Fabulousness – What the Doctor Ordered: Exploring the Intrapsychic Significance and Social Meanings of Fashion

Abstract

Fashion is simultaneously intensely personal and very public. We can use fashion as an external ego support when our inner self-representation needs propping up. Yet, the moment we put on a particular outfit, that clothing becomes a cultural artifact. Looking through a self-psychology lens, this article examines how clothing and fashion can be tools for promoting self-cohesion, while simultaneously exploring how the subjective experience of fashion is influenced by one’s larger societal context. Case material and excerpts from nonfiction writing allow for an examination of the felt experience of fashion and self-presentation. Fashion provides a wealth of opportunities for enlivening selfobject experiences, which may be sparked by the material, physical nature of clothes; the communicative function of fashion; or the imaginative act of self-styling. Drawing on Madison Moore’s concept of “fabulousness,” an embodied, queer esthetic that uses fashion for both self-realization and resisting oppression, this article concludes with a discussion of creativity and social change. Fashion is a tool not just for communicating the self, but for creating a self—often in deliberate resistance to destructive forces, whether those are social or interpersonal.