Abstract
Over the course of history what are the clothes that, in the societies of the Old Regime, differentiate individuals from each other? What styles and colors choose the hegemonic classes to represent and mark the status differences between them, the emerging classes and the common people? What are the signs and symbols that the sources testify as a political, ethical, aesthetic language? This essay tries to answer these and other questions, an essay conducted on the red thread of change in European countries, political, economic, social change that marks the rhythm through FASHION showing how this represents in a real and symbolic way the role of the dominant classes in power. In the course of history, clothing is transformed according to the new ideas that are affirmed and the different perception of which individuals are aware, so the representation of the self - social and individual - becomes an exclusive or additional language, confirming its expressive validity and the content necessary to decline human typologies, to express them, and even to impose them. Fashion contains history and society, art and harmony of forms, religious principles and moral rules, past present, continuity and discontinuity, in short, the life of human beings of yesterday and today, perhaps even of tomorrow.
Highlights
Introduction and MethodologyHistory is like a long chain where the rings are linked to each other and in the “longue durée” course each event is a consequence of the previous set-up and will be the cause of what will happen later
When, during the Twentieth century, the first avant-gardes scholars achieve the overcoming of political, diplomatic, military history - which until had been the center of the attention of researchers – it reveals the richness of the interdisciplinary research that conjugates economic, social, anthropological history, and it is capable of tackling new issues, accessing new documentary sources, opening new frontiers to research
“Once liberated, historical research had no more boundaries, could navigate almost everywhere, penetrate society, analyze the canons of the collective mentality and the material conditions of existence, becoming social, economic and anthropological history” [3]. The interest for the latter is evident in the second half of the last century but re-emerges continuously when confronted with systemic crises in post-modern societies - which destabilize the dynamics of economies and politics - defined by Bauman [4], using an inspired expression, “liquid” caused by the chaos created by current realities due to the cancellation of the previous context without yet having established another one, a society characterized by a “disorientation”, a confusion caused by the processes of globalization that seem to swallow the differences and erase every truth previously considered absolute
Summary
History is like a long chain where the rings are linked to each other and in the “longue durée” course each event is a consequence of the previous set-up and will be the cause of what will happen later. “Once liberated, historical research had no more boundaries, could navigate almost everywhere, penetrate society, analyze the canons of the collective mentality and the material conditions of existence, becoming social, economic and anthropological history” [3] The interest for the latter is evident in the second half of the last century but re-emerges continuously when confronted with systemic crises in post-modern societies - which destabilize the dynamics of economies and politics - defined by Bauman [4], using an inspired expression, “liquid” caused by the chaos created by current realities due to the cancellation of the previous context without yet having established another one, a society characterized by a “disorientation” (as he calls it), a confusion caused by the processes of globalization that seem to swallow the differences and erase every truth previously considered absolute. This bourgeoisie is destined to emerge because it has the means of production (and distribution) and over time assumes the control of the industries and the markets
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