Communication in Clothing

In the latest chapter we have read for class we discovered the importance of non verbal communication in our daily lives. I discovered how clothing can be a persons way of non-verbally communicating themselves. I had of course realized that people dressed in different ways but had never really thought of it as a form of non verbal communication. If you walk into a busy mall on any given day you can see many, many different kinds of dress that people are wearing. A person also can get some information about a person simply based on their dress. The most obvious that many in my group talked about were Somalian and Muslim women. They wear the long dresses and head coverings. This can be both a way of communicating their religion and cultural background. If you see an Indian woman in her traditional Indian dress with the shawl and bright colors you know they are expressing their Indian heritage in their clothing. There are many other choices in clothing that "speak"a persons culture and/or religion such as Jewish, African or Native American.

There are also many variations that the American culture has come up with. You see the teenage girls who are trying to show off as much of their bodies as possible without being naked. There is the grunge look and the goth look. Dark clothing, makeup and lots of piercings and maybe tattoos. There are the people that dress up fancy all the time trying to show their "class'. You will see the conservative people dressed in long skirts, pants and shirt sleeves. The list could go on and on. The point being that people can communicate a lot about themselves, their likes, and their way of life just by the clothing they choose to put on each day. I never really thought about how much a person can reveal about themselves through their dress.