HISTORY OF FASHION

FASHION AS A COMMUNICATION PHENOMENON I. FASHION

I.1. MAIN FEATURES OF FASHION The word moda (hereinafter referred as fashion) appears for the first time in Italy towards the mid 1600s. It was a translation of the word mode already used in France, coming from the Latin modus (manner, choice), which expressed the concept of something fair. Thus something is considered in fashion when it is perceived as fair and fitting in a given historical period and context. According to some studies carried out on this topic, clothing have two main functions: protection and modesty. The kind of protection given by clothing is against cold weather, but we get dressed for modesty, that is not to be ashamed showing intimate parts of our body; although some say that we use clothing to decorate our body or to express a precise identity within a given social context. Up to the end of the Middle Ages the way people got dressed was unvaried and that because the society was rather static and the past used to be the only supreme value, a sort of reference point for all behaviors. With the breaking up of the Medieval culture and the developing of the Renaissance, changing became a fundamental and aspired value and society started moving towards the future, while the individual sees himself entitled with the right to change social structures and make personal decisions as for aesthetics.

Picture 1 Therefore the development of fashion was made possible by the contemporary development in the Western countries of the so-called modern culture and its democratic principles. Two crucial aspects for this thing to happen were, first of all, the idealization of whatever was considered new and the myth of the social progress as well as the opportunity of the individual to get rid of traditional social bonds and feel free to express his own decision-making skills. And thats the reason why fashion is constantly changing and renewing itself. The law of variation is the core of fashion: it redefines endlessly whats in fashion and whats not, even through a quick succession of cycles for an endless production of new forms or that appear as such. At the beginning of the XVIII century, the doctor Bernand Bandeville was the first stating that fashion spreads thanks to imitation, that it the need of individuals to compete imitating and being better than the other, although taking into consideration what was worn at that time in the royal palace. On the same wavelength, a century after, the sociologist Herbert Spencer stated that fashion lays on imitative principles, although belonging to industrial societies and determined by the need to be homogeneous with and be accepted by those persons considered superior or of a higher level. Georg Simmel believes that the cause of the variation of fashion is to be found in an endless comparison between two opposite impulses that are innate in human beings: the one looking for imitation (or equality) and the other that moves towards the differentiation (or changing). He says that fashion is a phenomenon 100% cultural and conditioned by social system dynamics. It is the result of a society having at its top a superior class always trying to differentiate from lower classes, showing the diversity of their privileged status as well as the fact that they dont need to work wearing white clothes that gets dirty easily, or again flaunting their wealth buying new luxury and consumption goods. When it comes to lower classes, they do try to imitate the choices of higher classes, forcing these latters to re establish their positions by changing again their choices that, once copied and imitated, are trivialized and no longer express wealth. This generates a movement of fashions and consumption goods from higher to lower classes of a given society. During 1900, John Carl Flugel formulated a new hypothesis always bearing in mind the former ones stating that fashion was the result of a psychic contrast between modesty and flaunting. His new hypothesis was based on the sexual competitiveness used by women as a seduction instrument, including the shifting of the primary erogenous area (back, breast and legs). We find the same explanation in Alexander Elster, according to whom the social repression of polygamy

prevented the satisfaction of the so-called erotic variation biological need, to which fashion tried to provide for through clothing. During the 1950s, the American researcher Lloyd Fallers invented the theory of the vertical diffusion, also known as trickle down theory. Such theory highlighted how fashion cycles are determined by innovation that moves from the top to the bottom of a given society, it spreads wearing out its symbolic meanings, determining the need of a new innovation. According to Werner Sombart, the birth of fashion is to be explained as an inclination to luxury goods consumption that aims at calming down the anguishing feelings generated by the modern society. The traumatic passage from a community condition to modern times made people lost that comforting feeling to belong to a collective reality: now he is alone, by himself, facing death and thus he wants to experiment all possible pleasures during his short existence. Fashion was looked at with a different eye when we passed from advanced industrial societies to a new organization structure that was defined, at first, as post-industrial. The replacement of a social pyramidal structure with a structure that tends to develop horizontally, characterized by an increasingly greater middle class, meant the starting point for completely different approaches differentiating the lifestyles of a bunch of new social subgroups belonging to the middle class. Consumption goods start then spreading on a horizontal level because they are not referred to wealthier classes anymore but to other classes as well, including families. Due to the number of social changings that took place towards the end of the 1800s, flaunting behaviors were no longer meant for other classes but rather for members of the same class, characterizing not only higher classes but mid and lower classes too. As for higher classes, flaunting behaviors are always more complex, ironic, and based on ones personal style rather than personal wealth. In a post-industrial social context it is no longer acceptable that fashion trends move from the top to the bottom of societies. During the 1960s, Dwight Robinson speaks of simultaneous and horizontal diffusion of fashion in different social classes, whereas Charles King in the same years proposes to replace the trickle down theory with his new trickle across theory. In the following decade, many authors state that trends can develop also from the bottom to the top of societies: they can originate from social minorities, as youth vanguards, that in those years significantly influence the creation of new trends. In this direction, Blumberg proposes to replace the idea of trickle down with the trickle up or bubble up. With the loosing up of the societys hierarchical structure and the gradual development of the middle class, fashion became more and more accessible and democratic, and centers where trends were created rose almost everywhere.