THE PHENOMENON OF NATIONAL DRESS CULTURE: THE SYNTHESIS OF CULTURAL STUDIES AND AESTHETIC APPROACHES

Abstract

National dress is a dense cultural text in which material techniques, symbolic meanings, and embodied practices converge. This article articulates a synthetic framework that brings cultural studies and aesthetic analysis into one explanatory lens to understand how dress functions simultaneously as heritage, identity marker, and artistic form. Conceptually, the paper integrates semiotics of clothing, sociological theories of taste and habitus, and art-aesthetic categories such as proportion, color, and ornament. Methodologically, it relies on an analytical–interpretive review and comparative reading of classic and contemporary scholarship, complemented by a semiotic reading of dress components and their performative use in everyday and ceremonial contexts. The results propose a triadic model of national dress culture—material, symbolic, and performative layers—that explains how craft technologies, visual form, and social enactment co-produce cultural meaning. The discussion shows how this model illuminates the circulation of tradition within modern fashion systems, the formation of aesthetic judgment among youth, and the pedagogical value of studio- and museum-based education for cultivating informed taste. The paper concludes with implications for design pedagogy, cultural policy, and future empirical research on taste formation and identity through dress.