Aesthetic rules derived from ancient Greece abound in college textbooks used in modern apparel design and selection courses. This study attempted to evaluate these aesthetic rules empirically. Based on measurements of six persistent features (skirt length, waist length, décolletage length, skirt width, waist width, décolletage width) of women's evening apparel from 1926 to 1980, the distribution of frequencies for each dress dimension was not uniform but demonstrated a preferred value or region. Likewise, not all physically possible values for the dyadic relationships were uniformly observed. Findings of this study indicated that considerable latitude was demonstrated by designers in their interpretations of aesthetic rules. Yet an underlying order emerged. Some of this order can be attributed to existing design principles, but in several cases the sheer magnitude of the discrepancy between what is taught as good design and empirical reality suggests that certain aesthetic rules may need to be rephrased.

Much clothing research examines conformity in dress as if the antithesis, freedom in dress, were possible. While conforming behavior has been documented, no research on social interaction has shown that a continuum occurs from conformity through varying degrees of conformity ‐freedom to complete freedom in dress; before freedom in dress can be measured it must first be defined. When definitions of freedom from various disciplines are applied to dress, it is difficult to derive testable hypotheses from the resulting concepts. All concepts of freedom state that freedom is relative, that it involves some degree of individual control over choice or the decisionmaking process, plus a feeling of self‐satisfaction or reward. It is in the area of satisfaction, involving a nebulous state of mind, that testing becomes truly difficult. For purposes of research, three hypotheses concerning freedom in dress are presented.

The purpose of this study was to begin to identify measurable factors that are associated with a feeling of freedom in dress. Responses to a questionnaire by 71 undergraduate women at a mid western university indicated: (1) their subjective feeling of freedom in dress; (2) the extent to which socioeconomic factors restricted their choices of clothing; and (3) their levels of perception of cloth ing indicated by free association verbal responses to slides. A t‐test comparing the difference of means between those who felt more free and those who felt less free identified three social restrictions significantly associated with a feeling of freedom in dress. Those less free were much more likely to be restricted in their choices of clothing because of their roles as students, their lack of self‐confi dence in choosing their own clothing, and their dissatisfaction with previous clothing choices.

This study tests the proposition that the fashion process is accelerating by utilizing quantitative data and time series analysis. Metrical measurements of persistent features of women's formal evening dress (skirt length, skirt width, waist length, waist width, decolletage length, decolletage width) are taken from high fashion magazines and averaged to create yearly means, thereby creating a time series of 192 years. A methodology is described which deals with the magnitude of change from one year to the next in the means of each of the dress features. The velocity of the fashion process is found to be not accelerating in women's formal evening dress but rather is highly variable and episodic. What does exhibit a significant increase through time is the within-year variance of the variables.