Impact of Fashion on Individuals Identity

Impact of Fashion on Individuals Identity

Shubham Anil Jain
Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited
Bangalore, India
Email: shubhamajain125@gmail.com

Introduction:
It is important to understand that fashion today has a deeper impact on people’s lives than it once did. Fashion today reveals a portion of a person’s personality and identifies them to others, which is referred to as identification. Fashion can be defined as a constantly changing trend. Every person’s self-realization now includes their clothing. Fashion can have a significant impact on an individual’s identity. The clothes we wear, the accessories we choose, and the way we style ourselves can convey a message about our personality, our culture, and our values. The selection of clothing and accessories is just as significant as identifying one’s gender, height, and skin and hair colors. According to Barnard (2002), “Clothing today is a media of information about the person wearing it.”

Fashion and Its Impact on Individuals Identity:
A person’s personality typically dictates the kind of clothing they should wear. Fashion is frequently regarded as a sign of a person’s individuals identity because clothing reflects the wearer. Even simple wardrobe accents might provide insight into a person’s identity. Given how much about the wearer clothing conveys, the value of an article of clothing will vary based on the personality of the owner. Fashion is a significant informational medium because of connections like these between appearance and personality.

The aforementioned connection between fashion and personal identity is a fundamental contributor to the identity crisis that so many fashion aficionados experience. The definition of modern fashion makes it clear that trends determine it. Since they will want to try on a variety of garments and accessories that symbolize various identities, folks who enjoy staying up with fashion trends may have identity crises. Wealthy young individuals can afford to buy a variety of fashion trends to look stylish.

As a result, his or her personal identity may deteriorate. Hip-hop artists frequently dress in hip-hop attire before dressing in suits, for example. The suit-wearing individual may be well attired for the event, yet this may not influence how other people view the artist. If the artist believes the new dress to be more appealing than the traditional one, the artist’s identity may also suffer. Adopting contemporary culture’s dynamic dress trends puts other people’s identities in equal peril.

1. Age:
Women are taught at an early age that there are specific outfits we may and cannot wear depending on our stage in life. You can undoubtedly relate to this if you’ve ever heard that you should dress for your age. Many of us utilize our clothing to convey our desired or actual age. And as we age, our fashion tends to follow. Thankfully, these “rules” are now much more flexible among adults. Now picture yourself sporting purple makeup or ribbons like you would have done in the sixth grade. Our identities were beginning to take shape at those ages, and that had a significant influence on how we dressed and behaved.

2. Gender:
Most of us learned as children that blue was a boy’s color and pink was a girl’s colour. However, as we age, a vast color palette that isn’t limited to pink or blue becomes available to us. Our traditional concepts of men’s and women’s attire are no longer the best approach to determine someone’s gender in light of gender fluidity and a rise in acceptance of LGBT+ persons. Nowadays, people express their gender through clothing. Jaden Smith, a well-known hip-hop singer and fashion icon, frequently dons attire that might be categorized as “woman’s” clothes. Smith has had a significant impact on how the world perceives gender by using his platform. Smith does not consider an item of clothing to be a man’s or woman’s.

3. Self Expression:
It can be difficult to express who we are and are becoming in words; appearance style appears to provide a means of conveying an idea that is challenging to express verbally—that is, evolving and crossing identities. According to Freitas et al. (1997), it is actually simpler to describe who we want to avoid being or seeming like (e.g., not feminine, not too slutty, not a child). In addition, one identity can meld or fade into another (for instance, gender can become sexuality). Additionally, identity expressions are frequently conflicted.

4. Arriving at Individual Expression:
According to Breward (2003, p. 200), the current fashion consumer was shifting away “from a concern with elaborate artifice” and towards one of personal expression. This is characterized by Crane (2000) as a change from consumer fashion to class fashion. This process was not simple. The fragmentation and dislocation brought about by modernity itself produced a paradoxical understanding of what it meant to be an individual. According to Wilson’s (1985) theory, the modern sense of individuality is like a wound that causes people to worry about maintaining their independence; fashion helps to allay this anxiety while also serving as a reminder that individuality can be constrained.

Conclusion:
We can express ourselves without words by the way we dress. Whether we like it or not, others will evaluate us based on how we seem. While we shouldn’t let other people’s perceptions of us affect our self-confidence, the feedback we get from them throughout the course of our lives will have a significant influence on how we define who we are. Because of the way they dress, people frequently hold others responsible for what occurs. For instance, it’s common for individuals to accuse sexual assault victims of dressed in a “provocative” manner. There are numerous myths regarding appearances, but it is up to us to dispel them and use fashion to define who we are.

References:

1. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/fashion-and-individual-identity
2. https://womens-fashion.lovetoknow.com/fashion-tips-women/fashion-identity
3. https://skierscribbler.com/7634/ae/how-fashion-shapes-our-identity/
4. https://www.fashionnovation.com/fashion-for-enhancing-personal-identity/

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Mazharul Islam Kiron

Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. He is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.

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