Fashion and Beauty - A Historical Perspective
A lot more than 40 000 in years past the inhabitants of The eu adorned themselves with jewelry of ivory and bone. Clothes, worn to guard their bodies from the elements or to provide covering for modesty's sake, came much later. The people of northern Europe probably first slung animal skins around themselves as protection from the cold in approximately 25000 BC. In the Mediterranean and Middle East, fibers from plants for example flax, and the hair of goats and sheep, were woven to form lightweight fabrics that doesn't only afforded protection against the Sun's rays but also signified social status. The initial of these textiles, made in Anatolia in Turkey, date to about 6500 BC.
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As civilizations developed, so types of dress also evolved. In Egypt, Greece and Rome, clothes were draped, while the people of northern Europe and the East wore stitched, tubular garments. In the classical world the toga, worn not just by rulers but also by philosophers and teachers, was thought to be a symbol of civilization. Breeches and tunics, by comparison, were considered usual for barbarian, tribal societies.
However the idea of fashion, with its ever changing cycles of styles and trends, first became predominant in the mid 1300 in Paris, London as well as the Italian city-states, when the elite rejected their flowing garments for tight-fitting clothes decorated to demonstrate the latest tastes. Men's robes, that have previously been ankle-length, now reached across the knee, while female dress was transformed by lacing, buttons as well as the introduction of the d�colletage. As people wished to change their silhouettes at regular intervals - a trend that coincided using a growing international textiles trade - so cutting and tailoring developed.
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Early fashion belonged towards the elite, who attempted to preserve their social superiority with 'sumptuary laws' forbidding tradesmen and yeomen from wearing expensive and lavishly embroidered fabrics. Nevertheless the French code of dressing, using a fixed social hierarchy and courtly etiquette, was overturned through the Revolution of 1789. Elaborate wigs and powdered hair were abandoned, men's clothes were no longer embellished with embroidery and lace, and ladies adopted the simple Empire gown. Style became a mark of individual freedom, adopted for the own sake. No more the preserve of the aristocracy, it soon became linked to the avant-garde, Romantic writers and artists, political activists and dandies.
In great britan affordable, mass-produced printed textiles and products were made available through the Industrial Revolution. We were holding popular with the middle classes, who saw them as a way of expressing their new confidence and success. For males power now lay in operation, not the court. The dark suit became a male 'uniform', while women paraded the family's status through their particular and their children's dress. Fashion and femininity were inextricably entwined. Women were weighed down by petticoats and their mobility restricted by delicate shoes.
In the late 1800s attempts started to make female dress more 'sensible'. But ideals of beauty and fashion held sway, with shops offering ready-made copies from the newest styles featured in magazines, society photographs and, in the early 1900s, the cinema. From these beginnings the consumer-orientated 20th-century fashion and sweetness industries were launched.