Addressing fashion: a historical study on dress and fashion styles described in sri lankan poetical work (sandesakavyas)

Abstract

In Sri Lanka it was in the 16th century that Sandesa poetical literature came to the fore. Poets of that period have excelled at locating dress and fashion style as well as some unique socially accepted norms regulated in relation of dress and fashion in Sandesa poetry. Poets identified unique dress fashion and its amalgamated etiquettes followed by the royalty, court dancers and commoners. These poetical descriptions led visual interpretation of a unique fashion legacy in particular era. The objective of this paper is to study in further how poetical work expressed in which ways that said people had their space of spirit satisfaction in dressing and the desire of expressing themselves. On the other hand the poetical work gave an impression of fashion of dress that is an artifact, practice and institution that constitute a society’s beliefs, values, ideas and experiences. The study revealed that the dress is a way in which people created fashion legacy by communicating none verbally , not only feelings and mood, but also the values and norms, beliefs of dressing the body in the social groups of which they were members. Data for this research were gathered from many original historical records, texts, and pictorial records from the sculpture, temple murals, museum artifacts, wood and ivory carvings pertaining to the era. A qualitative research method was adopted for the study