Traditional Women’s Dress

The principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and space have not been discovered in the 21st century. Perhaps, they have been studied in depth and given these names by contemporary designers but, in reality, these concepts have been evolving for thousands of years and started their being with designers of an ancient past. The concepts of contrast, repetition, alignment, and space are easily noticed in an ancient traditional women’s dress, or miniskirt, for example. To create contrast on such a dress, or miniskirt early craftsmen made the whole dress out of white linen but decorated it with a very colorful collar of gold and silver with precious and semi-precious stones and beads. Next, the stones and beads of that collar were put in an orderly manner of color and or size to produce strong sense of repetition. In addition, the draping of the dress or miniskirt was mostly symmetrical, which means that the dress was aligned the same way on both sides and gave a great sense of unity to it. Finally, ancient fashion designers had a good sense of space and, therefore, let only the vibrant collar “to spoil” the beauty and abundance of white space in the dress.