own “divine” head designer. This is a pope deeply engaged in interpreting the an-
gelic ideals of beauty and myths of allure, consecrating the dream into orthodox
high fashion through rituals of transubstantiation, creating exclusive surface, pure
difference and status. Lagerfeld’s collaboration with H&M, the Gutenberg of mass
fashion, made his teachings reach outside his closed circle of devoted disciples and
accessible to the heathen masses who were hungry for his blessing. Yet, as with the
stratified Catholic Church, these masses were offered no possibility of taking the
faith in their own hands or talk back.
With this in mind we can render a response in Liberation theology-style. We can
try to see how fashion “base communities” can be organized and create their own
social interpretations of the fashion “faith”. The formation of fashion base com-
munities can be done for many reasons. It can be done in response to the interpas-
sivity of the hierarchical system of top-down dictations, to create larger action
spaces for every active participant. It can also be done to create its own culture of
activists and a critical mass of engaged believers, activists, creators or remixers.
This would mean to form a micro-culture, a personal scene, and make one’s own
voice heard through collaborative reinterpretations and the sharing of the fashion
“service”, skills and materials as well a performative space for identity production.
Sub- or micro-cultures in fashion has existed as long as fashion, but especially in
the last years with the rise of the fashion blogosphere we can see a more distributed
fashion system emerge with global distribution. Suddenly teenage fashionistas and
bloggers are sitting at the catwalk front row and every city has its street scene glo-
bally documented. Nonetheless, fashion is still ready-to-wear, the action spaces still
limited and the amateurs still neglected from within the system, if they are not so
“cool” to be “hunted” for the latest trend.
For a fashion heresy to take shape a multitude of base communities of believers has
to be formed. Most importantly, this formation of fashion base communities is a
way to “linuxify” the organisation of the fashion system and to avoid another hier-
Cathedral and Bazaar organization.
Both Lagerfeld and the pope are authori-
ties controlling the texts, codes or behaviours
within their belief system. They both com-
mand a stratified “cathedral” structure where
every decision of importance passes through
them, and has to be blessed by them (left). As
an alternative to this is the “bazaar” mode
of organization, the Linux model, a system
of free agents or base communities. The main
question remains: can the high current of the
faith remain energized even if transfered into
a bazaar model? What values can be trans-
fered between these two models without loosing
current? Is it crucial to have an icon in the top
to keep the faith intact and the power on?