Gender is a historically specific, socially and culturally

constructed category. Stevi Jackson (2005) defined gender as:

a hierarchical social division between women and men

embedded in both social institutions and social

practices. Gender is thus a social structural

phenomenon, part of the social order, but it is also lived

out by embodied individuals who ‘do gender’ in their

daily lives, constantly (re)producing it through

habitual, everyday interaction. (p. 16)

Utilizing this definition, gender identity can be conside

During the last two centuries, the definitions of gender were bounded by increasingly blurred lines, expressing the cultural

uncertainty surrounding masculinity and feminity. Besides it is known that gender is a social construction (and not only

determined by biological sex). Two basics social - cultural factors that shape the gender are dressing and fashion. A

chorography (especially the last two centuries) shows these different constructions of masculinity and femininity. The battle for

the use of trousers by women (from Coco Channel and stars of Hollywood Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine

Hepburn play a significant role) confirm the different treatment of male and female. Fashion, which in essence is the fantasy of

escape from the typical role of individuals, guiding and shaping the male and female roles, with the major fashion designers to

play the key role in shaping it. Dress movements such as Macaroni (1760 - 1780), Baeu, (early 18th century), Dandies (early

19th century) and Mods (20th century) and various teen subcultures show differentiation trends of certain groups. Unisex style

has tried to conceal gender differences showing a masquerade of equality for all (with the hippies and Ravers to have the basic

role). On the contrary androgynous style seeks to unite the male and the female body, leading to a return to a primordial

cosmic unity that will appease the gender confusion and anxiety. But eventually style and androgynous Unisex highlight th

1.1. The role of dressing

People, sometimes interact with objects, in this case garments, as if they are humans,

sometimes because they want show to others what they believe they represent (Adelman,

2008). Direct physical contact and intimacy of the dress with the body, makes it highly visible

in the construction of social identity in general and gender in particular. The materials which

are worn and carried on the body are obvious and with these people create "social contacts"

involved in the unstable interaction between the body and the outside world (Joyce, 2005;

Turner, 1980). Dress as a form of material culture is particularly suited to express the

relationship between personal values and those assigned to material goods, because of its

close relationship with the perceptions of the Self. The dressing affects and reflects the

perceptions of Self and has specific character as a material object, due to the direct contact

with the body, acting as a filter between the individual and the surrounding social world

(Crane & Bovone, 2006). The body is regarded as the tangible and visible outer limit of the

self, but operates as a collective experience, to the extent that mediates between the person

actions and the external environment, society, being part of the natural and social relations.

The body is a symbol of society and is categorized by it and especially the female body is also

a means of preserving cultural symbols (Gasouka, 2007). The traditional national costumes, in

many parts of the world, are still worn mostly by women and less by men. Simultaneously the

body is experienced as an individual, it is protected, it can be hidden or restricted by the

garment and thus the limits of personality are constantly renegotiated, i.e. paradoxically the

garment is used to blur the boundaries of the body (Fisher & Loren, 2003).

Social information is imprinted on the body, which incorporates and reiterate

1.2. Social Restrictions on Clothing and the Relevant Reactions

There are social restrictions on clothing along with legal disciplinary practices, which

restrict people and increase the pressure on the participants to adapt into prevailing standards

about their appearance and behavior. Dressing, because of its ability to transform the social

body, has been also used for recording social identities through laws that limited the costs of

clothing and marketing. Because of these regulations, tension is created giving a strange

ability to clothing; to express separation or deviation from the social group, thus contributing

to the creation of subgroups (Voss, 2008). Thus, clothing may become an operator of

socialization, social control, and/or freedom from cultural factors. This socialization is shown

by the important role played by the uniform in education, religious organizations and the

military, while liberalization is shown by the plenty members of various forms in clothing of

popular groups (folk groups) during the last fifty years (Crane & Bovone, 2006).

1.3. Dressing and Values

Everyone at the moment of her/his interaction with others, through clothing selects

the Persona who she/he wishes to be. Namely she/he can freely choose one of multiple

determinations or better, decide which favors her/his self-determination at that time (Crane &

Bovone, 2006). Dressing is an important and controllable way to communicate one's values,

particularly rich in emotional and psychosocial consequences. The public and instantly visible

nature of dressing makes it an ideal field for the study of values surrounding this consumer

good, as a link between values and clothing. The style in clothing is a combination of

personal expression and social rules. Dressing influenced by dominant values, social attitudes,

socioeconomic status, life status, and some of the circumstances through which people want

to assure their self-introduction. Clothing communicates symbolically the social identity,

namely how a person wants and seeks to appear in society (Davi

Gender and Symbolic Language of Dressing

For most people clothes usually highlight certain characteristics of the wearer, but the

manner in which information is structured is not always known and the interpretation can

vary. Whereas proposed by Lurie (1981) that clothing is a full visual language with a distinct

vocabulary, probably it is more similar to music or poetry, where yielding clear concepts

depends on the emotional mood of the person (Dodd, Clarke, Baron, & Houston, 2000). The

code of that language, while it uses visual and tactile symbols of culture, it does that in a

suggestive and ambiguous way, thus the resulting notions of the main elements of the code

(fabric, color, shape, volume and contour) are always volatile (Davis, 1992). It would be

wrong for somebody to think the dress code as the isomorphic equivalent of language. The

dress code is semantically more ambiguous and indeterminate. Except in the case of uniforms,

dressing usually suggests and implies much more than it optically states, thus approaching

music rather than declarative speech (Davis, 1989). Anne Hollander (1995) argues that even

the nudity is a form of apparel and clothing has the same dialectical relationship with the

body, like language with clear thinking.

With the choice of clothing it is not expected for all the encoded rules encoded to be

understood by this selection. The ambiguity of the dress code is a result of the temporary and

capricious nature of fashion. On the other hand, the code is heavily influenced by the context

in which it occurs, and its messages depend on people’s identity, circumstances, places and

even moods. Finally the code is associated to the social variance of the relationship between

the signifier and the signified. Namely for the same signifier, what is signified, or what it

implies are obviously different for different social groups and/or cultures, and therefore it is

hard to perceive it. Also different values are associated with the dress code at different

periods. For example, long hair of male Hippies or beatniks symbolized freedom and

liberation from gender (for the first), but their more conventional contemporaries, interpreted

it as a perversion of gender rules and an effort to cover up for laziness (Dodd, Clarke, Baron,

& Houston, 2000).

Dressing is considered a visual text type, similar to pictures and advertisements.

Clothing of young people subgroups, different cultures, primitive races and gay communities,

helps to understand how the values of specific social identities are expressed (Crane &

Bovone, 2006). However, emphasizing on code visualization is dangerous. On one hand it

If you refuse to dress like others, you will be ridiculed,

and no one wants to appear in public dressed like a fool

or an oddball. It is not likely that executives will ever

skip down Park Avenue at noon wearing tights in

fetching colors, and it is equally unlikely that people in

general will abandon their secret pride in being

identifiably themselves and imagining themselves

honored for their originality of appearance. (Fussell,

2002, p. 5)

The difficulty of negotiating a personal belief and im

Fashion and clothing are ideological, then, in that they

are also part of the process in which social groups

establish and reproduce positions of power, relations of

dominance and subservience. They are, moreover, part

of the process in which these positions of dominance

and subservience are made to appear entirely natural,

proper and legitimate. (Barnard, p. 42)

Dress, then, is not only a way of demarcating norms