Monday, April 11, 2011

Why England has no national dress

By Art Wilson


We're all well aware now that fashion is constantly on the move. You can't go to a boutique from one month to the nest without seeing that new trends are emerging and new styles being sought. Old styles are recycled and people engage with the looks of past decades with a sentimental eye. But where is a costume that people in England can look at and say: that's our fashion heritage? There isn't one. Unlike Japan that boasts hundreds of year old styles of dress, England, and most of Europe, doesn't have a look that it's ever clung to for long.

Europe underwent a great change in fashion during the 8th century onwards. Really this is when the roots of fashion were set. The exiled Muslim fashion designer Ziryab captured the imagination of Spanish nobles with new styles that he adapted from Moorish items. But this wasn't a simple introduction to one new style. It became a thirst for styles, with new types of clothes released with the seasons.

In 14th century England fashion was well established. Men took time to accentuate what they saw as their best features. They wore clothes that padded their chests and barely covered their buttocks. Ruffs became status symbols that drew attention to the face of the wearer, and swords were in some way ornamental too.

Of course we're not still padding our chests and wearing hotpants now, for the most part, so why didn't any of these new, impractical styles stick? Class has a lot to do with it. Upper class nobles didn't want to feel they were wearing the same as their subjects, while the subjects were constantly striving to look like the nobles. Rich people wanted to make their look unattainable, so international styles were incorporated and lavish new designs were constantly being made. Fashion is about snobbery, and that's part of its nature.

Things are more open today, with England as a prosperous country and its inhabitants enjoying the freedom to choose their styles, but there's still plenty of the same snobbery that has robbed England, and Europe as a whole, of any real clothing heritage. Greater freedom, relatively, in these nations has meant that riches rather than rules have allowed people to forge new identities.




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