Unequivocally, fashion came before art.

Contrary to the fig leaf theory our first human ancestors did not walk around naked. They were artistic, inventive, daring, practical, and often flamboyant. They adorned both male and female bodies in like manor. They also left artistic records of their deeds inside caverns located throughout the world. Granted some of these drawings show primitive figures along with animals; but they are artfully decorated.

We all know we desended from apes, right? Scholars argue that human’s transition from hairy to hairless began 1,000,000 years ago though they are reluctant to pinpoint a date when clothing first appeared on the scene. On the other hand, carbon dating of cave art dates between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago, at least until new discoveries are found. This time frame correlates with the out of Africa theory.

Mark Stoneking, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany believes that, “clothing may have been important in the spread of modern humans into colder climates.”  His theory is based on the evidence of body lice, nasty little critters that need clothing in order to survive. “Even looking at the extremes of that range, it still associates the origin of body lice, and thus by inference the origin of clothing, with modern humans.”

Fact is that our ancestors may have walked out of Africa naked, but they wound up in all parts of the world fully clothed.

Women were most likely the culprits for inventing clothing. After all, the first female DNA called mitochondrial Eve is said to have appeared in Africa some 170,000 years ago. Maybe this is why Kevin Johnson, an evolutionary biologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey suggests that clothing appeared sometime between “170,000 years ago and yesterday.” Y chromosome Adam, or our most common male ancestor, lived around 60,000 years ago.  I am not a scientist, but this suggests to me a world largely inhabited by females and most likely the reason why fashion weeks became a necessity.

Blame it on Eve. “Here Adam, cover yourself.” Her quick thinking in fashioning a fig leaf to cover up exposed body parts saved the day.

Consider that Virginia Woolf wrote in Orlando; "There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking"

I for one agree because I cannot imagine having to go around wearing a fig leaf.  On one hand, I have never worn a fig leaf but I did wear a very tiny bikini while lying on a hot sandy beach in Puerto Rico after being dragged from the undertow of a beach wave.
“Get me a towel please,” I screamed as my husband and friends ran up to where I was recovering.

“Why?” They said in unison. I looked up at male eyes popping out of their sockets and tongues wagging. I could feel that my breasts were hanging out and other body parts that should be covered were exposed.

I needn’t have worried; on the other side of the palm grove was a nude beach, so I was in fashion, just in the wrong place.

Clothing has always alternated from concealing to covering the body. Art Nouveau artists of the late 19th century recognized that clothing was an open canvas. The fashion world was never the same since and became a medium for their creativity. When Andy Warhol iconized Campbell’s soup, T shirts became a symbol of fashion as an art statement.

Even the Beatle’s left the world with a lasting impression on fashion. In 2002, Stella McCartney dared to combine the fine art of David Remfry’s semi-nude drawings with high fashion in her first advertising campaign.  Remfry’s drawings showed a female with full frontal – spread-eagled view. McCartney used the art work to display the sexy femininity of her designs on buildings in New York and L.A. 

Regardless of the criticism that McCartney received based on nepotism, her guts and boldness in design rocks. It’s like putting music into clothing and taking the look into a new dimension, a rarity that few designers achieve.
In order to make it big in the fashion world, a designer must break the rules. For instance, haute couture or high fashion is still out there though some experts believe as the names who gave haute couture its place in history age or die off along with the teetering economy, fashion will be a dead deal. They said the same words a century and a half ago when ready-to-wear clothing slowly entered the fashion scene.

The art of fashioning and sewing garments by hand has been around since time immemorial and although there are rules as to what constitutes this fashion, few can rise to fame. As long as there are celebrities and brides, there will always be a need to dress the best like J’Aton Couture.

This sensational (not to mention gorgeous) duo, Anthony Pittorino and Jacob Luppino won the Australian Gown of the Year fresh out of design school in 1994. For a relatively new name in the haute couture world, their fashions have already made history and are now housed in the Museum of Victoria.  Since then they have clothed the famous all over the world and will soon open a satellite home in New York City. Their secret is in hand-sewn details and innovative design technique.

Their designs fuse fashion into wearable art and the effect is so dramatic the dresses defy the great hidden laws of nature and subsequently establishes the duo’s fashion as art.

Which leads back to which came first - fashion or art? The earliest cave art stick figures (some obviously male) are shown in thongs with a frontal and back flap and the females though sometimes naked are wearing skirts and cloche hats.   

Reinach said in 1903, “the prehistoric sculptor was never preoccupied with an intent to please, but with the intent to evoke.” In the context that art is based on some type of visual imagery, someone had to pose for artists, didn’t they.