History Of Fashion

1192 Words5 Pages
Fashion has always been a reflection of the collective consciousness and unconsciousness of society. In politically conservative times, fashion reflects the staidness of the majority, but also the subversive elements of the minority. No less a controversial figure than King Louis XIV of France was rumored to have said that fashion was a mirror. Music, films, and television, all potent pop culture mirrors in their own right of the anxieties, hopes, and dreams of any society, all collectively form a synergistic relationship with fashion, each informing, influencing, and cross-pollinating the others in various turns. Fashion is also a pop culture manifestation of the intellectual and cultural trend of postmodernism. Fashion depends on newness; summer, fall, winter, spring are seasons that occur inexorably each year, and with them, the demand for new fashion lines. The inexhaustible hunger for new ideas and inspirations in fashion and other pop culture arenas leads inevitably to cannibalization, plagiarism, re-contextualization, and re-imagination of ideas past and present – the essence of postmodernism. If we survey the landscape of where pop culture and fashion have been, we can to some degree predict the elements which may define where it will go, though in the postmodern universe of the 21st century, it is next to impossible to predict what incarnations will come to pass. Fashion is the byproduct of a leisure society that has transcended many of the basic human struggles on the lower level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Most people in prosperous Western nations are fortunate enough to lead lives in which the acquisition and/or maintenance of food, shelter, and clothing is not a struggle that consumes their existence, as is sadly true in many African nations, for example. Free to ponder the meaning of their lives and the many ways in which it is possible
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