Fashion

Fashion refers to styles of dress (but can also include cuisine, literature, art, architecture, and general comportment) that are popular in a culture at any given time. Such styles may change quickly, and "fashion" in the more colloquial sense refers to the latest version of these styles. Inherent in the term is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole. The terms "fashionable" and "unfashionable" are employed to describe whether someone or something fits in with the current or even not so current, popular mode of expression. The term "fashion" is frequently used in a positive sense, as a synonym for glamour, beauty and style. In this sense, fashions are a sort of communal art, through which a culture examines its notions of beauty and goodness. The term "fashion" is also sometimes used in a negative sense, as a synonym for fads and trends, and materialism. A number of cities are recognised as global fashion centres and are recognised for their fashion weeks, where designers exhibit their new clothing collections to audiences. These cities are New York City, Milan, Paris, and London. Other cities, mainly Los Angeles, Tokyo, São Paulo, Sydney, and Dubai also hold fashion weeks and are better recognised every year. Areas of fashion Fashions are social phenomena common to many fields of human activity and thinking. The rise and fall of fashions has been especially documented and examined in the following fields: Architecture, interior design, and landscape design Arts and crafts Body type, clothing or costume, cosmetics, personal grooming, hairstyle, and personal adornment Dance and music Forms of address, slang, and other forms of speech Economics and spending choices, as studied in behavioral finance Entertainment, games, hobbies, sports, and other pastimes Etiquette Management, management styles and ways of organizing Politics and media, especially the topics of conversation encouraged by the media Philosophy and spirituality (One might argue that religion is prone to fashions, although official religions tend to change so slowly that the term cultural shift is perhaps more appropriate than "fashion") Social networks and the diffusion of representations and practices Sociology and the meaning of clothing for identity-building Technology, such as the choice of computer programming techniques Hospitality industry such as designer uniforms custom made for a hotel, restaurant, casino, resort or club, in order to reflect a property and brand. see "uniforms" Of these fields, costume especially has become so linked in the public eye with the term "fashion" that the more general term "costume" has mostly been relegated to only mean fancy dress or masquerade wear, while the term "fashion" means clothing generally, and the study of it. This linguistic switch is due to the so-called fashion plates which were produced during the Industrial Revolution, showing novel ways to use new textiles. For a broad cross-cultural look at clothing and its place in society, refer to the entries for clothing and costume. The remainder of this article deals with clothing fashions in the Western world. Clothing Main article: History of Western fashion The habit of people continually changing the style of clothing worn, which is now worldwide, at least among urban populations, is generally held by historians to be a distinctively Western one. At other periods in Ancient Rome and other cultures changes in costume occurred, often at times of economic or social change, but then a long period without large changes followed. In 8th century Cordoba, Spain, Ziryab, a famous musician - a star in modern terms - is said to have introduced sophisticated clothing styles based on seasonal and daily timings from his native Baghdad and his own inspiration. The beginnings of the habit in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in styles can be fairly clearly dated to the middle of the 14th century, to which historians including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of Western fashion in clothing. The most dramatic manifestation was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment, from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes accompanied with stuffing on the chest to look bigger. This created the distinctive Western male outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers which is still with us today.