Uvod u studije mode / Intruduction to Fashion Studies

Abstract

Though by the last decade of twentieth century the clothing sphere was observed from various one-dimensional perspectives, the accelerated development of cultural studies helped overcome all flaws of previous approaches to this demanding social and cultural practice. Fashion studies become one of integral subsystems within contemporary cultural studies what made a great step in the movement from classical costumes study as a credible element of material culture (as it was treated by ethnological, anthropological and historical studies) towards the clothing study as a symbolic text, which once just as a trace/artifact in diachronic time now also functioned as the sign for social and ideological affiliation, sexuality and chosen lifestyle. Fashion studies define clothing potentially as a text and a picture, an ideological sign but also as the subject of massive consumption. However, clothing is primarily defined in relation to the body. In that sense, the body and clothing make an indissoluble whole, which changes in line with changes dictated by the environment, cultural and social context of the realization of the individual existence by presenting a succession of incoherent cultural identities.