Autor: Alexandra Rusu
The systematic study of fashion in anthropology began in the mid-1980s when clothing and accessories contributed to research into the processes of social, cultural, and historical transformation. Also, this period witnessed a unification of previous fragmented perspectives proposed by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and curators. The fashion system includes both artifacts and the stages they go through during their material, social and symbolic life (production, distribution, marketing, appropriation, disposal and / or recycling), emphasizing the importance of multiple contexts in which clothes circulate, taking on meaning. The anthropology of fashion analyzes these contexts and the various practices involved in the formulation of a dominant aesthetic expression, highlighting the dialectic between society and the individual, between body and materiality.
In “Fashion anthropology: challenging Eurocentricity in fashion studies” Angela Jansen, seeking to eliminate from the anthropological study of fashion the dichotomies proposed by Eurocentric optics takes into account intercultural, holistic and cultural relativism and formulates a comprehensive definition of fashion, that of “desirable dress”. “Desirable dress” includes all existing forms of clothing and its attractiveness is based on “a series of values, be they social, political, nostalgic, exclusive, modern, innovative, national, youth, etc.” conditioned by the specific context. Because the desirable character is often difficult to extract and analyze, the researcher proposes the method of participatory observation as the only way in which we can delimit the typologies of behavior. What is certain is that in order for there to be fashion, many people have to do the same thing or wear the same thing, and the dissemination has to be fluid.
Another fundamental characteristic of fashion is dynamics, a perpetual movement conducive to creativity, a continuous change of tastes in different historical and cultural contexts, influenced by social events and which, in turn, can change the social fabric.
The field of research is as wide as the possible connections between the components of the system: fashion-component of material culture, fashion-individual and collective strategy of self-definition, fashion-means of increasing efficiency and power, fashion and consumption, fashion and economic circuits global, etc.
Among these themes, the construction of personal identity addresses the transformative possibilities of fashion and identifies the reasons for accepting one fashion to the detriment of another: the desire to be accepted in a group or community, the tendency to imitate, the need to distinguish, affirmation, desire to communicate or build an appearance. Fashion, through its rigorous framework of symbolization, becomes a system of building identity or solving identity problems, being sometimes a therapeutic phenomenon.
Becoming part of the mass culture governed by the principle of planned obsolescence, fashion “carries the weight of production” and projects this perpetual novelty on the individual, with important repercussions on self-construction. Speaking about the fashion myth, the philosopher Umberto Galimberti states:
“Where a world consecrated of lasting objects and feelings is gradually changed with a world populated by ephemeral images, which dissolve with the same speed with which they appear, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between dream and reality, between imagination and concrete dates.” And identities can be “dressed and thrown away as fashion culture has taught us.”
This illusory freedom has the potential to dissolve the landmarks of personal identity, in a multitude of aesthetic or behavioral manifestations adopted without the mediation of a critical thinking. The phenomenon can prove disastrous especially for young people. We can contrast this “neomania” with a conscious, ethical consumption, integrated with the tendency towards singularity.
Text & Photo: Alexandra Rusu
Bibliography:
1.Maria Angela Jansen, Fashion anthropology: challenging eurocentricity in fashion studies, Fashion Tales 2015 Conference, 18-20 iunie, Milano, Italia. https://www.academia.edu/13162442/Fashion_Anthropology_Challenging_Eurocentricity_in_Fashion_Studies
2.Umberto Galimberti, I miti del nostro tempo, Feltrinelli, Milano, a 8-a ediție, 2019.
3.Intissar Bouaziz, Roy Toffoli, La tendance à la singularité de l’individu et son rôle dans les choix de consommation: une étude exploratoire, 2007, https://archipel.uqam.ca/1228/1/M10506.pdf
