Clothing in the context of Livelihood

Nakedness and clothing use are characteristics of humans related by evolutionary and social prehistory. The major loss of body hair distinguishes humans from other primates. Current evidence indicates that anatomically-modern humans were naked in prehistory for at least 90,000 years before they invented clothing. Today, isolated Indigenous peoples in tropical climates continue to be without clothing in many everyday activities.

A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task, and proto-typically refers to solid hand-operated non-biological objects with a single broad purpose that lack multiple functions, unlike machines or computers. Although human beings are proportionally most active in using and making tools in the animal kingdom, as use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, and also in using tools to make other tools, many animals have demonstrated tool use in both instances.

Early human tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for the preparation of food, hunting, the manufacture of weapons, and the working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts and crafts such as pottery, along with the construction of housing, businesses, infrastructure, and transportation. The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools. The introduction of widespread automation in the 19th and 20th centuries allowed tools to operate with minimal human supervision, further increasing the productivity of human labor.

Costume is the distinctive style of dress and/or makeup of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, occupation, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch—in short, culture.

The term also was traditionally used to describe typical appropriate clothing for certain activities, such as riding costume, swimming costume, dance costume, and evening costume. Appropriate and acceptable costume is subject to changes in fashion and local cultural norms.

Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction, and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by diverse cultures and different trends and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. They can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."

An erotic dance is a dance that provides erotic entertainment with the objective to erotically stimulate or sexually arouse viewers. Erotic dance is one of several major dance categories based on purpose, such as ceremonial, competitive, performance and social dance.

The erotic dancer's clothing is often minimal and may be gradually removed to be partially or completely naked. In some areas where exposure of nipples or genitals is illegal, a dancer may respectively wear pasties or a g-string to stay within the law.

Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse environmental, legal, social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in statistics or economics there are two main measures: absolute poverty which compares income against the amount needed to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter; secondly, relative poverty measures when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place. The definition of relative poverty varies from one country to another, or from one society to another.

Statistically, as of 2019, most of the world's population live in poverty: in PPP dollars, 85% of people live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and 10% live on less than $1.90 per day. According to the World Bank Group in 2020, more than 40% of the poor live in conflict-affected countries. Even when countries experience economic development, the poorest citizens of middle-income countries frequently do not gain an adequate share of their countries' increased wealth to leave poverty. Governments and non-governmental organizations have experimented with a number of different policies and programs for poverty alleviation, such as electrification in rural areas or housing first policies in urban areas. The international policy frameworks for poverty alleviation, established by the United Nations in 2015, are summarized in Sustainable Development Goal 1: "No Poverty".

Microplastics are "synthetic solid particles or polymeric matrices, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water."

Microplastics cause pollution by entering natural ecosystems from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, construction, renovation, food packaging, and industrial processes.

The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of textiles: yarn, cloth and clothing.

A military uniform is a standardised dress worn by members of the armed forces and paramilitaries of various nations.

Military dress and styles have gone through significant changes over the centuries, from colourful and elaborate, ornamented clothing until the 19th century, to utilitarian camouflage uniforms for field and battle purposes from World War I (1914–1918) on. Military uniforms in the form of standardised and distinctive dress, intended for identification and display, are typically a sign of organised military forces equipped by a central authority.

Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair, living in hospitable climates, and not having developed the crafts needed to make clothing.

As humans became behaviorally modern, body adornments such as jewelry, tattoos, body paint and scarification became part of non-verbal communications, indicating a person's social and individual characteristics. Indigenous peoples in warm climates used clothing for decorative, symbolic or ceremonial purposes but were often nude, having neither the need to protect the body from the elements nor any conception of nakedness being shameful. In many societies, both ancient and contemporary, children might be naked until the beginning of puberty and women often do not cover their breasts due to the association with nursing babies more than with sexuality.

Academic dress is a traditional form of clothing for academic settings, mainly tertiary (and sometimes secondary) education, worn mainly by those who have obtained a university degree (or similar), or hold a status that entitles them to assume them (e.g., undergraduate students at certain old universities). It is also known as academical dress, academicals, or academic regalia.

Contemporarily, it is commonly seen only at graduation ceremonies, but formerly academic dress was, and to a lesser degree in many ancient universities still is, worn daily. Today, the ensembles are distinctive in some way to each institution, and generally consist of a gown (also known as a robe) with a separate hood, and usually a cap (generally a square academic cap, a tam, or a bonnet). Academic dress is also worn by members of certain learned societies and institutions as official dress.

An artisan (from French: artisan, Italian: artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, sculpture, clothing, food items, household items, and tools and mechanisms such as the handmade clockwork movement of a watchmaker. Artisans practice a craft and may through experience and aptitude reach the expressive levels of an artist.

Textile performance, also known as fitness for purpose, is a textile's capacity to withstand various conditions, environments, and hazards, qualifying it for particular uses. The performance of textile products influences their appearance, comfort, durability, and protection. The different textile applications (automotive, clothing, sleepwear, workwear, sportswear, upholstery, and PPE) require a different set of performance parameters. As a result, the specifications determine the level of performance of a textile product. Textile testing certifies the product's conformity to buying specification. It also describes product manufactured for non-aesthetic purposes, where fitness for purpose is the primary criterion. Engineering of high-performance fabrics presents a unique set of challenges.

The fitness for purpose of textile products is an important consideration for both producers and buyers. Producers, distributors and retailers favor the expectations of the target market, and fashion their wares accordingly.

A riding habit is women's clothing for horseback riding.

Since the mid-17th century, a formal habit for riding sidesaddle usually consisted of:

A swimsuit is an item of clothing designed to be worn by people engaging in a water-based activity or water sports, such as swimming, diving and surfing, or sun-orientated activities, such as sun bathing. Different types and styles may be worn by men, women, and children. Swimsuits can be described by various names, some of which are used only in particular locations or for particular types of suit, including swimwear, bathing suit, bathing attire, swimming costume, bathing costume, swimming suit, swimmers, swimming togs, bathers, cossie (short for "costume"), or swimming trunks (swimwear that resembles shorts), besides others.

A swimsuit can be worn as an undergarment in sports that sometimes require a wetsuit or drysuit such as cold water swimming, water skiing, scuba diving, surfing, and wakeboarding. Swimsuits may also be worn to display the wearer's physical attributes, as in the case of beauty pageants or bodybuilding contests, and glamour photography and magazines like the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue featuring models and sports personalities in swimsuits.

Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing (styles and trends) as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, designs, aesthetics, and trends.

The term 'fashion' originates from the Latin word 'Facere,' which means 'to make,' and describes the manufacturing, mixing, and wearing of outfits adorned with specific cultural aesthetics, patterns, motifs, shapes, and cuts, allowing people to showcase their group belongings, values, meanings, beliefs, and ways of life. Given the rise in mass production of commodities and clothing at lower prices and global reach, reducing fashion's environmental impact and improving sustainability has become an urgent issue among politicians, brands, and consumers.

A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections under one roof. The supermarket retail format first appeared around 1930 in the United States as the culmination of almost two decades of retail innovations to the grocery store, and began to spread to other countries after extensive worldwide publicity in 1956. In everyday American English usage, "grocery store" is often used interchangeably with "supermarket", while in other regions a supermarket is larger and has a wider selection, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or megastore, which developed decades later.

The supermarket typically has places for fresh meat, fresh produce, dairy, deli items, baked goods, and similar foodstuffs. Shelf space is also reserved for canned and packaged goods and for various non-food items such as kitchenware, household cleaners, pharmacy products and pet supplies. Some supermarkets also sell other household products that are consumed regularly, such as alcohol (where permitted), medicine, and clothing, and some sell a much wider range of non-food products: DVDs, art supplies, sporting equipment, board games, and seasonal items (e.g., Christmas wrapping paper, Easter eggs, school uniforms, Valentine's Day themed gifts, Mother's Day gifts, Father's Day gifts and Halloween).