People and Dressing: Do Clothes Make a Man?

A king in rags is still a king and a pauper clothed like a monarch is still a pauper.

Clothes are just mere disguises to assert the world of illusions and believe the realm of realities. Even what is real had been the focal point of much discourses since the time of Plato and Aristotle to the existentialists and to the present day.

In as much as it changes the outer appearance of the man , clothes of various fashions and designs do make an impact. To a small extent it instills a psychological edge on his personality, his confidence and feeling of self esteem but this superficial icing melts away as soon as the clothes are taken off.
In the Paleolithic age man dresses to protect himself from the elements .There was little evidence of vanity. Fashion was not the order of the day.

The focal concern was survival. Only with the advent of the Neolithic age as man began to live in bigger conglomerates and as cultures evolve therein, we find new forms of clothing emerge to conform to the traditionsl folkways, mores and norms of society. There are also evidence of man' s beginning to assert himself over his peers. Early fashion designs and costume jewellery are introduced into his life. Excavations into the tombs of Chinese emperors of the Chin dynasty, the Phroahs of Egypt and various sites of the ancient kingdoms have unearthed treasures depicting man's unrelentless efforts to assert his station and personalities through clothing.

Now clothes have become more and more a symbol of fierce vain competition to project an image of superiority. To look charming, elegent, attractive, and macho has taken over the order of the day.

Clothes have become the disguise retreat to hide man's frailities and shortcomings physically, emotionally and spiritually. By and large this is the most popular disguise retreat. Upcoming trends of fashions and designs and expensive costume jewellery are mere distractions from the real .

Yet, it may not be fair to generalize the evolution of fashions designs and jewellery as totally a disguise of the true man underneath and it may also be unfair to emphatically state that clothes do not change a man a bit. To categorically state whether clothes do or do not change the man hiding behind the façade of falsities demands a close and thorough investigations into the various possibilities of why a man dresses. The cultural traditions, peer group pressures and man's personality makeup itself would have to be looked into.

Man may be different with different clothes on or different even in the same clothes.True, it is difficult to separate the real from the false In an instant a man is an image of the clothes he wears and in another instant he is somebody else. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide has survived the erosion of time and is now appearing in cloned existence and in grater numbers.

The President of the United States may look macho and heroic with bodyguards walking alround in the white house but is he the same man when walking alone lost in the Amazon jungle as the lone survivor after a plane crash. Mahatma Ghandi was a patriot when dressed in a suit as a lawyer and still remained a patriot when dressed in a simple Indian saree. The short story of Somerset Maughm may shed some light on this controversy. In the story, a clergy always appearing in religious robes relentlessly attempts to persuade a prostitute to change her ways ; preaches to her and prays with her. In the end he is found dead committing suicide , after ending on the other side of the moral fence. This may be just a story or just an instance but it nevertheless sheds some light on the controversy ...DO CLOTHES CHANGE A MAN?