Is Modest Fashion Modest?

Elena Esposito

doi:10.6092/issn.2611-0563/10558

Authors

Elena Esposito Bielefeld University and University of Bologna
She is Professor of Sociology at the University Bielefeld and the University of Bologna. She published many works on the theory of social systems, media theory, memory theory and sociology of financial markets. Her current research on algorithmic prediction is supported by a five-year Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. Esposito’s publications include Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorübergehenden. Paradoxien der Mode (2004) and “The Fascination of Contingency: Fashion and Modern Society” in G. Matteucci and S. Marino, ed., Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (2017).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/10558

Keywords:

Modest Fashion, Volubility, Abstractness of fashion, Contingency, Ethnic Fashion

Abstract

Fashion seems to be opening to a trend towards ethnic and multicultural content, and even to a modest fashion based on the desire to avoid attracting attention. The paper discusses the possibility that fashion has a social impact, contrasting it with Simmel’s “abstractness:” the claim that fashion has no reason and cannot have a reason – and if it does, this is not the reason why we follow it. Fashion goes by and this is its real content, beyond the forms it takes over time. The open question is whether a modest fashion can still be modest, or whether it has to give up its nature in order to be fashionable – and whether this is a price that is worth paying.

References

de La Bruyère, Jean. Les Caractères ou les moeurs de ce siècle. In Moralistes du XVIIe Siècle, edited by Jean Lafond, 693-968. Paris: Laffont, 1992.

Esposito, Elena. Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorübergehenden. Paradoxien der Mode. Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp, 2004.

Godard de Donville, Louise. Signification de la mode sous Louis XIII. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1978.

Grenaille, François de. La Mode, ou charactère de la Religion, de la Vie, de la Conversation, de la Solitude, des Compliments, des Habits et du Style du Temps. Paris: Gasse, 1642.

Lipovetsky, Gilles. L’empire de l’éphémère. La mode et son destin dans les sociétés modernes. Paris: Gallimard, 1987.

La Rochefoucauld, François de. Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales. In Moralistes du XVIIe Siècle, edited by Jean Lafond, 134-93. Paris: Laffont, 1992.

Simmel, Georg. Die Mode. In Philosophische Kultur. Gesammelte Essays. Leipzig: Klinkhardt, 1911.

Tarde, Gabriel. Les Lois de l’Imitation. Étude sociologique. Paris: Alcan, 1921.

Is Modest Fashion Modest?

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