Fashion Focus Latin Edition

LA MODA IS FASHION IN LATIN AMERICA

F Written by, Carolina Smales

ashion or ‘La Moda’ (Spanish) refers to manners of human behavior, trends or customs acquired by people during a

most powerful industries of all times, the global pharmaceutical.

All that being said, the Selection of clothing is very important for a culture to find a space of its own within society, and Latinos (people with origins in Latin America) which represent one of the most dynamic and diverse racial/ethnic groups in the United States often try to find ways to preserve their identity, relying in Fash- ion and customary traditions as an expression of their need to protect themselves from multi- ple elements throughout their life journeys. The term “Latin America” refers to the Ameri- can countries in which most of the languages spoken come from Latin (specifically Spanish, Portuguese and French) and can be subdivided into several regions based on geography and demographics such as all the Americas south of the United States and the Caribbean. The richness of Latin American culture is the product of numerous influences like the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese cultures, particularly important in Brazil, Cuba, the Do- minican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Peru; and the African culture (tied to the introduction of slavery) which had a remark- able influence in dance, religion and clothing especially in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Co- lombia and Cuba, resulting in the “indigenous- Afro-Latin American culture.” Latin America is also (together with South Africa) the culture most influenced by the indigenous population of the West, and there- fore some of the clothing worn as the typical costumes in Mexico, include the well-known

period or at a certain place most often linked to styles of dress and ornaments. Fashion is directly influenced by socio-economics, politics, culture as well as art. According to author Frédéric Monneyron, a dress is the sign that separates man from animal; it has a function of primordial protection as well as adorn- ment. As basic as clothing appears, dress pieces have an influence on the way relationships in soci- ety are perceived. For example, the differentiation of classes, has been demonstrated through dress forms since antiquity when multiple laws regulated dresses and materials of the garments according to the social position of the people. Fashion is a social phenomenon that arose in conjunction with the birth of Bourgeois Societies of the West in the nineteenth century (Spanish: ‘So- ciedades Burguesas’) – There is a common saying in Latin America “Eres una Burguesa” which means that you belong to a rich group in society and are accustomed to high-standards of fashion. This dynamic in which the higher classes impose their likes of the moment, and the lower classes with limited resources try to imitate them, is one of the central points of fashion as a system. However, Fashion can also reconcile an individual with the collective by allowing a person to settle his/her personal taste in a certain collective framework. In this way, fashion unifies and uniforms societies according to the needs of a moment and enables individuals to express their feelings and person- alities. In terms of economy, the global fashion industry is estimated to be worth approximately 2 % of the value of the world economy which surpris- ingly is more than half than the worth of one of the

4 Focus Fashion

Aug 2018, Latin Edition