Fashion (with capital F) and fashion (with lowercase f)
Fashion (with capital F) differentiates itself from fashion (with lowercase f). The former can exist without marketing, branding, capitalism, trends or the dictatorial “zeitgeist”. It is an amalgamate of material and culture. Firstly, it is a type of technology humans have developed as they adapt to weather and environment-dependent conditions, a practicality. Secondly, it is a language, the acceptance of the communicative qualities of the clothes one chooses to wear, depending on whether it is hot or cold. The language of Fashion is about self-presentation and habits of dress, which relate to human behaviour and curiosity. fashion (with lowercase f) must make money, so it is the agent that turns culture into product, through its definition. It is the industry, the brands, the names. It pinpoints and encapsulates counterculture, intending to sell it. It is a commercial industry producing and selling a commodity.
Vogue, for instance, is currently detached from culture and irrelevant to Fashion. It is a corpse, a great example of fashion (with lowercase f). Fashion (with capital F) is free, because it is purely ethos. Fashion exists as an all-consuming part of culture, the conglomerate of reasons people dress as they do. In this way, it is more a belief than a certain type, amount, or style of clothing. It is a manufactured cultural symbol, more than it is clothes.[1] The way one chooses to set the table or organize one’s desk is Fashion (with uppercase F). Ways of speaking, tones, melodies and slang are Fashion too.
Yuniya Kawakubo states that Fashion surpasses the physicality of clothes: “Fashion is not visual clothing but is composed of the invisible elements that make up clothing.”[2] If Fashion (with uppercase F) is made of all the transparent parts that constitute it, it should be able to define itself through these parts, not only through clothing. There is a way to consume Fashion’s invisible parts as gelatinous images. If we let go of the possession of clothes, we can consume fashion without partaking (buying) in the capitalistic systems that make commodities circulate.
The definition of fashion has changed as the phenomenon has. In this text, I provide the concept of fashion (with lowercase f) and Fashion (with uppercase F), although the word itself exists within a vast etymological web of meanings and definitions. What fashion or Fashion are not, is static, singular concepts. Rather, it is a network that keeps growing and breaking apart. It is important to make this lexical distinction so that when I talk about Fashion, it is clear that I am not invoking trends, brands or designers. Instead, I am referring to the way people choose to dress and explore the circulation of garments and aesthetics in culture.
In The Regime of Visibility, van Winkel states, “There can be no culture without form, no substance without representation”. [3] Form, as the way something is made visible and perceived, must be recognized, judged, and reflected upon. Culture requires visual awareness. Otherwise, form would simply be functional, natural or irrelevant. In other words, culture exists when people notice how things look, not just what they are or what they are for.
Mass culture demonstrates how there is no meaning, or “substance”, without representation. Mass culture represents and is represented through images, language and symbols. Its meaning fully relies on how things are communicated, displayed and framed. Van Winkel argues that nothing has cultural “substance” unless it is represented through form. Meaning in culture is not inherent, as “The idea of a pure ‘culture of interiority’, which, because of its disregard for matters of appearance, has been eradicated by a post-modern culture of design”.[4] Meaning emerges through some sort of representation. In arguing that form and representation create meaning and culture, Van Winkel rejects the idea that one is more complete than the other, especially because “the latter would not have been able to affect the former, let alone eradicate it.”[5]
[1] Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies (Second Edition), Yuniya Kawakubo, Bloomsbury Publisher, 4
[2] Ibid., 4
[3] The Regime of Visibility, Camiel van Winkel, NAi Publishers, 2005, 176
[4] Ibid., 175
[5] Ibid.,176