Fashion in the Postmodern Era - Essay Example

Fashion in the Postmodern Era Introduction Postmodern describes the changes witnessed in literature, drama, planning, cinema, and fashion including other aspects of life. Postmodernism has become a major challenge to philosophers and scholars in an attempt of deriving meaning, and finding out whether it ever existed. Scientists and philosophers have argued that, since the 1980s, elements matching to postmodern culture have often been observed in the fashion trends. In fact, they argue that, were it not for postmodern, fashion would not be a subject to focus on as a major study (Crane & Bovone, 2006). However, the main industries prospering during the postmodern era was fashion, which was controlled by forces of the late capitalism period, especially an obsessive devotion to possession, conspicuous consumption built-in obsolesce, hyper individualism, and an exploitation of the art and culture. The purpose of postmodern philosophers was to heighten suspicions and doubts in the modern assumption, which are still clinging to our culture, enquire the allusions upheld concerning the truth, knowledge, power, language and the self. Modernism intended to be romantic, nostalgic for a primitive era, and ignoring an omniscient number that placed itself outside and above the society. Postmodernism has some key elements that build the concept of modernism. They include modern objectives of progress, rationality, order and individualism. The objective of modernity is the perpetual changes in the pursuit of progress (Black, 2010). Artist, philosophers and scholars state that the existing culture is postmodern. This is because the presuppositions evident in the postmodern are summed up succinctly as sweeping changes in the values and morals of the Western society from those of the recent past, resulting in a radically changed social existence. Modernism tended to be like the goddess position that was fundamental, authentic and important whereas postmodernism was involved in disrupting this transcendental stance. Power of Fashion and Sociology of Fashion Fashion is a style accepted by a big number of people for a certain time. Fashion is placed at the inception of the modern era heightening with the ascent of the industrial revolution. Fashion can outline the fundamental nature of the city culture and life in the west, challenging the initial reign of royalty, family and religious certainty. For example, in the early ninetieth and the early twentieth century, capital was more invested in selling commodities depending on the qualities that were in the production. According to postmodern theories, culture functioned by hindering misplaced obstruction and not significance for postmodern generation. Theorists further suggest that the era tended to assimilate cultural pessimism, which rose in Germany and proceeded to World War 1. Aspects like cultural development and social condition bring Simmel’s view of fashion in modernism. Veblen 1899claim that fashion in postmodernism was brought by patterns of other persons from a higher class. According to Blumer (1969), fashion erupted as a different aspect in open class society. In other words, fashion arose in the form of styles, which demarcate from the learned group. Moreover, fashion depends on certain types of society where it takes place; in postmodernism fashion is a channel of change that is natural and scarce and not unusual or aberrant. However, despite his research doing very well in published literature, it could not give the key point as a social happening. In postmodernism, fashion is the key factor that dictates the society and the cultural field. On the other hand, the performance is extended to identity; the identity is not viewed as changing essence but rather as a performance. Embodied behaviour need to be reinvented on a daily basis, even in its complex aspect such as gender or ethnicity. According to Blumer (1969), fashion in postmodernism erupted as a result of differences in society, but another theorist Lipovetsky, felt that fashion came in the shape of the body. In the same context, Blumer (1969), argues that fashion depends on a certain society and Lipovetsy claims that fashion depend on certain aspects like gender and ethnicity. In other words, postmodern commodities lose their relation between labour and people that give its meaning as is the case with modernity (Blumer, 1969). Fashion and Cultural Movement Rap music came from the environs where people spoke rhythmically over record music; the Mc was only there to bookstand, and keeps the crowd dancing. However, with time the Mc started “rapping” or talking rhythmically to the beats of the music, imitating the intonation and inflections of local radio Deejay. Moreover, the Dj took the initiative of their emerging Mcs who would “fight” among themselves for lyrical supremacy. In addition, rap music indicated the disregarded yet sanctioned voice of young African Americans (Clay, 2003). Hip-hop is a North America-based culture; it is characterized by break dancing, art, Mc and rapping, or rhythmically talking over disco beats. In the same context, Hip-hop was a change of the saccurine-saturated disco era that abandoned the concerns of Black youth. In addition, the modern dance was against the repressiveness and rigidity that kept a woman bound in pointed shoes and male inspired phantasmal roles. Postmodern blackness is a generation of the Black youth born in the early seventies and who had come age in the "after glow" of the Civil Rights era. However, there are a few overlapping issues that the Black youth experience today including trafficking of drugs, such as Bronx, NY, along with the corresponding crime. With the current generation, postmodern Blackness is exemplified with Hip hop culture. It is becoming significance across-cultural source of contention; however hip hop artist lament on the violence in gangster rap and long for a re-birth of less hip hop commercial. In addition, postmodern Black witnessed minstrelization in hip hop culture, a return to caricatured representation of masculine bravado and the subsequent objection of ladies. Hence, postmodern blacks threaten to weaken the cultural strength of homogenization, postmodern blackness try on an authenticity that clearly brings out the difference between them and the white culture while constructing a culture of its own. For instance, the black had a single social cause to rally and were bound together by religious faith. Black people may be inclined to say blackness miss the significant transform that social and the economic conditions inflict on Black culture (Shapiro, 2004). During the period 1970- 1980, there was no continues civil rights movement for them to be involved to drugs and crime ravaged their neighbourhood schools were not providing adequate education of, gangs ran the streets and many blacks youth had never been to church. In the same context, this social, economic and cultural desperation, hip-hop evolved. Hip is post-social because it has broken from what the many of the civil rights generation perceived as traditional blackness, hip is post-modern because it represents a resistance culture. The problematic homogenization of hip-hop is clear of its post-modern status as evidenced through its use to sell commodities, advertise and conformities to predictable formulas and patterns. Post-modern blackness in hip-hop music entails identity construction of blackness, pastiche and borrowing in sampling the naturalization of patriarchal virtues through feminine authenticity (Shapiro, 2004). In other words, post-modern blackness is perceived that blackness sis diverse, complex, multi-dimensional and socially built while it seeks to denaturalize the social construction of whiteness. Therefore, culture and hip-hop is a dimension of postmodern blackness. History of Fashion Art is a form of culture that evolves from a system of evolved activity, whereas fashion is a generic term for the forms of culture that change regularly and diffuse rapidly and widely. In the same context, fashion in clothing is what fashion designers and fashion organizations produce. In addition, fashion systems, organizations, institutions and individual’s interact with one another to build, legitimate and disseminate a particular form of culture (Henderson & Delong, 2000). However, fashion design, such as architecture, interior design and furniture design are entirely different from fine art because the system of collective relationship comprises of anaesthetic economy. On the other hand, aesthetic economies both economic calculation and aesthetic issues are the important aspects of cultural production. Economic calculation is intervened by cultural concerns and is related to cultural knowledge, capital and acquired tastes, and to social, cultural and institution relationships. However, in fine arts, economic considerations tend to be minimal in the production of art. It may acquire economic value whereas in fine arts creates artworks despite its economic value. Since 1980 when the Japanese invaded the fashion world several designers from Japan appeared in the global scene. Their designs puzzled and fascinated many in the fashion industry (Sudjic, 1990). In the history of fashion, the body shape is important, the design should fit closely at some point as hips, sleeves or the whole body shape. The most imperative factor in a successful design, balance of the garment is to distribute the waist suppression. The curve is longer than a straight line between two given point, the length must be allowed to provide and enable the garment to follow a natural curve of the figure. When analyzing body shape, it is clear that the measurement is the same, the configuration of the body is unique, an illusion rather than physical, which constitutes the fashion. The ideas behind the fashion appear to have precedence over the physical fashion and this is because his ideas were central to the fashion (Sudjic, 1990). This is a consistent concept in the fashion industry because artists are coming up with their own ideas to create fashion. In addition, Rei’s fashions show that artists should create ideas blindly rather that forcing aesthetic judgments into the fashions. Fashion Forecasting Fashion forecasting is a method for looking for pattern in fashion. As stated earlier, fashion is a form of culture, which evolves from a system of evolved activity. Therefore, it is apparent that it will induce some form of trends, which would be observable during the modernist and postmodernist eras. In fact, fashion is a representation of the forms of culture, which change regularly and diffuse rapidly and widely. In the same context, fashion in clothing is what fashion designers and fashion organizations produce. In addition, fashion systems, organizations, institutions and individual’s interact with one another to build, legitimate and disseminate a particular form of culture (Henderson & Delong, 2000). However, fashion design, such as architecture, interior design and furniture design are entirely different from fine art because the system of collective relationship comprises of anaesthetic economy. Postmodern movement explains revolutionary period as prior traditions were question and dramatically changed, modernist saw it changed in many major global ways. The trend in lifestyle started what eventually become the diverse cultural conditions of post modernity, the spread of life changes influenced the trend and included the idea of the individual expression. Moreover, trend started with super mannerism, super graphics, new-wave hypsography through to retro and vernacular design was advancing visual culture during postmodern time. In addition, modern culture gave way for a new form of expression and the way of life. Political and social viewpoints are prejudice and biases tradition is criticized and a new of thinking evolves, hence the trend in postmodernism is greatly accepted as an expression of cultural change. In 1990s, there may have erupted the personal involvement and self absorbed bearing of social activism. Postmodernism put life behind in visual culture by exploration of forcing the boundaries of preconceived allusions, in the same context limitation of historical reference and decoration, and postmodern ignored the vernacular, which was strict rules to modernist by looking for information that had been formatted by the modernist (Veblen, 1899). The trend in postmodern culture has pushed design or this time testing the limit of already existing style and hence creating a method of visual culture that was different in the modernist era. Aesthetic postmodernism erupted in the new avant-garde modernist movements and bohemian subculture, which in turn rebelled against the alienating factors of industrialization and rationalization, while trying the culture and research creative self-realization in postmodernism. However, modernist visual culture was on the removal of fancy, unnecessary decoration. This contributed to the stripping the visual all the bare fundamental and focused on the basic elements of shape and colour. Upcoming design in postmodernism like super mannerism and super graphic are evolving with the embrace of pop-art concept of changing setting and scale and including an oblique stroke to the straight and upright structure of modern architecture. There is new, internationally designer in Switzerland are exploring their ideas in America, postmodernism fashion graphic design are delivering liberation of freedom (Veblen, 1899). This trend of postmodern fashion is being accepted widely in the architecture furniture and graphic arts. Conclusion Fashion is a complicated phenomenon, which has evolved since the modernist era to the postmodernism era. In this regard, artist, philosophers and scholars utters that the existing culture is postmodern; this is because the differences witnessed between the 6two eras are substantial, but the latter appears to be common in this century. The postmodern era has seen to the sweeping changes in the values and molars of Western society from those of the modernist era, resulting in a radically changed cultural and social existence. An analysis of fashion in the modernism era shows that it served as a point of reference, placing itself outside and above the society it criticized. Because of this, designers and theorists viewed to be fundamental, authentic and substantial. However, with the rise of the postmodernism era, modernist theorists felt that fashion was disrupted, and the modernist transcendental stance was altered. What the two ears fail to understand is that fashion is a style accepted by a big number of people for a certain time, and people place it at the inception of the modern era heightening with the ascent of the industrial revolution. A comparison of the two era’s reveals that fashion can outline the significance of the society’s culture west life; can challenge the preceding reign of royalty, family and religious conviction. For example, in the early ninetieth and the early twentieth, capital was more invested in selling commodities depending on the qualities that were in the production. Fashion will remain an essential cultural and social phenomena, this is because, since 1980, the Japanese invaded the fashion world several designers from Japan appeared in the global scene. Their designs puzzled and fascinated many in the fashion industry. Yohji Yamamoto together with Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo set the tone for understanding these designers. However, in the current state of fashion, there are other emerging designers, who in the near future might outdo the most popular designers of all times. Bibliography Black, S. 2010, Editorial, Fashion practice, The journal of design, creative process & the fashion industry, Vol.1, No.1, pp. 5-12. Blumer, H. 1969, Fashion: from Class Differentiation to Collective selection’ in Barnard, M. 2007. Fashion Theory: A Reader. London & New York: Routledge. Clay, A. 2003 “Keepin’ It Real: Black Youth, Hip-Hop Culture, and Black Identity.” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol.46, No.10, pp. 1346-1358. Crane, D. & Bovone, L. 2006. Approaches to material culture: the sociology of fashion and clothing, Poetics, Vol.34, pp. 319-333. Henderson, B., & DeLong, M. 2000 “Dress in a postmodern era: An analysis of aesthetic expression and motivation” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol.18, No.4, pp.237-250. Lyman, S. 1997, Postmodernism and Sociology of the Absurd: And Other Essays on the “Nouvelle Vague” in American Social Science. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press. Shapiro, R. 2004. The aesthetics of institutionalization: break dancing in France. The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Vol.33, pp. 316-335. Souza, M, 2012, Globalizing Locations: Production-Consumption Relations in the Hip-hop Movement in Brazil and Portugal. International review of social research, Vol.2, No.1, pp. 72-92. Sudjic, D. 1990, Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons. New York: Rizzoli Veblen, T. 1899 ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ & ‘Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture’ in Purdy, D.L. 2004. The Rise of Fashion: A Reader. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 261-278 & 278-288 Read More