The Silk Worms of the East Must Be Pillaged: The Cultural Foundations of Mass Fashion

Abstract

Eighteenth century Scottish data provide rare documentation of the origins of a mass fashion system from the perspective of those who experienced it. This analysis focuses on the conceptual distinction between dress and mass fashion as a category ofdress, and it uses culture theory to propose a cultural-contextual explanation of the shift from dress to mass fashion in dress. It explains why dress becomes mass fashion only in the context of an emerging industrialized nation state with the necessary understructure to support a mass fashion system, a system with very different cultural requirements from dress and from aristocratic fashion. An analysis of Roach and Musa's (1980) definition of fashion makes it clear that the distinctions between these terms are far from trivial, for each implies different levels of socio-cultural complexity. Parallels between the mass fashion system that developed in late 18th-century Scotland and those of developing nations today are suggested. © 1990, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.