Utilitarian Beginnings

We’ve established that fashion (in the clothing sense) has its roots in utilitarian garments. Once people were able to subsist in such a way that time, effort, and money could be spent on non-utilitarian garment features, fashion was born.

I’d conjecture that this occurred fairly early in the development of human cultures and civilizations. Even the earliest garments were often marked with dyes or accessorized with stones, bones, and other natural accoutrements.

Even the most basic changes can be considered fashion. Consider this relief picture depicting two men in ancient mesopotamia. The fringing on the robe garment adds little to no value, but distinguishes it from non-fringed garments, thus making it an example of fashion.

Of course, in the earlier periods of civilization (say before readily available heating and cooling sources), there was significant utilitarian constraint on what could be achieved in fashion. These constraints (weather, natural phenomena, working environments) necessarily varied significantly among cultures and geographic regions.

Thus, it is reasonable to expect that the utilitarian beginnings of clothing in these different regions could be drastically different. We might expect the total coverage to be less than average among those in rainforest environments, and more than average in desert or cold environments, for example. This would imply drastically different starting structures for the clothing of people, and while it is possible that fashion could make a quantum leap to other basic structures, it is far more likely that fashionable changes were based upon these utilitarian foundations.

This is a very important point! The initial survival conditions of a culture can impact the fashion of the culture as it develops for potentially hundreds of years. Slowly, new structures do emerge, but a large proportion of fashion is rooted in these beginnings.

We can see the results in modern fashion today. For example, European clothing (temperate climates, lots of farming and fieldwork) began with simple tunics and full-body dresses. For a long time, dresses/robes were the norm for both men and women. Eventually, men developed pants, but even then, a longer tunic was still worn over top, eventually shortening to today’s modern jacket and pants style. On the other hand, many Middle Eastern countries still have men wearing longer robes like garments and significant headwear to deal with the different climate. Each region develops different fashions, because the initial differences propagate apart as fashions develop.

Now, this leads to an interesting design idea. IF we can establish a new structural paradigm, it opens up a wealth of fashion paths. Of course, creating a new utilitarian idea and having it accepted by a large enough social subset, is extremely difficult. Certainly a project for the super-creative and the ambitious, but the results would be glorious. It may be necessary to move on to a new “age” of fashion.

-III