Fashion arose to reconcile individual identity with mass-produced industrial aesthetics

Evidence

Fashion, as opposed to clothing, has been linked to the rise of modernity and its attendant economic structures. To become fashion, clothing must take on a fiction of personal meaning, even if this is no more than the ability to consume adeptly and/or stylishly. Wilson (1985:12) has suggested that modernity creates fragmentation and dislocation and that the fear of depersonalization haunts our culture — in response, fashion develops as a means of reconciling the wish for individual identity with the mass-produced aesthetics of the industrial age. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2839

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Immodesty article’s cross-cultural moral panics over dress — both treat clothing as identity/political signaling rather than mere covering. — connects to: Conformist anxiety made authenticity itself a uniform to be worn — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 892; Style lets particular individuals imprint what they express onto the universal — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 591; Seemingly superficial fashions fundamentally organize identity and social life — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 18
• DEFINE: Defines fashion as distinct from clothing — fashion requires a ‘fiction of personal meaning’ tied to consumption.