The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy
Product Description
In a book full of playful irony and striking insights, the controversial social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky draws on the history of fashion to demonstrate that the modern cult of appearance and superficiality actually serves the common good. Focusing on clothing, bodily deportment, sex roles, sexual practices, and political rhetoric as forms of “fashion,” Lipovetsky bounds across two thousand years of history, showing how the evolution of fashion from an upper-class privilege into a vehicle of popular expression closely follows the rise of democratic values. Whereas Tocqueville feared that mass culture would create passive citizens incapable of political reasoning, Lipovetsky argues that today’s mass-produced fashion offers many choices, which in turn enable consumers to become complex individuals within a consolidated, democratically educated society.
Superficiality fosters tolerance among different groups within a society, claims Lipovetsky. To analyze fashion’s role in smoothing over social conflict, he abandons class analysis in favor of an inquiry into the symbolism of everyday life and the creation of ephemeral desire. Lipovetsky examines the malaise experienced by people who, because they can fulfill so many desires, lose their sense of identity. His conclusions raise disturbing questions about personal joy and anguish in modern democracy.
The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy
Written by admin under Fashion Books.
Anonymous
May 23, 2010 at 5:06 am
Unlike the stuffy American academics who turn their nose up
at the world of fashion, Lipovetsky realizes the importance of
fashion – not just as a result of liberalism and/or capitalism -
but as a contributor to these structures.
Lipovetsky basically argues that modern fashion contributes
to democratization by allowing individuals more choices and also by
obscuring social classes (Does Bill Gates dress signify his social
or financial superiority in any way?).
He also gives a pretty concise and coherent history of fashion
which helps us understand where we stand today.
On top of all that, it’s well written. I don’t know whether to thank him
or Porter for that.
All and all, an outstanding and entertaining rejection of the tedious, reductive
Marxist explanations of fashion.
Rating: 5 / 5
Jorge Maldonado
May 23, 2010 at 5:15 am
In this book Lipovetsky makes explicit ideas that one could find in a more timid way in earlier books. The basic idea of his thought is that fragmentation of society does not, in the way it is thought commonly, mean destruction of morals or democracy. On the contrary, democracy is formed by the powers that are able to join fragmentation and continuity. This is what he shows with fashion. Fashion is from where he can understand what is “the essence” (although it isn’t an essenciallist thought)of Western Culture. He uses the concept of fashion to synthetize the opposites: fragmentaed indivilualistic society and universal democratic society. As Hegel, he sees the union of both opposites through the whole reconstruction of Fashion. Not science or Reason but fashion is what explains us better what we are and why we are like that.
Rating: 5 / 5