The clothingmanufacturing is the most prominentindustryaround the globetoday. The demand of fabric in today’s world is ever increasing. At present, we use cloth for all the things, starting from bed sheets to grand piano covers. however, before we began dressing our instruments with a grand piano cover, it was our body itself which was covered and decorated with fabric.
It is said that the earliest of humans used to cover themselves with leaves and animal skin. Even in those times, fabric greatly showed a social standing, as the mightiest and strongestmen wore the skin of the wildest animals. Archaeologicalartifacts show that humans used clothing and wearable stuff as early as 170,000 years ago. The clothes at that time were draped and knotted around the body rather than stitched in an appropriate way. yet, the very first sewing needles found are of around 40,000 years ago. This suggests that people had began to sew their garments by that time, and this fact also leads to a theory that some sort of fiber was already known.
The exact date of the oldest fiber use and discovery is uncertainyet, but archaeologists have found a thread of dyed flax fabric in a cave in Georgia. This thread of dyed fiber dates back to 36,000BP. A 25,000 years old statue of Aphrodite is the very firstfigurine of anyone depicted with drapes.Clothing comprises all the accessoriessuch as hat and belts.definite sewing needles and weaving sticks belonging to the same erawere also found in Eastern and Western Europe.
It is assumed that the very first fabric to be used was felt, but it was a bit rougher than today’s felt. The woven textilehowever, is Flax. It was cultivated in the Near East around 8000 BC. The usage of cotton as a cloth was common in the Asian sub continent civilization in around 4000BC. Around the same period, linen was also produced in ancient Egypt. Many weaving techniques and machineries were invented in Egypt in the same times. Wearing linen was so much in Egypt that ancient Egyptians even made use of it it in mummification of their dead. All of these points are very eminent from the paintings and murals of those times.
The Chinese are famous to have invented the silk fiber in 3000BC. Bits of silk are found from different historic sites in China. Due to the invention of Silk in China and the cultivation of cotton on the Indus River, the trade of textile and fabric was very common on the Silk Road. This eventually made clothing sewed out of knitted fabric an increasing necessity around the world.
During the classical era, the most stylishkind of clothing in the west was tunics and togas worn by Greeks and Romans. However, it was in the medieval times that fashion established as an essential element of society and class. People began to wear unique clothsaccording to their social ranks and standing. The finest fashion was for the lords and socialites, while peasants and the poor used to wear plain clothes.
Then there was the Middle Ages when fashion was something that everyone was after, and the fact is still the same. Clothing is not only an obligation now, but a lot more than that. It well defines a person’s overall personality and it is quite enough to transform that too.
