Fashion has been used as a method of communication for hundreds of years. Clothing could identify where someone was from, their marital and social status, and was also a way to differentiate friend from foe. This is still true today. Attire can often able to distinguish tourists from local citizens, there are wedding and engagement rings to reveal marital status, and the purchase of designer clothing items is a common indicator of wealth and social status. For years, militaries all over the world create distinct uniforms for their soldiers, making it easy to identify who to trust. It can be used to express or change someone’s mood, it can suggest intent and occupation and wealth. It conveys positions of power, special occasions, as well as intent. In modern times, celebrities use fashion to make political statements, from Billy Porter’s tuxedo dress to NBA players with ‘Black Lives Matter’ screen printed across their jerseys. With all of this in mind, there is no denying that fashion has created its own language that is simultaneously universal and dynamic.
A critique of the concept of fashion as a language comes from Fred Davis, where he says that “the clothing-fashion code is highly context-dependent” (Davis 151). Davis doesn’t say this to completely invalidate the argument, simply as a critique of the theory. Ironically, this statement further proves why fashion should be considered a language, as many languages have context dependent phrases. Factors such as tone, body language, and the situation in which a phrase is said can all affect how it’s interpreted. Nearly all communication is context-dependent, and fashion is no exception. A similar critique comes from Colin Campbell, who talks about how fashion “may constitute multiple or even overlapping languages or language codes” (Campbell 160). With this argument, fashion can’t be recognized as one singular language, but multiple different languages that overlap and occasionally contradict each other. Again, this can be true for verbal languages as well. For example, English is spoken all over the world, and it varies greatly from region to region. From a technical standpoint, all English speakers should be able to communicate perfectly with one another, but in practice that is rarely the case. To compare the use of English in the United States and the United Kingdom, words such as “boot”, “lift”, “pants”, and “trunk” have very different definitions, all of which are correct. None of this makes English any less of a language, simply a language subject to variation and double meanings. The same can be said for fashion, which is entirely open to interpretation, but still has enough unity to create a general sense of understanding.
There will never be a time in which fashion is completely universal. It will always be changing, because people are always changing, and fashion clearly reflects that. It has created a language that falls within the realm of nonverbal communication; words are occasionally necessary to guide it, but it is able to communicate all on its own. This makes it a language that is fluid and open to social change much faster than anything verbal, making it the easiest way for someone to express themselves, completely impossible to ignore.