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Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26
Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage
Two.
FASHION AND SOCIETY: A HISTORICAL
PERSPECTIVE
In all societies the body is 'dressed', and everywhere dress and adornment play symbolic and
aesthetic roles. The colour of clothing often has special meaning: a white wedding dress
symbolising purity; or black clothing indicating remembrance for a dead relative. Uniforms
symbolise association with a particular profession. For many centuries purple, the colour
representing royalty, was to be worn by no one else. And of course, dress has always been
used to emphasise the wearer's beauty, although beauty has taken many different forms in
different societies. In the 16th century in Europe, for example, Flemish painters celebrated
women with bony shoulders, protruding stomachs and long faces, while women shaved or
plucked their hairlines to obtain the fashionable egg-domed forehead. These traits are
considered ugly by today's fashion.
The earliest forms of 'clothing' seem to have been adornments such as body painting,
ornaments, scari cations (scarring), tattooing, masks and often constricting neck and waist
bands. Many of these deformed, reformed or otherwise modi ed the body. The bodies of men
and of children, not just those of women, were altered: there seems to be a widespread human
desire to transcend the body's limitations, to make it what it is, by nature, not.
Dress in general seems then to ful l a number of social functions. This is true of modern as of
ancient dress. What is added to dress as we ourselves know it in the west is fashion, of which
the key feature is rapid and continual changing of styles. The growth of the European city in the
14th century saw the birth of fashion. Previously, loose robes had been worn by both sexes,
and styles were simple and unchanging. Dress distinguished rich from poor, rulers from
ruled, only in that working people wore more wool and no silk, rougher materials and less
ornamentation than their masters.
However, by the 14th century, with the expansion in trade, the growth of city life, and the
increasing sophistication of the royal and aristocratic courts, rapidly changing styles appeared
in western Europe. These were associated with developments in tailored and tted clothing;
once clothing became fitted, it was possible to change the styling of garments almost endlessly.
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By the 15th and 16th centuries it began to seem shameful to wear outdated clothing. So those
who could afford to do so began discarding unfashionable clothing simply because it was not in
style. Cloth, which was enormously expensive, was literally, and symbolised, wealth
in medieval society.
In modern western societies there is no form of clothing which has not felt the impact of
fashion: fashion sets the terms of all dress behaviour. Even uniforms have been designed by
some of the top fashion houses; even the dress code in the workplace has shifted from formal,
business attire to the more relaxed, smart casual look; even the less af uent enjoy haute
couture - they wear cheaper versions of the top designs and top labels.
Even the unfashionable wear clothes that represent a reaction against what is in fashion. To be
unfashionable is not to ignore fashion; it is rather to protest against the social values of
the fashionable. Last century the hippies of the 1960s created a unique appearance out of an
assortment of secondhand clothes, craft work and army surplus, as a protest against the
wastefulness of the consumer society. They rejected the way mass production
ignored individuality, and also the wastefulness of luxury.
Looked at in historical perspective, the styles of fashion display a mad relativism. At one time
the rich wear cloth of gold embroidered with pearls, at another beige cashmere and grey
suiting. In one epoch men parade in elaborately curled hair, high heels and rouge, at another to
do so is to court outcast status and physical abuse. It is in some sense inherently ironic that a
new fashion starts from rejection of the old and often an eager embracing of what
was previously considered ugly. A case in point is the outlandish, fashion statement made by
the non-conforming, rebellious youth of today who have tattoos, metal studs and body
piercings. They de ed mainstream fashion only to see their de ance become the fashion of the
day in the broader community. Moreover, having once de ned style in centuries past, these
adornments have now come full circle.
Despite its apparent irrationality, fashion cements social solidarity and imposes group norms. It
forces us to recognise that the human body is not only a biological entity, but an organism in
culture. To dress the way that others do is to signal that we share many of their morals and
values. Conversely, deviations in dress are usually considered shocking and disturbing. In
western countries a man wearing a pink suit to a job interview would not be considered for
a position at a bank. He would not be taken seriously. Likewise, even in these 'liberated' times,
a man in a skirt in many western cultures causes considerable anxiety, hostility or laughter.
However, while fashion in every age is normative, there is still room for clothing to express
individual taste. In any period, within the range of stylish clothing, there is some choice of
colour, fabric and style. This was even more true last century, because in the 20th century,
fashion, without losing its obsession with the new and the different, was mass produced.
Originally, fashion was largely for the rich, but since the industrial period the mass production
of fashionably styled clothes has made possible the use of fashion as a means of self-
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enhancement and self-expression for the majority.
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