the term “fashion” has three distinct meanings: the industry of personal appearance and clothing, the average taste of the moment in terms of clothing, and the average taste in a broader sense (not limited to clothing). Let us now focus on related terms, such as “dress”, “costume”, or “anti-fashion”. How do they differ from “fashion”? What are their particularities?
In her famous book Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and modernity (1985), fashion historian Elizabeth Wilson provides some answers. She defines “dress” as opposed to “fashion” in that the latter would refer to a “rapid and continual change of styles”, characteristic of Western capitalist modernity and urbanity, unlike a “dress” referring to the way in which everybody, in every society, is adorned.
Dress
there are however clothes that seem to escape the fashion mechanism. Can uniforms or vintage clothes really be defined that way as dress? as fashion? According to Wilson, all movements deliberately rejecting fashion do so precisely in relation to it, hence their inability to “escape the whole (fashion) discourse”, especially since they cannot control the phenomenon of trends. Wearing clothes branded with Sergio Tacchini, Fila, or Ellesse, seemed to be the hallmark of some “out of fashion” people five years earlier. We therefore end up with a certain “relativism”, depending on the willingness of individuals to comply to fashion movements or to separate themselves from the crowd.
Fixed costume
Other theorists and writers seem to share this position. This is the case of the British psychoanalyst John Carl Flügel (1884-1955) as well as the American anthropologist Ted Polhemus.
In The Psychology of Clothes, published in 1930, J.C. Flügel distinguishes between “fixed costume” and “modish costume”. Taken in part from the German psychologist F. Müller-Lyer, who discerned “natural” clothing, “national” clothing and “modish” clothing, the difference between “fixed costume” and “fashionable costume” would depend on their relationship to time and space. The “fixed costume” would undergo only slight changes over time and would have a strong geographical base, while the “modish costume” would vary rapidly and would remain relatively uniform in the same cultural areas. Unlike Elizabeth Wilson, J.C. Flügel postulates for the persistence of some fixed costumes in the West, such as military, professional or collective uniforms, although he notes their gradual disappearance.
Anti-fashion
In 1978, Ted Polhemus was inspired by this distinction as well in Fashion & Anti-Fashion: Exploring adornment and dress from an anthropological perspective to forge his famous concept of “anti-fashion”. To him, “fashion” refers to the “modish costume”, when “anti-fashion” is more akin to the “fixed costume”. Fashion is defined here as “systematic, structured and deliberate change of style”, as a “language of social mobility”, and is in fact opposed to the notion of “anti-fashion” referring to “all styles of ornament falling outside the system of change organized by fashion”, and referring both to the British royal family, Swazi costume, and subcultural attires.
Through the notions of “dress”, “fixed costume”, or “anti-fashion”, Elizabeth Wilson, John Carl Flügel, and Ted Polhemus all describe forms of ornament that oppose the cyclical change imposed by the fashion system specific to Western modernity.
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