Dog fashion is a popular style or practice, especially in canine clothing and accessories. Dog fashion is a distinctive trend of the style in which people dress their canine companions. This trend dates back to the Egyptian predynastic period and has since expanded due to increased consumer capitalism. Other animals such as cats may also wear fashion. [1]
There is evidence from ancient Egypt that people were using decorative collars to adorn their dogs. One collar was discovered in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian nobleman Maihar Piri in 1440 BC. It depicts hunting scenes embossed into leather. The dog's name, Tantanuit, is visible on the collar. He was a favorite dog of the nobleman who wished to bring him to the afterlife. [2] There are also silver, gold, silk and velvet decorative dog collars from the time of King Henry VIII which were used to represent how many battles the dog survived. [3] During the Renaissance, dogs were seen as objects of possession and thus collars were fitted with padlocks where only the owner of the dog had the key. Nobility and the upper class have been decorating their canine companions for centuries and there is photographic evidence from 1900 of people dressing their dogs in human costumes. [4] Today, it is common for people to dress up their dogs, particularly small dogs, and canine clothing has become a global phenomenon. In 2011, there was a dog fashion show in New York called Last Bark at Bryant Park. [5]
Dog fashion and style has been greatly influenced with the advent of the internet. [6] New professions have arisen driven by consumer capitalism, such as the pet style expert. [7]
Dog clothes are available in various price ranges, from inexpensive to high-end designer styles. Typically toy and small breed dogs, such as Chihuahuas and Yorkshire Terriers, are dressed in dog clothes, although even large breeds like Golden Retrievers can wear clothes, too. It is more common to dress small dogs because they are easier to dress and they often suffer from cold temperatures. Dog clothes are made to be either functional or for show. Functional dog clothes are for protection from the elements and allergens. Dog clothes that are purely for show would be used as costumes for holidays and special occasions, such as Halloween or weddings.
Dog coats are most commonly used for protection against rain and cold and to provide extra warmth. Dog coats are also used as fashion accessories.
Dog sweaters are both functional and fashion accessories. They provide extra warmth for dogs that are hairless or suffer from the cold and come in an array of patterns and styles, such as cable knitted sweaters or hooded sweatshirts with embellishments.
Dog shirts can be used to help keep a dog clean and as fashion accessories. They can also be used to help protect a dog who is excessively scratching itself due to allergies or prevent hairless dogs from getting sunburned. They are available in a t-shirt style with short or long sleeves as well as a sleeveless tank top for use during warmer weather.
Dog dresses are purely fashion accessories and are mainly worn on toy and small breed dogs. [6]
Dog tuxedos also exist. Some people may involve dogs in formal-wear at their weddings, whether in photos, parties, or at the ceremony itself. There has been at least one documented case of a dog serving as the owner's best man. [8] Dog hats are an alternative to clothes if dogs get too warm wearing garments. Dog hats can be worn for warmth or to be fashionable. One hat trend has holes for pointy eared dogs. This allows owners to dress up their dog without disguising the breed.
There is a clear distinction between pet shows [9] and pet fashion shows. The pet fashion show's emphasis is on the clothes, not on the dog. In countries all over the world, pet fashion shows are becoming increasingly popular [10] [1] [11] [12] During these shows, well groomed pets strut down the runway wearing high fashion clothes. Some well known designers such as Alexander Wang have designed outfits for dogs. [13] Anthony Rubio, a New York designer, was the first to hold a canine fashion show at New York Fashion Week. [14]
Dog coats, collars, cute sweaters, shirts, stylish dresses, and booties are some of the items people purchase to adorn their dogs with style. [6] Some major international fashion retailers such as Ralph Lauren have launched their own canine clothing lines. [15] Louis Vuitton has a line of leashes and collars for dogs with their trademark LV pattern. [16] Swarovski also has a line of collars and leashes for dogs with crystals. [17]
The canine fashion industry has become a multi-billion dollar business [18] set to top £30 billion in 2015. In the US, expenditure on pet supplies, including clothing, has been steadily increasing for the last twenty years with 2014 estimated spending at $13.72 billion. As of 2014, an estimated 26.7 million US households owned a dog, and an estimated 83.3 million dogs were kept as pets in the United States. The dog fashion industry is projected to continually grow. [19]
In 2021, the pet apparel market was valued at $5.7 billion, with dog owners accounting for the majority of sales. [20]
Humans typically have deep attachments to their dogs because dogs are adept at fulfilling emotionally supportive roles in people's lives which results in high levels of attachment. Dog owners who are single, childless, newly married, empty nesters, divorced, or in a second marriage tend to anthropomorphize their pets more often. Dogs can be emotional substitutes for family members such as children and spouses and they contribute to the moral maintenance of people who live alone. [21]
Dogs have become increasingly important and treated as unique individuals. In a world where people are increasingly disconnected from their families, they rely more on their pets, specifically dogs, to fill emotional voids. Pets have become a relatively easy and lovable replacement for children or a strong community. [22]
Humans have been dependent on animals as sources of companionship and artistic inspiration since the Paleolithic period, and animals have continued to mold the shape of human culture and psychology ever since. [23]
Increasing affluence means that more people can spend resources on items that are not necessary, like clothes and costumes. [24]
People express themselves through fashion. As Georg Simmel says, "Style is the manifestation of our inner feelings and through style we demonstrate our taste, values, and status. We project all of those qualities onto our dogs when we dress them." [25]
The appearance of a dog reflects the status of the owner: dressing a dog is more about the owner than the animal. When an owner dresses up their dog they establish a unique bond with the dog that places them at an even more personal and intimate level. [6]
Dogs are often shown in movies dressed up in clothing and costumes. This reflects the contemporary trend of dog fashion. In films such as Oliver and Company , one of the characters is a female dog, Georgette, who indulges in luxury fashion and wears leopard print scarves, big hats, and jeweled collars. [26]
In the Disney film Beverly Hills Chihuahua , a family of chihuahuas portray small dogs wearing fashionable clothes including sunglasses, hats, shirts, dresses, jeweled collars, and bandanas. In one scene, a wedding takes place between two dogs where the female dog wears a bridal gown and the male dog groom wears a tuxedo. [27]
A popular trend in various kids films, dogs are shown with the capability of human speech and dressed up in human clothing while remaining quadrupedal. A great example of this would be Air Bud (1997). The film centers around an escaped circus dog turned adopted stray that is taken to a basketball court and is discovered to have incredible talent in the sport. [28] Throughout the film, the dog is shown in various human outfits and attire.
Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.
Clothing is any item worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, while hats and headgear cover the head, and underwear covers the private parts.
There are typically two types of clothing worn in Japan: traditional clothing known as Japanese clothing, including the national dress of Japan, the kimono, and Western clothing, which encompasses all else not recognised as either national dress or the dress of another country.
Cheongsam or zansae, also known as the qipao and sometimes referred to as the mandarin gown, is a Chinese dress worn by women which takes inspiration from the qizhuang, the ethnic clothing of the Manchu people. The cheongsam is most often seen as a longer, figure-fitting, one piece garment with a standing collar, an asymmetric, left-over-right opening and two side slits, and embellished with Chinese frog fasteners on the lapel and the collar. It was developed in the 1920s and evolved in shapes and design over years. It was popular in China from the 1920s to 1960s, overlapping with the Republican era, and was popularized by Chinese socialites and high society women in Shanghai. Although the cheongsam is sometimes seen as traditional Chinese clothing, the cheongsam continues to evolve with times as it responds to the contemporary modern life.
A lap dog or lapdog is a dog that is both small enough to be held in the arms or lie comfortably on a person's lap and temperamentally predisposed to doing so. Lapdog is not a specific breed, but a generic term for a type of dog that is small in size and friendly towards humans.
Clothing terminology comprises the names of individual garments and classes of garments, as well as the specialized vocabularies of the trades that have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold clothing over hundreds of years.
1840s fashion in European and European-influenced clothing is characterized by a narrow, natural shoulder line following the exaggerated puffed sleeves of the later 1820s and 1830s. The narrower shoulder was accompanied by a lower waistline for both men and women.
Fashion in the period 1550–1600 in European clothing was characterized by increased opulence. Contrasting fabrics, slashes, embroidery, applied trims, and other forms of surface ornamentation remained prominent. The wide silhouette, conical for women with breadth at the hips and broadly square for men with width at the shoulders had reached its peak in the 1530s, and by mid-century a tall, narrow line with a V-lined waist was back in fashion. Sleeves and women's skirts then began to widen again, with emphasis at the shoulder that would continue into the next century. The characteristic garment of the period was the ruff, which began as a modest ruffle attached to the neckband of a shirt or smock and grew into a separate garment of fine linen, trimmed with lace, cutwork or embroidery, and shaped into crisp, precise folds with starch and heated irons.
Fashion in the years 1750–1775 in European countries and the colonial Americas was characterised by greater abundance, elaboration and intricacy in clothing designs, loved by the Rococo artistic trends of the period. The French and English styles of fashion were very different from one another. French style was defined by elaborate court dress, colourful and rich in decoration, worn by such iconic fashion figures as Marie Antoinette.
Fashion in the period 1795–1820 in European and European-influenced countries saw the final triumph of undress or informal styles over the brocades, lace, periwigs and powder of the earlier 18th century. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, no one wanted to appear to be a member of the French aristocracy, and people began using clothing more as a form of individual expression of the true self than as a pure indication of social status. As a result, the shifts that occurred in fashion at the turn of the 19th century granted the opportunity to present new public identities that also provided insights into their private selves. Katherine Aaslestad indicates how "fashion, embodying new social values, emerged as a key site of confrontation between tradition and change."
Fashion of the 1960s featured a number of diverse trends, as part of a decade that broke many fashion traditions, adopted new cultures, and launched a new age of social movements. Around the middle of the decade, fashions arising from small pockets of young people in a few urban centers received large amounts of media publicity, and began to heavily influence both the haute couture of elite designers and the mass-market manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.
Fashion in the years following World War II is characterized by the resurgence of haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Square shoulders and short skirts were replaced by the soft femininity of Christian Dior's "New Look" silhouette, with its sweeping longer skirts, fitted waist, and rounded shoulders, which in turn gave way to an unfitted, structural look in the later 1950s.
The most characteristic North American fashion trend from the 1930s to 1945 was attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. The period also saw the first widespread use of man-made fibers, especially rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and synthetic nylon stockings. The zipper became widely used. These essentially U.S. developments were echoed, in varying degrees, in Britain and Europe. Suntans became fashionable in the early 1930s, along with travel to the resorts along the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, and on the east coast of Florida where one can acquire a tan, leading to new categories of clothes: white dinner jackets for men and beach pajamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women.
Western fashion in the 1920s underwent a modernization. Women's fashion continued to evolve from the restrictions of gender roles and traditional styles of the Victorian era. Women wore looser clothing which revealed more of the arms and legs, that had begun at least a decade prior with the rising of hemlines to the ankle and the movement from the S-bend corset to the columnar silhouette of the 1910s. Men also began to wear less formal daily attire and athletic clothing or 'Sportswear' became a part of mainstream fashion for the first time.
Fashion in the period 1900–1909 in the Western world continued the severe, long and elegant lines of the late 1890s. Tall, stiff collars characterize the period, as do women's broad hats and full "Gibson Girl" hairstyles. A new, columnar silhouette introduced by the couturiers of Paris late in the decade signaled the approaching abandonment of the corset as an indispensable garment.
The 1910s in Western fashion encompasses styles from 1910 to 1919. Western fashion in this period carries influences from oriental and neoclassical inspirations as well as the subsequent effects of World War I. Over the decade, Women's fashion experienced a shift towards shorter hemlines and dropped waistlines in addition to the more practical garments necessitated by the war. In men's fashion, evening wear largely continued to adhere to previous conventions while trends in informal outerwear continued to evolve. During the period, shifts in fashion made way for styles associated with the Jazz Age of the 1920s.
Chinese clothing includes the traditional hanfu and garments of ethnic minorities, as well as modern variations of indigenous Chinese dresses. Chinese clothing has been shaped through its dynastic traditions, as well as through foreign influences. Chinese clothing showcases the traditional fashion sensibilities of Chinese culture traditions and forms one of the major cultural facets of Chinese civilization.
A fashion museum is dedicated to or features a significant collection of accessories or clothing. While there may be some overlap with Textile museums, fashion museums focus on what trends in clothing and accessories reveal about the larger cultural, social, and economic values of different historical periods. Although fashion is a broad term that applies to more than just clothing items, these provide tangible examples of trends changing over the years which explains why the term fashion museum is most commonly referring to those featuring clothes.
Fashion in the twenty years between 1775 and 1795 in Western culture became simpler and less elaborate. These changes were a result of emerging modern ideals of selfhood, the declining fashionability of highly elaborate Rococo styles, and the widespread embrace of the rationalistic or "classical" ideals of Enlightenment philosophes.
Anthony Rubio is an American fashion designer, best known for creating costumes for dogs. His designs have been exhibited at events like New York and Los Angeles Fashion Weeks, and have appeared in magazines like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar and Elle.
