A Passion For Fashion - Fashion as Social Energy (original) (raw)
Related papers
On fashion and fashion discourses
Critical Studies in fashion and beauty, 2010
While critical views inherited from the past still influence our appraisal of fashion, its pervasiveness in contemporary society calls for an explanation. In this article I attempt to show how the importance of fashion in our society is the result of a combination of a structurally modern space and Romantic cultural ideals. I conclude that, despite its frivolous appearance, fashion is not only a powerful social indicator, but also a particular means of bringing together the diverse and often contradictory demands of our human nature through a peculiar exercise of practical judgment.
The Unhappy Fashion Consciousness
Fashion is generally understood to reflect an era, not shape it. The spirit of a time can be neatly quantified through dress—the excesses of the 1920s were manifested in decadent beading and furs worn by the flappers, while the structured look of the 1950s reflected the conservatism of the postwar years. Although it is seductive to see fashion, and indeed entire decades, so simplistically this relationship between fashion and time eliminates the force of the individual, and the dialectical movement that exists between an individuality and the external world.
For a Contemporary Vision of the History and the Phenomenology of Fashion
Alessia M. M. Giurdanella , 2024
This paper traces the salient phenomena that have marked the history of fashion and define it as it is nowadays. Foremost, an attempt is made to value the term "fashion" under different lights. From the 18th century onward, there was a succession of historical, political, social, and cultural changes that accelerated the phenomenon consolidation of fashion as a cultural phenomenon of great importance and dynamism, both in terms of its incursions into the languages of art and in terms of the international economy. A few focuses follow: on Lombard clothing, on how some items played different roles besides clothing, on the costume in the Goldoni's theater, on the twentieth-century Decadentism of Oscar Wilde, and others. Other aspects that characterize the industry today follow: the intersection of fashion with all the other arts, the role of magazines in the process of women's emancipation, the meaning of "fashion showcase", luxury brands and the phenomenon of their counterfeiting, the role of the "prosumer", and sustainable fashion laws, looking toward a future zero-carbon society.
Vital Vogue: A biosocial perspective on fashion
2018
- What if we understood fashion as a bioelectrical energy and as a form of flirting? - What if fashion is not so much about clothes, but primarily a cognitive interface between living organisms, hungry for connection and love? - How would such shift in perception change our approach to fashion and sustainability? The psychoanalyst, political theorist, biologist and pioneer of body therapies Wilhelm Reich framed a groundbreaking synthesis on the biosocial aspects of life. Reich never discussed fashion, but taking designerly inspiration from his work, this book argues fashion can be understood as a biological as much as social phenomenon; when fashion works at its best, we feel it in our bodies. The agency of fashion is not in the system, but in your body. Fashion is the organismic pleasure and excitement of growth and expansion, an energy sparkling with life, a form of biosocial flourishing, or more precisely: a vital vogue.
The Modern Concept of Fashion and its Origins in Romanticism
In this essay I briefly survey central aspects of the modern concept of fashion that in the period around 1800 were not only relevant to the debate about fashion itself but also in Romantic thought. What is especially significant for the modern is the idea that fashion is a medium of individuality, which for its part is important in civil society as a characteristic feature of an educated citizenry. This development away from a condemnation of fashion as something purely superficial to a new functional definition based on political and economic considerations is presented in the first half of the paper. It is followed by a second key concept in fashion. Temporality is of crucial importance both for fashion itself and for current fashion happenings in particular. Firstly, the perception of temporality and temporal development of fashion happenings is a condition of understanding fashion conceptually. And secondly temporality is a central element for modern fashion creation, as time itself is made visible in the products of fashion. This should illustrate how the ‘temporality’ of fashion has similarities to central concepts of the Romantics, especially Romantic irony.
Modapalavra e-periódico, 2021
In the first post-lockdown commercial reopening that aimed to minimize the contagion of Sars-CoV-2, in several world capitals, we witnessed tumultuous scenes of agglomeration caused by anxious consumers. They awaited the opening of stores of major fashion brands and, as a result, generated relevant revenue for these companies. Based on the thinking of philosophers: Lipovetsky, Deleuze and Foucault, we promote a reflection on such behavior. Considering the threatening context and, at that time, the exposure to a risk of unknown proportions, we asked ourselves: what drives this desire to consume? We deal with the logic that governs the capitalist and fashion systems, whose historical relationship gave rise to a desiring consumer. Fleeing from dichotomous thinking, we consider that the reason-system is a condition constitutively produced by the subject, which has its maximum expression in the fashion culture. We conclude that, as fashion culture is the culture of Being, this was sought...
The Fashion Condition - The Fashion Praxis Collective
A collectively written book about the politics of fashion. - As Hannah Arendt wrote, what is most difficult is to love the world as it is, as it is plagued by evil and suffering. Yet, as Arendt astutely acknowledges, it is this same love that shapes our human togetherness. The Fashion Praxis Collective would add that it is the same love that shapes fashion as a social phenomenon. This book provokes new perspectives, challenges existing concepts, and generates new ways of seeing/understanding the varieties of fashion(s); as signs and symbols, concrete human relationships and intentions, gestures and movements. As boundaries, fronts and conflicts, but also as passions and com-passions. As systems and industries, as modes of social industriousness of being together.