Clothing
Clothing is any item worn on a human body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to humans and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, hats and headgear cover the head, and underwear covers the intimate parts.
Clothing serves many purposes: it can serve as protection from the elements, rough surfaces, sharp stones, rash-causing plants, and insect bites, by providing a barrier between the skin and the environment. Clothing can insulate against cold or hot conditions, and it can provide a hygienic barrier, keeping infectious and toxic materials away from the body. It can protect feet from injury and discomfort or facilitate navigation in varied environments. Clothing also provides protection from ultraviolet radiation. It may be used to prevent glare or increase visual acuity in harsh environments, such as brimmed hats. Clothing is used for protection against injury in specific tasks and occupations, sports, and warfare. Fashioned with pockets, belts, or loops, clothing may provide a means to carry things while freeing the hands.
Clothing has significant social factors as well. Wearing clothes is a variable social norm. It may connote modesty. Being deprived of clothing in front of others may be embarrassing. In many parts of the world, not wearing clothes in public so that genitals, breast, or buttocks are visible may be considered indecent exposure. Pubic area or genital coverage is the most frequently encountered minimum found cross-culturally and regardless of climate, implying social convention as the basis of customs. Clothing also may be used to communicate social status, wealth, group identity, and individualism.
Origin and history
Early use
Estimates of when humans began wearing clothes vary from 40,000 to as many as 3 million years ago. A study in 2003 suggested humans were wearing clothing at least 100,000 years ago from evidence about lice. Human body lice cannot live outside of clothing, dying after only a few hours without shelter. This strongly implies that the date of the body louse's speciation from its parent, Pediculus humanus, can have taken place no earlier than the earliest human adoption of clothing. This date, at which the body louse diverged from both its parent species and its sibling subspecies, the head louse, has been estimated to between 40,000 to 170,000 years before present. However, recent transcriptome analyses cast doubt on whether lice provide a means to date the origin of clothes since they have found that "body and head lice were almost genetically identical. Indeed, the phenotypic flexibility associated with the emergence of body lice, is probably a result of regulatory changes, perhaps epigenetic in origin, triggered by environmental signals."Dating with direct archeological evidence produces dates consistent with those of lice. In September 2021, scientists reported evidence of clothes being made 120,000 years ago based on findings in deposits in Morocco.
The development of clothing is deeply connected to human evolution, with early garments likely consisting of animal skins and natural fibers adapted for protection and social signaling. According to anthropologists and archaeologists, the earliest clothing likely consisted of fur, leather, leaves, or grass that was draped, wrapped, or tied around the body. Knowledge of such clothing remains inferential, as clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared with stone, bone, shell, and metal artifacts. Archeologists have identified very early sewing needles of bone and ivory from about 30,000 BC, found near Kostenki, Russia in 1988, and in 2016 a needle at least 50,000 years old from Denisova Cave in Siberia made by Denisovans. Dyed flax fibers that date back to 34,000 BC and could have been used in clothing have been found in a prehistoric cave in Georgia.
The oldest known piece of woven clothing is the Tarkhan dress, an over 5000 year old linen garment.
Making clothing
Several distinct human cultures, including those residing in the Arctic Circle, have historically crafted their garments exclusively from treated and adorned animal furs and skins. In contrast, numerous other societies have complemented or substituted leather and skins with textiles woven, knitted, or twined from a diverse array of animal and plant fibers, such as wool, linen, cotton, silk, hemp, and ramie.File:Raja Ravi Varma, Lady Going for Pooja.jpg|alt=Sari|thumb|upright=.8|Hindu lady wearing sari, one of the most ancient and popular pieces of clothing in the Indian subcontinent, painting by Raja Ravi Varma
Although modern consumers may take the production of clothing for granted, making fabric by hand is a tedious and labor-intensive process involving fiber making, spinning, and weaving. The textile industry was the first to be mechanized – with the powered loom – during the Industrial Revolution.
Different cultures have evolved various ways of creating clothes out of cloth. One approach involves draping the cloth. Many people wore, and still wear, garments consisting of rectangles of cloth wrapped to fit – for example, the dhoti for men and the sari for women in the Indian subcontinent, the Scottish kilt, and the Javanese sarong. The clothes may be tied up or implement pins or belts to hold the garments in place. The cloth remains uncut, and people of various sizes can wear the garment.
Another approach involves measuring, cutting, and sewing the cloth by hand or with a sewing machine. Clothing can be cut from a sewing pattern and adjusted by a tailor to the wearer's measurements. An adjustable sewing mannequin or dress form is used to create form-fitting clothing. If the fabric is expensive, the tailor tries to use every bit of the cloth rectangle in constructing the clothing; perhaps cutting triangular pieces from one corner of the cloth, and adding them elsewhere as gussets. Traditional European patterns for shirts and chemises take this approach. These remnants can also be reused to make patchwork pockets, hats, vests, and skirts.
Modern European fashion treats cloth much less conservatively, typically cutting in such a way as to leave various odd-shaped cloth remnants. Industrial sewing operations sell these as waste; domestic sewers may turn them into quilts.
In the thousands of years that humans have been making clothing, they have created an astonishing array of styles, many of which have been reconstructed from surviving garments, photographs, paintings, mosaics, etc., as well as from written descriptions. Costume history can inspire current fashion designers, as well as costumiers for plays, films, television, and historical reenactment.
Clothing as comfort
is related to various perceptions, physiological, social, and psychological needs, and after food, it is clothing that satisfies these comfort needs. Clothing provides aesthetic, tactile, thermal, moisture, and pressure comfort.;Aesthetic comfort: Visual perception is influenced by color, fabric construction, style, garment fit, fashion compatibility, and finish of clothing material. Aesthetic comfort is necessary for psychological and social comfort.
;Thermoregulation and thermophysiological comfort: Thermophysiological comfort is the capacity of the clothing material that makes the balance of moisture and heat between the body and the environment. It is a property of textile materials that creates ease by maintaining moisture and thermal levels in a human's resting and active states. The selection of textile material significantly affects the comfort of the wearer. Different textile fibers have unique properties that make them suitable for use in various environments. For example, natural fibers are breathable and absorb moisture while synthetic fibers are hydrophobic, repel moisture and do not allow air to pass. Different environments demand a diverse selection of clothing materials. Hence, the appropriate choice is important. The major determinants that influence thermophysiological comfort are permeable construction, heat, and moisture transfer rate.
;Thermal comfort: One primary criterion for our physiological needs is thermal comfort. The heat dissipation effectiveness of clothing gives the wearer a neither very hot nor very cold feel. The optimum temperature for thermal comfort of the skin surface is between. Thermophysiology reacts whenever the temperature falls below or exceeds the neutral point on either side; it is discomforting below 28 and above 30 degrees. Clothing maintains a thermal balance; it keeps the skin dry and cool. It helps to keep the body from overheating while avoiding heat from the environment.
;Moisture comfort: Moisture comfort is the prevention of a damp sensation. According to Hollies' research, it feels uncomfortable when more than "50% to 65% of the body is wet."
;Tactile comfort: Tactile comfort is a resistance to the discomfort related to the friction created by clothing against the body. It is related to the smoothness, roughness, softness, and stiffness of the fabric used in clothing. The degree of tactile discomfort may vary between individuals, which is possible due to various factors including allergies, tickling, prickling, skin abrasion, coolness, and the fabric's weight, structure, and thickness. There are specific surface finishes that can enhance tactile comfort. Fleece sweatshirts and velvet clothing, for example. Soft, clingy, stiff, heavy, light, hard, sticky, scratchy, prickly are all terms used to describe tactile sensations.
;Pressure comfort: The comfort of the human body's pressure receptors' sensory response towards clothing. Fabric with lycra feels more comfortable because of this response and superior pressure comfort. The sensation response is influenced by the material's structure: snugging, looseness, heavy, light, soft, or stiff structuring.