We will be considering fashion and clothing from the perspective of class and gender; as being the sort of things that are constructed, performed and reproduced.


Dress is so intimately related to our bodies, and thus profoundly connected to our sexual, cultural and gender identities. Fashion and clothing are instrumental in the process of socialisation into gender roles; they shape people's ideas of how a person should look (whether masculine or feminine). From this point of view, fashion both might help to nurture one's own identity or might confine in those existing strict gender norms.