Mass production of clothing is reconciled through individualized fashion expression

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Normcore embodied the logical progression of fashion democratization. As blogs and e-commerce made designer goods widely accessible, the ultimate countersignal was to dress as if clothing didn’t matter. However, this approach had its limits: As fashion journalist Lauren Sherman noted, normcore made women look less “hip or chic” and more like “a mom.” And despite its aspirations toward futurism, normcore was another iteration of retromania. As writer Fiona Duncan pointed out, “The contemporary normcore styles I’ve seen have their clear aesthetic precedent in the nineties.” Unlike other decades, however, 1990s athletic fashion never devolved into kitschy nostalgia. Its drabness ensured that even its revival felt deliberately understated. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 407 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The more an article becomes subject to rapid changes of fashion, the greater the demand for cheap products of its kind, not only because the larger and therefore poorer classes nevertheless have enough purchasing power to regulate industry and demand objects, which at least bear the outward semblance of style, but also because even the higher circles of society could not afford to adopt the rapid changes in fashion forced upon them by the imitation of the lower circles, if the objects were not relatively cheap. … It has been noticed, especially in the older branches of modern productive industry, that the speculative element gradually ceases to play an influential rôle. The movements of the market can be better overlooked, requirements can be better foreseen and production can be more accurately regulated than before, so that the rationalization of production makes greater and greater inroads on chance conjunctures, on the aimless vacillation of supply and demand. Only pure articles of fashion seem to prove an exception. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 741 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: 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; Indian cottons democratized color and pattern in English dress (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Fashion arose to reconcile individual identity with mass-produced industrial aesthetics #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2839
• Democratized fashion access made dressing as if clothing doesn’t matter the ultimate status signal #complicates (0.78) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 407
• Fashion goods resist the rationalization that transforms other production #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 741