Protection

Old Japanese raincoat.
Clothing has long played a "protective barrier" role. The first of the protections to bring concerned the bad weather. This is still the case today, independent of the changes that have occurred through the centuries:

cold: the fabrics prevent the circulation of the cold air on the skin. They thus avoid the supply of cold air against the skin and the escape of the air warmed by the skin. In addition, the fibers of the tissues trap air and immobilize it. However, immobile air has a very poor thermal conductivity (this effect is particularly used for double glazing);
sun and heat: by stopping ultraviolet and infrared radiation, clothing prevents burns (sunburn); when they are light in color, they reflect global radiation and limit the temperature;
precipitation (rain, snow): some fabrics, called "waterproof", prevent water from meeting the skin. Water is a good coolant unlike air, which is used for central heating circuits. The cold water or the snow thus causes a very important cooling of the body.
Beyond the weather, clothing has always been used to protect the body from possible external aggression. For example, 17th-century doctors used cloths when they had to treat plague victims6.

In the twenty-first century, some garments retain a specific protective role, especially against mechanical and chemical risks. This role is very important in professional clothing which frequently constitutes personal protective equipment (PPE). This is the case of blouses, work blues, helmets, aprons, and, in the extreme cases of armor (including bullet-proof vests). By contributing to the cleanliness of the body, some clothes finally help to protect against external dirt, perspiration and bad smells. Marc-Alain Descamps ideally summarizes this dimension: "The clothes protect us from the elements (cold, heat, rain, wind, sun ...), abrasions, animal bites or insect bites, men's blows in the war or in sports, etc. But you must never exaggerate the functional aspect of clothing. Usefulness in this area ultimately explains very little. If we only take into account the cold, the Mediterranean people would live naked 10 months out of 12. Moreover, instead of protecting us from the cold, clothes weaken our resistance and make us lose our natural thermoregulation                                                                                    
                                     Modesty


The appropriate skirt lengths according to Harper's Bazaar in 1868: By the middle of the Victorian era, a skirt was worn at the knees at age four and practically at the ankles at sixteen.
In the second place, clothing plays a central role in modesty. They aim to hide the body, to conceal it by wrapping it in textiles in order to put verbal communication and reflection before instincts. The sight of primary and secondary sexual characteristics (genitals, buttocks, female chests) often provokes a desire, an attraction; to hide these organs allows to see in the other a social being before seeing a potential sexual partner. This is the reason why the sexual organs must not be visible in many cultures where it is frowned upon to reveal one's body. The management of "primary" human reactions is therefore facilitated: erection and goosebumps are, for example, subtracted from the eye. The relationship between respect for modesty and the development of clothing remains complex and difficult to date historically. Sexual gorillas of almost naked ethnic groups, such as Oceanian penises or loincloths, might suggest that modesty preceded clothes. On the other hand, one can also wonder about whether modesty would not result rather from the masking of the body, making the vision of the body unseemly even when time allows to discover it - see for example the municipal decree Deauville from 1996 banning the naked torso outside the beach, or the testimonies of practitioners of nudism (the emotion is created by lack).

Once again, the work of Marc-Alain Descamps brings us an excellent synthesis of this aspect: "In fact, sexuality is much more important for accounting for clothing, the first and last of the clothes being always the sex-cache. Modesty inclined men (and even more women) to hide their reproductive organs so as not to excite envy. Then, by proximity of the organs of elimination, there is added shame. So our body is cut in two: the noble or demonstrable parts and the "shameful parts". But modesty is not a stable reality, for there is nothing more erotic than modesty. Also its location varies according to the times and places. The role of the clothes is finally to hide to give price by exciting the desire, and afterwards, to reveal the hidden in an endless striptease. Thus we hide the neckline by a modesty, which is then made of lace and we wear a miniskirt but being careful to put under a tights that hide what we have just revealed. "  
                                    
 
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If clothing can be used to hide the body, it can also play the opposite role: to enhance it for seductive purposes. Indeed, we can hardly correct our physical appearance while the clothing, it is easily modifiable. By playing with the clothes we wear, we can easily highlight our physical assets ... and make sure that our defects are as visible as possible. Merging with the carnal envelope, some clothes can have a partially "mechanical" role: corset, strapless, sheath, shirts epaulettes ... This phenomenon is not new and, since antiquity, women were bandaging their breasts with a material to meet the aesthetic criteria of the time. Some clothes are expressly designed to direct the glance towards the sexual attributes, to value them or simply to let them show through, to suggest them. The article on the necklines or the one on the tight-fitting clothes will be read on this subject.

Once again, Marc-Alain Descamps gives a perfect summary of this aspect: "Finally the adornment better reflects the garment. Its origin must indeed be in the hunting trophy (the skin of bear, wolf or lion of Nemea for Hercules) that the hunter keeps on his back to perpetuate the memory of his victory. To this first role of intimidation is superimposed that of general exaltation of the body. It is always about magnifying the human body, to grow with heels or hats, to expand the shoulders of men and now women, to tighten the waist to separate the high nobleman from the base despicable. By this are all the collective fantasies and the unconscious of a group that will be part of the body (the egg for the Mediterranean "mama", the wasp in 1900, the spider and the wader currently