Encyclopedia
Clothing is defined, in its broadest sense, as coverings for the torso and limbs as well as coverings for the hands , feet and head .
Humans nearly universally wear clothing, which is also known as
dress,
garments,
attire, or
apparel.
People wear clothing for functional as well as for social reasons. Clothing protects the vulnerable
nude human body from the extremes of
weather, other features of our environment, and for safety reasons. But every article of clothing also carries a
cultural and social meaning.
People also decorate their bodies with
makeup or
cosmetics,
perfume, and other ornamentation; they also cut, dye, and arrange the hair of their heads,
faces, and bodies , and sometimes also mark their skin . All these decorations contribute to the overall effect and message of clothing, but do not constitute clothing per se.
Articles carried rather than worn are normally counted as fashion accessories rather than as clothing.
Jewelry and
eyeglasses are usually counted as accessories as well, even though in common speech these items are described as being worn rather than carried.
Clothing as functional technology
The practical function of clothing is to protect the human body from dangers in the environment: weather ,
insects, noxious chemicals,
weapons, and contact with abrasive substances, and other hazards. Clothing can protect against many things that might injure the naked human body. In some cases clothing protects the environment from the clothing wearer as well .
Humans have shown extreme inventiveness in devising clothing solutions to practical problems and the distinction between clothing and other protective equipment is not always clear-cut.
See, among others: air conditioned clothing,
armor,
diving suit,
swimsuit,
bee-keeper's costume,
motorcycle leathers,
high-visibility clothing, and
protective clothing.
Clothing as social message
Social messages sent by clothing, accessories, and decorations can involve social status, occupation, ethnic and religious affiliation, marital status and sexual availability, etc. Humans must know the code in order to recognize the message transmitted. If different groups read the same item of clothing or decoration with different meanings, the wearer may provoke unanticipated and/or unwanted responses.
The manner of consciously constructing, assembling, and wearing clothing to convey a social message in any culture is governed by current
fashion. The rate at which fashion changes varies; easily modified styles in wearing or accessorizing clothes can change in months, even days, in small groups or in media-influenced modern societies. More extensive changes, that may require more time, money, or effort to effect, may span generations. When fashion changes, messages from clothing change.
Social status
In many societies, people of high rank reserve special items of clothing or decoration for themselves as symbols of their social status. In ancient times, only
Roman senators could wear garments dyed with
Tyrian purple; only high-ranking
Hawaiian chiefs could wear feather cloaks and palaoa or carved whale teeth. In Imperial
China and many parts of Southeast Asia, only the [monarch] could wear
yellow. In many cases throughout history, there have been elaborate systems of sumptuary laws regulating who could wear what. In other societies , no laws prohibit lower-status people from wearing high-status garments, but the high cost of status garments effectively limits purchase and display. In current Western society, only the rich can afford so-called haute couture. Additionally, the threat of social ostracism may limit garment choice.
See also: Dress code
Occupation
Military, police, and firefighters usually wear uniforms, as do workers in many industries. School children often wear
school uniforms, while college and university students sometimes wear
academic dress. Members of religious orders may wear uniforms known as
habits. Sometimes a single item of clothing or a single accessory can declare one's occupation or rank within a profession — for example, the high
toque or chef's hat worn by a chief cook.
See also undercover.
Ethnic, political, and religious affiliation
In many regions of the world,
national costumes and styles in clothing and ornament declare membership in a certain village, caste, religion, etc. A Scotsman declares his clan with his
tartan. A
Sikh displays his religious affiliation by wearing a
turban and other traditional clothing. A French peasant woman would have identified her village with her cap or
coif.
Clothes can also proclaim dissent from cultural norms and mainstream beliefs, as well as personal independence. In
19th-century Europe, artists and writers lived
la vie de Bohème and dressed to shock:
George Sand in men's clothing, female emancipationists in bloomers, male artists in velvet
waistcoats and gaudy neckcloths.
Bohemians,
beatniks,
hippies,
Goths, punks and
Skinheads have continued the tradition in the
20th-century West. Now that haute couture plagiarizes street fashion within a year or so, street fashion may have lost some of its power to shock, but it still motivates millions trying to look hip and cool.
Marital status
Some Hindu women, once married, wear
sindoor, a red powder, in the parting of their hair; if widowed, they abandon
sindoor and jewelry and wear simple white clothing. Men and women of the Western world may wear
wedding rings to indicate their marital status. See also Visual markers of marital status.
Sexual interest
Some clothing indicates the modesty of the wearer. For example, many Muslim women wear head or body covering that proclaims their status as respectable women. Other clothing may indicate flirtatious intent. For example, a Western woman might wear extreme
stiletto heels, close-fitting and body-revealing black or red clothing, exaggerated make-up, flashy jewelry, and perfume to show sexual interest or invite male attention. A man might wear a tightly-cut shirt and unbutton the top buttons to invite female attention.
What constitutes modesty and allure varies radically from culture to culture, within different contexts in the same culture, and over time as different
fashions rise and fall. Moreover, a person may choose to display a mixed message. For example, a Saudi Arabian woman may wear an
abaya to proclaim her respectability, but choose an abaya of luxurious material cut close to the body and then accessorize with
high heels and a fashionable purse. All the details proclaim sexual desirability, despite the ostensible message of respectability.
Sexual fetishes involving clothing
Because clothing and adornment are closely related to ideas of human sexuality and sexual display, humans may develop clothing fetishes. They may be strongly aroused by the sight of another person wearing clothing and accessories they consider arousing or sexually exciting. Sometimes the object of clothing becomes the object of arousal itself. Fetishes have been documented in every culture and have been recorded throughout history. Common fetishes involving clothing include arousal by or involving
shoes,
leather, uniforms, or
lingerie.
Fetishes vary as much as
fashion. Sometimes the clothing itself becomes the object of fetish, such as in case with used girl panties in Japan. Some clothing manufacturers make
fetish clothing, designed to arouse buyers with specialized tastes.
Religious habits and special religious clothing
Religious clothing might be considered a special case of occupational clothing. Sometimes it is worn only during the performance of religious ceremonies. However, it may also be worn everyday as a marker for special religious status.
See also, .
Clothing materials
Common clothing materials include:
Less-common clothing materials include:
...
Reinforcing materials such as
wood,
bone,
plastic and
metal may be used in
fasteners or to stiffen garments.
Clothing maintenance
Clothing, once manufactured, suffers assault both from within and from without. The human body inside sheds skin cells and body oils, and exudes sweat, urine, and feces. From the outside, sun damage, damp, abrasion, dirt, and other indignities afflict the garment. Fleas and lice take up residence in clothing seams. Well-worn clothing, if not cleaned and refurbished, will smell, itch, look scruffy, and lose functionality .
In some cases, people simply wear an item of clothing until it falls apart. Cleaning leather presents difficulties; one cannot wash bark cloth without dissolving it. Owners may patch tears and rips, and brush off surface dirt, but old leather and bark clothing will always look
old.
But most clothing consists of cloth, and most cloth can be
laundered and mended .
Humans have developed many specialized methods for laundering, ranging from the earliest "pound clothes against rocks in running stream" to the latest in electronic
washing machines and dry cleaning .
In past times, mending was an art. A meticulous tailor or
seamstress could mend rips with thread raveled from
hems and seam edges so skillfully that the darn was practically invisible. When the raw material — cloth — was worth more than labor, it made sense to expend labor in saving it. Today clothing is considered a consumable item. Mass-manufactured clothing is less expensive than the time it would take to repair it. Many people prefer to buy a new piece of clothing rather than to spend their time mending old clothes. But the thrifty still replace
zippers and
buttons and sew up ripped
hems.
The life cycle of clothing
Used, no-longer-wearable clothing was once desirable raw material for
quilts, rag rugs,
bandages, and many other household uses. It could also be recycled into
paper. Now it is usually thrown away. Used but still wearable clothing can be sold at consignment shops,
flea markets, online auction, or just donated to charity. Charities usually skim the best of the clothing to sell in their own thrift stores and sell the rest to merchants, who bale it up and ship it to poor
Third World countries, where vendors bid for the bales and then make what profit they can selling used clothing.
Early 21st-century clothing styles
Western fashion has to a certain extent become international fashion, as Western media and styles penetrate all parts of the world. Very few parts of the world remain where people do not wear items of cheap, mass-produced Western clothing. Even people in poor countries can afford used clothing from richer Western countries.
However, people may wear ethnic or
national dress on special occasions or if carrying out certain roles or occupations. For example, most Japanese women have adopted Western-style dress for daily wear, but will still wear silk
kimonos on special occasions. Items of Western dress may also appear worn or accessorized in distinctive, non-Western ways. A Tongan man may combine a used
T-shirt with a Tongan wrapped skirt, or
tupenu.
Western fashion, too, does not function monolithically. It comes in many varieties, from expensive haute couture to thrift store
grunge.
Mainstream Western or international styles
Regional styles
- Clothing of Europe and Russia
- Clothing in the Americas
- South American fashion
- United States mainstream fashion
- For example: "Catalogue" fashion, regional styles such as preppy or Western wear.
- United States alternative fashion
- These fashions are often associated with fans of various musical styles.
- See also Goth, Hippie, Grunge, Hip-hop, and Fetish-wear
- Clothing in Asia
- Clothing in Africa
- Clothing in Oceania
Origin and history of clothing
According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the earliest clothing probably consisted of
fur,
leather, leaves or grass, draped, wrapped or tied about the body for protection from the elements. Knowledge of such clothing remains inferential, since clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared to stone, bone, shell and metal artifacts. Archeologists have identified very early
sewing needles of bone and ivory from about 30,000 BC, found near Kostenki,
Russia, in 1988.
Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser and Mark Stoneking,
anthropologists at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, have conducted a genetic analysis of human body lice that indicates that they originated about 107,000 years ago. Since most humans have very sparse body hair, body lice require clothing to survive, so this suggests a surprisingly recent date for the invention of clothing. Its invention may have coincided with the spread of modern
Homo sapiens from the warm
climate of
Africa, thought to have begun between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. However, a second group of researchers used similar genetic methods to estimate that body lice originated about 540,000 years ago . For now, the date of the origin of clothing remains unresolved.
Some human cultures, such as the various peoples of the
Arctic Circle, until recently made their clothing entirely of furs and skins, cutting clothing to fit and decorating lavishly.
Other cultures have supplemented or replaced leather and skins with cloth: woven, knitted, or twined from various animal and vegetable fibres. See
weaving,
knitting, and
twining.
Although modern consumers take clothing for granted, making the fabrics that go into clothing is not easy. One sign of this is that the
textile industry was the first to be mechanized during the
Industrial Revolution; before the invention of the powered loom, textile production was a tedious and labor-intensive process. Therefore, methods were developed for making most efficient use of textiles.
One approach simply involves draping the cloth. Many peoples wore, and still wear, garments consisting of rectangles of cloth wrapped to fit — for example, the Scottish
kilt or the
Javanese sarong. Pins or belts hold the garments in place. The precious cloth remains uncut, and people of various sizes can wear the garment.
Another approach involves cutting and sewing the cloth, but using every bit of the cloth rectangle in constructing the clothing. The tailor may cut triangular pieces from one corner of the cloth, and then add them elsewhere as gussets. Traditional European patterns for men's
shirts and women's
chemises take this approach.
Modern European
fashion treats cloth much more prodigally, typically cutting in such a way as to leave various odd-shaped cloth remnants. Industrial sewing operations sell these as waste; home sewers may turn them into
quilts.
In the thousands of years that humans have spent constructing clothing, they have created an astonishing array of styles, many of which we can reconstruct from surviving garments, photos,
paintings,
mosaics, etc., as well as from written descriptions. Costume history serves as a source of inspiration to current
fashion designers, as well as a topic of professional interest to costumers constructing for
plays,
films,
television, and
historical reenactment.
- See also History of Western fashion,
Future trends
As technologies change, so will clothing. Many people, including futurologists have extrapolated current trends and made the following predictions:
- Man-made fibers such as nylon, polyester, Lycra, and Gore-Tex already account for much of the clothing market. Many more types of fibers will certainly be developed, possibly using nanotechnology. For example, military uniforms may stiffen when hit by bullets, filter out poisonous chemicals, and treat wounds.
- "Smart" clothing will incorporate electronics. Clothing may incorporate wearable computers, flexible wearable displays , medical sensors, etc.
- Present-day ready-to-wear technologies will presumably give way to computer-aided custom manufacturing. Low power laser beams will measure the customer; computers will draw up a custom pattern and execute it in the customer's choice of cloth as well as choice of desirable fit.
Clothing industry
The clothing industry is concentrated outside of western Europe and America, and garment workers often have to labor under poor conditions. Coalitions of NGO's, designers and trade unions like the Clean clothes campaign seek to improve these conditions as much as possible by sponsoring awareness-raising events, which draw the attention of both the media and the general public to the workers' conditions.
See also
See also: List of types of clothing and
Clothing terminology.
For the alternative to clothing — wearing nothing — see
nudity.
External links
- by Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser and Mark Stoneking
