Fashion: A Conceptual Constellation

Through a survey of the philosophical implications of fashion, the essay shows how fashion can lead to qualify the aesthetic phenomenon in general. In the first part of the essay the problem of integration of fashion in the current cultural system serves to redeem the character of the aesthetic as an everyday practice, in opposition to the traditional ideology of the fine arts. The second part discusses the categorial structure of fashion, whereby the aesthetic is emerging as a dynamic field that exceeds any unilateral definition. The third part of the essay, dedicated to fashion as an anthropological problem, insists on the aesthetic factor of identity constitution. Finally, the fourth part focuses on the particular experience of beauty related to fashion, where the aesthetic coincides with an ephemeral but original appearance. Fashion proves so to be a constellation, a field of tension between irreducible polarities which tends to exhaust itself in its manifestation, taking shape as an essential source of sense especially effective today.