Fashion: it’s Characteristics, Contrasts with Custom and Role in Modern Society (2024)

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The Meaning of Fashion:

Fashion also is an important means of social control. I determines our speech, opinion, belief, recreation, dress, music art and literature. We shall briefly study its most salient features and the role that it plays ii society.

Herbert Spencer regarded fashion as a leveller of custom Gabriel Trade defends fashion as the “imitation of contemporaries. MacIver has well described fashion “as the socially approve sequence of variation on a customary theme.” According to Lundberg, “Fashions are folkways that survive for only a short time.” E. A. Ross writes, “Fashion is a series of recurring changes in the choices of a group of people which, though they may be accompanied by utility, are not determined by it.” Kimball Young defines fashion as “the current or prevailing usage mode, manner or characteristic of expression, presentation, of conception of those particular cultural traits which customise allows to change.” Fashion implies certain habits upon which fashionable changes flourish. It is a compromise between desire for novelty and desire for conformity. It is a transitory accepted change on a permanent line of behaviour. Thus wearing a nylon sari, putting on high heeled shoes, having bobbed hair, playing cricket, using painting to decorate the drawing room, going in pair are all examples of fashion.

To make the meaning of fashion more clear, we may look to the meaning of two other words, ‘Etiquette’ and ‘Convention’. Convention and etiquette are merely matters of convenience in social relations without having any deeper meaning. Convention prescribes those forms which social relations in given situations must follow. These forms are merely social agreement. They are socially agreed upon procedures. They make social relationships go smoothly and automatically with a minimum of confusion and friction.

Thus that one must avoid topics might create tension if openly expressed, that certain forms of speech and behaviour should be used to keep a relationship on a superficially friendly basis, when undersea the there is conflict of interest, that one should not say lo a man’s face what one says to his friends, are all examples of convention. Unless these conventions are followed, human relations would be uncouth and unbearable.

Etiquette prescribes the detailed formalities lo be observed on ceremonious occasions. It is a code with respect to manners. Thus greeting and wishing well are modes of etiquette.

Fashion, it may be noted, is not something which society just tolerates but it is something that society accepts. It has an element of social sanction behind it: if it were not so then fashion would fall into the category of cynicism.

Characteristics of Fashion:

The following characteristics of fashion may be pointed out:

(i) Fashion is a group choice:

Fashion is not an individual choice but is a group choice. So long as a particular choice remains confined lo an individual, it may better be called ‘style’ and not fashion. The style becomes a fashion when adopted by a number of people.

(ii) Fashion is changeable:

The important characteristic of fashion is its changing nature. If it survives long, it ceases to be a fashion and may become a folkway or mores.

(iii) The element of utility may or may not be present in fashion:

A fashion may be adopted for some utilitarian purpose, but it is not essential that every fashion should carry some utility nor can it be said that all fashions are useless.

(iv) Fashions are all-pervading:

Fashions embrace a large part of human life. They can be seen in numerous fields, from speech to dress. Fashions are found in every society.

(v) Uniformity:

Due to the rapid means of transport fashions spread from one corner to the other corner of the world. The Fashions of American hippies have spread in Indian society as well.

(vi) Maddening tempo:

Sometimes fashions change so quickly that it becomes difficult to be in step with the changing fashions.

Contrasts between Custom and Fashion:

Custom and fashion are sometimes thought of as interchangeable. But in fact it is not so.

The following points of contrast may be noted between the two:

(i) Custom is enduring, fashion is changeable:

Custom is enduring; fashion is changeable. Custom is transmitted from generation to generation, and custom only is followed from time immemorial. Fashion, on the other hand, is short lived and hardly lives a decade. Time is the very essence of fashion.

The style of dress that seems so beautiful today will appear ridiculous a few years hence. If fashion survives long, it in fact, ceases to be a fashion. Permanence of fashion means the demise of fashion; fashion is followed because it has never been followed before.

(ii) Custom is spontaneous, fashion is artificial:

Custom is spontaneous, fashion is artificial. Custom grows in society by itself and followed as a matter of habit but fashion is created and followed with a purpose in mind. Sometimes it is the aristocracy which starts a new fashion and others follow it. Sometimes it is a political or social movement which starts a fashion as the wearing of Khadi in modern India. Sometimes a business firm invents” a fashion to popularize a product by associating it with some film star. Sometimes fashions are started by those who are skillful at catching the mood of the moment and are imitated simply because they arouse interest.

(iii) Custom stands for sociality, fashion for individuality:

Custom stands for sociality, fashion for individuality. Custom is followed by all the members of a community and this universal following creates social bonds between them. Fashion is started by somebody and somebody has to be the last to adopt it.

Just how fashion starts is still something of a mystery requiring more sociological research to solve than has yet been given it. When it becomes universal, it loses its novelty and gives place to a new fashion. By following a custom an individual seeks to identify himself with the rest, whereas by following a fashion he seeks to distinguish himself from the rest.

(iv) Custom is concerned, with important matters, fashion with frivolous ones:

Custom is concerned with the intimate life and temperament of the group, fashion is generally concerned with frivolous and superficial matters. Or, in other words, we may say that fashion pertains to things that can change because they are trivial, whereas custom pertains to things that cannot change because they are important.

Fashion stresses the change itself, not what changes. In the field of dress there are general types of garments prescribed by custom for particular occasions, such as weddings, mournings or sports, or for particular seasons; while within these types the styles are regulated by fashion.

Whether a girl puts on a nylon sari or a cotton sari is not a matter so important as whether she puts on a sari or not. Just as in dress similarly in recreation and many other areas of social behaviour fashion determines, “the fugitive varieties of the custom- prescribed general types.” People follow fashions because to be completely out of fashion in many particulars is to lose much social prestige and few people care to run such a risk.

(v) Fashion grows where custom breaks off:

Fashion frequently grows where custom breaks off. If divorce becomes a fashion, society may be said to be heading for disaster. If the use of contraceptives becomes a fashion, the future of the family may be doomed. When fashion takes the place of morality, the solid pillars of social life are shaken.

Fashion in Modern Society:

Fashion is more prevalent in modern society than in primitive tribes or peasant communities.

The following are the reasons:

(i) Mobile class structure:

The modern society is an open society where class distinctions are not so rigid as in primitive society. Its urban and mobile class structure enables people to cultivate individual taste and adopt new course. The modern society is more tolerant of differences and therefore places few shackles on the cycle of fashion.

Our standards of judgment have also changed. Today the individual is rated more by observable externalities than by his ancestry, his character or his genuine accomplishments. The clothes a man wears, the language he speaks, the manners he shows have more weight in ascribing a status than his simplicity, patriotism and integrity. If he can keep himself upto date in the matters of his dress, speech and manners, he will assure himself a high social esteem.

(ii) Affluence:

Not only the mobile and urban character of modern society, but its affluence also speaks for greater prevalence of fashion in it. Men today are richer than their ancestors and have more leisure. They have the necessary means and time to play with luxuries and to think of fashion.

As MacIver writes: “We do not think of fashion in overalls; there is more of fashion in the body of an automobile than in its chassis; there are no fashion in steam shovels. Consequently, the higher the standard of living, the more material there is for fashion to operate upon.”

(iii) Means of communication:

Finally, the enormous development of the means of communication is also responsible for the spread of fashion in modern society. The barriers of time and distance have been broken down. A novelty invented anywhere soon becomes known everywhere. Advertisem*nt and motion pictures have become the carriers of fashion.

Today a number of specialists are busy in creating novelties. Custom is more powerful in the areas remote from communications where isolation is greatest. In modern society the hold of custom loses hold, fashion gains new ground. The cumulative inventions of the industrial age have diminished the area of life controlled by custom and increased the area controlled by fashion.