• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.837-851
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• 2013

This study investigates the relationship between dystopian ideas and fashion since the $20^{th}$ century and examines the social meaning of fashion influenced by dystopian ideas. From the 1900s to the 1950s, the idea of dehumanization by authoritarian governments and technology gave rise to fashion for freedom and self-introspection, which includes surrealistic fashion and beat style. In the 1980s and 1990s, a society marked by monopolistic power and the hi-tech control of humans was regarded as dystopia. It influenced a fashion that expressed dehumanization by hi-tech means such as cyberpunk style and designs that depicted or used electronic elements. The ongoing fear of ecological disaster since the late $20^{th}$ century also influenced designers to present collections concerned with environmental problems. Designers have created designs with printed messages on environmental issues or designs that express environmental devastation, and protective designs that use hi-tech fabrics or mechanical devices. Fashion influenced by dystopian ideas expressed contemporary fears, provided a critical view of society through defamiliarization, and sought problem-solving actions and alternatives to change or cope with the dystopian situation. Dystopian fashion gave society a chance to face contemporary problems and pursue a better society.