Happy Valentaine”s Day

The History of Saint Valentaine”s Day

Valentaine” day started in the time of the roman empire. In ancientnRome,

February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and
Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The
following day, February 15th, began the Feast of lupercalia.
The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the
customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia
the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Eachyoung
man would draw a girls name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of
the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an
entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry.
Under trhe rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was invoived in meny bloody and
unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to
join his military leagues. He believedthat the reason was that roman men did not want to
leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages ang
engagements in Rome. The good Saint Valentine was a priest at Rome in the days of
Claudius II. He and Saint Marius aided the Christian martyrs and secretly married
couples, and for this kind deed Saint Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the
Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his
head cut off. He suffered martyrdom on the 14th day of February, about the year 270. At
that time it was the custom in Rome, a very ancient custom, indeed, to celebrate in the
mont of February the Lupercalia, feasts in honour of a heathen god. On these occasions,
amidst a variety of pagan ceremonies, the names of young women were placed in abox,
from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed.
The pastors of the early Christian Church in Rome endeavoured to do away with
the pagan element in these feasts by substituting the names of saints for those of maidens.
And as the Lupercaliabegan about the middle of Febriary, the pastors appear to have
chosen Saint Valentine”s Day for the celebration of this new feast. So it seems that the
custom of young men choosing maidens for valentine”s, or saints as patrons for the
coming year, arose in this way.

Clothing

The habit of people continually changing the style of clothing worn, which is now
worldwide, at least among urban populations, is a distinctively Western one. Though
there are signs from earlier. In 8th century Cordoba, Spain, Ziryab, a famous musician and
stylist migrant from Baghdad, introduced the first germ of fashion in Europe. He
developed a sophisticated clothingfashion based on seasonal and daily timings. In winter,
for example, costumes were made essentially from warm cotton or wool items usuallyin
dark colours and summer garments were made of cool and light costumes involving
materials such as cotton, silk and flax in light ang bright colours. Brilliant colours for
these clothes were produced in tanneries and dye works which the Muslim world
perfected its production, for example, in 12th century Fes, Morocco, there were more than
86 tanneries and 116 dye works.
In daily timing Ziryapsuggested different clothing for mornings, afternoons and
evenings. Henry Terrace, a French historian, commented on the fashion work og Ziryab,
“He introduced winter and summer dresses, setting exactly the dates when each fashion
was to be worn. He also added dresses of half season for intervals between seasons.
Through him, luxurious dresses of the orient were introduced in Spain. Under his
influence a fashion industry was set up, producing coloured striped fabric and coats of
transparent fabric, which is still found in Morocco today. “
It can be fairly clearly dated to the middle of the 14 th century to which historians
including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of Western fashion in clothing.
The most dramatic manifestationwas a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the
male over garment, from calf – length to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes
accompanied with stuffing on the chest to look bigger. This created the distinctive
Western male outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers which is still with
us today.
The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and
women’s fashion, especially in the dessing and adorning of the hair, became equally
complex and changing. Art histo rians are therefore able to use fashion in dating images
with increasing confidence and precision, often within five years in the case of 15th
century images. Initially changes in fashion led to a fragmentation of what had previously
been very similar styles og dessing across the upper classes of Europe, and the
development of distinctive national styles, which remained very different until acounter –
movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, finally those
from Ancien Regime in France. Though fashion was always led by the rich, the
increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants
following trends at a distance sometimes uncomfortably close for the elites – a factor
Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing fashion.
The fashions of the west are often believed to be unparalleled either in antiquity or in the
other great civilizations of world. Early Western travelers, whether to Persia, Turkey,
Japan or China frequently remark on the absence of changes in fashion there, although
they understood little of the cultures comment on the unseemly pace of Western
fashion.Which many felt suggested an instability and lack of order in western culture.
The Japanese Shogun’s secretary boasted (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor
in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years. However in
Ming China, for example, there is considerable evidence for fastly changing fashions, see
TimothyBrook’s book “the Confusions of pleasure : Commerce and Culture in Ming
China “ (University of California Press 1999), it has a whole section on fashion in
particular
Albrerht Durer’s drawing contrasts awell turned out bourgeoise from Nuremberg
(left) with her counterpart from Venice, in. The Venetian lady’s high chompines make
her taller.
Ten 16th century portraits of German or Italian gentlemen may show ten entirely
different hats, and at this period national differences were at their most pronounced, as
Albrecht Durer recorded in his actual or composite contrast of Nuremberg and Venetian
fashions at the close of the 15th century (illustration right).The “Spanish style” of the end
of the century began the move back to synchronicity among upper- class Europeans, and
after a struggle in the mid 17th century, French styles decisively took over leadership, a
process completed in the 18th century.
Though colors and paterns of textiles changed from year to year, the cut of a
gentleman’s coat and the length of his waistcoat, or the pattern to which a lady’s dress
was cut changed more slowly. Men’s fashions largely derived from military models, and
changes in a European male silhouette are galvanized in theatres of European war, where
gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of foreign styles : an example is the
“Steinkirk” cravator necktie
The pace of change picked up in the 1780s with the increased publication of
French engravings that showed the latest Paris styles; thogh there had been distribution of
dressed dolls from France aspaterns since the 16th century, and Abraham Bosse had
produced engravings of fashion from the 1620s. By 1800, all Western Europeans were
dressing alike (or thought they were): local variation became first a sign of provincial
culture, and then a badge of the conservative peasant.
Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations
before, and the textile industry certainly led many trends, the history of fashion design is
normally taken to date from 1858, when the English- born Charles Frederick Worth
opened the first true hame couture house in Paris. Since then the professional designer
has become a progressively more dominant figure, despite the origins of many fashions in
street fashion.
Fashion in clothes has allowed wearers to express emotion or solidarity with other
people for millennia. Which is why its absurd to suggest it didn’t exist outside of Europe.
Modern Westerners have a wide choice available in the selection of their clothes. What a
person chooses to wear can reflect that person’s personality or likes. When people who
have cultural status start to wear new or different clothes a fashion trend may similar
style.
Fashion may vary significantly within a society according to age social class,
generation, occupation sexual orientation, and geography as well as over time. If, for
example, an older person dresses according to the fashion of young people, he or she may
look ridiculous in the eyes of both young and older people. The terms “fashionista”or
“”fashion victim” refer to someone who slavishly follows the current.
One can regard the system of sporting various fashions as a fashion language
incorporating various fashion statements using a grammar of fashion. (Compare some of
the work of Roland Barthes).