Fashoin cycles.

For centuries, we have used clothes as a form of nonverbal communiation of status, wealth, race, gender, sexual availability locality and class

But exactly what is fashion. many of us shop for the latest trends, but how many of us know why things come in and out as they do?

After all, Last years winter clothes are probarbly fine for this winter, Just as this years summer clothes will do just as good a job of covering you up and keeping you cool next year.
Fashion, as many people seem to think may not be a matter of life and death, but its got to the stage in society where it's an important factor in communication.

Fashion is a form of iconography which communicates meanings about people and groups. In its every form, from that handbag you see a woman carrying to the hundred peircings that guy has, it enables out individuality and identity to be understood quickly and easily by the casual onlooker.

The way we percieve beauty is dependant on the cultural atttudes of the time. The women painted as beautiful a hundred years ago would look undesirable, now because our values and our society has changed. Many of us have lost the ability to change or maintain our shape either through tight corsetry or through impatience meaning we don't bother to diet, therefor, societys perception of beauty has changed.

Whilst we, as humans constantly look for affiliation into the group, we also have an innate urge to be different, and individual. Removal of dress codes and laws means we are now able to use fashion to differentiate between the different roles that a person plays in one day. For example, we might wear Trousers, Sensible shoes and a shirt at work, to portray a sensible and mature image, but for going out in the evening, something less sensible would be adorned, to portray a sexual, interesting or even just a fun image.

A trend is designed, and approved by others, then it is copied and recopied and because of competition, it eventually dies, having ceased to express ones individuality, leading to the birth of a new trend.