Page 225 - Encyclopedia Of World History

dress 575

beliefs. For Christians, dressing the body is directly tied
to the concept of original sin. For Orthodox Jews, Mus-
lims, and people of many other religions, dress symbol-
izes their membership in a religious community and sets
them apart from the surrounding societies. Religious
attire may be differentiated by color, cut, fabric, or even,
in some cases, the absence of dress itself. Like academic
dress, clerical dress often contains stagnated forms of his-
torical garments. Ritual dress for religious elites shows
the power, prestige, and the wealth of the religious estab-
lishment. Modernization has altered Western religious
dress, making it more secular in appearance.
A difference between urban dress and rural dress has
probably existed since the development of cities, but
industrialization and its accompanying mass migration of
labor to the cities have made this difference even more
striking. “Fashion” generated in the cities was part of the
reason, but the availability of finer cloth and manufac- Two girls in their First Communion
tured clothing also separated urban from rural.Workers costumes. The use of special clothing is an
adopted “city clothes” to fit in and show their connection element in many religious rituals in many
with their new environment, and a mix of urban and religions.
rural dress illustrates the mixed consciousness of early
industrial workers. Strangely, fashion sometimes reverses
this pattern, with urban residents adopting the clothing The words native and traditional are often used in
of the countryside in a nostalgic attempt to recapture a dress history to imply something that is static and
simpler past. unchanging. These two words are often used inter-
Modern manufacturing, communication, and adver- changeably with the word authentic, implying freedom
tising have increased the importance of fashion and the from modern contamination and a continued cultural
speed at which it changes and spreads, even creating an longevity. Dress, however, like material culture in general,
international fashion of T-shirts, blue jeans, and sport does not develop in isolation. It develops with internal
shoes that defies gender, nationality, and class.Although and external forces. Modern concepts of “traditional
a Western “institutionalized fashion cycle” began in the dress” are often based on festival or ceremonial clothing
courts of fourteenth-century Europe, fashion has likely and are divorced from what people actually wear on a
been around nearly as long as clothing. Since prehistoric day-to-day basis. Even such festival or ceremonial cloth-
times humans have shown an interest beautifying their ing is a hybrid of indigenous styles and outside or mod-
clothing with beads, feathers, and other sorts of trim. ern influences. African traditional clothing, for example,
They have also shown an interest in changing clothing is a result of centuries of contact and borrowing from
styles, although at a much slower pace than today. African, European, and Arabic cultures.Within these “tra-
Roman writers described the importance of fashion dur- ditions” runs a current of nuanced and ever-changing fash-
ing their time, and during the Tang dynasty (618–907 ion that may be unnoticed by outside observers. Many
CE) in China, feathered skirts were so popular that certain wearers of “traditional dress” willingly trade customary
species of birds were threatened with extinction. fabrics for modern human-made ones and incorporate