The origins of costume

If one admits that clothing has to do with covering one's body, and costume with the choice of a particular form of garment for a particular use. Cloth­ing depends primarily on such physical conditions as climate and health on textile manufacture. It re­flects social factors such as religious beliefs, magic, aesthetics, personal status. Must we also envisage a process of emergence, which might place clothing before costume or cos­tume before clothing?

This last point has given rise to diametrically opposed opin­ions. The Greeks and the Chinese believed that Man first covered his body for some physical reason, particularly to pro­tect himself from the elements.

Clearly we have insufficient information to assess the relative soundness of these theories.

We may at least surmise that when the first men covered their bodies to protect themselves against the climate, they also associated their primitive garments with the idea of some magi­cal identification. After all, some primitive peoples who normally live naked feel the need to clothe them­selves on special occasions.

Costume, at any rate, must have fulfilled a function beyond that of simple utility, in particular through some magical sig­nificance, investing primitive man with the attributes, such as strength, of other creatures, or protecting his bodies from evil influences. Ornaments identified the wearer with animals, gods, heroes or other men. Costume also helps inspire fear or impose authority: for a chieftain, costume embodies attributes expressing his power, while a warrior's costume must enhance his physical superiority and suggest that he is superhuman. In later times, professional or administrative costume has been devised to distinguish the wearer and to express personal or delegated authority. This purpose is seen as clearly in the lawyer's robes as in the police­man's uniform.

Costume denotes power, and as power is more often than not equated with wealth, costume came to be an expression of social caste and material prosperity. On this level, costume becomes subject to politics.

Military uniform also denotes rank, and is intended to intimidate, to protect the body and to express membership of a group.

Finally, costume can possess a religious significance that combines various elements: an actual or symbolic identification with a god, and the desire to express this in earthly life, the desire to increase the wearer's authority. Sometimes religious associations may even lead to the wearing of garments for reasons of respect.

When and how did these various functions of costume make their appearance? It is very probable that they followed and were determined by the development of civilizations, allow­ing that the two evolved at different rates.

When we consider the causes of emergence of these functions of costume, we see that they appear as the result of essential elements of these civilizations, which gradually took shape out of an interplay of opposing forces, progress on the one hand, and on the other, reaction or simply stability. Can we not cite the religious and static character of Indian civilization as the chief reasons, along with climate, for the adoption of drapedcostume, which still shows no signs of losing popularity? And in the ferment of ideas and beliefs, the constant exchanges thatmark the development of the general economy of western Europe, can we not see the principal causes behind the rapid, di­versified development of its costume?

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