Dress and dressing an object of communication and activity of culture

Dress is a non verbal communicative object and dressing is a part of cultural activity. One of the distinctive features of dress is that a group of people shares a particular patterns or styles of dress. The style of a dress is a consequence of the culture of a society and the traditions which people follow. The way people dress and decorate their body with a variety of jewelry and the methodology of arranging the dress to the body is a communicative activity. Individuals share ideas and beliefs according to their ideologies of culture. Besides, they participate in social agreements by which they live from generation to generation and from individual to individual. The objective of the paper is to investigate the material and non material culture during the period of the Kotte kingdom by focusing on the extended cultural practices amalgamated with dress and dressing. Further this article looks for changes in contextual boundaries of dress signs in order to understand the culture which predominates dress communication. The method adopted for the research was qualitative. Research findings show that dress fashions and dressing in Sri Lanka is made up of a rich set of possible combinations of cultural and communicative objects which entails authentic individuation of an outfit

Dress fashions of Royalty: Kotte kingdom of Sri Lanka

This collection of writings provides an intensive reading of dress fashions of royalty which intensified Portuguese political power over the Kingdom of Kotte. The royalties were at the top in the social strata eventually known to be the fashion creators of society. Their engagement in creating and practicing dress fashion prevailed from time immemorial. The author builds a sound dialogue within six chapters’ covering most areas of dress fashion by incorporating valid recorded historical data, variety of recorded visual formats cross checking each other, clarifying how the period signifies a turning point in the fashion history of Sri Lanka culminating with emerging novel dress features. This scholarly work is very much vital for university academia and fellow researches in the stream of Humanities and Social Sciences interested in historical dress fashions and usage of jewelry. Furthermore, the content leads the reader into a new perspective on the subject through a sound dialogue which has been narrated through validated recorded historical data, recorded historical visual information, and logical analysis with reference to scholars of the subject area. Therefore the reader is guided into cross referencing over a variety of data gradually and will gain reliable and analytical interpretation of the subject

Dress for Dance : costumes during Kotte period

Dress has always been a distinctive mark of a historical period. The aim of this article is to present a comprehensive study of dance costumes in use during the Kotte period. Two ivory caskets at present in the Munich Treasury reveal an interesting representation of period dance costume. This attire was inspired by South Indian culture. A profusion of jewelry and an abundance of drapery signified that these dresses were definitely utilized by the court performers of the perio

Fashion syntax concept of contextual perspective

Fashion gives distinctive meanings.These meanings however subject to constant change because of the context in which any message is transmitted influences its interpretation. There are three kinds of contexts which can be considered in relation to generating meanings in fashion the appearance context, the social context, cultural and historical context in which people lived and interacted. The Kotte era of Sri Lanka from the 15th Century to the 17th Century was a turning point in fashion history where the western fashion (Por-tuguese) directly influenced. It brought many social and cultural changes due to the changing of the state religion into Christianity. The newly introduced Christian social context led to many changes in royal dresses in the succeeding eras in history because the royalty formed a novel piece of dress fashion by mixed and matched with traditional Sinhala dress features with western dress fashion items. (Hybrid forma-tion) The new fashion brought many new meanings to the Sri Lankan fashion arena. The objective of the research is to find out in what ways the ‘context’ affect the meanings of fashion. A qualitative method has been adopted for this research. Data were gathered from temple murals, cloth paintings, wood and stone carvings, sculptures and special ivory carvings at Munich Treasury in Germany. Literary data gathered from manuscripts, chronicles, books, original records of foreign travelers, published research and inscriptions. Validity was much concerned. The study reveals that the meaning of dress rely heavily on social contexts in order for a meaning to be comprehended

Fashion cognition deciphering meanings of dress

Theories of culture based on signs and systems are found across an interdisciplinary spectrum. There seems to be a growing consensus across disciplines that the forms of culture (linguistic, material, aesthetic, ritualistic, etc.) are connected to each other in some way. With the help of social cognition theory, this article claims that the cognitive mechanisms connecting people influence their thinking patterns and identification by their appearance. These patterns could be identified as patterns of the structures of social cognition. Cognitive structures also allow receivers to organize their thoughts and to simplify their perceptions, so they do not have to consciously struggle for interpretation each time a person is observed. Cognitive structures provide an easy sense of order and predictability for the purpose of clarification of expectations and also explaining behaviors related to senders.( Kaiser 1998)The theory also claims that fashion and social change as well as sender’s creativity in appearance management lead to a variety of appearances for which perceivers may not have already formulated a cognitive structure’. It is understood that cognitive processes lead to stereotyping and itis possible to link signs and systems which govern the dress and fashion system into a network of distributed meanings that constitute a culture. Stereotypes are ‘pictures in the head’ that receivers use to place others into categories and then to apply certain cognitive structures. Stereotypes may be viewed as strategies for simplifying and storing the complex array of information supplied by appearance and for reducing uncertainty and apprehension in initial interactions with others. The objective of the present research is to understand how the meanings of dresses arouse and create meaning as a result of negotiation between the wearer and the perceivers. The Kotte era was selected as the study setting. As the Sri Lankan dress paradigm significantly became more ambiguous with the advent of the Portuguese

Fashion transformation Portuguese fashion dictate Sri Lankan fashion arena

Priyanka Virajini Medagedara Karunaratne The cultural determinations of different visual priorities of dresses make carvings and mural during the 16th Century in Sri Lanka visualized on earlier dress and dressing visions of the country during a period that intensified Sri Lankan Portuguese cultural exchanges. This period seems having various social, cultural and political impulses that energized varieties of dress strategies. Historical research of this nature demands working across cultural and economic contexts and, making the dress categories Sri Lankan and foreign too absolute, it is requires that historical exploration of what is now established as contemporary dress in Sri Lanka. According to the linear theory of social change the concept of western would be identified as a gate way to the concept of modernity. These two concepts were instrumental in forming the base of ideologies of fashion movement of royal clan during the Kotte period in Sri Lanka. The exclusive fashion line of the royalty has changed after the Portuguese invasion during the period of 1505. Sri Lankan Kings adopted western stitched long sleeved loose jacket with clinging draped cloth. The Queens too adopted western long stitched dress. Succeeding era, the Kings changed their lower unstitched cloth to a stitched pantaloons followed by the Portuguese Kings. This paper explores, in what ways the outfit accentuates the idea of changing contemporary new notions of dress composition which entails a linear movement in Sri Lanka. The results shows that Sri Lankan fashion is made up of rich set of possible combinations (tradition and modernity) which entails authentic individuation of an outfit. Qualitative method was adopted for the research. Data for this research was gathered from original historical literary records, texts, illustrations, temple murals and carvings. Systematic sequence of observational studies was carried out to gather, sort and analyze data. Validity data were confirmed with cross checking with literary sources

Addressing fashion: a historical study on dress and fashion styles described in sri lankan poetical work (sandesakavyas)

In Sri Lanka it was in the 16th century that Sandesa poetical literature came to the fore. Poets of that period have excelled at locating dress and fashion style as well as some unique socially accepted norms regulated in relation of dress and fashion in Sandesa poetry. Poets identified unique dress fashion and its amalgamated etiquettes followed by the royalty, court dancers and commoners. These poetical descriptions led visual interpretation of a unique fashion legacy in particular era. The objective of this paper is to study in further how poetical work expressed in which ways that said people had their space of spirit satisfaction in dressing and the desire of expressing themselves. On the other hand the poetical work gave an impression of fashion of dress that is an artifact, practice and institution that constitute a society’s beliefs, values, ideas and experiences. The study revealed that the dress is a way in which people created fashion legacy by communicating none verbally , not only feelings and mood, but also the values and norms, beliefs of dressing the body in the social groups of which they were members. Data for this research were gathered from many original historical records, texts, and pictorial records from the sculpture, temple murals, museum artifacts, wood and ivory carvings pertaining to the era. A qualitative research method was adopted for the stud