the evolution of the semiotic code of fashion: from early clothing to social function

Feb 1

Dress is among the earliest material practices developed by human societies. Long before clothing became associated with fashion, style, or a system, it emerged gradually through bodily modification, material experimentation, and adaption to environmental conditions. Clothing developed as humans adapted to their environment, organized work, and structured social life. It responded to the need to survive, to labor effectively, and to live in ordered communities. The history of dress cannot be separated from these fundamental aspects of human existence. For most of human history, clothing developed in response to practical requirements - garments were shaped by climate, available materials, tools, and the physical demands placed on the body. What people wore depended on what could be made and what allowed them to work, move, and survive.

In prehistoric and early societies, clothing developed under conditions where daily survival depended on physical ability. People needed to gather plants, collect seeds and berries, hunt animals, defend themselves, and move efficiently across varied terrain. These activities required freedom of movement. Clothing that restricted the body, added unnecessary weight, or required constant adjustment would have been impractical. But clothing was also shaped by prevailing weather and climate conditions. Garments had to respond to heat and cold, and seasonal change - they served a primarily protective function essential to survival. Purely decorative dress arrived only much later - in stratified societies where survival was no longer tied to physical labor or mobility. The evolution of dress did not occur as a single invention - obviously - or as a continuous linear progression. Instead, it emerged through a series of incremental developments that included bodily decoration, the processing of natural materials, and the use of animal skins and plant fibers. There was no point in history where humans suddenly “created clothing” as a finished concept. Instead, different elements that later became clothing appeared at different times and for different reasons. Decoration existed before garments; material processing existed before wearable forms; skins and fibers were used in various way long before they were consistently worn as clothing. Also different societies developed clothing in different ways depending on climate and needs. Some techniques appeared early and remained unchanged for long periods. Others developed, disappeared, or were never adopted in certain regions. As a result, garments evolved slowly and unevenly.

When clothing became a consistent and visible component of daily life, its function expanded beyond protection. Regular use and repeated observation allowed garment to acquire shared social meanings. Over time, dress became integrated into systems of social organization, serving as a means of differentiation and non-verbal communication within communities. Established conventions linked specific forms of dress to age, gender, social status, occupation, and group affiliation. These social functions emerged alongside the material role of clothing, embedding dress within durable systems of custom and social regulation. A closer look at how dress evolved from material necessity into a social code reveals a longer story. What began as protection and practicality gradually became a shared visual language - one that continues to shape how clothing is read and understood today.

Venus of Willendorf, c. 28,000-25,000 B.C. (© Helmut Fohringer/AFP/Getty Images)

Origin of the Code

So, let’s take a closer look at the origins of dress. Early clothing developed in direct response to the demands of the environment and of survival. What people wore was determined by what materials were available, what could withstand repeated use, and the technical capabilities of the community. Human population inhabited diverse environments, requiring clothing to provide protection against climatic and physical exposure. Dress that failed to meet these environmental demands could not persist. As a result, early clothing was shaped by material limits and functional requirements. Survival governed early decisions about covering the body. But archaeological evidence suggests that bodily decoration preceded the consistent use of garments. It appears as one of the first ways in which appearance began to carry information. Beads, pigments, shells, and carved ornaments appear in the archaeological record tens of thousands of years before preserved clothing. Their presence in non-protective contexts and their lack of functional utility indicate that bodily decoration developed independently of clothing’s protective function. Decoration did not initially depend on textile construction. Beads were strung on cords, animal sinew, or plant fibers and likely attached to the body, hair, or simple coverings. Body paint, early tattooing, and ornamentation altered appearance directly on the body and required minimal material investment - and no garment or textile construction. Clothing emerged later as an extension of these practices, gradually absorbing and adapting decorative elements.

In small, socially interdependent groups, visible markers allowed individuals to be recognized, distinguished, and identified. Early human groups were small and highly dependent on cooperation. People lived, worked, hunted, and survived together. In such settings, it was important to recognize others quickly and reliably: who belonged to the group and how to distinguish according to participation and role. Visible markers helped solve this practical problem. Marks on the body made individuals immediately recognizable in everyday interaction. They created visible differences that could be noticed at a distance and remembered over time. Once a visible mark is seen often enough by enough people, it can be read in the same way by everyone. So they acquired shared meaning. Pause here. Because this is where it gets interesting: this is the earliest form of coding - when appearance begins to carry information through repetition and recognition. Before garments, before fashion and its system, appearance already obeyed the logic that makes fashion possible at all. But why? At the most basic level, humans evolved to read one another visually. Long before complex language, writing, or institutions, survival depended on rapid social assessment: who is familiar, who is trustworthy, who belongs, who does not. The human brain is highly attuned to pattern recognition. We are wired to notice difference, repetition, and deviation. Appearance is processed quickly, often unconsciously, and used to orient behavior. Because early human societies were small and interdependent, social coordination was essential. Individuals needed ways to signal affiliation, role, or transition without constant explanation. Visual markers solved this efficiently. Once a visible trait or mark was repeated and consistently associated with a social situation, the brain learned to treat it as information. The mechanism is cognitive: repeated visual cues become meaningful through association. And there is also a memory component, of course. Marks on the body or consistent forms of dress create continuity over time. The brain links what it sees now with what it has seen before. This stabilizes expectations and reduces uncertainty in social interaction. In evolutionary terms, anything that reduces uncertainty in social environments has adaptive value. Appearance becomes a low-cost way to manage complex group dynamics. In short: the psychological reason is that humans are pattern-recognizing, socially dependent organisms.

So the question is also: was coding more important even than protecting the body from cold. Short answer is, no. But it came earlier. Coding came first because social legibility was a constant requirement, while thermal protection emerged as a situational response shaped by climate. Humans first lived for tens and thousands of years in predominantly warm to temperate environments where protection from cold was not a constant necessity. Social life, however, was always present. Only later, with migration into colder regions did the widespread need stay warm raise the importance for clothing. Garments emerged through technological development and climatic necessity, However, once clothing began to be worn regularly within a group, it did not remain neutral for long. Once garments became regular, they were inevitably absorbed into the existing logic of recognition and association. In other word, the medium changed, but perception did not. Over time, dress absorbed and formalized distinctions that were already socially relevant - role, participation, hierarchy, belonging - because clothing was repeatable and publicly visible. In agrarian and later stratified societies, these distinctions became more explicit and regulated, as dress differentiated labor, social role and rank. With urbanization and the growth of trade, clothing circulated beyond local groups, allowing codes to travel, shift, and layer. Fashion, emerging much later, did not invent this system but accelerated it, introducing speed, variation, and self-conscious change into an already established logic of visual communication. Today, despite technological change and globalization, the mechanism remains intact: clothing continues to be read automatically, producing assumptions about identity, status, intention, and belonging. The coding system endures. But why?

Humans read appearance automatically (© Edie Lou)

The Code System Operates Across Time

Once dress became socially legible, the coding system it produced proved remarkably durable. It’s endured through decades of social, technological, and economic change. Even though clothing styles, trends, and cultural meanings change over time, the way the human mind processes appearance does not change very much. At a basic level, the human brain is optimized for speed over accuracy in social situations For most of human history, survival depended on making rapid assessments of others: Is this person familiar or not? Ally or threat? Dominant or subordinate? Cooperative or risky? Hesitation carried cost. As a result, the brain developed mechanisms that extract information from immediately visible cues before conscious reasoning has time to intervene. Vision plays a central role in this. It is the fastest sensory system for processing complex information at a distance. The brain automatically detects contrast, pattern, coherence, and deviation. From these cues, it generates provisional judgements that help orient interaction. This is not a cultural habit but a biological shortcut: appearance provides a high-density signal that can be read quickly without requiring speech or extended interaction.

Once early humans began living in stable social groups, these perceptual shortcuts became socially reinforced. Repeated exposure to certain appearances in certain roles strengthened associations. Over time, the brain learned to link visible features with expectations about behavior, status, or intent. Crucially, this learning happened implicitly; humans read appearance automatically because social perception is a survival function, not a stylistic preference. The code endures because it is embedded in how humans perceive one another, long before clothing acquired aesthetic or symbolic complexity. Cultural meanings change, but the need to orient oneself socially does not. The brain continues to ask the same questions - Who is this? How should I respond? What should I expect? - and appearance remains the most immediate source of information available.

Through history, clothing’s meaning changed. For most of history, clothing was expected to last. A garment was worn until it physically wore out. Before fashion as a concept appeared, clothing did change, but change was slow and rarely organized around novelty. Garments varied by region, material availability, climate, skill, and circumstance, yet within a community the overall forms, uses, and expectations of dress remained recognizable over long periods. Because of this relative stability, appearance could be read through familiarity. Meaning emerged from repeated exposure to similar forms within the same social environment, not from absolute sameness. Change occurred slowly and was usually driven by necessity. Within a given social context, dress remained broadly recognizable, which allowed meaning to emerge through familiarity and repeated exposure. The shift occurred in Western Europe between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when clothing began to change noticeably within a single generation. Rapid urbanization increased population density and the frequency of social encounters, placing greater pressure on appearance to function as a differentiating signal. Courtly environments become central arenas of visibility, where proximity to power is negotiated through display and distinction, and where dress is subject to scrutiny and comparison. At the same time, advances in textile production, tailoring, and dyeing made variation technically feasible, while expanding trade networks introduced new materials and forms into circulation. As mobility grew - geographic, social, and economic - appearance needed to orient individuals within an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Industrialization later amplified this process by accelerating production and distribution, making novelty more and more frequent and widely visible, a trajectory that led to what is now recognized as the contemporary fashion system.

But the mechanism that turns appearance into judgement remains the same (© Edie Lou)

Susan Fiske and a Contemporary View of Coding systems

While the meanings attached to clothing have shifted across millennia, the underlying coding system through which dress is read has remained intact. The coding system of garments has remained fundamentally stable in its purpose, because it continues to serve social survival: it enables rapid evaluation of others in situations where decisions matter. Clothing still affects whether someone is trusted, taken seriously, included, excluded, hired, believed, or dismissed. That core function has not disappeared across centuries. What has changed though are the meanings attached to specific garments, the speed at which those meanings shift, and the contexts in which they are read. A tunic, a frock coat, a business suit, or a Loro Piana jacket do not mean the same thing historically. But the mechanism that turns appearance into judgement remains the same. People still infer competence, credibility, and belonging from what they see, often before conscious reflection. Dress continues to operate as a tool for social orientation and risk assessment. Fashion reorganizes the surface of the code - introducing speed, novelty, and volatility - but it does not suspend the underlying process. Clothing still matters because being read favorably still affects outcomes.

While the historical analysis shows how clothing became a stable surface for social meaning, the work of Susan Fiske explains why these meanings continue to be activated automatically; why even highly educated, reflective people still perceive automatically. Knowledge does not prevent perception; it only allows later correction. We can know that clothing shouldn’t matter and still react to it instinctively. We can critique the system and still participate in it. Fiske’s research demonstrates that social perception operates through fundamental dimensions that are activated automatically and universally, regardless of education, intention, or ideology. Across cultures and contexts, people evaluate others almost instantly along a small set of axes - most consistently competence (Can this person act effectively?) and warmth or intent (Is this person well-intentioned or threatening?). These judgments emerge prior to conscious reasoning and shape behavior even when individuals explicitly reject stereotypes or believe themselves to be neutral. What is critical in Fiske’s work is that knowledge does not prevent these evaluations from forming. Even when people are aware of bias, even when they actively oppose it, the initial categorization still occurs. The brain does not ask whether an evaluation is fair before producing it; it asks whether is useful. Reflection comes later, as a possible corrective - but no as a replacement. Clothing feeds directly into these automatic evaluations because it provides immediate cues related to order, resources, familiarity with norms, and social positioning. A person wearing refined, coherent, or high-status clothing is more likely to be read as competent and credible; a person in visibly degraded or incoherent dress is more likely to be read as unreliable or marginal, a person wearing a unique or unconventional combination is understood as a signal of competence within difference. These are not conscious conclusions. They are default inferences, produced before reasoning intervenes.

Fiske’s work also shows that these early judgements have real consequences. They influence who is trusted, who is listened to, who receives help, who is overlooked, and who is excluded. This is why the coding system of dress is not merely cultural residue, but a mechanism that continues to affect outcomes. Even in modern societies that value equality and rational evaluation, appearance still shapes trajectories because the psychological process that reads it is both fast and persistent. The coding system of dress persists not because people fail to think critically, but because critical thinking operates too late to prevent perception from doing its work. As Fiske’s research makes clear, humans can reflect on their judgements, question them, and sometimes correct them - but they cannot stop them from forming. That is why a system rooted in ancient social survival continues to function in a world of science, ethics, and self-awareness.

Even when cultural values change, the effects of appearance remain (© Edie Lou)

Still Inside the System

So what does all of this leave us with? What follows is the emergence and persistence of a coding system attached to appearance. From early bodily markings to stabilized garments and later fashion systems, the central development remains consistent: appearance became a surface through which social information could be registered. What stays consistent is not what people wear or how they decorated their body, but what appearance is used for. Early decoration, later regularized clothing, and contemporary fashion - the same social task is being performed. In all cases, appearance provides a shared, visible reference through which behavior is coordinated without constant negotiation or verbal explanation.

The persistence of the system cannot be explained by culture alone. If the coding system of appearance were purely cultural, it would be easy to change. Cultural norms change, values shift, and beliefs can be questioned, criticized, or replaced. If clothing only mattered because societies agreed that it mattered, awareness or ideological change could dismantle its power. Even when cultural values change, the effects of appearance remain. People may consciously reject hierarchies, oppose stereotypes, or value equality, yet they still form immediate impressions based on how others look. These impressions continue to influence behavior, often in ways people do not intend. This persistence points to something else than culture only: biological and cognitive mechanisms of perception. Humans evolved to extract information quickly from visible cues in order to orient themselves socially. These mechanisms operate automatically and independently of belief. Culture shapes what is read, but biology explains why reading happens at all. Human social perception operates automatically and prior to reflection, extracting information from visible cues in order to orient behavior.

These mechanisms evolved to support cooperation, trust, and risk assessment in social environments where rapid evaluation mattered. When humans developed higher cognitive abilities - language, abstract reasoning, moral judgement, scientific thinking - these abilities did not overwrite older perceptual systems. Mostly, evolution does not work by deleting functioning mechanisms. Instead, it adds new layers. The brain keeps earlier systems if they are still useful, and builds more complex ones on top of them. That said, evolution does not never remove mechanisms. Traits can be reduced or lost when they become costly and no longer useful (for example, loss of eyesight in cave-dwelling species). But this tends to happen over long timescales and usually affects structures that are no longer activated. In contrast, human perceptual and social-evaluative systems are activated constantly. They remain useful in almost every environment humans inhabit, including contemporary ones. The systems that handle perception - seeing, categorizing, forming first impressions - are older, faster, and automatic. They operate continuously and without conscious control. Higher cognition, by contrast, is slower and requires attention and effort. It intervenes after perception has already taken place. We perceive and judge automatically, and reflect, question, or correct those judgements later on. This explains why the coding system of dress persists even in contemporary societies that value rationality, individuality, and self-awareness. The meanings attached to garments continue to shift, and fashion accelerates these shifts by organizing change itself, but the act of reading remains constant. Participation in this system is not a choice. One may comply with its signals, resist them, or attempt to subvert them, but all such positions remain legible within the same framework. The code persists.

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