Fashion is a cultural phenomenon affecting clothing, hairstyle, makeup, accessories, and lifestyle choices. It reflects a person’s status, nature and attitude. Clothing choices can be influenced by culture, religion, age, social group and gender. The latest trends in a fashion sense can be established by magazines, television and the internet or they may be discovered in personal experience, as is often the case with music or film.
Clothing is a form of art. It can be used as a symbol of identity, and also for practical reasons: judges wear robes, soldiers wear uniforms, brides wear white dresses. It can also be used as a mode of self-expression: artists wear different colors, singers put on costumes, and people with political and cultural differences use clothes to express themselves in ways that are unique to them.
Generally, fashion is considered to be changing at a rapid pace in the modern world. However, there have been times in history when the change has been much slower. During the Middle Ages, it took centuries for Western clothing styles to reach India and China, while in some cases ancient Greek garments survived intact until the Renaissance. Early Western travelers noted that non-Western clothing seemed to change little, and the secretary of a Japanese shogun claimed in 1609 that Japanese dress had changed only a few times in 1000 years. Today, globalization and the fast-fashion industry have made it possible for trends to be established in one part of the world, manufactured in another and sold in a third.