Shopping in the Modern World - Essay Example

Academia Academia Research 30 May 2006 Fashion: Shopping is a complex and contradictory activity which cannot be reduced simply to the act of buying goods or services. Shopping in the modern world is more affiliated with clothing and not just an ordinary clothing, but these days people have more intentions of buying designer made fashionable clothes, which naturally brings us to think that shopping is not just about going out and buying various products such as shoes, clothes and watches, but it is all about buying brands such as Gucci, Armani and Rolex. By this statement anyone can clearly understand that the fashion has a significant role to play in this modern society, unlike the previous society having only traditional clothes in which the brands were only the core products, fulfilling the basic needs only without providing style and uniqueness. Fashion is often considered as a kind of mask, which actually helps in disguising the true or original nature of the body or person. In the old fashioned society, people were only concerned with the clothing and females were particularly exposed to the fashionable dresses, the traditional English dresses used to be worn only by the upper class women or more formally, the royal families. However, the fashion is much similar to the old one in this modern society's upper class, but the difference is made by the brand names. We can also regard fashion as the way in which we clothe the body as an active process or technical means for constructing and presenting a bodily self. This view however is philosophical, where as in actual, there are brands that are distinguishing us from the ordinary person. Western fashion is a particular modification of fashion in which the designer plays the role of definer. The life of the body is played out through the technical arrangement of clothes, beautification and motion. There is another interesting point about fashion and that is at times we cannot simply relate fashion with shopping, simply by acknowledging that not all clothing is fashion, all clothing systems have at least a distant relationship with fashion systems and stylistic conventions. For example, military, religious and legal clothing can be related to earlier dress codes where associations of tradition, authority, order and distinctiveness are purposely called upon. In addition, such clothes keep on changing over the time, steadily and with considerable thought going into the design of new concepts. The western style military uniforms adopted by many modern military regimes brings in view the fact that even these garments are directly influenced by fashion, where shopping has absolutely no concern. The shopping can be restricted to a particular age where as fashion cannot be restricted, we cannot expect a child to go out for shopping and buying heavy stuff and clothing material but we can for sure expect a child to go out to visit a barber and get and stylish cut in the form of service which is also reflecting fashion, perhaps more natural one. But if we get more honest here then we should relate fashion to a particular gender, as we all know that women have a greater part in fashion to play where as men have little. Sawchuk once quoted in 1987 that, "Women's love of clothes, cosmetics, jewellery, their obsession with style and fashion, reinforces the myth that we are narcissistic and materialistic. In turn, this reinforces capitalism, which depends upon this obsession with our bodies for the marketing of new products"(Craik 1994: 47). Lets emphasize on another point which is perhaps more well defined in explaining that fashion is another major aim behind shopping. Just imagine what happens when anyone goes out for shopping, lets put some light behind the entire process starting from the designer or maker to the customer. Lets consider the example of any modern rising brand such as Christian Dior, the company previously was not allocating the need in the men's segment and was manufacturing perfumes and few other apparel for women, the products being offered to men were not that high class and the company suddenly came up with a strategy of offering high class suits to the men having buying power as the prices were set real high and this strategy worked as designers automatically get related to the high standards and therefore some high quality fashion which remains rare in the society and so remains valuable due to its uniqueness. The customers would definitely attract towards it as it caters a specific segment, perhaps those who can afford it. Now lets again get on to the point that how the consumer gets out for shopping and starts buying all the products, simply because there is a big planning by the company in order to attract the buyer. Now lets compare it with the process being used today in the fashion industry, clothing and other fashion material is prepared, a high price is set for it, it gets distributed to various places in the market and marketing is done simply by window displays, magazine displays by hiring models, creating websites with all the details attracting many of the potential young males and females. So this all is showing that shopping is not just related to the usual buying but it is much related to fashion. In fact in the modern days, people only get out for buying such material that is representing a sense of fashion in them, yes there is a class buying cheaper material but those might be the one we call savers or perhaps those who are having lesser or no buying power. One of the ever-fashionable cities is London, which have got the roots in fashion since the beginning of the kingdom. The fashion is done regardless of gender over there and since the city comprises of many other nationals, therefore many cultures have merged in and created so much versatility in fashion, perhaps this might be the only reason for London to be extremely fashionable. In defining cultural identity, I want to bring consumption as a defining class activity and, in particular, style and women's traditional concern with shopping and buying. Men have usually been discussed more when it comes to the style and traditional outfits, such as a hat and umbrella with a good suit but women have got more importance in fashion and shopping. We can also relate fashion with shopping in relatively a different way, perhaps by calling it a lifestyle shopping. Lifestyle shopping focuses on cultures of consumption and there impact on individuals and societies, in the great urban societies of the late twentieth century. The term lifestyle fashion is directly related to the social class of the society, in the British society, there are different classes based on income and living standard. We cannot expect the majority to get in the lifestyle fashion context. However, there is a point that differs the shopping from fashion but eventually shows a relation between the two of these, a simple shopping more or less remains same. If you have fixed a budget for household grocery and you keep on buying it again and again even after years then this is quite different than the lifestyle shopping, in lifestyle shopping, people seek to buy new materials which are not in relation to set budgets at times and also a criticizing thing about fashion is that it keeps on changing and does not remain same, it takes even few days to get changed which results in disturbance in budget, so this all is showing a huge difference between old and new shopping. Reekie said in 1987: "Children's clothes (boys as well as girls) were categorized as women's goods because women were responsible for child care and for buying the clothes of their sons and daughters. Haberdashery, furnishings, Manchester and most fancy goods were also women's commodities because of their affinity with the domestic sphere. Ironmongery, hardware (except for household items such as crockery and cooking utensils), workmen's tools and materials such as paint, smoking requisites, leather goods and sporting goods were male. Furniture occupied a peculiarly ambiguous position in the gendered world of commodities, male by virtue of its bulk but female in its household association"(Craik 71: 1994). Through the public site of shopping, women took advantage of the opportunity to operate outside the home, join friends and other women, and derive pleasure from the activity of shopping, but why shopping Certainly its all about exploring their selves and showing each other the ways in which they can be best seen or more formally a fashion which suits them the best. Even for young women, shopping provides an important point of identification between the worlds of home and work. While young women mostly shop for the buying fashion, cosmetics and leisure goods, they also begin to prepare for their future home simply by buying soft furnishings, homeware and furniture, which are also reflecting a sort of fashion, perhaps a fashionable house, which is going to be a next big fashion and has already taken place in the various societies. Fashion designers have already replaced the traditional dominance of women in the dressmaking trade and established a different kind of relationship with their customers, in the old society where women were only going out for buying the basics and households and the rest was done at home such as by sewing clothes, the designers changed the scenario and have brought such material related to beauty as fashion. The designers have started spreading the awareness in people that it is the era of moving out and buying label attached clothes so that people can also be proud of something in context of fashion. Thus, the new approach to fashion has been developed. On one hand, the fashion is democratized as more people have access to the images and clothing preferred by the trendsetters. On the other hand, fashion producers are setting or have already set the styles. Other changes are also occurring in the fashion industry. The upper classes have succeeded in giving fashion a more prominent boost than any one else. However there are many opinion leaders or trendsetters also used in order to bring the people to the designer outlets, making shopping a sort of buying fashionable goods. A range of commercial practices have been adapted to the requirements of the fashion industry, including techniques of advertising and promotion, mass production, increased product range, multiplication and differentiation of markets, as well as new techniques of selling. These techniques underpinned the fashion process and shaped associated body techniques. If we all go out in a mall and keep noticing our acts then we all would come to one same conclusion, regardless of the fact that we bought any thing or not. We all would realize that if we did window shopping then most of the time we kept on watching the shops that are selling clothing, shoes, watches or similar material. It is the biggest indication of our behavior and attitude towards fashion. If we further more analyze the situation, then when some body says to us "shopping", we quickly bring in our minds stuff like new clothes, and so many things that are much related to the term "fashion". This is the modern influence of fashion in our lives that we do not care for the basics or households but we go straight for expensive clothing and related stuff. That is why we are arguing that shopping is a complex and contradictory activity, which cannot be reduced simply to the act of buying goods and services, but it involves a considerable amount of fashion in it. In conclusion to all the discussion, it is fair enough to say that the modern times shopping is not just to get the core products supporting the daily life uses but also it is to get something extra, which could actually show a lot to others and also which can influence others to buy the similar stuff yet giving others some problem in finding the similar material. Therefore, shopping automatically becomes so complex activity as people are required to find the similar fashionable stuff they have in their minds as a vision. References & Bibliography Craik J, "The Face of Fashion: The Cultural Studies in Fashion", New York, Routledge: 1994. Carter M, "Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes", Oxford, Berg: 2003. Read More