I will first state that this post flits about like a demented mosquito but it comes together in the end if you follow the threads and are patient. Just enjoy the journey.
They say that clothes make the man. I'm not sure where that leaves women but it seems that the more technologically advanced we become, the less well dressed we are. I have often wondered upon this discrepancy and have decided to address it, forgive the pun.
Clothing throughout history has indicated the status of the person wearing it because of the fineness or richness of the fabric or even the rareness of the fur or skin of which it was made. Dyes and decorations also indicated status and only some classes were allowed to wear certain dyes in certain cultures. Metals and precious stones were also used as embellishments and the wealthier you were, the rarer of these you were able to obtain and wear while the poorer or lower classes often used cheaper metals and glass to emulate those worn by their wealthier counterparts.
It is interesting to note that mankind is the only creature to clothe itself. Animals, however, have evolved to display colors used for camouflage or to catch the attention of mates. My favorite animal to provide an example of this is, in fact, a bird; the extraordinary Peacock. The female is a dull grey but the male's plumage is fabulous and what a performance he puts on to win a female.
How, I often wonder, does a creature evolve and adapt to its environment in order to ensure the success of future generations when the animal cannot see itself? How does it compare its appearance to that of its environment? One of life's mysteries is to understand how the brain stores the details of the animal's surroundings in its data bank and passes that information to its genes so its progeny can gradually adapt to fit the environment.
I don't for one moment believe it is accidental but that the mind is, even at the level of a non self aware animal, the most extraordinarily clever organ. We have not yet begun to really comprehend its complexity although we have begun to understand what parts of the brain are responsible for managing particular parts of our body.
Another interesting thought is that, perhaps, because homo sapiens did become sapient, or was on his way to becoming sapient, that the brain worked towards this aspect of his evolution rather than camouflage as the brain would become the means by which he could protect himself. The subconscious, or perhaps the Limbic system of the brain, allied with its more evolved lobes, is intelligent at a level we cannot understand, in that it has come up with a way to direct the body to protect itself by evolving to disguise its exterior and also making itself attractive to a potential mate.
Now some people and, no doubt, many scientists would argue that this is nonsense and it's all an accident of nature. To them I say bah, humbug. We don't even know why or how we came to be, self conscious or otherwise. What our brains are capable of is, frankly, impressive, but at the same time, not much. We cannot possibly think our brains have evolved to their full extent. If we do we are being like the smart alec in the schoolyard or the teenager who is quite sure his parents are idiots. He or she thinks they have discovered thought and their parents are imbeciles. They are wrong. We are all imbeciles.
But back to clothes. Since the Middle Ages, men's and women's standards of dress have been rigid and dictated by the fashion of the times. Women's curvaceous forms have been held in by corsets that defy the ability of their lungs to expand and, for men, it wasn't until Beau Brummel first wore long pants instead of knee breeches that were accompanied by stockings that the current fashion of trousers was born. His influence on fashion has remained legend or, to this day, women might be fighting their male partners for their pantyhose.
The modern couturiers of today favour stick thin woman and this brings me back to why the saying is that clothes make the man. Men carry their fat deposits on their stomachs and under their chins. This provides a certain uniformity for designers to work with. Men look great in uniform too thanks to their inverted triangular shapes while women rarely do. It is the skeleton that gives fashion structure. Women, however, put on fat in all manner of places. How can a couturier possibly create fashion for female curves without knowing where those curves will appear? Hence they choose tall, rectangular, fat free women to inspire their designs and on whom they look good because they do not possess a stray mound of fat to ruin the line of the garment.
Recently the curvaceous rear of Kim Kardashian has become vogue. She has a tiny waist and no overhanging saddles protruding from her rear. I still, however, don't regret the liposuction I had on my saddle thighs at forty. They and my rear were the only part of me that weren't thin. It made buying slacks hell but that was pre-elastane, which became my best friend. I used to have to choose slacks and skirts a size too large to accommodate my hips but that swam around my waist. Thanks to the liposuction I fit clothes better now. Women have so many different types of attire to choose from because there are so many varied shapes of the female body and they have to find one that fits theirs. This is why, I believe, clothes do not make the woman. We are not the bespoke gender and just have to choose what works for us.
This brings me to the question, why are our clothes less formal now, more deshabillé?
I have a number of theories. One is that fabrics became more comfortable thanks to manufacturers creating stretch fabrics but that doesn't really explain it. The other is that, over time, our technological achievements have become many. In past times, pre technology, it was the ability to construct complex edifices, for example the pyramids, that showed how clever an animal man is. Using natural fibres such as cotton and silk, spinning and then weaving them into fabrics also showed intelligence that set us apart from the animals. Until the industrial revolution, apart from the discovery of dynamite, the refining of metals and creating tools with them, language and mathematics, only these accomplishments set us apart from the non self aware beasts.
These things, however, began to pale into insignificance when mankind hit the twentieth century. Of course the next advances wouldn't have been possible without the former, but mankind was beginning to take the old ones for granted. We harnessed electricity and what a rocket boost that gave to so many types of manufacture, not to mention opening up the opportunity for all kinds of new inventions that could be powered by it. It was like a superhighway of potential and reached its zenith in the computer and, following that, the Internet.
It was only fifty years before I was born that man invented a machine that could fly. Women wore long dresses and didn't have the vote. There were no domestic refrigerators, televisions or cars. The car had been invented but hardly a soul owned one, nor was the means of mass production yet invented. By the time I was thirty all these inventions had been part of our lives for years. Baby boomers were truly the first to live in the modern age and not much seemed to change in a big way, except culturally and in regard to women's rights, until the eighties. All this time, however, computers had been evolving as well as shrinking and satellites were being launched into space and being used for communication. That nifty gadget, long imagined by science fiction and secretly lusted for by all humans, the mobile phone came into being. At first they were the size of large house bricks but no one cared. The Jetsons had come to life. Oddly this one invention made man and womankind feel they had truly arrived in the imagined future. But we hadn't seen anything yet. By the nineties the time was ripe and the Internet was born and this changed everything.
After this things may have looked the same but everything was different. Mail became electronic, telephone conversations became text, mobile phones and the Internet mated and created a superbeing: the Smart phone. We took photos and videos with it and instantly sent them to someone anywhere in the world. Towers were built to ensure global coverage for all who wanted a phone, the Internet or both. The world became truly global and people suddenly felt it was harder to become important in a world where everyone counted and could have their say about anything.
It became very hard for governments, institutions, criminals and just ordinary people to hide anything but they still tried. The one detriment to this overwhelming connectedness is the inability to be covert, but naturally it has, like any cloud, a silver lining. How you see this is a bit like how you see a half full/empty glass. It depends on your point of view. It is wonderful to talk to someone you are not with who is half way around the globe. It is wonderful to bank instantly, pay instantly, shop online, stream movies and music. You can even become an Instagram sensation if that's your thing and you've Botoxed yourself, plumped up your lips and are willing to display your assets to the entire planet. You can write 140 character statements (now 280) on Twitter, if you can be profound enough in few enough words, to say something world shaking, but presidents have tried and ended up with their feet in their mouth.
Watching all this from my Baby Boomer point of view, I'm amused. I personally feel that what we had by the eighties was enough. I am accused now, when I don't upgrade my technology, of not keeping up, to which I say, "I've watched it from the beginning and, frankly, I'm tired of it. Tired of seeing planned obsolescence so that I have to upgrade to the latest version of Word, or whatever, as it won't fit on my old computer. I'm tired of greed and I was happy before all this."
I'm not against all this innovation of course, I just no longer care. Yes I love my Smartphone but the other day one of my Apps disappeared because they had upgraded it for newer phones. I'm not going to buy a newer phone until the present one dies of old age.
But what has this to do with clothes? Well, obviously, everything. We are way past trying to show how far we are above other animals and so what we wear is no longer a means of showing how far we have progressed from our cave dwellings. We can now be as shabby as a caveman because our technology has kicked clothing way down the ranking scale.
Just remember, however, that disasters can occur and we still require all the knowledge we've picked up over the millennia and may one day need it again to survive. That's why school children should learn handwriting, food growing, fire making and all the basic arts of survival. We must not take technology for granted. Only a few people have actually contributed to the inventions that have taken us this far and we just learn the skills to survive in our present world. I think that's dangerous. I think we all need survival courses and books. Yes, we definitely need printed books because they endure and are not beamed to our computers by a satellite that may, one day, not be there.
And you thought this article was just about clothing. I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
END.
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