Language in Fashion
In the last entry, we went
through definition of language and this time let’s talk about language of
fashion.
Fashion is one kind of attitude
expression, fashion is identity, fashion is language of sorts. We tend to show
our characteristic or how we feel through clothing and people still can judge
it instead of words from our mouth. It just as Tomasello mentioned, humans
alone are capable of recognizing intentionality in others. In
the sense that the meanings of these clothes shift over time, the way the
meanings of words shift over time, rendering them even more arbitrary. Example
like the meaning of makeup on women, for instance, has shifted over the decades
from “prostitute” to “brazen” to “fashionably cutting-edge” to “entirely
conventional” (Greta, C., 2011). Meanings
change depending on how we combine the “grammar,” if a person wears jeans with
muddy boots and a baseball cap from 7-eleven mean something different from jeans
with stiletto heels and a RM70 Topshop T-shirt. Another case like these
meanings can change depending on context example like jeans at a rock concert
mean something different than jeans at a funeral. Different cultures assign
vastly to different arbitrary meanings of clothing example like a short skirt
and stiletto heels mean something different in Malaysia and something very
different in Iran.
Clothes itself is not a word, it’s
more like a code, it has to form together with other things so it can convey
messages. Alison Lurie, the author of The
Language of Clothes, claimed that clothes must make up a vocabulary and
have a grammar if they are going to constitute a language, principles of this vocabulary
like hair style, accessories, etc (Lars, S., 2004).
It makes sense when a woman wants
to show her beauty of body lines, she can’t just wear a loose dress with
platform shoes. It’s similar with before the fourteenth century, women were
wearing dresses that admittedly more body hugging to emphasize their breast and
buttock while men were more on tights with short trousers to show more masculine.
Bibliography
Lars, S. (2004) Fashion: A
Philosophy. Translated by John Irons. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2006. pp.
64-65.
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