In an online age of obsessively curating and designing our lives as they appear to others, personal fashion finds itself awkwardly situated between perception and actuality. But to fully delve into what personal style means in a modern context, we have to start somewhere within its loose history. Through the course of human history, fashion has followed a development similar to that of most art forms, such as paintings, music, architecture etc. At the pivotal point in history where society and civilization developed to a format such that people’s main priorities were no longer worrying about what their next meal would be and how to stay alive. Humans had more time to begin questioning the world around them, hence the first philosophers of Ancient Greece. People had more time to think, to question, to create, and to indulge. It is from this turning point where we start to see some of the first instances of fashion, in civilizations such as Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Of course, elements of personal style and the use of fashion as an art form would’ve existed to some extent before these empires and city-states, but it is within their societies that fashion truly blossomed on a larger scale than ever before.
Unfortunately, for those interested in the art of fashion itself, I’m more focused on the role of personal style in society rather than the evolution of the art form. In Ancient Egypt, for instance, men and women dressed themselves quite similarly compared to modern standards. Parallelly, personal style was more equal between genders than was standard at the time, men and women were also much more equal in society. Although they typically worked more household-based jobs while men ran the government, women in Ancient Egyptian society were given more freedom and respect than was common during this time period (as seen in Ancient Greece).Â
In Ancient Greece, similar reflections of society through personal style are seen in many aspects of their fashion, but particularly in the materials used to make the clothing. If you were of a higher socioeconomic class, your clothes would be fashioned out of linen, the more expensive material, and may have been dyed different colors or prints. If you couldn’t afford to buy linen, your clothes would’ve been fashioned from wool and likely not dyed or decorated with prints and symbols. In this way, people in Ancient Greece could be easily identified with their socioeconomic class just by a mere look at what they were wearing. You could glance at someone and instantly determine what kind of lifestyle they might be living in comparison to you. Notably, the Ancient Egyptians were also able to distinguish between social classes in the same way between differences in fabric and dress, as members of the upper class would be able to afford softer, more luxurious fabrics and more accessories. As for women in Ancient Greece, there is a stronger divide between the fashion of men and women, just as there was more of a divide between the rights of men and women. Women tended to wear robes that reached their ankles, which was farther down than the men’s robes. However, women’s robes would often reveal more in the chest area and a more stylistic effort was often put into women’s clothing.
With apologies to any history majors reading, I’m going to skip far ahead to the late medieval period in England (1500s), in relation to sumptuary laws. Sumptuary laws were laws strictly imposed rules on what each social class was allowed to wear so that people could be identified based on what they were wearing. Though fashion laws were actually quite common in Europe during this period, they were implemented more intensely in England. Sumptuary laws didn’t just limit specific articles of clothing, they imposed restrictions on materials, colors, garments, and accessories as well. Prior to the early 1600s, for instance, only those in the direct royal family were allowed to wear the color purple. If you dared to violate the fashion laws of medieval Britain, you could be fined and sent to jail for a short time, and if you couldn’t pay said fine you could be imprisoned indefinitely! While these laws seem (rightfully) ridiculous through a modern lens, they reflect the intense separation between socioeconomic classes during this time period, and how the ability to identify someone by their clothing evolved from the variation between linen and wool to rules on every color, fabric, garment and jewel. In late medieval England, if you couldn’t afford to put food on the table for your family that night, each and every person you encountered throughout the day could know just by a quick look at what you were wearing.
The Renaissance period in Europe actually overlapped with sumptuary laws and influenced the way upper class fashion became more and more extravagant (though the exact beginning of the Renaissance and the end of the medieval period are still debated). During this period especially, European fashion trends became so extravagant and expensive, in parallel with the evolutions in other artistic mediums, that dresses and other clothing items were practically designed to look as if they popped straight out of a painting. Men and women’s fashions also continued to differ further, and the gap between men and women’s fashion became even further divided as the style of each sex began to take on a life of its own. The ability to indulge in art and to afford the materials for it were (again) a status symbol during this time, particularly as bright colors and intricate designs became highly desired. I could point to countless other examples throughout human history of how personal style implicates societal structures and has, throughout time, been a large indicator of personal wealth, but I think they’d all make a somewhat similar point to these.
In the modern fashion landscape, we look down and laugh on the societal divisions of sumptuary laws, the ability to define someone just by a simple glance at their outfit and draw such intense, segregating lines between each division of wealth. I mean, thank God fashion isn’t an indicator of social class anymore. Everyone just wears whatever they want! And if you believe that, I’m going to assume you just skimmed over the last five paragraphs. Has progress been made since the days that wearing a purple shirt would put you in an indefinite jail cell? Sure, who am I to deny that? We’re living in completely different times with completely different advancements in technology and, therefore, a different social landscape due to how differently (and how much more frequently) we interact with one another. Our indicators of wealth may look different today than they did hundreds of years ago, but they’re still there, just in a different form.Â
I think of how today, the average American struggles to afford even the most basic of grocery orders with worsening inflation and increasing costs of living. While fresh fruit and vegetables may seem unrelated to the subject of personal fashion, anything that can only be obtained by the rich typically finds its way into how we identify with social class. In Hailey Bieber’s recent collab with the clothing brand FILA, she poses in glamoured makeup and trendy clothes, holding grocery bags of fresh produce, the contents of which are spilling out onto the floor behind her. Her face is poised as careless, the groceries falling behind her as she walks. Five or ten years ago, the idea of wasting groceries would have no stylistic value, but in an economy where only the wealthy can afford to waste fresh produce, the careless tossing of vegetables becomes an icon of style, because trends are only trendy while they’re unattainable. Â
Social media, in particular, has even curated specific personas associated with our personal style choices, the way 2020 saw the rise of “cores” with terms like “cottagecore,” “coastal granddaughter core,” “whimsigoth core” etc. On TikTok, each nuance in your outfit can imply aspects of your personality and lifestyle and, by extension, your socioeconomic class. As an effect, we curate the appearance of our lifestyles through choices in personal style like Instagram feeds and TikTok OOTDs, absorbing from others how to curate the appearance of trendiness, wealthiness. Is personal style truly so personal when we find ourselves curating it for ourselves and not the art form itself? Personally, I don’t think this question is easily answered, if answerable at all, but I ask it not for an answer but for thought. For many of us who cannot draw or paint, our personal fashion choices are a simple way to express ourselves visually in the way people see us from day to day, but I think it’s still worth taking a look at what it really means to express ourselves through style if the art form of fashion has so long been centered around division and inequality.Â