Fashion, Identity, and Social Change, Essay Example

In “Fashion, Identity, and Social Change,” the role of clothing is related to social construction and identity. Clothing and fashion has long been seen as identifiers of social class. Clothing often identified people’s occupations, religion and class. The idea of artifacts as agency gives meaning to how we see ourselves and others. Ultimately, clothing creates behavior because it is on display for all to see and signals certain responses from society as a whole. Now, social movement is more fluid, so there identifying one’s class based on fashion and clothing is a bit harder. In the United States, early immigrants were able to shed their old clothing and begin a new life free of social class and distinction. The emerging fashion markets allowed people of all income levels to represent their style in the ways they wanted. The transition from uniform-type fashion style to ambiguous, fluid styles shows the important of the changing fashion based on how we interact with others and how we see ourselves. Fluidity in fashion is what defines current trends and social behavior and gives individuals more creativity and room to define themselves.