Dress is a marker of national identity; discuss in relation to Coursework

Dress is a marker of national identity; discuss in relation to specific dress codes and their contexts, such as the veil and its history - Coursework Example A classification of these dress codes is usually created for wavering levels of reserve and at times the time of day. Such instances include the traditional Western culture of dressing where different gender’s dress styles portrayed the type of work and even status. In real instances, the type of dress is either followed naturally or influenced by peer pressure. This is to why people within a specific nation or society wear the same clothing in the same condition. In this analysis, this paper will concentrate on specific dress codes and the reasons they are still makers of national identity. The veil is a very old type of dressing that was mostly associated with the Islamic society. It, however, originates from the ancient European society. This included Greeks, Romans, Hittites and Persians. In addition, the Assyrian culture also wore this type of dressing. Looking at the Assyrian beliefs of the veil, it was associated with class and also gender inferences. The first recorded time it was used was with the Assyrian women back in the 13th century.2 During this period, an Assyrian veil was meant to bring class distinction and in fact the Assyrian law prohibited farmhand women and even prostitutes from putting it on. The women who went against this particular law of wearing the veil were heavily punished. In the Persia community, those women who went to public meetings were supposedly required to wear the veil. The wealthy and high class Persians used it to hide their ladies from the public eye. In a matter of years of spread, the veil then spread throughout Middle East, amidst the Persian downfall. During the colonial regime in northern Africa, women wore veils by force as a sign of their opposition against the French, who wanted them to remove them and copy the French customs and laws. This, as a result, became a