Fashion & Media -- Popular Beliefs, Myths, & Icons

Popular Beliefs, Myths and Icons

Mark Twain wisely said “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Although clothes have clearly always been used to place their wearer into a category of some sort, Twain’s statement has perhaps never been truer than it is today.  That need to categorize people is tantamount to stereotyping them based on their clothing choices.  In the 1950’s the good boys dressed neatly in trousers, button up shirts, sweater vests and loafers.  Black leather jackets and white t-shirts with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve was the uniform of choice for the troubled boys. The 1960’s and 1970’s ushered in clothes made with tie dyes flower power prints, and that were lose and flowing.  Those who donned that garb were quickly marked as hippies.  The past 30 years have continued to produce styles that are too often used to use to place people into a specific personality type based on our visual assessment. 

So how is that we are so quickly able to sort people based on their clothing? Given that the pervasiveness of this stereotyping seems to be increasing, is it possible that mediums such as television and movies may be influencing our opinions on how people dress?  According to a Nielsen blog, the average American watched nearly 35 hours of television in the fourth quarter of 2010.  (Nielsen, 2011).  Thinking back to those old black and white Westerns, viewers were trained that we could easily recognize the good guys by their white cowboy hat and the bad guys were always donned in black from head to toe.  This is a simple example of how television and movies have helped create the myth that clothes do make the man and are implicit in the intentions and morals of those who are wearing them. 

From the time television came to be a common fixture in the American home, it has influenced our opinions and desire for fashion.  Throughout the decades, we can look to television to find the source of many of our fashion icons.  In the 1970’s, the Brady Bunch kids served as psychedelic fashionistas and sadly the 1980’s gave men the infamous Miami Vice look.

Clothing has changed drastically over the past 60 years, but one thing that has remained constant is that television and movies have a great influence over how we dress and how we perceive the personalities of people based on their clothing choices.    Although television may reflect the popular culture of fashion, it seems unlikely that fashion alone can convey the person that lies within.