Women's clothing

Women's clothing - clothing worn by female persons ( girls , girls and women ). It had a different character in different historical periods and has a significant variety of types and functional styles. Clothing serves several purposes, and each item of clothing can combine functionality and decorativeness, which in modern culture is often higher in women's clothing than in men's. Clothing can serve and be selected for 1) protecting its carriers from the adverse external influences of natural (warm clothing in cold weather, headgear from the sun) and man-made (work, protective clothing, including uniforms and elements of protective equipment of power structures, where women also serve medical clothing) character; 2) creating a business (working), home or holiday atmosphere; 3) designation of occupation and official position; 4) expression of personal beliefs, in particular, religious; 5) body decoration and emphasizing the virtues of the physique. The variety of options and styles of clothing available to the population is associated with the development of each given culture and the degree of its freedom and openness.

Different countries and cultures have their own climatic features and different ideas about the decencies and the permissible degree of emphasizing the figure and demonstration of undisguised parts of the body and its own traditional women's clothing, which may have a special generalizing name. For example, traditional women's clothing in India is called " sari ."

Women's clothing for tribes leading a traditional way of life in hot countries can be limited to loincloths , while for tribes living just as traditionally, but in a cold climate, clothing covers the whole body and will be warm and multi-layered. Clothing in modern Western culture is multilayered and covers most of the body, with the exception of the maximum permissible degree of exposure on the beach and the maximum degree of clothing being closed for nuns during the service and for believing women during prayers and visiting places of worship. Peoples traditionally practicing Islam retain stronger, than in Western culture, restrictions on the demonstration of female body parts prescribed by religion and traditions, similar to the requirements of other monotheistic religions ( Christianity , Judaism ), and sometimes more stringent, requiring concealment from outsiders not only the body and its shape, as well as the hair on the woman’s head, but also her face ( veil , veil). In Western culture, considerations of modesty caused the woman's face to be covered in public with a veil attached to the hat, and at the wedding veil ; at the same time, the dress of secular ladies could open their shoulders and upper chest ( décolleté ).

Among the peoples of many countries, clothing has evolved along with the development of public perceptions of moral standards and the improvement of textile and clothing production methods. In the 20th century, along with fibers of vegetable (linen, cotton) and animal (silk, wool) origin, the manufacture of fabrics began to use the achievements of the chemical industry - artificial (for example, viscose) and synthetic (lavsan, nylon, nylon) fibers.

Traditionally, especially in countries with developed economies, women's clothing differed from men's in cut and often in the degree of decorativeness due to differences in the degree of activity prescribed by traditions and the spheres of activity of men and women. Due to the emergence in many countries of universal employment of people of both sexes in the economy in the same positions, some elements of traditionally men's clothing were adapted to be worn by women ( trousers , jackets ( jackets ), ties , hats , caps ) and a unisex style appeared. Today, almost any clothing can be female; Nevertheless, skirts , dresses , sundresses , blouses are more often referred to women's clothing in modern culture. In modern Western-style culture, only underwear is strictly distinguished between the sexes: male (underpants of various cuts) and female (underpants and bras ), which is associated with the anatomical differences between men and women. Underwear as a whole serves to protect easily injured skin of the genital area from friction damage caused by wearing outer clothing and to protect outer clothing from possible residual discharge of the pelvic organs and mammary glands , and bras also serve to maintain a healthy and aesthetic form of the mammary glands . In Western modern culture, before World War I, women were not supposed to demonstrate the lower half of their bodies and legs, and with rare exceptions they wore long skirts and dresses, while trousers were considered men's clothing, but this division is not universal: in some cultures men also wear they wore clothes for the lower half of the body or the whole body and legs from one cloth panel - here you can recall the Scottish kilt , as well as the sarong characteristic of a number of Southeast Asian countries or a cassock of Orthodox priests, then how women of the East could wear salvars , in certain traditions, under a skirt, sometimes shorter than them. It should be noted that both the length and cut of men's trousers in the West have changed over time.

The cut and the relative cost of clothing in every class society until the second half of the 20th century depended on the class of the woman. So, in Western-type cultures, peasant women could wear mostly closed dresses made of linen fabrics of their own home-made, while aristocrats often wore silk or velvet dresses that open their shoulders. Peasant clothes could be decorated with embroidery with ornaments and figures that have the meaning of amulets and wishes of fertility (fertility) in folk culture, since the survival of a family in the village depended on the number of its able-bodied members.