn. For many people,
clothing is a status symbol. It helps people project an image. Often, clothing
is a form of self-expression. Adults in different social or work situations
present different views of themselves by the clothes they wear. Young
people have an entirely different form of dress to express their
personalities. Often people will simply follow popular fashion styles so that
they will fit in. Clothing is far more than just a means to protect our bodies.
• Clothing is usually made of fabric sewn together, but may also be animal
skins. Each body part has a typical item of clothing. The torso can be
covered by shirts, arms by sleeves, legs by pants or skirts, hands by gloves,
feet by footwear, and head by headgear or masks. In cold climates, people
also wear heavy, thick coats such as trench coats.
How Can Clothes Represent Culture?

• Clothing habits tend to differ from place to place, as every culture has unique
clothing styles attributed to it. Apparel can also reflect the beliefs, customs,
values, morals, economics, art, and technology of individuals and groups of
people. In fact, fashion is the ultimate way used to express ourselves through
the garments and accessories we decide to wear. Culture is at the core of the
fashion industry and elements like patterns, fabrics and garments are allies to
represent culture in several different ways.
• Our clothing is intimately related to the social and cultural values we carry.
Culture can be identified in some of people’s choice of apparel that can
signify:
• Religious beliefs: a Muslin Hijab, a Nun’s Habit, a Jew Kippah
• Symbols: cross, star, eye, flower, and other drawings can symbolize luck,
fortune, hope, love, strength, and much more
• Specific events: prom dress, wedding dress, baptismal gown, mourning
clothes
• Belonging: sports team uniforms, school uniforms, work uniform
• Activity: beachwear, sportswear, outerwear, social wear
• Moreover, historically, clothing reflects what is culturally acceptable by a certain
society. Before World War II, it used to be unacceptable for women to wear trousers, but
as the war forced those women to work in industries performing jobs so far exclusive to
men, these females needed adequate apparel that would allow them to develop their
work, such as pants. Under the same scope, the length of skirts and the exposure of
certain body parts are subject to cultural judgments and social perceptions. Besides,
even colours and fit shapes can have different meanings according to the culture. It is
imperative to understand the dress codes that guideline what is appropriate and
culturally accepted in a determined place or country.
• Clothing was created in its origins as a way to protect our body but over time it became
much more than that, it became a tool for expressing our personality and a social
symbol. In some world regions, mostly in Asia, clothes are used to indicate a caste
system or a particular position in society. Other costumes are typically worn by
determined people as a means of communication, promotion, and demonstration of
ideologies.
• However, nowadays our society values the things that are in the latest fashion trends,
commonly influenced by popular culture, as a reflection of social factors and cultural
forces. Fashion is extremely important since it represents the world’s history.
 Clothing and Fashion in the Context of Social
Identities
• Society is made up of large sampled social classes (race, gender, language,
economic situation, profession etc.) that have power, position and
respectability among them.And the individual wants to feel himself
psychologically belonging to a group and part of a group.The Social Identity
Theory focuses on the concept of social identity rather than personal identity
Turner explains that individuals define and evaluate themselves, taking into
account the social groups they are members of, and classify themselves. At the
end of this classification they become identified with the group they are placed
in. This identification leads to social identities.
• And it is possible to say that the basic expression of the social identity starts
with the clothing. As Barthes says at the book ‘The Fashion System: ‘we have
seen that a fashion utterance involves at least two systems of information: a
specifically linguistic system, which is a language (such as French, English) and
a ‘vestimentary’ system, according to which the garment (print, accessories, a
pleated skirt, a halter top, etc.) signifies the world (the races, springtime,
maturity) or fashion”.
• Fashion is a form of non-verbal communication. The dressed body
communicates our personal and social identities.It expresses our
thoughts, feelings, and desires, as well as group membership.
• It means that clothing and fashion carry some vestimentary codes
and these codes are can be the signs of something because visual
elements which carry also some communicative purposes are the
codes of the clothing and fashion.
 In the Context of Social Groups
• Depending on the social group psychology, individuals wear some
special garments which all the group members also wear it. This makes
the individual a part of the group. “The garment is always involved in a
social context, and it puts the position of the individual in the face of
the group”. Inclusion, opposition, incompatibility, disdain, or rejection
can be find place by clothing. Clothes refer to a style (lifestyle) and
those who share this lifestyle want to see and identify each other to
look like the custodian of these symbols.
• The significant and communicative expression over clothing in the
context of social groups mostly is seen at sports team’s fans. For
example if you wear a t-shirt which belongs to Real Madrid football
team,it means that you support a team Real Madrid and wearing that t-
shirt makes you a part of that team. And you feel a group belonging.
 In the Context of Social Classes and
Statues
• American sociologists have long considered clothing as a major explanatory
note of belonging to a social class” . We can see that the clothes have
always been used to distinguish between the powerful and the weak in the
history of costume. If we look at the Ancient Egypt, we can notice that the
clothing style from pharaoh to commoners had changed.
• As Tortora and Eubank (1989) noted, despite the relative simplicity of
Egyptian costume, ‘‘costume served to delineate social class’’. “Oftentimes,
the adornment of jewellery and clothing of superior material marked one’s
superior status; the lack thereof marked the relative inferiority of one’s
position”.
• If we think clothes and social classes over choices high fashion and mass
market can be given as an example because of the choices of the
costumers’ from different social classes.Even mass market productions
change from class to class. And each brand has different costumers from
different social classes. Nature of consumption patterns with symbol
systems emphasizing the idea that fashion is a struggle to convey the image
of a person. “High-end acquisitions such as Armani suits and Salvatore
Ferragamo shoes might communicate to the observer that the wearer is
upper class, while clothes from Wal-Mart might communicate the opposite,
that the wearer is working-class or poor”.
 In the Context of Gender
• The semantic and phonetic similarities of the terms male-female and
feminine-masculine are dissociated from these similarities in the biological
dimension and the social dimension.There are those who advocate that
biologically based differences need to be expressed in terms of sex,
sociocultural based differences should be expressed in gender, as well as in
the case of differences between men and women (Dökmen, 2016). In general
frame; the biological aspect of being a woman or a man corresponds to sex,
whereas the understanding and expectation of society and culture related to
the biological structure of the individual corresponds to the gender
(Akdemir, 2017).
• And the clothes are visible expression of gender identity of the person not
just about the wearing style but also using the terms for representing the
gender identity.
 Conclusion
• Clothing is an expression, image and personality of a culture,
because from clothing can be reflected the norms and cultural
values of a nation. Clothing tends to be inseparable from the
culture of society, because it is influenced by habits, customs that
exist in society.
THANKYOU