The World as a Runway

Watching the parade at New York’s fashion week, it’s easy to forget that fashion isn’t just about $5,000 chain-link halter tops. The world is the inspiration for fashion, as National Geographic’s lavish new book “Fashion” (National Geographic Society) aptly demonstrates with a collection of photographs culled from the magazine’s century-old archives.

“The idea was to examine what is fashion,” said author Cathy Newman. “What we found is fashion is an instinct that cuts across all cultures and all time periods.”

Whether you’re on the streets of Paris or in the Australian Outback, fashion is a badge, an insignia. “It tells you what tribe you belong to,” Newman said. “It’s a look-at-me statement. If you were a Roman wearing a long toga, it was a symbol you were a patrician, she said. If you are a woman wearing Prada shoes today, they are a symbol that “you’re cool.”

Of course designers have been poaching from other cultures for years, from Vivienne Westwood’s “Savages” collection of 1982 to Miguel Adrover’s ode to the desert dwellers of the Middle East last fall. The Western world has thought it has owned fashion for a long time, said Annie Griffiths Bett, one of the editors of the book. “But in the most primitive cultures with the smallest means, a woman will take a piece of cloth and make it into a skirt or a sarong, or wear it on her head with style.”

Newman said, “Fashion is accessible to everyone. It’s important because everyone cares about how they present themselves to the world.”