The clothing and other wearing are also affected by the environmental conditions. For example, people living in different physical environments may require different types of shoes, footwear’s and clothes. Residents of polar climates may wear fur-lined boots, which protect against the cold, and snow shoes to walk on soft, deep snow without sinking in.
In winter season, the Kashmir’s who live at places like Gulmarg, Sonmarg and Pahalgam use special duck back shoes with woolen socks to protect against severe cold, frozen land and ice covers. In warm and humid climates, footwear may not be necessary because the heavy rainfall, high temperature and time spent in water discourage their use.
The custom in the Netherlands of wearing wooden shoes may appear old fashioned and quaint but derives from environmental conditions.
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The Dutch farmers wear the wooden shoes to work in the fields, which are likely to be extremely moist in a country where much of the land is below the sea level. The Tamils and Keralites rarely use shoes as the hot and moist conditions are not conducive for their use.
About the clothing, the folk people are generally very rigid and their clothes are prepared according to the prevailing environmental conditions.
The folk adhere to the dresses worn by their ancestors. Contrary to this, the popular customs of clothing are not confined to a particular region.
In western countries, different clothing habits generally reflect different occupations rather than particular physical environmental conditions. Lawyers and businessmen, for example, tend to wear black coat and dark gowns, light shirts and neckties; factory workers wear blue denims and work shirts.
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The second influence on western clothing is increasing income. Women’s clothes, in particular, change in fashion from year to year and even month to month.
The colour, shape and design of dresses can change as a result of examples created by professional clothing designers. People with high income adopt the latest fashion for the sake of establishing social status.
Improved communications have permitted the rapid diffusion of clothing fashion from one part of the earth’s surface to another. New dresses for women’s are created in Paris, Rome, London, Tokyo and New
York. These clothes quickly get diffused in the urban centers of the developing countries. An important example of spread of western fashion is jeans, which have become a prized possession for young people throughout the world. Before 1960s, jeans were associated with low-status manual labourers, cowboys and farmers of USA and Europe.