The role of fashion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The role of fashion - Essay Example The essay "The role of fashion" discovers the role of fashion. The denotative meaning is also called a principle meaning. Using this perspective, clothes is defined as the protection of our body. However, this level of understanding does not reveal the clothing’s fundamental function in a culture. At the connotative level, fashion is interpreted at a secondary level significant and important within a social and cultural convention. Semiotics plays an important role in visual rhetoric. The signs or codes are transferred from actual conversations (based on intuitive understand developed within the culture). These signs or codes are transferred into actual conversations based on these intuitive understanding that developed within a culture. Society is influential in establishing an individual’s identity through social constructs. What people wear and how we are wearing clothes should not affect the decision and preferences we have. Rather, it should become the basis for co nstructing the individual’s understanding of a belief within the society. Our choice of clothes, then, is not affected by a decision or a choice made by the individual. Rather, it depends on how he understands and believes in what the society dictates. Fashion, then, identifies and constructs one’s identity by using semiotics that developed within a culture. Fashion can also behave as a tool for non-verbal communication in different ways. This includes fashion’s role of suggesting one’s expression, political view.... This includes fashion’s role of suggesting one’s expression, political view, or social status or role. But even if fashion is not used as a definer of social role or expression, it is significant in the expression of one’s personality. These meanings are based on connotation level rather than denotation meaning. The power of semiotics is evident in the study of fashion and youth. This leads us to understand how fashion affects the personality and character of an individual, and vice versa. Even though everyone has the freedom to choose his own style, people tend to judge other people by these preferences. It is not unusual for someone to suspect another person sporting a Mohawk hairstyle or tattoo, and wearing ripped jeans, to be troublesome or delinquent. In the article, Hiding in the Light: Youth Surveillance and Display by Dick Hebdige, one’s appearance can put the young ones under suspicion of a crime. Hebdige asserts, â€Å"Pictures of punks and mods and skinheads, for instance are commonly regarded, even amongst many documentary practitioners, as unproblematic or as distractions from the real issues: visually interesting but ideologically suspect†(Hebdige, 19). This proves that even if the individual is using his fashion as a necessity of man, for the purpose of covering his body, the connotative meaning of his clothing disregards the denotative meaning. One’s clothing and appearance can be changed completely by social expectations and assumptions. Let’s use another example. Two people dress up in different styles. The first one has a punk style and the other has a formal and businesslike look. Because of his appearance and style, the punk would receive grave stares as people suspect him doing criminal acts.