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= Political and Social Changes Influence Fashion Trends =

Introduction
What comes to mind when you hear the words fashion, social issues, and politics. One might not be thinking that social issues and politics have an influence over fashion. Fashion has since become a platform for a person or organization to express their views on politics and social issues. Fashion functioning as a sign of political and social influence at the current time. Designers are doing their part in making changes just like activists and organizers but through the clothes they produce and this becomes a selling point to the masses. Author Ann Priest shows in her study that the long term impact variables such as society, culture and politics have on fashion and decisions it plays on clothing purchases.

Fashion in Politics
In politics, fashion has been used by people to send a message of support of their movement they believe in. The earliest use of this was during the french revolution in 1789, where people would dawn on red, white, and blue striped cockades that denoted they were a revolutionary.

Fashion has become a way for people to express their disagreement in politics and to protest social issues. Fashion designers are using their designs and the runaway as a platform to voice their political beliefs and social issues. The term “Political fashion” has been known to be major trend that came out of the year 2017 and still continues to be major trend currently. Many Fashion Designers continue to express their opinions on social issues such as Feminism, Rights of LGBTQI community, Human Rights, Racism and Environmental issues on the clothing they design.

Designers around the world are willing to risk customers to support human rights, political issues and political candidates. Brands want to show support on the side of the majority on political and human rights issues. The brand Nike created an advertisement campaign highlighting Kaepernick in 2018. Some Nike fans responded to this campaign by posting on social media videos of themselves burning their Nike shoes with the hashtag #Boycott Nike. The brand begins to symbolize a person’s pledge to political allegiance.

Fashion has been used in politics many times by anyone or organization like the Black Panther Party, a major celebrity, or just a regular person. Celebrities have used their popularity and fashion to send a political statement, like in the Met Gala. The 2021 Met Gala had a great number of celebrities to portray their messages to the public and social media like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many others in the Met Gala. The 2021 Met Gala was widely remembered when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided to make a political statement with her dress. The dress she wore had the phrase “Tax the Rich” written in capital red letters. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and designer Aurora James wanted to bring attention to childcare, healthcare, and climate. Both received backlash for the message depicted on the dress and the controversy it caused at the event.

Fashion In Society
Fashion is an expression of a person’s individualism in society. Fashion has been a way to depict which part of the social scene or group a person identifies themselves with and/or supports. For example, it can help identify a person's working status, political party movement, and social group their part of and support. During the time of Cultural Revolution, Chinese consumers were looking to fashion to express their individualism and wanted to distinguish themselves among china's social classes. The lower-classes decided to adopt the fashion of the upper-classes while the upper-classes decided not the follow trend.

In recent trending Fashion news, the international brand Balenciaga has teamed up with companies to make collaborations with their brand. A couple of examples would be the Simpsons and Fortnite collaboration with Balenciaga. During New York Fashion Week 2021, Kim Kardashian stunned on-lookers with her masked face and head-to-toe black leather unconventional jumpsuit made by Balenciaga’s head creative director Denma Gvasalia. This would be an example of a well-known celebrity being used to gain exposure and more likeness towards the overall brand's future collections and image. Fashion is used to make more money on the gaming platform Fortnite because users were able to buy Balenciaga branded clothing for their characters in the video game. This has also brought to light how much revenue can be generated when brands collaborate with each other.

Video Games as said before have changed fashion where fashion companies like Louis Vuitton try to lure people who play games by displaying a Final Fantasy character named Lightning on one of their advertisements to attract people who play Final Fantasy, also Nike in trying to do collaboration with Sony to make Playstation themed shoes. These sort of collaborations caused the fashion to have some sort of identity crisis.