Fashion is the reflection of an era, a country, a culture or a people. Whether they are dressed, artistic, musical, decorative, aesthetic, political, linguistic, sporting or geographical... fashions are made and undone, exclude or embroil, touching all backgrounds and all fields. We can love it, run away from it, seek it out, despise it... But what are we talking about, where does it come from and what is its purpose?
What is fashion?
When we think of fashion, we think of the clothing industry, luxury goods, cosmetics, brands that create and develop accessories to enhance the look... Fashion is also a way to assert one's social rank, purchasing power or personality.
Three "Lea" in class, all on vacation in the Dominican Republic or "yo man" to say "hello" ... Fashion creates changes that are regularly renewed like this, two, three, four times a year, in the case of clothing fashion with the collections that follow one another. Another particularity of fashion is that instead of adding new elements, it tends to remix them.
Where does fashion come from?
While those who create fashion are often artists or designers, everyone can feel they want to launch one. We all have a creative part in us... Fashion is defended by the critics and by all those it touches who become its ambassadors... Here too, we can be impacted, as long as we want to, because following fashion is not compulsory...
It is difficult to say when it dates back, difficult to imagine if prehistoric men were chatting about the last fashionable animal skin... However, it seems that it was in Antiquity that the first fashion phenomena as we know it today were to be found. It was in the Middle Ages, thanks for example to the commercial opening of the Silk Road, that the meeting of other civilizations allowed the rise of fashion.
How was fashion clothing born?
Fashion is based on the power of the "claw" of those who transform inert objects, raw materials such as fabric into magical objects, carrying meaning represented by a colour, a shape or a logo. Fashion can also be born without any specific reason or origin. It occurs at a certain period of time because the conditions are met for it to appear. If its origin is often difficult to detect, the reason for its disappearance is often just as mysterious.
What sense does fashion have?
Fashion is a way of living, of thinking, specific to a period, a country, a milieu. It is often considered as superficial or as a way of selling products that the consumer (i.e. you) may feel compelled to buy "because it's fashionable". Fashion brings together people who will go towards the same desires or make the same choices. It conveys values such as change, the ephemeral, the new, the modern, the latest, the original, the highly mediatized, elitism, luxury ...
Fashion is an economic activity because it produces objects, but it is also an artistic activity because it produces symbols. So it doesn't just transform fabric into clothing, it creates objects that make sense to those who wear them.
What does it represent?
The fashion and luxury goods industry is a major economic activity. The industry accounts for nearly 6% of global consumption across all sectors, with 1,400 billion euros in 2008. By way of comparison, the automotive sector accounts for just under 4% of global consumption.
Who is it for?
We follow fashion to signal our belonging to a social group, a group of thought, a form of aestheticism, to distinguish ourselves from others; therefore to signal our originality, our refusals, our social and political rejection... Fashion brings people together and reassures. But one can also be fashionable by conformism.
