Fashion Industry

Fashion has psychological, social, and cultural dimensions. It is an important link between individual and collective life. One can see the popular culture, political positions, intellectual ideas, and religious and cultural prescriptions expressed in the appearance of an individual. Georg Simmel suggests that fashion is synonymous with modernity, existing in sufficiently democratic societies where there is, through the possibility of class mobility, the danger of absorption and even the obliteration of established hierarchies. Fashion has its roots in the desire to imitate others [Page 593]and to follow socially established guidelines, and the need to differentiate oneself from others—to be an individual. Simmel argues that when these antagonistic principles are mediated by fashion, they exist in a dialectical relationship to one another. Though Simmel acknowledges that ...