Fashion and style Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Fashion and style - Essay Example The essay "Fashion and style" talks about fashion and different styles. Women began to use dresses to express their identity. â€Å"Fashion and style may be regarded as expressive or oppressive, but nobody could argue that fashion reflects expression of woman’s identity, creativity and sensuality, and is connected to a sense of personality on the levels of class and gender†. (The Fashion Plate and the Rise of Consumer Culture) This fashion had features of modern urban culture, which percolated into the contemporary fashion magazines. They focused on brightness, sophistication, metropolitan culture and commerce. There were some famous UK magazines that represented a French world of haute couture - The London and Paris Ladies’ Magazine of Fashion, Le Follet and The World of Fashion. The women’s clothing in the early nineteenth century is the reflection of their persistent watch over their own public identities, and that of other women. Because clothing and a dornment has always been a means of identifying tribe, status and awareness, it is not surprising to discover fashion emerged as a dominant force within the city. â€Å"A whole range of exciting yarns, new fashion fabrics, protective materials and engineered fabrics became widely available after 1960. New materials and fabric finishing techniques are at first exclusive and expensive. Initially, they are offered to the world of haute couture. A couple of years later they filter to the mass market†. In addition, women had more need to present themselves.... se the areas in which women can take up public residence, but, while this led to increased interaction and increased pressure for women's rights, this does not necessarily mean women were quick to accept each other or other classes.With the addition of more women to the workforce who had some degree of control over the money they earned, retailers began to recognize a tremendous new market. During the last part of the nineteenth century women were targeted for successful development of consumerism. Accordingly, pictures in fashion magazines either for advertising purposes or images were as the prototype of a show window. The models on these pictures never looked into the eyes of the reader, representing a feeling of superiority, and expressed sexuality, modesty and self-consciousness at the same time. (Brewer) Development of department stores in the 70s and 80s provided women an escape from their dull living of housewives, and in the 90s the process of shopping was "sexualized". All this was complemented throughout with various genres of advertising. These tendencies in marketing and advertising flourished in the modern world. Myra Macdonald notes in her book "Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media": "As evidence grew in the early decades of the twentieth century that the developing arts of retailing and advertising were attracting a predominantly female clientele, marketers and advertisers became significant definers of twentieth century women's desires and aspirations. " (p. 180) Women as potential consumers are studied now with the help of numerous market researches and surveys. The power of consumer decision-making is changing, and advertising now describes a woman as the person who decides how to spend her money on herself and her family.