Rising demand for designer fashion expressed longing for formality in a rationalized world

Evidence

While blogging sprinkled techno-optimist magic on fashion—Dolce & Gabbana famously provided loaner laptops to bloggers at their shows—the rising interest in style also seemed to reflect a yearning for formality and flair in a hyper-rationalized world. Designer fashion offered an accessible way to inject individuality into regimented lifestyles and a means to flaunt newfound status in an era of growing wealth. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 403

Categorization

• XREF: A candidate alternative mechanism for the era’s style surge: not just status signaling but anti-rationalization yearning. Useful ammunition for the reader’s counter-case against pure status-dynamics explanation. — connects to: Mods’ style-aspiration sought everyday aestheticization, not bourgeois advancement — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1352; Seemingly superficial fashions fundamentally organize identity and social life — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 18
• SEED: Angle: if 2010s formalwear revival was an anti-rationalization longing, what other ‘hyper-rational escape’ aesthetics appeared in the same period (cottagecore, quiet luxury, silent era revivalism) and what do they say about the monoculture’s true signature?