Blog Post #5 (Book Summary)

Changing Styles in Fashion, Maggie Pexton Murray, Chapter One

• Fashion has different meanings from different perspectives. Overall, it's the strict sense of apparel that implies covering the body with an article of clothing that is recognized or accepted in society.
• Fashion comes from a psychological need to cover the body.
• During the Ice Ages, people needed to wrap fur and skins around themselves for warmth, creating "clothes" (at the time). Feet were also wrapped for warmth, creating shoes.
• Most people follow the social and cultural "rules" that are socially "accepted" by society.
• People sometimes show their standing in economy by the way they dress and live. For example, people standing higher in economic society would typically dress more formal than the average person and 'drink white whine rather than hard liquor"(Murray 2). 
• Almost every society eventually develops a counter-culture movement, whose members create a look that is different than what is "socially accepted". 
• Person's choice of clothing represents combinations of reasons, psychological, geographic, and historic issues. 
• One's religious principles are often at work for selecting someone's wardrobe. 
• Religions dictates face coverings in the Islamic nations.
• Amish people, even in modern times, still dress like they did a hundred years ago: dark, simple, and quaint from the Puritans and Pilgrims. 
• Clothing establishes a sense of yourself: it communicates your moods and personal attitudes, psychologically speaking.
• Some people dress for identification, such as a sport team's jersey or someone's school.
• Fashion is considered art, because clothing is a changing and moving aesthetic form, depending on the matter in which it moves and changes.

In the book Changing Styles in Fashion, the author, Maggie Pexton Murray argues that people dress for various reasons. I agree with this statement because some people dress for religious purposes, such as in the Islamic nations. People also dress for identification, such as a school or sport's team. People can also dress as a counter-culture movement, where they dress against what is "socially accepted" in society.