Culture of The United States - Fashion and Dress

Fashion and Dress

Apart from professional business attire, fashion in the United States is eclectic and predominantly informal. Additionally, certain events may call for more formal attire, such as a dance, wedding, or formal party. While Americans' diverse cultural roots are reflected in their clothing, particularly those of recent immigrants, cowboy hats and boots and leather motorcycle jackets are emblematic of specifically American styles.

Blue jeans were popularized as work clothes in the 1850s by merchant Levi Strauss, a German immigrant in San Francisco, and adopted by many American teenagers a century later. They are worn in every state by people of all ages and social classes. Along with mass-marketed informal wear in general, blue jeans are arguably one of US culture's primary contributions to global fashion.

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Famous quotes containing the words fashion and/or dress:

    Fashion is primitive in its insistence on exhibitionism, which withers in isolation. The catwalk fashion show with its incandescent hype is its apotheosis. A ritualized gathering of connoiseurs and the spoilt at a spotlit parade of snazzy pulchritude, it is an industrialized version of the pagan festivals of renewal. At the end of each seasonal display, a priesthood is enjoined to carry news of the omens to the masses.
    Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)

    We give lovely parties that last through the night,
    I dress as a woman and scream with delight,
    We wake up at lunch time and find we’re still tight.
    What could be duller than that?
    Noël Coward (1899–1973)