Depression Chic and the Philosophy of Fashion

The fashion industry irritates me. Designers and editors pontificate about 'it shoes' and 'statement handbags' and models preen and primp themselves before strutting around in whatever happens to be 'in' at the time. In response, we consumers collectively swoon and shell out the moneys. It has always seemed to me to be a vacuous circle, tapping into the crude social status circuitry in our heads in a vainglorious attempt at making our lives more fulfilling.

From the standpoint of human behaviour, I think fashion reveals two things. Firstly, I see it as an example of a cultural institution being moulded out of our genetic clay, and then misfiring spectactularly. Secondly, I think it can be used as a textbook example of monopolistic competition in a market traditionally thought of as quite competitive, and that might be illustrative of general anomalies in economic thinking. These are of course major theses in their own right, and deserve more thorough consideration which I will give them in due course.

But for now I have a different agenda. The Atlantic recently published a stimulating feature on fashion in the depression economy and the challenges the industry faces going forward. It is a great read, arguing that as we enter a winter of financial discontent, consumers will rethink their conspicuous consumption of fashion. However, the designers are ready for this, and will respond with a panoply of new trends which continue to push the envelope, assisted of course by Michelle Obama, that heraldic doyenne of all things glam. What can that family not do?

What particularly piqued my interest though was this:

Fashion’s singular ability to marry aesthetics and psychology, formalism and eroticism...consumers of fashion are undergoing a “values correction"

Sounds fascinating. But wait, there's more:

Fashion is both a form of self-expression and an outward means of defining and altering selfhood....It famously, complicatedly blends art and commerce, and perhaps the highest compliment one can pay a designer is to say that he or she understands the customer: a good part of the art lies in fathoming her mood, her desires, and her ambitions, and the ways these may shift from season to season and year to year and evolve as she ages.

The suggestion seems to be that self-identity, hopes and ambitions, emotional moods and personal narrative, nothing less than the fundaments of consciousness, can be manifest in fashion. Yes, this is a somewhat ponderous extrapolation. But to me it represents a fundamentally different way of looking at this industry and its values and purpose.

If aesthetic value can truly be ascribed such a weighty role, then we should spend more time celebrating this function, rather than allowing the rhetoric of fashion to descend into mindless platitudinous back-slapping. That would certainly stop me from so glibly dismissing the fashionistas.