If marriage between same sex are in some ethnic groups , most companies do not provide this possibility. However at the beginning of xxi ^th  century, an evolution of several laws has led, in ten states, the legal recognition of civil unions or marriages between persons of the same sex. The political debate taking place about gay marriage raises related issues, especially concerning the rights of unmarried couples or same-sex married vis-à-vis the descent and the adoption .

French dictionaries offer a variety of definitions of marriage, which can exclude or include the marriage of same sex. For example, the Treasury of the French language (TLF), published 1971 to 1994 , indicates that marriage is the “union between a man and a woman consecrated by a set of civil acts or sometimes religious”. Conversely, Webster , in his edition of 2011 , refers to marriage as the “lawful union of two persons as provided by law” , and mentions in his examples the “gay marriage” .

At 11 February 2012 , ten countries have legalized gay marriage: the Netherlands (2000), Belgium (2003), the Spanish (2005), Canada (2005), the South Africa (2006), the Norway (2008), Sweden (2009), Portugal (2010), the Iceland (2010) and Argentina(2010), with an additional seven states of the United States ( Massachusetts , Connecticut , Iowa , New Hampshire , Washington , Vermont , New York ), and the city of Washington, DC . In Mexico, gay marriage was legalized by the City of Mexico , and is also authorized by the State of Quintana Roo.

1900-1919 Fashion History

All changes made this season was because of World War I (1914-1918). The women stopped wearing jewelry and stunning clothes, began to take part in charitable projects, thereby expanding their horizons and changed their appearance forever. Before the war there were no social classes and all the women used to dress identically. The influence of war was felt in fashion with military braid, belts with buckles and skirts for women who didnt wear skirts in the past, reaching to the ankles (for the first time in 1915 had skirts had reached that height and remained so until 1918). The men wore a suit, just waisted and buttoned up. As a dress introduced in tuxedos. In general prevailing dark colors in clothing, since all were influenced by the loss of loved ones because of war.

1920s Fashion History

After the first world war social and economic developments changed completely the role of women and revolutionary innovations in women’s clothing took place. What comes to mind most when talking about the 20s is ala “garconne” style. In reality, this style made its appearance since 1926. In previous years the length of dresses and coats reached the shank. The dresses and skirts shortened to the knee only between 1926 and 1928 and that was the only period when evening dresses were worn at this length.

The everyday dress of the men was serious or sporty. The jacket was very serious, monopeto with high waist and the shortened trousers. The vest in the evening and the sweater in the daytime were necessary ingredients of a male attire. The formal attire remained rigid.

At that time a new style appeared in the women’s hairstyle ala waiter in conjunction with tall hats or turbans decorated with feathers to be worn for the most official appearances. Necessary accessories were long necklace of pearls and a long pipe with a cigarette. The makeup was particularly intense in evening performances with almost black eyes and dyed red, small, painted lips.

It is worth mentioning that, this decade made its presence felt in the Coco Channel, clothes represented perfect planning at this time. The clothes were neutrals, they were easy-comfortable, modern and quite revolutionary for that time. During this decade ,LBD (little black dress) made its first appearance and was considered a legitimate child of Coco Channel.

1930s Fashion History

The economic crisis (1929), unemployment and the rise of National Socialism were a phenomenon that strongly influenced all areas of life during this period and of course influenced fashion as well.

Women’s clothing for the morning was feminine and decent and the evening could be described as bright and shiny. In previous years women were not interested in clothes and the chores were done by the maids. The ’30s, however, things changed, women were more productive and busy, this had resulted in more practical and simple clothes that gave freedom to the movements for the day. The most impressive and luxurious dresses were worn for evening performances. During this period also new fabrics appeared that were particularly prevalent in evening dress like metallic lame.

In general the dresses were from lightly molded fabrics, in the day they were at twenty inches from the ground and in the evening touching the ankle, emphasizing the waist and was tight at the hips and bottom were bell-shaped, evening dresses had neckline and a small kind of veil in the back. Finally, the narrow line prevailed in jackets and coats.

The men’s clothing remained conservative and just everyday clothing with the weather it became more sporty. The men wore jackets to emphasize shoulders and pants in a straight line with a backhand wide.

It is worth mentioning that at the time the sixth Coco Channel , it made its appearance in the past decade, there were some other great designers such as Italian Elsa Schiaparelli (who was an exception in this simple fashion and in collaboration with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau enriched creations with surreal touches) and the French Madeleine Vionnet.

Finally worth noting is the fact that standards of the time were stars of theater and film. We can cite as an example to Marlene Dietrich. She was the first woman who publicly smoked and wore men’s suits.

1940s Fashion History

During the Second World War (1938-1945), the circumstances left no room for evolution in fashion. The fabrics were hard to find, so people could make frequent changes to their clothes and join debris. The military clothing for men was introduced and social views. Women’s clothing was simple and functional in distinguishing colors.

Inside the modest setting of the postwar period, made its appearance with the New Look by Christian Dior (1947-1957) and was designated “King of Fashion”. It gave a sense of luxury and was feminine and very classy. We saw towards the end of this decade long skirts on the legs, with strongly accented waist and shoulders. The formal dresses had delicate neckline and acquired investments fabrics. Female appearance were introduced to stylish hats and distinctive hairstyle with curls.

In the men wear no special changes were made, only after the war jackets became distant, fardynan narrowed shoulders and hips.

1950s Fashion History

The decade between ’50 and ’60 was explosive. The economic prosperity and rising living standards had room for growth in haute couture.

50s, mainly represented the new generation. It was the first time the new age people gained their own fashion, style and appearance, influenced by standards of film and singers. Essential elements for their appearance were leather, jeans, the klos skirts, knitted or crocheted, of corduroy and ballet shoes for girls.

Along with this fashionable Christian Dior , sensation was brought by the length of the skirt which was worn a few inches below the knee and connecting the couture with the letters of the alphabet. Thus the line A was born (narrow at the top and bottom open), the line H (straight and severe) and Y (open in back and close down).

In Paris he developed two different trends in haute couture. On the one hand, the Channel attempted to combine couture and comfort, putting the clothing in the service of the body. On the other hand, some designers seemed to deal only with the impression created by their creations.

The distinguished Christobal Balenciaga ruled this season for his talent in draped fabrics, creations stable thick silk and taffeta-like sculptures.

The death of Christian Dior in 1957, shocked the fashion world, at least until the name of his successor Yves Saint Laurent, who launched the trapezoidal line.

In menswear jackets and coats were large and had rounded lapels trousers were comfortable at the top and narrowed down. But it is worth mentioning that it brought a great change in men’s clothing among young men. By the standards of Marlon Brando and James Dean , they wore jeans, leather jacket and simple T-shirt. It is the first time in history until then that , jeans were not worn only by the working class.

1960s Fashion History

In the ’60s fashion inspired by a apparently a libertarian proposals and different places. Characteristic fashion was released from obligations and taboos. America finds his muse in the person of Jackie Kennedy and imposes a style of classical elegance with dresses to the knee in line A with geometric designs. The Audrey Heyburn, but is this myth that makes the little black dress through participation in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The most important innovations in women’s fashion in this decade was the appearance of mini skirt and the introduction of women’s trousers.

It was the first time that by wearing “antimodes” youth was regained. One of these was the movement of Mod’s, which made first appearance in 1964 in Britain and heralds the advent of punk in the ’70s.

The most common characteristic, however about, “antimodes” was that it was launched during the time of hippies and that of the beggars . The fashion of hippies was jeans bell, embroidery and studs on clothing, fringes, discoloration, psychedelic and geometric designs.

At the same time, equally prevalent were the suits of Coco Channel and princess style dresses. The appearance of the boot in Women’s Shoes and Wide Shine with strange heels was remarkable.

As regards to male attire, in the beginning of the decade it was cut straight and wide , in 1965 trousers were without cuffs and narrow. The most famous men wore colorful shirts and vests with fringes.

1970s Fashion History

The beginning of the 70s was characterized by a general disappointment. From everywhere people echoed about the Vietnam War, the recession ended in shopping with a light heart and the crisis with oil, sparked a true and great simplicity.

In the fashion prevailing anarchy. The Ralph Lauren found refuge in neoromantismo. The star of the rock triggered the mania for lourex and excess glitter. It was time that culminated hot shorts, platforms that broke ankles and shirts that were applied like a glove (because of synthetic fabrics), with standing collars. The disco style made its appearance at this time. Characterized by elastic clothes, flashy colors and shiny fabrics.

The 70′s also brought with it females showing off their nails in exotic ways, bright nail polishes, long fake nails and gel nails and acryclic nails all came into fashion and women found new ways to show off their beauty.

It was comparatively more conservative or more media women wore skirts and dresses with highlighted waist (with belt or without). There was a T line, which emphasized shoulders and predicted the emergence of a more rigorous style for years. Jeans that time was very tight and was in combination with leather, T-shirt with prints and eccentric hairstyles were the so-called style of Punk, which appeared in the decade of the ’70s, a typical representative of the designer Vivienne Westwood.

As it relates to men’s fashion, men’s shirts were often plaid or striped, the jackets were inside with narrow shoulders and pants with narrow and broad crotch to the bottom. In men’s accessories bags were added. Men did not wear ties, but often preferred the scarves and handkerchiefs.

1980s Fashion History

The economic recovery in the early 80s brought with it closer lengths, while the obsession with healthy living and fitness made people thinner and the sinewy silhouettes. It was also apparent that human needs a separate and distinct look, which also constituted a criterion for social classification. Their first appearance in this decade had great designers like Giozi Yamamoto and Kenzo and Ray Kavakoumpo the house Comme des Garcons.

Female lines prevailed, which was represented by pencil skirts with high average which came in contrast with the rock style that was characterized by leather, coveralls, studs and chains. Generally styles from previous decades returned and formed a multidisciplinary fashion.

In menswear there is the traditional costume, comfortable and classic. The coats and trench coat were very popular at that time.

I do not think you need to make extensive reference to this decade, since it is close enough chronologically to most of us. Suffice it to recall some of our series or films representing completely this time, such as Dynasty and Dallas.

From the 80s till now we can say that we have seen some new fashions in clothing, we just slightly changed and shaped the current trends in fashion reminiscent of previous decades. It is worthy to know some basics about the history of fashion, which helps to better understand the trends that appeared each year. Hope someday show people with new ideas will create their own history in fashion, ,eventually all it takes is imagination.

The Individual and Society

In the individual the desire for change normally is balanced by a desire to keep what already exists, and the frequency and amplitude of the cycles of fashion are always influenced by the inertia of the social group. The polarity of inclination, between tradition and revolt, very likely accounts for the periodicity of the swings of fashion. In the long perspective, the oscillations of the mode, extravagant as the results may seem, appear to be regulated by something like common sense. The modern shoe deforms the foot; but it does not absolutely destroy the wearer’s ability to walk, as did the Chinese foot-bindings, which resulted in the “golden-lilies” of former years, or the mid-Victorian boot, which fitted the right foot or the left indifferently well. The female waist continues to wander uncertainly from the armpit to the knee, but it is no longer pinched into the wasp-like shapes that were in style in the 1770s or the 1900s.
On the social level, fashion is regulated by the inherent tension between the individual and the collective—the desire for self-assertion that impels the individual to distinguish himself from the group as against the need to avoid unpleasant conspicuousness. Ideally, the individual in the Western cultural pattern would be both unique among his fellows and completely indistinguishable from them. The consequence of this paradoxical ideal is that fashion operates within limited boundaries. Fashion modifies, renews, adapts, and extends the modes of the past, but it very rarely brings about a wholly new departure.
Modes are usually initiated by those who, for one reason or another, are relatively free of the restraints that limit the exhibitionism of the average person. If the innovators have the necessary prestige, they are imitated by followers of similar inclinations, who are thus enabled to share the originality of the fashion leader without the responsibility of innovation. This avant-garde then influences a still larger, more stable group to follow its example. Thus a mode is extended in ever-widening circles.
Fashion, however, is in large measure self-limiting. If the proposed innovation arouses only temporary enthusiasm, it is dismissed as a fad. If it is widespread and of some duration, a new fashion is established, its style becomes “correct,” and the pressure on everyone to accommodate to it becomes irresistible. But as the style achieves general acceptance, it becomes necessary for the initiators to differentiate themselves from the mass by another change of mode, and the cycle begins anew.
Fashion operates, accordingly, in the middle area between the extremes of radical taste and the preferences of those who oppose innovation of any kind. Between the two is a more or less unstable mass of individuals of no special conviction, upon whose sheeplike tendencies the changing mode depends. This group, while indispensable to the success of a mode, is, curiously enough, never in fashion. Its inertia is such that it is always caught in the transition between one fashion and the next.
Once a style goes out of fashion, those who persist in it run the risk of being considered contemptible or eccentric. Ephemeral modes simply vanish, to reappear perhaps with renewed elegance somewhat later in the fashion cycle. But the great modes of the past are often handed down the social scale in a ritualistic manner. Thus the powdered wigs and knee breeches of the 18th century gentleman became a uniform for footmen in the 19th century; the dress coats of the 19th century became the working clothes of waiters in the 20th; and the upper-class finery of the past survives in the festival clothes of peasants.

Fashion and the History of Culture.

The Middle Ages

While fashion appears to be aimless, it would be a mistake to conclude that its variations are wholly a matter of chance. Very likely the modality of taste accords with significant sociological currents, the precise tendency of which can only be conjectured.
In Europe the literature of love began in the 12th century. At that time, in courtly circles, there was not much difference between the dress of men and women. In the early vignettes the sexes are barely distinguishable; both were regularly dressed in long gowns. In the 13th century, buttons were introduced in the West by the Crusaders and rapidly displaced buckles as a means of securing garments to the body. With the introduction of buttons, clothes no longer had to be wide enough to pull over the head; and it became possible to fit clothes in such a way as to display the figure to advantage. But while tight jackets and trousers became increasingly fashionable for men, women continued to drape themselves in formless tunics, gowns, and capes. Thus in the 14th century the first thoroughgoing difference was established between upper-class fashions for men and for women. The lower classes, unaffected by fashion, continued to dress as before in tunics and shifts.

The Renaissance

By the mid-15th century, men’s trousers were so tightly fitted that a wedge-shaped piece of cloth, the braguette, had to be inserted in the crotch so that the wearer could move about. At the same time, shoulders were padded out and waists pinched in, and the male silhouette acquired its characteristic fashionable outline. During most of the Renaissance, men displayed their legs, puffed out their chests, and flaunted their codpieces with disarming frankness, while women showed their breasts and thrust out their stomachs proudly, as if to emphasize the signs of their fecundity.
During this period, while men continued to strut like peacocks, love and the literature of love became increasingly the object of attention in polite society, until amatory concerns occupied a central position in both literature and art. This fashion lasted, with various vicissitudes, until the second half of the 19th century. After the time of Baudelaire there was no major love poetry. In the ensuing years men’s fashions inclined toward exceptional sobriety of cut and color until, in the 1960s, signs appeared of a sartorial revolution. Concomitantly there was a perceptible relaxation of the taboos regulating sexual behavior.
It is seldom easy to account for the magnitude or duration of a vogue, but it is occasionally possible to trace its course with some accuracy. Just as the Crusaders brought Oriental fashions westward in the Middle Ages, the French invasions of Italy at the end of the 15th century carried the Renaissance to France literally in the carts of its armies. There followed a flood of Italian artisans, artists, writers, and musicians. The result was a thorough Italianization of French culture and fashion in the 16th century.
The north Italian cities, notably Venice, Genoa, and Milan, had long been centers of European fashion, and they remained so as long as the Mediterranean trade routes to the East were vital to European economy. With the discovery of America, however, and the consequent influx of gold, Spain became dominant in European affairs, and the sober ceremonious garb of the Spanish court became fashionable everywhere.

18th Century

The operations of the Dutch East India Company in the early 17th century, coupled with the publication of the accounts of Dutch travelers in China, produced an immense vogue of chinoiserie by the end of the century. This fashion chiefly characterized the rococo period (18th century), which saw the rapid proliferation in the West of a taste for Chinese things—porcelain, gardens, such specialties as peacocks and goldfish, and all the minor elegance of what Voltaire called the age of knickknacks.
Of deeper cultural significance than these manifestations, and more mysterious, were the influences that brought about the cult of “Nature” toward the end of the “Age of Reason.” The reaction against classic rigidity and academic authority, the reconciliation of man and his natural environment, long regarded as hostile, and the decisive shift from the cult of the mind to the cult of the heart were trends, long in the making, that came to the surface with impressive suddenness and powerfully influenced the course of Western culture. Together with the mounting attack on established authority came a general relaxation of attitudes and customs. It now became fashionable to take pleasure in natural surroundings, artificial grottoes, and bits of man-made wilderness.
During the rococo period the first form-fitting chairs were devised and produced, and for the first time in history it became possible to sit comfortably in a drawing room. The art of polite conversation developed enormously. Amid the distant rumblings of the approaching revolution, men of learning sat at their ease and eloquently discussed the “rights of man” in fashionable salons enlivened by the paintings of Boucher and Fragonard.

19th and 20th Centuries

At the close of this engaging period the middle classes asserted their objections in a series of upheavals that shook the world. The consequent changes must be reckoned as crucial in the history of fashion. Thus far, dress had been an indication of social status. At the meeting of the French Estates General of 1789 the master of ceremonies forbade members of the Third Estate to wear colors or ornaments. Mirabeau, in his first public address, protested these restrictions on the ground that men had a right to wear what they chose. This right was later conceded, in theory, but fashion proved to be more tyrannical than any legislative stricture.
After the French Revolution the dress of the lower middle class became standard for all classes of society. In the name of equality and fraternity, men adopted a simple coat and trousers of sober hue, and the aristocratic splendor of bright colors and gold embroidery was restricted to the military. After 1800, men’s fashions varied within narrow limits, and dandyism became a matter of meticulous tailoring and an exaggerated attention to detail.
It was now chiefly women who bore the brunt of fashion. Only in the relative anarchy of bohemian life or among the poorest classes was recognized the right of men to dress as they chose. It was not until the late 1960s that a new wave of romanticism brought about the development of the cult of the bizarre and the extreme in dress and manners, art, music, and literature. As usual, these manifestations seemed to have more to do with fashion than with freedom, since those who revolted were more strictly regimented than those who did not. In the swings of fashion it seems hardly possible to revolt against the despotism of the mode save in terms of one more despotic.