Relating Fashion Change to Social Change: A Methodological Approach

Abstract

Fashion authorities recognize that social changes and fashion changes are related. How ever, their observations are largely speculative, rather than being based upon empirical testing. This research was designed to determine whether patterns of stability and change in attire coincide with periods of societal stability and change. A data recording form was developed and a method to quantify the data for likelihood ratio tests was designed.A sample of 112 costumes, either photographs of portraits or fashion illustrations, was used to pilot test the methodology. Eight male and eight female costumes were spaced throughout each of seven of the traditional historic periods between 1715 and 1914 in France. Political and institutional stability and change do not always coincide. Therefore, for hypothesis testing, the traditional periods were classified as periods of institutional stability or change or political stability or change. Two hypotheses concerning patterns of change in dress fashions, one related to institutional change and one related to political change, were rejected when the composite silhouette data were subjected to maximum likelihood ratio tests with the data pooled by sex and by stability and change periods.