Clothing, coverings and garments intended to be worn on the human body. The words cloth and clothing are related, the first meaning fabric or textile, and the second meaning fabrics used to cover the body. The earliest garments were made of leather and other nonfabrics, rather than of cloth, but these nonfabric garments are included in the category of clothing.
Fashion refers to the kinds of clothing that are in a desirable style at a particular time. At different times in history, fashionable dress has taken very different forms. In modern times nearly everyone follows fashion to some extent. A young woman would look odd if she wore the clothing that her grandmother had worn when young. However, only a small minority of people dress in the clothing that appears in high-fashion magazines or on fashion-show runways.
It is not always easy to tell the difference between basic clothing and fashionable clothing. Especially today, fashion designers often use inexpensive and functional items of clothing as inspiration. Blue jeans, for instance, originated as functional work clothing for miners and farmers. Yet today, even people who dress in jeans, T-shirts, and sports clothes may be influenced by fashion. One year, fashionable jeans may have narrow legs; the next year the legs may be baggy.
Clothing historians trace the development of dress by studying various sources, including magazines and catalogs, paintings and photographs, and hats, shoes, and other surviving items. Reliable evidence about everyday clothing from the past can be hard to obtain because most publications and images concern the fashions of the wealthy. Furthermore, clothing that has survived from the past tends not to be typical of what was worn in daily life. Museum collections are full of fashionable ball gowns, for example, but have very few everyday dresses worn by ordinary working-class women. Even fewer examples of ordinary men's clothing have been saved. Images, such as paintings, prints, and photographs, do provide considerable evidence of the history of everyday clothing. These sources indicate that although everyday clothing does not usually change as rapidly as fashionable dress, it does change constantly.