Fashion and Identity - Essay Example

Fashion and identity   Fashion and identity Introduction People are likely to see what wear first before anything else. The interpretation of these of our identity, therefore, depends on our fashion. This is because the style there is a linkage between what people wear and what they think to believe. Males and females have different prevalence and fashion does more than covering our nakedness. Direct physical contact and intimacy with fashion with the body makes the body more visible. This enables better construction of our gender and social identity. The materials themselves on these clothes also create a sense of identity that people use to identify us. Therefore, what we wear defines us. Over ages, the dress style has been to differentiate between the genders. Until to date, fashion provides the individual with essential means through which they manage their identities. Fashion and professional identity Starting from the places that people do work, it is easy to identify people based on their ranks and gender among other classifications. The males and females choose their fashion distinctively at work (Abrahamson 1996). Mostly suits are for males at the workplace. For a long time, men at the workplace have had this identity. Later clothing to other sectors have been from the primary suit modification has been done to extend to other work areas (Abrahamson 1996). Females also like skirts and other formal dressings. However, today people are becoming diverse and female suits are available but they are distinctively different from those of the males (Buick 2012). At the hospital set up, identification of doctor and the nurses is easy from what they wear. Therefore, identification of people at the workplace does not necessary need looks just identification of what they wear (Bennett 2005) Similarly, there is a fashion for every profession and every person represented in the society. For those people who are not professional, they wear depending on what they want their identification to be (Parmentier & Fischer 2011). To them, the clothing reflects what they want other people to see. If you stand in a marketplace, u can be able to identify the priest, prostitutes, and students among others. Our fashion also talks a lot about us to others and can identify the activity that people are to perform (Pentecost & Andrews 2010). For example, identification of an individual about to sleep with a sleeping nightdress, swimming to the swimming costume and sports gear for the athletes. Besides, there is also fashion for all occasions from celebration to mourning. There are those designed for graduation too, parties and most of other times. Despite this factor, clothes for different genders are different (DiMaggio & Crane 2002). On graduation square, you can identify the males from the female. If two people are also swimming, it is easy to identify one person from another from one sex to another. The design of the male clothes is different from those of female (Gimeno Martinez 2009).Furthermore, these fashions make use a broad range of materials with those of female being of a broad range from those of females. Fashion and character identity Fashion is also deductive of the person’s character. However, the person character can vary from one person to another depending on the interpreter (Ross & Harradine 2011). Ross & Harradine (2011) likens clothing to poetry or music with distinct vocabulary that shows the emotional mood of the person. For instance, the fashion can be showing a cultural person or a person exhibiting the modern life. Various components suggest the culture language of the fashion (Bennett 2005). These include accurate interpretation of the colour, fabric colour, volume, shape, and contour that are always unique and distinct within different fashions (Arvanitidou 2011). The fashion always implies more than what it looks. Even partial transparent clothes have a particular identity. However, it is wrong for people to find an identity of a person basing on these. This is because some people have no clue on the fashion and interpretation of the materials and colour they have put on (Arvanitidou 2011; Buick 2012). Besides, some colour combination and shape may be hard to understand or ambiguous (DiMaggio & Crane 2002). Furthermore, the uniforms and other work garments may have nonspecific communication except where they are different in colour to denote the rank or working position (Pentecost & Andrews 2010). If misidentification of language of a fashion occurs, the person maybe misidentified. This may be because of misunderstood components of the style (DiMaggio & Crane 2002). The ambiguity of the fashion interpretation can also result from misunderstanding encoded rules by the capricious nature of fashion. Similarly, the fashion can also be interpretable in the context it occurs (Saviolo 2002). The people of that area can only understand the identity, circumstances and moods of the fashion. For instance, other people cannot interpret the clothing depicting an instance of a particular place (Bennett 2005). Another example is clothing used in certain organisation to identify outsiders may not understand a specific generation. Finally, it is also true that the code is associated with the social relationship between the person bearing the fashion and the person to identify the fashion. In that case, the interpretation of the fashion will be based on this experience (Ross & Harradine 2011). Otherwise, it will be easily misinterpreted. This includes the long hairs by males, which may mean freedom and liberation from gender contemplatives (Ross & Harradine 2011; Twigg 2009). In this, others may interpret it as perversion, which may not be the identity to a person bearing the fashion. In addition, people can use the individual’s fashion to identify someone’s values. Grooming of a person shows the value of an individual at that specific time (DiMaggio & Crane 2002). Dressing shows a significant aspect of a person like emotions and psychosocial wellbeing. The public and instantly see able nature of fashion makes it an ideal study field of values that surrounds this consumer product, as a link between values and clothing(Parmentier & Fischer 2011). The style in clothing combinations both personal expression and social rules(Bennett 2005). Dressing influenced by dominant social attitudes, values, life status, socioeconomic status, and some of the circumstances through that people want to assure their self-introduction. Fashion communicates the social identity symbolically, namely how a person wants and seeks to appear in society(Gimeno Martinez 2009). Besides it can also, style reflect the profound class characteristic of contemporary society, considering the minimal difference between the acquisition prices of branded clothing from cheap copies. In addition, men’s clothing reflects the concentration of power and emphasises the male prestige(Pentecost & Andrews 2010). Fashion, culture and gender identity Across genders, female identification with gender is more than male. Since the 19th century, the attribution of fashion has been to females than to males (Craik 1994). In the market, many fashion clothes and atonements are feminine than those of mescaline. The fact that women have a wide range of ornaments and clothing demonstrates this. The designers have had a wide range of products to choose. Different artist makes different fashion was representing the different ornaments that the women wear (DiMaggio & Crane 2002).Therefore, the range of female products is more than those of male. For this, women are the major identification mark for the fashion. The variety of the cloth line and the numerous ornaments are the identification mark. However, the male counterparts are lagging behind. This is the main identifier between the male and females everywhere in the society. Then will be identified with their pants, closely related clothes while those of females are wide. Secondly, women have embraced fashion more than the men have. Women have known men to be people of no fashion. “Men do not notice clothes”(Craik 1994). All over the world, women hold strict view on the dress of the male. They do hold that clinches relating to male fashion as disguising. According to females’ view, the men only dress for fit and comfort. Thus, people in the fashion industry have invested much in the female fashions than the male. This has seen the contemporary codes of the female fashion to be an admired image. That of the male has remained. Historically and culturally, there have been trends in styles and fashions. However, those of males have attracted less and less attention. This shift has been associated with change in power related to gender-related associations. Males dominate in industrial societies, other workplaces and the public sphere. Thus, their fashion reflects this. The new adopted male codes, therefore, result from their conducts and their works and their fashions match these. The lack of taste in the males is one of the contributors to less fashion in their clothing. According to Craik, (1994) men have abandoned their fashion studies, and they lack interest in clothes. This has made the designers and the store to stalk the clothes of males for a long time not considering change from the clothes they initially whore to the current ones (Craik 1994).However, this trend is on the change in the recent times men are changing. Men seem to be waking up from their sleep in the tastes in the clothes they wear (Craik 1994). Men of these days are not like the men of the past in fashion even culturally. Their dress codes this day ignores or subverts the cultural codes and are considered stronger than those of females did(Pentecost & Andrews 2010). Historically the fashion of the men used to be narrow. It comprised of the jacket trouser and a shirt with time this has changed to include tie with a number of different fractions of t-shirts. Currently, the fashion of male runs parallel to those of the female. However, the men have fewer choices at a particular period. Men frequently resisted fashion and conformation to mainstream elements (Craik 1994). Men’s fashions are conformed to specific groups. Therefore, fashion can identify non-normative groups in men. These groups attach themselves to non-mainstreamed forms that are reflected in the choice of their clothes (Craik 1994). It is easy to identify the male’s sexuality by just looking at their fashion. The normal men are more to normative and formal dressing the image they perceive to be in line to their sexuality. Body tattooing seen among the men is common among the sexuality and the men with the liberal mind (Parmentier & Fischer 2011). These men dress to conform to the order of their current day. Today the body tattooing is to both the males and females. However, the type of body decorations as a gender identifier. There are laws that identify the types of clothes that people wear in their respective gender. These restrict the materials, fabrics, and accessories to wear (Venkatesh et al. 2010). An example is the sumptuary laws that specified fashion and codified display. According to these laws, people wore differently according to their occupation and social status. These laws seek to enhance the status of aristocracy through sartorial distinctiveness (Venkatesh et al. 2010). Culturally, the fashion also creates an identity that is different for males and females it is easy to isolate those male clothes from the females. Over ages, males have worn distinctively different from the female. For instance, the war garment is unique from that of the female. In some societies, they prefer their females to wear long clothes s they can be identified by this Conclusion It is true that the clothing we employ identify us in our daily lives. This extends to our respective subgroups, different culture and sexual orientation (Pentecost & Andrews 2010). Therefore, apart from identity the fashion enables us to express our social identity. However, fashion is prone to misinterpretation, by non-contextual people. In that case, social contact with that person bearing the fashion is the crucial thing. It is clear that, people will be understood and therefore easily understands a person in a social set up. Similarly, the distinction in gender is very possible. The moral and social values of the fashion can also be easily determined in the context of the cloth, but identification of this depends on the accuracy of interpretation of the material and the body.   References Abrahamson, E., 1996. Management fashion. Academy of Management Review, 21(1), pp.254–285. Arvanitidou, Z., 2011. Fashion, Gender and Social Identity. , pp.1–19. Available at http://www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/media/research/documents/zoi-arvanitidou.pdf. Bennett, A., 2005. Culture and Everyday Life. Gender and Language, pp.1–37. Buick, N., 2012. Further Resources : Deepen The Conversation – Fashion And Cultural Identity. ,(August). Craik, J., 1994. 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