Fashion is a popular style or practice, especially in clothing, footwear, accessories, makeup, body piercing, or furniture. Fashion is a distinctive and often habitual trend in the style in which a person dresses. It is the prevailing styles in behaviour and the newest creations of textile designers.
Because the more technical term costume is regularly linked to the term "fashion", the use of the former has been relegated to special senses like fancy dress or masquerade wear, while "fashion" generally means clothing, including the study of it. Although aspects of fashion can be feminine or masculine, some trends are androgynous
Early Western travelers, whether to Persia, Turkey, India, or China, would frequently remark on the absence of change in fashion there. Observers from these other cultures commented on the unseemly pace of Western fashion, which many felt suggested an instability and a lack of order in Western culture. The Japanese Shogun's secretary boasted (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years. However, there is considerable evidence in Ming China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing. Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate, followed by a long period without major changes. In 8th-century Moorish Spain the musicianZiryab introduced to Córdoba sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily fashions from his nativeBaghdad, modified by his own inspiration. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.
The beginning in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated. Historians, includingJames Laver and Fernand Braudel, date the start of Western fashion in clothing to the middle of the 14th century.[9][10] The most dramatic early change in fashion was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment from calf-length to barely covering thebuttocks, sometimes accompanied with stuffing in the chest to make it look bigger. This created the distinctive Western outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.