Language disguises the thought, so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.
The western culture is cultivating a grand love affair with the distinctive fashion style in India. Along with Indian music and spirituality, Indian clothing is seeing a huge impact on main stream identities of western style and culture. The main intention of this essay is to demonstrate how this emerging trend relates to the changing face of Indian fashion.
Fashion is the style and custom prevalent at a given time. To some it’s an art form, to others it’s like a part of their culture and religion but to most it is a method of utilizing cloth to show or hide something about themselves. Fashion can be used to serve as an extension of one’s own personality or to disguise one’s own true self. One of the major points here is, how does art, culture and industry, the three aspects of life, relate to fashion? The English dictionary states that, art is a human skill opposed to nature. There are various for and against argument on whether fashion is an art form. One view that favors the argument is, art is a visual medium whose creators respond to the same stimuli as painters and sculptors and like art, it involves immense creativity as well as mastery of technique and materials. The view against it is, artists supposedly are not concerned with selling, they are consumed with creating works of art, not producing a collection for regularly scheduled showings (Rhodes, 2003). Culture on the other hand is basically an ‘intellectual development’ at a certain time and a certain place and refers to certain human behavior and activities that conclude to significance and importance whereas; industry is a segment of economy, concerned with the production of goods and service. It is an essential component of most societies and fashion is a huge contributor to it. The major fashion cities have continuous competition between each other and due to their different strategies become known as the ‘cultural industries’. The history of costume, Barthes (1983) says, has a general epistemological value. By ‘history of costume’, he means a socio-semiotic reading of the phenomenon of clothing as an articulate language through which it is possible to analyse a culture, as system and process, institution and individual act, expressive reserve and significant order. The nature of fashion, however, constantly changes and focuses on newness, or the illusion of something new which means that signs and symbols are transient. According to Woodruffe-Burton “fashion is a visual commentary on the excess of a postmodern culture, the perfect foil for a world of fragmented and commensurate identities and personage, offering a dynamic procession of free floating signs and symbolic exchanges”.
SUBMITTED BY:
CONTEST ENTRY # 3
Name –. Fatema Pansari
College Name –. K. P. B. Hinduja College
Course Name – BMS
Which year – SY
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