Culture vs. Commercialization
Before my time as a fashion merchandising major at VCU, I spent a year at Penn State studying anthropology. I leaned towards cultural anthropology, informing the lens in which I see the fashion world now. I look at the history of fashion as a battle between two forces: culture and commercialization. The history of textiles and garments dates back to the stone age, definitively marking this art form as distinctly human. In every era of human history, clothing has reflected the current aesthetics, technology, and culture of specific groups throughout time and space. Despite the differences and evolutions, one thing has remained constant: the merchandising of this revolutionary concept, intertwined with every human, every day. The culture of fashion has always been affected by the commercialization of fashion, however the industry has been getting a lot of recent attention garnered around quality, price, sustainability, and the supply chain that puts products into the hands of consumers. Where do my clothes come from? Why do they cost this much? Why do vintage clothes feel “better” and last longer than new ones? These are all questions that I see reverberated around the online sphere. Shoppers are noticing what fashion historians have known for decades: The Industrial Revolution is almost entirely to blame.
Yes, that Industrial Revolution. However distant it may seem, the effects of widespread technological progress has a direct influence on every aspect of our day to day life. Many major changes have occurred throughout history before, however I’d argue none as impactful on the fashion industry like this one. The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century in England, intermittently spreading to America and other parts of the world over the next few centuries, and even unto today with the rise of AI and the digital age of the 21st century. This rapid advancement of technology seems to be almost exponential. It was not so long ago that the cotton gin was invented, factories began to rise up, and the entire fabric of the industry was literally changed. Clothing turned out faster and faster in what was called “ready-to-wear” lines, standardizing the size chart that is so quintessential in today’s fashion lexicon. Chemists experimented with synthetic fibers, unlocking a whole new world of possibilities for the future of fashion. By standardizing sizes and producing garments of manufactured fibers, clothing can be sold faster and cheaper. What was in trend accelerated, and the industry could keep up by providing consumers with new clothes more often.
This change in pace of supply and demand turned fashion as we knew it before on its head. What the Industrial Revolution effectively did was transform society from one that relied on the handiwork of humans, to one that then replaced centuries of knowledge and practice with newfound inventions. From antiquity until the Industrial Revolution, not much actually changed about how clothing was produced. The sudden replacement of years of handiwork and technique was revolutionary in the industry. We no longer work solely with natural materials, instead often incorporating some kind of synthetic. There are gowns and fabrics that we are no longer able to reproduce today because we’ve lost the knowledge and technology in a time before widespread advancements. This handicraft culture of being so intimately attached to the manufacturing process of clothing is what seems to be missing from today’s hyper-commercialized market.
Today’s market offers a wider variety of products than ever thought possible. Consumers have begun to start questioning the sustainability of name brands and fast fashion brands alike. Discussions of quality comparisons are becoming more frequent, and more and more people are looking into the reason why. The truth is, the changes made a few centuries ago had an everlasting impact on the manufacturing process today. Even top designer pieces are notably lesser in quality, an impact that the use of cheaper materials and cheaper labor has. It’s become so normalized to purchase a large amount of clothing and give it away to make room for next season’s biggest sellers, but the current system is just not sustainable to our planet or our wallets.
The impact this historical event has had continues to carry weight today. Consumers yearn for clothing that feels like it will last, like the clothing produced before mass manufacturing and commercialization. The takeaway here is to be more conscious of the source of your garments, and make purchasing decisions based around that. By understanding the history behind what we put on our bodies, we can interact with fashion in a much more meaningful and longlasting way.
