FASHION AND STYLE

Khaliqur Rahman

Fashion can be defined as the current custom that is popular, especially in dress or social conduct.

It often changes and reflects a person’s social class and personality. Fashions come and go and they are affected by inventions and good economy. For example, a war leading to bad economy will enforce plain fashion. On the contrary, peace and good economy coupled with innovations in technologies are sure to promote high fashion, generating in societies passion for fashion.

Fashion must continue to be unique to an individual who goes for it to express what perhaps cannot be said in words. Fashion thus adds to one’s body language and yet continues to be paralinguistic.

The present day youth prefers jeans. That’s the fashion. Dancing down the street, whether it’s a wedding or a festival, and burning fire-crackers, is another fashion. Fashion can be understood as a manner or style of doing something. In a particular fashion is a popular style, a particular manner rather than a custom. You can talk about a fashionable society or a woman of fashion.

Younger people generally go after fashion even if it is expensive and undignified or affordable but inconvenient! It is the fad, the craze, the whims and whams that makes things go in and out of fashion. Fashion then refers to custom or style or mode. The phrase, in vogue, means in fashion. Current fashion is the trend. But when a particular fashion becomes excessively popular, it is the craze, the rage, the latest thing or even the mania.

In the sense of manner or style, a fashion is a mode or a way. Within this range of meaning fashion can be used as a verb meaning to model, to make, to shape, to mould, to forge, etc, or simply to manufacture. You can say chic (pronounced sheek), a la mode, modish, in vogue to refer to the adverb fashionably. But most often the word trendy is used in a derogative sense.  Trendy means stylish but perhaps in a cheap fashion!

Style, however, can be defined in many ways. You can say an elegant style of clothing. Here, it refers to a kind of appearance or form. You can say: This piece is written in a florid style. In this sense style refers to a manner of writing or speaking or performing, etc. You can say: His style of living is more western than Indian. The word style, in this sense, points to the distinctive manner of a person or school or period, especially in relation to dress, food, furniture, painting, architecture, etc.

When you say he did it in style you mean he did it in a superior manner and that was superior quality performance, as well. But when you say bad style, style simply refers to form. You can get trousers in all sizes and styles at Marks and Spencer’s. Here, style means make or a particular shape or pattern. When you say Old Style or New Style you are in fact thinking about dates, eras or periods. Stylo in French refers to pen: un stylo means a pen. In English, style refers to an ancient writing implement. Style, when used as verb, means to design or make in a particular way…. fashionable style!

Shane Warne, Mushtaq and Kumble, are all leg-spinners but Warne is different from Mushtaq and Mushtaq is different from Kumble and Kumble is different from Warne. They all have different styles.

Similarly, Mark Waugh, Lara, Tendulkar, Azhar, Arvinda De Silva and perhaps Inzamam are all delightful batsmen. But they have different batting styles.

.Fashion is the society and style is the man!