Clothing

I

Introduction

Clothing, coverings and garments intended to be worn on the human body. The words cloth and clothing are related, the first meaning fabric or textile, and the second meaning fabrics used to cover the body. The earliest garments were made of leather and other nonfabrics, rather than of cloth, but these nonfabric garments are included in the category of clothing.

Fashion refers to the kinds of clothing that are in a desirable style at a particular time. At different times in history, fashionable dress has taken very different forms. In modern times nearly everyone follows fashion to some extent. A young woman would look odd if she wore the clothing that her grandmother had worn when young. However, only a small minority of people dress in the clothing that appears in high-fashion magazines or on fashion-show runways.

It is not always easy to tell the difference between basic clothing and fashionable clothing. Especially today, fashion designers often use inexpensive and functional items of clothing as inspiration. Blue jeans, for instance, originated as functional work clothing for miners and farmers. Yet today, even people who dress in jeans, T-shirts, and sports clothes may be influenced by fashion. One year, fashionable jeans may have narrow legs; the next year the legs may be baggy.

Clothing historians trace the development of dress by studying various sources, including magazines and catalogs, paintings and photographs, and hats, shoes, and other surviving items. Reliable evidence about everyday clothing from the past can be hard to obtain because most publications and images concern the fashions of the wealthy. Furthermore, clothing that has survived from the past tends not to be typical of what was worn in daily life. Museum collections are full of fashionable ball gowns, for example, but have very few everyday dresses worn by ordinary working-class women. Even fewer examples of ordinary men's clothing have been saved. Images, such as paintings, prints, and photographs, do provide considerable evidence of the history of everyday clothing. These sources indicate that although everyday clothing does not usually change as rapidly as fashionable dress, it does change constantly.

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II

The Functions of Clothing

Since prehistoric times, people in almost all societies have worn some kind of clothing. Many theories have been advanced as to why humans began to wear clothing. One of the earliest hypotheses is the so-called modesty/shame theory, also known as the fig leaf theory. This theory is based on the biblical story of creation. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve, the first human beings, realize they are naked after they eat an apple from the tree of knowledge. Ashamed of their nakedness, they make clothing for themselves out of fig leaves. As late as the 19th century, most Europeans and Americans believed that people wore clothing primarily for reasons of modesty. With the rise of a nonreligious worldview, however, people began to offer other theories. Some argued that the origin of clothing was functional—to protect the body from the environment. Others argued that some clothing was designed for sexual attraction—to display the body's beauty.

Evidence that early clothing was indeed functional came from a 1991 discovery of a 5,000-year-old male body, frozen on top of a glacier near the Austrian-Italian border. It was clothed in a fur cap, a crudely tanned leather cape, a loincloth (strip of cloth wrapped around the waist and between the legs), leggings, and leather shoes. A grass cloak covered the fur and leather clothing. These clothes would have provided protection against the cold and rain. The Iceman, as he is called, also had tattoos, which may have been marks of decoration or tribal identity, or were perhaps intended to provide magical protection.

Decoration seems to satisfy a fundamental human need. Other animals groom themselves, but only human beings have ornamented themselves. Although in some societies people have worn little or no clothing, so far as we know, people have decorated their bodies in some way in all societies throughout history. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggest that early people may have decorated their bodies with paint, tattoos, and other types of ornamentation even before they began wearing clothing made of fur or fabric. Body decoration, like clothing, has served a variety of social and symbolic purposes.

Modern scholars believe that clothing provides a mark of identity and a means of nonverbal communication. In traditional societies, clothing functions almost as a language that can indicate a person's age, gender, marital status, place of origin, religion, social status, or occupation. In modern industrialized societies, clothing is not so rigidly regulated and people have more freedom to choose which messages they wish to convey. Nevertheless, clothing can still provide considerable information about the wearer, including individual personality, economic standing, even the nature of events attended by the wearer. When a woman who usually wears blue jeans puts on a frilly, flowered dress, she may be stating that she wants to look more traditionally feminine. A person wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a rock band is probably a fan of that music group and may have attended one of the group’s concerts.

A society’s economic structure and its culture, or traditions and way of life, also influence the clothing that its people wear. In many societies, religious laws regulated personal behavior and permitted only members of an elite class to wear certain prestigious items of clothing. Even in modern democracies, clothing may represent social standing. Clothing with a designer label tends to be relatively expensive, so it may function as an outward sign of a person's economic standing. Clothing most obviously defines a social role in the case of uniforms, such as those worn by police officers and nurses, and garments worn by clergy or members of religious orders. Clothing metaphors—blue-collar and white-collar workers, for example—are used to distinguish between types of work (factory or office, in this example).

Clothing also derives meaning from the environment in which it is worn. In most cultures brides and grooms as well as wedding guests wear special clothes to celebrate the occasion of a marriage. The clothing worn for rituals such as weddings, graduations, and funerals tends to be formal and governed by unwritten rules that members of the society agree upon. Clothing may also signal participation in leisure activities. Certain types of recreation, especially active sports, may require specialized clothing. For example, football, soccer, and hockey players wear matching jerseys and pants designed to accommodate such accessories as protective pads.

Most modern societies comprise different social groups, and each group has its own beliefs and behaviors. As a result, different clothing subcultures exist. Within a single high school, for example, teenagers known as jocks are likely to wear different styles of clothing than teens called nerds. This difference can indicate to which group a teen belongs.

III

Materials Used for Clothing

The development of new materials for use as covering or ornament has played a major role in the history of clothing. In early prehistoric times, the range of materials for clothing was small. Until about 10,000 years ago, people used animal skins for clothing. Single skins were worn as capes thrown around the shoulders; two skins fastened together at the shoulder made a simple garment. Fitted clothes, such as trousers or a parka (an outer garment with a hood), were also made from animal skins. Simple needles made out of animal bone, found in many sites in Europe and Asia, provide evidence of sewn leather and fur garments from at least 30,000 years ago. However, only with the development of textile technology did greater variety become possible.

A

Beginnings of Textile Production

Tens of thousands of years ago, early humans learned to obtain fibers from wild plants, such as wild flax, hemp, and nettles. Such fibers could be spun into thread and made into cloth textiles. People began to weave fabric during the Neolithic Era, a period that began around 8000 bc. Evidence of early weaving comes from fragments of flax fibers found in Switzerland. In some cultures, people made cloth without weaving, by pounding sheets of bark to produce a soft, flexible textile. The development of agriculture led to the domestication of fiber plants, such as cotton, hemp, and flax.

The production of textiles requires the ability to process fibers, spin them into thread, and make cloth from the thread. Cloth can be made in a variety of ways, such as knotting, knitting, and braiding, but most cloth is made by weaving. Weaving is usually done on a loom that holds long threads (called the warp) under uniform tension so that other threads (the woof or weft) can be inserted over and under them. Many different types and patterns of weaving are possible, depending on the fiber used and the arrangement of the threads. Ancient Egyptians wove their earliest textiles from flax, which produced linen; in southern Europe, the earliest textiles came from wool; in China, from silk; and in India, Peru, and Cambodia, from cotton.

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