• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.124-131
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• 2011

Modernity is commonly defined as a reflection of the features of modern society based on the historical experience of the West. As such, modernity includes involvement with political, economic, and social changes, a changing world-view, and changing trends in equality, gender roles, a desire for "the new," consumption, distribution based on mass production, and rational reform in fashion and dress. First and foremost, however, modernity in costume has been driven by the functional requirements of industrial capitalism. But while modernity has popularly been regarded as some sort of universal standard, in fact the West and the other societies have vastly different, unique, and particular experiences with their own respective histories of modernization. For this reason, cultural changes in the modernization process should be-indeed, must be-analyzed in the context of a country's own unique historical and cultural circumstances, rather than through the prism or strict adaptation of generalized Western concepts of modernization. Moreover, a "periodization" of the modernization of fashion and dress can be established by examining the characteristics of modernity in costume.