Evolution of costume and its role in shaping process a child's social status and image

. The article considers the methodology of image analysis using several methods of artwork analysis from the periods from the ancient world to the 16th century, where the image of a child and its clothing based on artwork are considered chronologically for the first time. The article also considers an algorithm for designing products for the children's segment.


Introduction
Children's clothes have a special place in the range of everyday goods on the modern market, but this area of production has become a relatively recent development. Until the 19th century, children's clothes were made in the image and likeness of an adult costume. Certain design features, details adapted to the physiology or age requirements of the child could not be considered as a separate type of "children's clothing", but only as "clothing made for children". However, in the process of forming the "phenomenon of childhood" in European culture there emerged and directly established children's clothing and costume options, which expressed the ideal image of the child in the representation of adults. Thus, clothing (costume) in this case, as never before, was a marker of formation of the social status of the child and the attitude of the adult society to it. The author of this article has set a goal to trace how the formation and development of children's clothing relates to the evolution of the image of the child. The object of the study is works of Western European fine art.
Currently, experts agree that costume is formed under the influence of several external historical, cultural, and social factors, becoming one of the key identifiers of a wearer in society. According to gender, age, nationality, religion, occupation, social status, belonging to a group, and aesthetic preferences, a person chooses his/her costume. However, a child does not have the power to shape its own appearance, so its costume is not the result of selfdetermination and conscious positioning in society, but a certain ideal image of the child created by adult members of a particular social group at a certain time. Thus, the factors influencing the formation of children's clothing and the definition of a child's appearance and image are fundamentally different from those of an adult's costume. By addressing the study of children's clothing, we gain an opportunity to better understand society's attitude to the formation and development of the phenomenon of childhood, and to identify the features of this phenomenon, as conveyed through children's costume, in the present.
Children had different meanings to society at the major stages of European civilization. Moreover, attitudes towards the child in different social groups may have differed fundamentally within a given culture and era. The child was accepted by society according to its potential role-benefit, from heir to orphan labourer. This is partly evidenced by the etymology of words for child. Philologists believe that in Russian "child" goes back to the Proto-Slavonic "robya", which has a common root with "slave", "work", "slavery". In Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman and Armenian there was a Slavonic word "orphan" to denote a child (it was orphans who did hard work from an early age), while in Gothic the word with similar sounding meant -"heir". [1]. Frances Arriès traces the emergence of words with different tones from pejorative to affectionate in the period of the 13th-17th centuries in France and connects them with the formation of the phenomenon of childhood [3]. It can be assumed that it was the child's origin that largely determined not only his social level, but also his image in the minds of adults, which was further transmitted in society by means of costume.
This research paper, based on the analysis of works of European fine art, examines the historical stages of the formation of children's clothing, and reveals its role in the process of shaping the image of the child. It is the art history analysis of works with special emphasis on types, designs and colours in children's clothing that has enabled the most effective identification of the main stages in the formation of the world of childhood, where clothing is the main tool. These data will enable the formation of specific criteria in the design of modern clothing, as well as serve as an original source of inspiration for the development of children's clothing segment, formed on the basis of art works.

Materials and methods
The structural analysis method for studying the formation of a child's range included the following sequence of stages. The first stage is to study the types of artworks in which a child's image is presented, and then, based on the results of the study, to determine its possible application in the time period to which the artwork relates. After this, the presented range of products and their nature of application are examined. Based on the study of possibilities and close analogues of the application of similar technologies, a theoretical algorithm for the use of this technology in certain children's products, which is subsequently supplemented by an example of limited practical implementation of the algorithm.

Results
The surviving artifacts suggest that in the culture of the ancient world the image of the child was of a 'unified' nature: children were depicted uniformly and without gender, but anatomically accurately (Fig. 1).  Depictions of children in ancient Mediterranean cultures indicate that infants and young children wore no clothes and, from the age of 4-6 years, were dressed in loose tunics with straight-cut sleeves. In the Altar of Peace of Augustus in Rome, for example, the subject is a solemn procession with children instead of adults. The fact that it depicts children is currently of particular interest to scholars in the formation of the phenomenon of childhood and the formation of attitudes towards children in society (Fig. 2). The length of the tunics varies (from the thigh line to the knee), while the clothes do not show gender differences. Importantly, tunics in the ancient world cannot be fully defined as dresses. Rather, this type of clothing is characterized precisely as sexless or suitable for two genders. However, a tunic with sewn-in sleeves is fundamentally different from an upper draped garment for adults, thus differentiating children. Only adolescents (teenagers) received the right to wear draped clothing as adults, and from that time (probably from puberty) the child's sex was expressed by the clothing.     European countries. As the body was not seen as a value, no attention was paid to the special physiology of children, so they were portrayed as adults. Scholars believe that children were not distinguished as a special social group, but merely represented a smaller version of a human being. Philippe Aries notes the gradual recognition of childhood in thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Europe under the influence of the Reformed Church [3].
F. Arjes believes that due to the high mortality rate of infants, they were tried not to be attached to them -that is, young children occupied some intermediate position between society and nature and did not yet have social value. Once they reached the age when they were weaned and could eat and attend to their basic needs on their own, children were incorporated into the adult world and provided with adult-like clothing [3]. As differences in the cut of male and female tunics cannot be distinguished from the images, it is difficult to determine the sex of the children from the costume. Most likely, there was no "gender marking" of clothing until they reached puberty.
The colour scheme for children's clothing is also impossible to separate from adult clothing. One does not observe the use of lighter shades or the use of certain colours for children, especially -in the clothing of the middle and lower strata of the population. It can be assumed that children's clothes were made of the same cloth as adult clothes and in some cases, they were altered. Thus, the informational function of clothes during the Middle Ages was poorly expressed.
During the late Middle Ages (XIII-XIV centuries) clothes in Europe reached a new level owing to the general development of material culture and wealth, the influence of Arabic civilization. The appeal to hedonistic philosophy and development of secular culture of rich feudal lords and royal courts was also an important factor [4]. Gender differences began to be marked in clothing (male and female were polarized, the roles of men and women were clearly delineated), social marking also intensively developed, and the concept of "fashion" appeared. It was at this time that children's clothing became distinctive, and the first sign of children's costume was its conservatism.
Children's clothes developed much slower than the costumes of adults, they were not influenced by fashion. First, changes affected the costume of the higher class, where the basis of the child's social status was his kinship and wealth, and his primary purpose was inheritance of separate family estates, continuation of the family in order to concentrate and preserve inheritance. Therefore, boys were particularly important, whose costume was shaped in the first place.
The clothing style for young children was still based on the tunic. The very nature and significance of this garment changed somewhat. Against the background of clear differentiation of male and female silhouettes, long sleeves became an accessory of women's wardrobe and remained in men's wardrobe mainly only for priests, monks, representatives of some professions (for example, judges), who, on one hand, embodied tradition, and on the other, did not realize their masculinity completely or were outside it. Thus the "medieval" tunic signified a special incomplete, intermediate status for the child (especially the boy), before he took up the most important social role of family representative, warrior and producer and belonged to the female world and the female part of the home. In addition, clothes open underneath were more convenient from a utilitarian point of view for children who could not undress themselves to perform their natural needs. Later, the custom of dressing little boys in a dressing gown evolved and was present in children's clothing until the beginning of the twentieth century.
In most medieval images, children appear with their hair cut short, wearing tunics with long sleeves narrowed at the wrist. The tunics could be topped with a sukko (outer garment). The clothes of feudal lords and nobility children are more complex in decoration and richer in materials, but the child's individuality is not expressed in them (Fig. 7). Renaissance. During the Renaissance, society reached a new level of development, in which science and humanisation played an important role. The discovery of ancient Roman culture in Italy enabled a new view of the child's anatomy and contributed to the creation of a new image of childhood. The value of the child increased, and this can be seen in the appearance of images of children, including personal, bespoke portraits that emphasised not only their importance as heirs, but also their individuality. Expensive fabrics and embroidery, intricate headdresses, hair arranged in elaborate hairstyles -in the portraits of young representatives of the emerging Italian aristocracy the costume fully copies the 'adult' fashion of its time.
The 15th-century Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli left many images of children in his frescoes, giving an idea of what they were wearing in Italy. In early childhood, a knee-length tunic with long sleeves gathered at the cuffs continued to be the child's main type of clothing, it was cinched. However, already in the junior school age the tunic was supplemented with "adult" cut upper garments and decorated. Children of aristocratic origin or in the service of the palaces appeared in society in costumes, which were a copy of adults, clearly demonstrating the status and gender of the child.
The colour scheme of children's costumes is varied and not fundamentally different from that of adults. Children also wore "demi-party" clothes, coloured in the colours of the clan.
Thus, early, and high Renaissance children's costume can be considered a tunic only, a distinctive feature of which is belonging to both sexes. In the next century, a more complex system of differentiation in costume was formed for children in Europe (Fig. 8, 9).  The portraits of the Prince of Piedmont, Philip Emanuel of Savoy (1586 -1605) by Jan Kraeck show that infants wore a particular simplified costume with a skirt and stand-up collar, with an apron or bib. From two to five years of age, noble Spanish boys were dressed in women's court dress with a "frezoy" collar, flap sleeves, bell-shaped skirt on a frame. Of particular interest are the platform strap shoes, which have become a stable form of children's footwear up to the present day. From the age of five, princes wore (on ceremonial occasions) a man's suit, trappings of power and weapons. It can be assumed that the age of five was the age of socialization of the heir.
It should be noted that the clothing of the little princes was dominated by light colours: pink, yellow, and white (Fig. 10). An interesting painting by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, representing Christ with women and children. The children, about five years old, are also dressed in dresses with some peculiarities. The girls' dresses are "lower" and differ from the women's dresses by the absence of a bodice with a stiff corsage and an upper skirt, the cut of the sleeves and the double waistband. The girls have female hairstyles. The boys' costumes imitate the aristocratic (military) and merchant's costumes. The children in this painting are dressed as adults, however they play and frolic at Christ's feet, and the babies are brought by their mothers wrapped in snow-white diapers. The painting shows a changed attitude towards children, who are seen as a value, and who differ in their behaviour from adults. Children's costume looks more comfortable, adapted to the child's needs and physiology (Fig.11). The girls in Cranach's painting are dressed in white gowns as opposed to women in brightly coloured outfits. F. Aries notes that in the XV-XVI centuries, under the influence of the Church, an image of innocence of a child, his likeness to an angel was gradually formed [3]. That was probably the time when artists started to use light colours in depicting children's clothes and that would later have an impact on children's costumes.
Children often became the protagonists of the multitudinous paintings by the Dutch painters of the Brueghels. Of particular interest to us is the fact that the 'muzhik' painters left evidence of peasant and raznochinny life. Let us consider in detail the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder 'Children Playing' (Fig. 12). According to Jean-Pierre Vanden Branden, it depicts 168 boys and 78 girls of different ages [5].
The younger children are dressed in long sleeved tunics and headscarves, the older ones in late medieval urban costumes: narrow chauffons with bracelets, tunic shirts, jumpsuits, and duplets for boys, complemented by caps, berets and hats; girls in dresses and aprons, female bonnets and bedspreads. All had similar footwear -dark-coloured shoes. Costume colours include grey, blue, terracotta, brown and, rarely, beige. Comparing children's clothing in this painting with other paintings by Bruegel, which depict adults, shows that children's costume did not stand out in the heterogeneous urban (as well as peasant) environment of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In Pieter Brueghel the Younger's The Bagpiper Surrounded by Children, children are also likened to adults. This is particularly evident in the fact that in the right-hand part of the painting, the man is holding a girl, who is a copy of the woman depicted nearby. The man himself is 'reflected' in the boy in the foreground, holding his little girlfriend in his arms. All the children are depicted with serious adult faces, which is reminiscent of the medieval tradition of the homunculization of the child. Children in the folk milieu were not singled out as a special group and were imbued with childlike imagery until the early 17th century.
Two girls stand out among the children in the painting (one of them is in the arms of the nurse, the other is in the foreground left) in more elaborate costumes with double skirts, folded sleeves, or ribbons (the girl in the foreground), large collars "frets" and "toque" type hats. These are members of the wealthy class, who are dressed in special "children's dress". F. Ariès pays attention to the formation of this special "child's dress", in which the traditional flap sleeves turned into ribbons, useful in teaching a child to walk [3]. He associates this form with the 17th century, but the works of Jan Kraek and Pieter Brueghel show that this type of costume developed in the aristocratic environment as early as the 16th century and penetrated into urban life in the 17th century (Fig. 13). Children's dress, in fact, existed only for children under the age of five. It was a halterneck or one-piece garment with several buttons accentuated with braid or other trimmings in the centre of the front and atavism false sleeves turned into long ribbons of dress fabric, fixed on the armholes at the back and going down to the knee. According to some accounts [3] these dresses were worn by boys over trousers. We can assume that such attire, made of quality fabric and trimmed with braid and buttons, was expensive. However, it did not consider anatomical and physical features of a child at all, was heavy and uncomfortable, but effective and representative. This suggests that the child was perceived by adults as the same "little man", who had to carry the burden of status and symbolize the generosity and wealth of his parents.
Thus, in the sixteenth century, the children's tunic turns into a more complex construction and details of "child's dress", whose peculiarity is that it partially repeated elements of adult costume, but without regard to fashion. The image of the child is still blurred. Children are singled out as a separate group, showing their desire and ability to play.
17th century. You can trace the costumes of child heirs in the 17th century through the famous portraits by Diego Velázquez. The first image of Infanta Margarita Teresa of Spain (1651-1673) is of a two-year-old girl. We will compare her costume with that shown in the portrait of the two-year-old Prince Felipe Prospero (1657 -1661). The children's dresses consist of a closed bodice with long decorated sleeves and a fluffy round two-tiered skirt to the floor. The prince wears an apron covering the dress from the corsage line to the floor. Characteristically, the prince is wearing a red dress (Fig. 14).
The same style is used on the portrait of Prince Balthasar Carlos (1629-1646) supposedly painted in March 1631 when the boy was 1 year and 4 months old [6]. Elements of male military costume and the insignia of a satin ribbon over the shoulder are combined with the 'child's dress', thus demonstrating that the heir's social status was formed at birth, whereas the child's gender and gender role would not be marked until five years old ( fig. 15 left). The portrait in 1656 shows the five-year-old Infanta Marguerite in a dress copying an adult style with a wide, skeleton skirt. It was from this age, as noted earlier, that child heirs were expected to look like adults ( fig. 15 right).  The costume of a generic child in the seventeenth century fully copied the secular fashion with the national features of the respective country. Thus, the costume lacked "childishness" -distinctive features reflecting the child's development and character, creating his unique image.

Discussion
Through this analysis we can see the cyclical nature of the images of the "little adult" and the "angel child". The costume of the child was formed under the influence of several external historical, cultural, and social factors, becoming one of the key identifiers of its bearer in society. It actively participated in the formation of the image of the child as an independent member of society.

Conclusion
A comparative analysis of children's clothing, based on visual art, has highlighted the particularities of perceptions of childhood and the image of the child in different historical eras. The fact that artists did not always portray children's appearance in a realistic way and made deliberate distortions to meet the requirements of society suggests that the formation of the image of the child has undergone a complex evolutionary path. Studying and comparing the range of children's clothing in different eras allows us to get closer to an understanding of how a child felt in these clothes and how adults wanted them to be, i.e., to an understanding of the image of the child. Through the study of children's clothing, we can better understand society's attitudes to the formation and development of the phenomenon of childhood and identify the characteristics of this phenomenon.
Initially, the child was not an object of cognition. Later attention to the child was driven by the need to emphasise the social status of parents. The child's world had only one function: it reflected the interests of adults. The clothes of high-ranking children were adorned with exclusive jewels and copied the intricate cut of adult costumes -this primarily allowed adults to stand out in society and show their wealth, and at the same time, made the child dependent on the circumstances dictated by society.
A radical turnaround was the scientific discoveries that changed attitudes to the child. Research in child psychology and pedagogy has made it possible to understand the peculiarities of childhood.