The Fashion Businesseffect, namely the sometimes bewildering and clumsy intellectualization of
the subject, a tendency to depart from the real into the realm of the abstract,
and a desire to reposition it in closer proximity to art.
Antipathy, Thinly Veiled and Undisguised HostilityThe reading list for first-year students of fashion design at Kingston University
includes The Fashioned Self by the anthropologist and sociologist Joanne
Finkelstein. It is my fervent hope that none but those students whose interest
in the subject is unshakable should ever chance to get their hands on a copy;
the book’s arguments are presented with a devastatingly seductive logic and
an authority that would persuade anyone else to abandon the profession
without delay. In the author’s words,
It is the argument of this book that as long as we continue to value physical
appearances, and sustain the enormous industries which trade on this value, namely,
the consumer-orientated cosmetic, fashion and therapeutic industries, we authenti-
cate a narrative of human character which is spurious.^22Finkelstein’s numerous objections to fashion and its industries are founded
in her theory that the origins of our interest in appearances lie in the
discredited field of physiognomy, with its claim that individual moral
character and intellect can be revealed by physical characteristics. She adheres
to the view that fashion and ‘fashionability’ are devices whereby a complex
modern society cynically regulates human exchange for economic motives,
and argues that, by submitting ourselves to fashion with its claims to provide
a means for self-expression, that we actually deny the self. The text returns
several times to the idea that the manufactured or fashioned self invites
appraisals which may be inaccurate, that fashion can be a disguise or pretence,
that it can be ambiguous or even deceive. This is presented as an undisputed
indictment, even though the possibility of things not quite being what they
appear is the very thing which appeals to those who delight in fashion.
Like many who decry fashion, Finkelstein believes it to be a condition of
capitalist societies. Those who are indisposed towards capitalist ideologies,
must inevitably, it seems, take a similar stance on fashion. Writing in Fashion
Theory Finkelstein concentrates specifically on the fashion industry, its
- Finkelstein, J., The Fashioned Self, Cambridge: Polity Press and Oxford: Blackwell,