However, the cut of the frock is not trivial in the way that social justice, the starving millions and whales are not trivial, in that they are all or may all be treated as cultural phenomena. They are all ways in which a group can identify and constitute itself as a cultural group: they are all topics or areas in terms of which a group may express its hopes, fears, beliefs about the world and the things in it. How a group responds to the starving millions is just as much a cultural response as the way in which is responds to the cuts of frocks, and the relative importance that it gives to these things.
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Barnard, M. (1996). Fashion as communication. London: Routledge.
