Review of available Literature on fashion design, fashion, and their influence
A number of new, theoretical approaches and studies of fashion, fashion design, and the study of dress have appeared, casting new light on the issue of stylistic change as shaped by social, political, and cultural processes, and demonstrating links between the embodied self and social history. (Maynard 2000)
For example, Maynard states that (2000) “Australian designers like Kee and Jackson were attempting, partly through referencing indigenous (aboriginal) motifs and cultural 'borrowings', to offer supposedly timeless and 'genuine' clothing alternatives outside the framework and cycles of novelty endemic to orthodox Western fashion. These options were for the relatively wealthy consumer but soon flowed into everyday consumption and the tourist market. «In the early 1970s, the political climate of the Whitlam government, elected in 1972, fostered new encouragement to artists as a way of strengthening national identity. (Maynard 2000) At that moment two Australian designers Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson inaugurated the innovative Flamingo Park boutique in Sydney. These two designers, and others, too, became invigorated through contact with what they considered to be timeless, spiritually uplifting 'grassroots' design, namely Australian indigenous art, artifacts, and textiles. (Maynard 2000)
In the work “'Fashion in Undress': Clothing and Commodity Culture in Household”, Catherine Waters (year) discusses dressing and social identity, dressing and social influence, clothing and behavior and found out that there are much interconnected and influence each other. The author found
out that clothing has an important role in people’s lives and also how people judge and judged (or perceived) only because of getting dressed. Waters found out that fetishism of the commodity arises when fashion identity becomes extremely important for a person and in the society too. Waters also discusses the function of uniforms, as they make the man and marks them as an inherently ambiguous signifier and when it is always a fashion, the identity of a person always will be the constant in society. Another article that supports this idea is “Sociology of Fashion: Order and Change” by Aspers Patrick and Godart Frederik (year), where authors examined fashion as a social phenomenon, that important for society in terms of culture and economy. Later Jukka Gronow (1993) discusses a similar idea and marked people’s losing their identity and personality or preserving it due to the social impact of fashion. Elaborating on ideas of Emanuel Kant and George Simmel, Gronow explained fashion, clothing role in society as a way to express and distinguish himself in society and at the same time get aesthetic pleasure. Moreover, Gronow pointed out that for people fashion is a tool to solve the problem of the philosophy of life as was expressed once by Emanuel Kant.
When the fashion product being made there a lot of things that need to be considered and to be taken into account. They can be sociological, economic, and psychological analyses of the society, due to their important role and impact. By making particular product marketing specialists or designers should know what is in demand now and what people will mostly like and how it should be presented. Fatma Engin Alpat and Yusuf Ziya Aksu (2014) found out that people’s taste, requirements, likes to play a big role in the formation of a new product and it is extremely important to examine what people prefer in terms of textile products. Authors suggest that only “with the integration of esthetic ideas existing in human nature” it is possible to create fashion products. (Aplat and Aksu, 2014).
Demshina (2009) points out that ethnic destination in the last decades is one of the most demanded in the design. And in analyzing ethno tendencies in modern design it is important to take into consideration the connection of actualization of ethnical theme with common cultural processes, history of the formation of the trends in fashion, the main features of ethnic style, creative understanding among different ethnic theme designers. When exploring ethnic trends in design, it is necessary to make a difference in the definition: ethnic trends, national style, and folklore. From a theoretical point of view between the suit in national style and ethnic style, there is a certain difference. Demshina (2009) characterize national style as the generalization and interpretation of traditions, and ethnic style is differentiable by national color, character, ecology, and details of the ethnographic style of a country. Moreover, it approves the idea of harmony between man and nature. (Demshina 2009)
For fashion designers, it is also very important to be in right place in order to succeed. The productive role of 'quality of place': a case study of fashion designers in Toronto Leslie and Brail (2011) researched this idea and come up to decide that for fashion designer it is extremely important to have a “luck” to be in right place in a right time. But the main thing is that new designers a less likely to influence and to be recognized than old ones, thus it is the whole social process to gain popularity and build up a market for fashion designers. Following this idea, Finnane (1993) discusses how Chinese fashion designers are building upmarket and growing in China, but at the same time their struggle to get recognition on the world stage. As China market associates with products of poor quality, it also creates a negative attitude from people. Although China is a big republic, according to this study a lot of people preferred foreign brands. The same tendency can be noticed in Kyrgyzstan.
In Grassroots Style: Re-Evaluating Australian Fashion and Aboriginal Art in the 1970s and 1980s Margaret Maynard (2000) wrote about Australian designers in the 1970s and 1980s who looked for inspiration and relied on European history, in the hope to find alternatives to the current Western fashionable style (Maynard 2000). Maynard states that by the end of the 1960s, the Australian government and community agencies were also seriously encouraging indigenous craftspeople to design textiles and make clothing using traditional motifs as a route toward self-sufficiency and cultural reclamation (p-24). Since the early 1980s, there has been an explosion of urban, highly politicized Aboriginal art, alongside what is regarded as more spiritual, so-called 'authentic', nonurban art. So in the Australian fashion designers example, it is analyzed that, ethnicity, national imagery, and indigenous imagery, can never be 'essential' but must be regarded as moving through cultures and through art forms and be seen as expendable and subjective notions, looking back to shared cultural or historical markers but always in process and never static. (Maynard 2000).
In their study “Social Utility and Fashion Behavior,” McIntyre, Miller, and Jones (1992) present results of the examination on the development of fashion ad its influence on society. This data was gathered using computer-based simulation. The research shed the light on how to influence society's fashion and how it varies in different cases and situations. Also, fashion behavior varies from person to person depending on his/her personal treats. Hence, this research presents valuable data that could help to understand both fashion behavior and also dynamics and varieties of social influence.
“Women have historically been marginalized in concepts of human rights definitions and applications. This 'gender' blind spot in human rights law and movements was, and remains to a fair degree, blatant” (Han-Woo, 1999).
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