Fashion: A Language of Its Own

The other day I was walking back to my dorm room and I saw someone wearing a shirt that read "Fcuk" across the front. If looked at quickly, one would think that there was some modern profanity being displayed on the front of the shirt when, in fact, there was none. The writing on the shirt actually is a label for a company by the name of French Connection. All this begs the question, is fashion becoming more brash, or is it emphasizing on the American right to freedom of speech? Furthermore, are some people taking that constitutional right too far? Clothing and fashion has always had a language of its own. Throughout the ages, the style in which one dresses has defined one's position in society, one's political views and one's occupation.

Fashion has held a very important position in the way in which one is viewed in society. A peasant woman in the Renaissance period, for instance, would wear the following:

"Dressed for snow, the woman wears a blue, long-sleeved, lined overgown over a blue undergown. Pattens protect her feet while two headwraps and a hat protect her head."

However, that amount of clothing would be a little too much for our society today. Nowadays the style in which one dresses can inform a stranger of that person's occupation just as it did back then. For example, a man or woman dressed in a suit can be taken as a business man or woman just as a man or woman dressed in old raggedy clothing, and looks themselves rugged and crude, can easily be taken as a modern peasant. Likewise, students dress much differently than adults. One can easily tell when they are approaching, from afar, a college or High School student based on their clothing. Therefore, clothing has a language of its own, a code of rules tha...

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...o continue a royal family line. Profanity is more than sticking up the middle finger, it's the way people act and constitute their actions. That being accepted as true, could not a shirt reading, "Fcuk" or "Nucking Futts," or even "Buck Fush" be viewed as profane? Yes I know it doesn't actually say the "F" word on either of those examples, but the idea behind the shirt and the message intended for the shirt seems profane to me at least. I see that society is condemning censorship, but I also see that society is being hypocritical in the sense that while they say that censorship is wrong, they also practice censorship on a daily basis. Where is the line drawn? Perhaps it can begin with the discourse of fashion.

Works Cited

Pierpont Morgan Library. A Selection of Twelve Miniatures from the Da Costa hours, Pierpont Morgan Library Manuscript 399. New York, 1972