The psychology of dress / [Frank Alvah Parsons].

  • Parsons, Frank Alvah, 1868-1930.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of dress / [Frank Alvah Parsons]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION IT DOES seem that “there is nothing new under the sun” and “there is nothing either good or bad but think¬ ing makes it so.” Men are fundamentally the same in every land and every clime, having the same appetites and longings, with the same basic motives and vanities, differently proportioned, differently stimulated, there¬ fore somewhat differently expressed. The intimate connection between mind and material expression is daily becoming more clearly understood and their natural relationships grow the more absorbing as we study from history the various materials and forms through which human conceptions of life and its needs have been expressed. For example: man’s primal need for food and shelter have pressed him to conceive not only how this need shall be satisfied, but in what way things necessary to this end shall be made so that they may best answer the demand for which they exist. Another need, just as universal, has urged him to fashion things in such a way that the result shall be (as he sees it) a thing of beauty— that is, that the material, form, and colour which he has used shall be so proportioned that the aesthetic sense, as well as the physical appetite, shall be satisfied through the thing created. The House and Clothes have answered the human requirement for shelter and, whether we will or not, they also express the individual and the national ideal