FASHION by George Simmel
"Fashion is the imitation of a given example and satisfies the demand for social adaptation..."
I joked with someone in class that this was an “anti-reading,” I think because I had the distinct impression that Simmel was speaking in facts, delivering information already known to be true. I thoroughly enjoyed this reading and found its ideas to be both persuasive and enlightening. But i did become suspicious of my willingness to accept these at times over-arching pronouncements. (Perhaps it is the knowledge that it appeared in a journal of Sociology that provoked me. Somehow theory is differnt from scoiology although I know better than to think that true).
I found one of the most interesting and memorable points to be this notion of the one-way trajectory of fashion trends. I underlined this statement in the abstract and wondered why —even from the vantage point of 1950—this seemed like a conservative statement.
This prompted me to think about when fashion and trends in general began to cross class boundaries and influence one another in a more syncretic and fluid manner. I challenged myself to come up with an example and thought about the adoption/appropriation of blue jeans in the 1950s. I found a reference to this cultural phenomenon in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluejeans): “In the United States during the 1950s, wearing of blue jeans by teenagers and young adults became symbolic of mild protest against conformity. This was considered by some adults as disruptive…”
A small point, a footnote really, but it did enable me to begin to formulate my own concurrent discourse in what was a very engaging and thoroughly convincing argument.