Clothing

• 1. Introduction

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  Clothing is any item worn on a human body, and it is a feature of every human society on earth. Yet the question of when humans first wrapped themselves in fur or leaves has no settled answer. Estimates range from 40,000 to as many as 3 million years ago. One of the strangest clues comes not from cloth but from lice. A 2003 study suggested humans were wearing clothing at least 100,000 years ago, reasoning that human body lice cannot survive outside clothing and die within a few hours without shelter. So how did something so ordinary become a marker of wealth, faith, and rank? Why does a simple barrier between skin and weather still spark fashion bans, sweatshop campaigns, and an $790 billion export trade? The answers run from a Siberian cave to a runway in Copenhagen.

• 2. Reading The Evidence

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  Body lice gave scientists their first molecular clock for clothing. The body louse, Pediculus humanus corporis, diverged from its parent species and its sibling the head louse, with that split estimated between 40,000 and 170,000 years before present. Recent transcriptome analyses, however, cast doubt on the method, finding that body and head lice were almost genetically identical. Researchers concluded the difference was probably regulatory, perhaps epigenetic, triggered by environmental signals rather than a clean speciation event. Direct archeological evidence produces dates consistent with the lice. In September 2021, scientists reported evidence of clothes being made 120,000 years ago, based on findings in deposits in Morocco. The earliest garments likely consisted of fur, leather, leaves, or grass, draped, wrapped, or tied around the body. Such knowledge remains inferential, because clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared with stone, bone, shell, and metal. The hardest survivors are the tools. Sewing needles of bone and ivory dating to about 30,000 BC were found near Kostenki, Russia in 1988. In 2016, a needle at least 50,000 years old turned up in Denisova Cave in Siberia, made by Denisovans. Dyed flax fibers from 34,000 BC, possibly used in clothing, were found in a prehistoric cave in Georgia. The oldest known piece of woven clothing is the Tarkhan dress, an over 5000 year old linen garment.

• 3. The Craft Of Cloth

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  Cultures inside the Arctic Circle have historically crafted their garments exclusively from treated and adorned animal furs and skins. Elsewhere, societies wove, knitted, or twined textiles from wool, linen, cotton, silk, hemp, and ramie. Making fabric by hand is a tedious, labor-intensive process of fiber preparation, spinning, and weaving. The textile industry was the first to be mechanized, with the powered loom, during the Industrial Revolution. One way of turning cloth into clothing leaves the fabric uncut. Many people wore, and still wear, rectangles of cloth wrapped to fit: the dhoti and sari of the Indian subcontinent, the Scottish kilt, and the Javanese sarong. Some are tied, like the dhoti and sari; others held with pins or belts, like the kilt and sarong. Because the cloth stays uncut, people of various sizes can wear the same garment. The other approach measures, cuts, and sews cloth to the body. A garment can be cut from a sewing pattern and adjusted by a tailor, shaped on an adjustable mannequin or dress form. When fabric was expensive, a tailor tried to use every bit of the rectangle, cutting triangular pieces from a corner and adding them elsewhere as gussets, the logic behind traditional European patterns for shirts and chemises. Modern European fashion treats cloth far less conservatively, cutting in ways that leave odd-shaped remnants. Industrial operations sell these as waste, while domestic sewers may turn them into quilts. Many vanished styles have been reconstructed from surviving garments, photographs, paintings, mosaics, and written descriptions.

• 4. The Science Of Comfort

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  After food, clothing satisfies a person's comfort needs, and researchers break that comfort into distinct kinds. Thermophysiological comfort is the capacity of clothing to maintain the balance of moisture and heat between the body and the environment. Natural fibers are breathable and absorb moisture, while synthetic fibers are hydrophobic, repel moisture, and do not allow air to pass. Thermal comfort gives the wearer a feeling that is neither very hot nor very cold; thermophysiology grows discomforting below 28 and above 30 degrees. Moisture comfort prevents a damp sensation, and according to Hollies' research, it feels uncomfortable when more than 50% to 65% of the body is wet. Tactile comfort resists the friction of clothing against the body, shaped by smoothness, roughness, softness, and stiffness. Words like soft, clingy, scratchy, and prickly all describe these tactile sensations, and finishes such as fleece sweatshirts and velvet can ease them. Pressure comfort is the response of the skin's pressure receptors, and fabric with Lycra feels more comfortable because of it. Aesthetic comfort, shaped by color, garment fit, and finish, ties the physical sensations to psychological and social ones. Serious study of these functions is older than it looks. J.C. Flugel published Psychology of Clothes in 1930, and Newburgh produced Physiology of Heat Regulation and The Science of Clothing in 1949. By 1968, environmental physiology had advanced significantly, yet the science of clothing within it had changed little, and Newburgh's book is still cited by contemporary authors building thermoregulatory models of clothing development.

• 5. Dressing The Body Politic

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  In ancient Rome, only senators could wear garments dyed with Tyrian purple. The principle that cloth could mark rank recurs across societies. In traditional Hawaiian society, only high-ranking chiefs could wear feather cloaks and palaoa, carved whale teeth. In China, before the establishment of the republic, only the emperor could wear yellow. During the early modern period, individuals used high-quality fabrics and trendy designs to communicate wealth and to signal their grasp of current fashion to the public. In societies without sumptuary laws, which include most modern ones, status is signaled instead by buying rare or luxury items limited by cost or availability. Gender draws its own lines in fabric. In contemporary Western societies, skirts, dresses, and high-heeled shoes usually read as women's clothing, while neckties read as men's. Trousers were once seen as exclusively men's clothing, but are now worn by both genders. A woman wearing clothing perceived as masculine is generally common, while the opposite is seen as unusual. Some garments crossed over entirely: T-shirts originated as menswear, while the fedora was originally a style for women. Faith adds another layer. Islam usually requires women to wear a hijab, with required articles ranging from the headscarf to the burqa. Sikhs wear a turban as part of their religion. Jewish ritual requires rending, tearing, of one's upper garment as a sign of mourning. Clothing threads through the Bible too, from Adam and Eve's coverings of fig leaves to Joseph's coat of many colors and the specific garments of the priests in the Temple in Jerusalem, whose absence made one liable to death.

• 6. The Western Wardrobe Goes Global

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  Blue jeans tell the story of how Western dress conquered the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century they became very popular, and are now worn to events that normally call for formal attire, in styles from high-rise to bootcut, skinny, boyfriend, and capri. The mechanization of the textile industry had made a wide variety of cloth available at affordable prices, and synthetic fabrics shifted the very definition of stylish. The business of fashion learned to sell names as much as cloth. Licensing of designer names was pioneered by Pierre Cardin, Yves Saint Laurent, and Guy Laroche in the 1960s, and became common practice from about the 1970s, with labels like Marc Jacobs and Gucci named for Marc Jacobs and Guccio Gucci. By the early twenty-first century, Western clothing styles had become, to some extent, international styles. The process began centuries earlier during European colonialism, and most recently spread through Western media corporations penetrating markets worldwide. Fast fashion, less expensive and mass-produced, became a global phenomenon, while donated used clothing from Western countries reaches poorer countries through charity organizations. Local traditions persist alongside the imports. Most Korean men and women have adopted Western-style dress for daily wear, but still wear traditional hanboks on special occasions like weddings and cultural holidays. A Tongan man may pair a used T-shirt with a Tongan wrapped skirt, the tupenu, accessorizing Western dress in distinctly non-Western ways.

• 7. The Cost Of A Garment

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  By the mid-twentieth century, mechanization had transformed most of the clothing industry, yet garment workers still labored under conditions demanding repetitive manual work. Mass-produced clothing is often made in what some consider sweatshops, marked by long work hours, lack of benefits, and lack of worker representation. Such conditions appear mostly in developing countries, though clothes made in industrialized nations may share them. Outsourcing to low-wage countries like Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka became possible when the Multi Fibre Agreement was abolished. That agreement had placed quotas on textile imports and was deemed a protectionist measure. Many countries recognize treaties such as those of the International Labour Organization, but make exceptions or fail to enforce them. India, for example, has not ratified sections 87 and 92 of the treaty. Designers and campaigners have pushed back. The Clean Clothes Campaign and the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, alongside designers including Katharine Hamnett, American Apparel, Veja, Quiksilver, eVocal, and Edun, have sponsored awareness-raising events. Fur became its own battleground. PETA and other groups called attention to fur farming, and Copenhagen in 2022 and London in 2018 fashion weeks banned real fur from their runways. Gucci and Chanel banned fur from their garments, while Versace and Furla stopped in early 2018, and in 2020 Canada Goose announced it would discontinue new coyote fur on parka trims. Governments followed. In 2021, Israel became the first to ban the sale of real fur garments, except for religious practice. In 2019, California banned fur trapping, with a total sale ban on new fur garments, except sheep, cow, and rabbit fur, taking effect on the 1st of January 2023.

• 8. After The Wearing

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  Clothing suffers assault from within and without. The body sheds skin cells and oils and excretes sweat, urine, and feces, while sun, moisture, abrasion, and dirt attack from outside, and fleas and lice hide in the seams. People often wear an item until it falls apart, and some materials resist rescue: leather is difficult to clean, and bark cloth, tapa, cannot be washed without dissolving. Humans devised many ways to fight back, from pounding clothes against rocks in running streams to electronic washing machines and dry cleaning. Storage brings its own enemies, the black carpet beetle and clothing moths, deterred by cedar-lined chests, lavender, mothballs, or airtight bags. Even the cure can carry a hazard. A resin used to make non-wrinkle shirts releases formaldehyde, which can cause contact dermatitis. In 2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the highest formaldehyde levels generally in non-wrinkle shirts and pants. A 1999 study found that after six months of routine washing, 7 of 27 shirts still exceeded 75 ppm, the safe limit for direct skin exposure. Mending was once an art, when cloth was worth more than labor and a tailor could hide a tear with thread raveled from hems. Today clothing is a consumable item, and mass-manufactured garments cost less than the labor to repair them, though Japanese Sashiko inspires visible mending and upcycling. The scale is staggering. An estimated 80-150 billion garments are produced annually, used clothing is worth $4 billion globally, and the U.S. leads exports of it at $575 million. Some firms even destroy excess inventory to preserve brand value, a quiet endpoint for garments that began, tens of thousands of years ago, as fur and grass tied around the body.