Fashion and Consumer Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Fashion and Consumer Culture - Essay Example The essay "Fashion and Consumer Culture" concerns the consumerism and fashion. Factors include religion, beliefs, climate, gender, and economic and cultural situation, among others. Though fashion may change as dictated by society, clothes are more than just about warmth and protection. In fact, clothes have become a representation of particular cultures that create them. Clothes are considered consumer goods. But then again, more than being consumer goods, it defines the cultural class that wears them. It is one of those consumer goods that are being used as tools for social mobility as stated in the ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ theory by 19th Century economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. In his book ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions, he says that luxury goods are tools to display economic power, and that such display of discretionary economic power is a means of attaining or maintaining a particular social sta tus. Moreover, as an elaboration, these consumer goods have become tools to provoke envy from other people. Ultimately, consumer goods, and fashion is one of them, is a means of displaying a buyer’s superior socio-economic status. In the article ‘Consumption and the Consumer Society’, it says that the average United States resident consumes 275 lbs. of meat, uses 635 lbs. of paper and uses energy equivalent to 7.8 metrics tons of oil. Forty-five years ago consumption was about half of current statistics. In the U.S. there are 2 persons.