In these troubled times we must seek a solid foundation to guide our actions. Seasonal rhythms represent one such foundation, allowing us to be in harmony with our natural condition.
These rhythms find their way into many spheres of experience, including the fashion seasons which give life to changing taste and evolving style. Fashion is different from fads expressing superficial and passing enthusiasm. Fashion is balanced between the drive to imitate and the desire for differentiation.
This tension, Georg Simmel argued over a century ago, is part of the human condition, and the foundation for a true fashion system. It represents a form of individualism underpinned by powerful social and historical awareness. Simmel describes the mutual limitation of the individual and the public, in a balance which has been lost with the decline of the public sphere in recent decades.
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Decline started in the 1970s and 1980s, with compelling implications for fashion. In those years a new form of hedonism arose, which reflects neither true individual drives nor any sense of public experience.
Today the idea of the public has been eroded to the point of making it difficult to distinguish between compliance and rebellion. Years ago, individuals drew from the public sphere to cultivate personal distinction.
Today the public has invaded the private, shaping individual desires as never before, encouraging a false sense of distinction driven by the leveling force of the mass market.
This is categorically different from the historical fashion system which operates at the interface between the public and the private.
The public expresses conformity, moderated by the differentiation sought by the individual in an autonomous private sphere. Today authentic individualism has been replaced by mass-individualism. Sartorial sameness prevails over pluralism.
Thus, a particular brand dominates some market segments, having gained status as a symbol of individuality and self-expression reproduced over and again among broad sectors of the community.
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People wearing exactly the same garments feel a paradoxical distinctiveness.
This fashion choice is characterized by undercoding: a safe and conservative choice avoiding any real personal statement.
This ambiguous form of individualism is rendered possible thanks to the artificial vision of the person created by modern technology. These people can be many things in many spheres but never themselves.
It is a form of default hedonism, where everyone cultivates identical tastes symbolizing the very individuality this choice denies. Today we need to return to a more solid foundation for individual differentiation, rooted in an understanding of the publicly acclaimed fashion world.
Knowledge of the products, the production process, the fashion history and trends, fuels deeper commitment to individual taste. As always, true fulfilment cannot be enjoyed in isolation: it requires the support of the public world.
The choice to embrace this type of fulfilment requires real courage since it goes against the tide of nihilistic uniformity found in modern hedonism.
Mass customization can be an antidote to mass individualism, although it is difficult to adapt customization to large-scale producers. For instance, Levi’s have announced their FLX Project (Future Led Execution) to create customized jeans combining over one thousand different options tailored to the needs of the individual fashion buyer.
This effort attempts to reproduce the customization characteristic of the historic fashion craft. Fortunately, the customization this project imitates is still found in artisan products which continue to represent an important component of the fashion market.
They also constitute the grounds for an authentic form of individualism available to discerning and courageous fashion buyers. They express historical continuity with one of Europe’s most important artisan sectors renewed by the ongoing quest for innovation.
They also reflect a profound individualism made possible by the small scale of production and unique handmade qualities.
In an uncertain world, a return to the certainty of renewed tradition is a viable pathway for reasserting individual self-fulfillment which goes beyond the soulless pleasure of default hedonism.
Gregory Overton Smith, D.Phil.(Oxford)
Temple University Rome
