Clothing habits reveal how popular culture can be distributed across the landscape with little regard for distinctive physical features. These habits in turn reflect availability of income, as well as social forms like job characteristics.
Influences of Clothing:
- The MDC’s of North America and Western Europe, clothing habits are generally determined by occupation rather than a particular environment.
- Higher income is also an influence of clothing. For social purposes people with higher income may update their wardrobe frequently with the latest fashions.
Technology’s Role in Clothing
- Improved communications have permitted the rapid diffusion of clothing styles from one region of the globe to another. There is less than a 6 week period between the time it makes to recreate inexpensive reproductions of designer clothes. This is due to the diffusion of fax machines, computers, and satellites. Sketches, patterns, and specifications are sent instantly from European fashion centers to American corporate headquarters and then on to Asian factories.
- Globalization of clothing styles has involved increasing awareness by North Americans and Europeans of the variety of folk costumes around the world. Increased travel and the diffusion of television have exposed people in MDC’s to other forms of dress and traditional garb.
- e.x Poncho South America
- e.x Dashiki Yoruba Nigeria
- The continued use of folk costumes in some parts of the world may persist not because of distinctive environmental factors or traditional cultural values, but to preserve past memories or to attract tourists.
Jeans: An Important symbol of Western diffusion of popular culture
- Jeans=Image of youthful independence in the U.S in 1960′s
- Became an obsession and a status symbol among youth in the former Soviet Union when Communist Government prevented their import.
- Access to Levi’s (popular selling gene brand) increased around the world American consumers began to turn away from the brand. Levi’s closed their last U.S factory in 2004.
Watching television is the most popular leisure activity in MDC’s throughout the world, and is the most important mechanism by which knowledge of popular culture (i.e. professional sports) is diffused across the Globe.
- Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, television diffused from the United States to Europe and other MDC’s, then to LDC’s.
- The U.S has always geld the lead for number of television sets per inhabitants. The United States had about 200 TV sets per 1,000 inhabitants in 1954, and the rest of the world had about 2 per 1,000.
