mell scrie:
18.Speak about the way in which fashion influences one’s personality. Give arguments and examples to sustain your ideas.
Introduction :
- "Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time; fashion produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time !" ( Jean Cocteau );
- "Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make oneself its slave !" ( Napoleon Bonaparte );
- "Fashion can be bought. Style one must have !" ( Edna Woolman Chase );
- "Fashion which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike ! "
( Eric Bentley );
- "Fashion is that by which the fantastic becomes for a moment universal !" ( Oscar Wilde )
"Development :
A. Fashion = a mode of dress or overall style:
- by definition, fashion implies a mode of dress or overall style - so a personality ;
- this overall style is accepted as the one that represents a personality's up-to-dateness;
- fashion is not necessarily the same thing as clothes;
- clothes are often used in individual ways;
- so being fashionable is different from using clothes in particular ways;
- the distinction "being in fashion" versus "using clothes in particular ways" is the same as that of "having a personality" versus "being a person"; ( I am a person, by nature; but I become a personality by my own choices )
B. Being in fashion = accepting the prevailing ideas :
- being in fashion is always the acceptance of the prevailing ideas;
- these prevailing ideas change considerably from year to year,
- and most women are not immune to these changes;
- the mechanics of fashion is this : a style once willingly adopted becomes a stigma of outmoded ugliness;
- more than the adoption of the new, fashion is also the certain death ( or, at least deep coma ) of what has gone before;
- fashion's mysterious cycle of death and rebirth, avarice and disgust is pretty well sex-specific;
- women alone are subject to fashion's curious workings;
- fashionable clothes often mark ,in some societies, sharp social class distinctions;
- on the other hand, fashion styles often mark very strong personality distinctions
C. Being trendy = defining the defined sex :
- it may happen that some men now wear earrings, sometimes make-up;
- and it's true man's fashion has passed through brightly-coloured dungarees to the beaten-leather look;
- but compared to female fashions, men's fashion has changed absolutely minimally;
- the fundamental outline of man's clothes and the fundamental elements of male fashion have remained constant for a long time now;
- on the other hand, women's bodies, and the messages which clothes can add, are the receptacle of the social definitions of sexuality;
- men are usually neutral to it, because a male personality is often defined by some other elements as well;
- but women are always regarded as the defined sex;
- and gyrations around women's clothing are part of the constant pressure towards display of these definitions;
- and in almost all human societies, female personalities are almost always defined by fashions and by styles;
Conclusion :
- my own understanding of the mechanics of fashion is :
1). that the constant generation of the new ideas regards previous styles as ugly and repellent / disgusting ;
2). that the previous styles come to signify a past form of behaviour ;
3). that the outmoded personal behaviour is always looked upon as a defunct style;
- that is why, even though I ,by nature, possess a male personality, I tend to keep being in fashion;
- of course, not extravagant, not eccentric;
- but just in good fashion;
- or, to quote Edna Woolman Chase, "in very personal style".
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