Women believe dress grants access to both the world and an idealized self

Evidence

Through envious or admiring approbation, woman seeks an absolute affirmation of her beauty, her elegance, her taste: of herself. She dresses to display herself; she displays herself to make herself be. She thus submits herself to a painful dependence; the housewife’s devotion is useful even if it is not recognized; the effort of the fashion-conscious woman is in vain unless consciousness is involved. She is looking for a definitive valorization of herself; it is this attempt at the absolute that makes her quest so exhausting; criticized by only one voice—this hat is not beautiful—she is flattered by a compliment, but a contradiction demolishes her; and as the absolute only manifests itself in an indefinite series of appearances, she will never have entirely won; this is why the fashion-conscious woman is sensitive; it is also why some pretty and much-admired women can be sadly convinced they are neither beautiful nor elegant, that this supreme approbation of an unknown judge is exactly what is missing: they are aiming for an in-itself that is unrealizable. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1582 (#expands, via linked claim)

In a certain sense fashion gives woman a compensation for her lack of position in a class based on a calling or profession. The man who has become absorbed in a calling has entered a relatively uniform class, within which he resembles many others, and is thus often only an illustration of the conception of this class or calling. On the other hand, as though to compensate him for this absorption, he is invested with the full importance and the objective as well as social power of this class. To his individual importance is added that of his class, which often covers the defects and deficiencies of his purely personal character. The individuality of the class often supplements or replaces that of the member. This identical thing fashion accomplishes with other means. Fashion also supplements a person’s lack of importance, his inability to individualize his existence purely by his own unaided efforts, by enabling him to join a set characterized and singled out in the public consciousness by fashion alone. Here also, to be sure, the personality as such is reduced to a general formula, yet this formula itself, from a social standpoint, posssesses an individual tinge, and thus makes up through the social way what is denied to the personality in a purely individual way. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 732 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Feminine dress functions as self-decoration, offering the wearer up as merchandise — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1078; Dress lets the idle woman believe she is recreating her own self. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1551; For a woman, dress functions as economic currency and social standing. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1567 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Dressing for display makes women dependent on others’ recognition for self-worth #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1582
• In the anonymous city, wearing high-status dress could grant assumed rights #expands (0.80)
• Fashion substitutes for class and profession as a source of individual differentiation. #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 732