Taste and Fashion: The Social Function of Fashion and Style

Abstract

In the classical European humanistic tradition, fashion was alwavs thought to be anti thetical to good taste. A person blindly following the whims of fashion was without style, whereas a man of style - or a gentleman - used his own power of judgement Immanuel Kant shared this conception with many of his contemporaries. It is well known that Georg Simmel's idea of a formal sociology was influenced by his reading of Kant's aesthetic writings. Even Simmel's famous essay on fashion can best be understood as a somewhat ironic commentary on Kant's idea of a semus communis: the community of fashion is the real community of universal taste To Simmel, fashion is a societal formation always combining two opposite forces It is a socially acceptable and safe way to distinguish oneself from others and, at the same time, it satisfies the individual's need for social adaptation and imitation Furthermure, the charm of novelty offered by fashion is a purely aesthetic pleasure. Fashion helps to solve - at least provisionally - the central problem of the philosophy of life, also expressed in the antinomy of taste as formulated by Kant. It teaches the modern man how a person can be a homogeneous part of a social mass without losing his individuality, or how he can both stick to his own private taste and expect others - who recognizably also have a taste ot their own - to share it Simmel's suggestion of the 'stylized life-style' further develops the same idea. In modern society, both style and fashion are functional equivalents to 'good taste'.