Fashion: a way to look alike AND to stand out

Is fashion a distinction or imitation?

The German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918), as well as the American linguist Edward Sapir (1884-1939), have both taken interest in the somewhat paradoxical nature of fashion: it appears to be as much of a way for the individual to imitate the social group, as a way to distinguish herself from the mass. From a literary perspective, the French author Honoré de Balzac appears to be the first to identify fashion as a principle of distinction of the self. In his famous essay "Treatise on elegant living", published in 1830, he dwells on the analysis of the codes of "the elegant living", a concept widely inspired by guides of manners and other protocol books, which were popular at the time. Balzac draws from his own social experience the template of "social climbing" through the mastering of the clothing codes, as demonstrated in his novels by the path of characters such as Rastignac (Father Goriot) or Lucien de Rubempré (Lost llusions). 

In 1905, Georg Simmel offered a sociological perspective of fashion by observing two interesting phenomena: on the one hand, he seeks to explain fashion’s necessary convergence in taste: what drives individuals to dress the same, in a determined time and location?

The second problem he encounters lies in the instability of this "convergence phenomenon": why are preferences so quickly renewed, within the same social group? In other words, for Simmel, fashion stands, from a sociological point of view, as a curious phenomenon of "unstable regularity". Simmel tackles the paradox of fashion through the anthropological concepts of imitation and differentiation.

Imitation is defined as an "economical" behavior: when the individual imitates one or several members of his group, he is in fact preserved from the "torment of choice". It is, for Simmel, the primary stage of the development of the individual in society. He explains the rise of the common fashion taste by the instinctive inclination towards imitation: to dress like the group is in a sense "easier", as the individual is preserved from the cost of the psychologic effort an autonomous clothing decision may induce. That leaves us with the other aspect of fashion, meaning its instability throughout time.

Simmel uses, on that matter, another anthropological principle: the individual aspiration to distinguish oneself, which is "the next step" in the behavioral evolution of the individual. When she accesses this more "advanced" state of being, the individual places personal interest as well as future consideration as center of her motivations scheme, whereas imitation favors the preservation of what is already achieved and the perpetuation of well-installed habits. Taking inspiration from Adam Smith, Simmel extends his "Trickle-down economics" theory to fashion: as he observes the phenomenon of lower social categories imitating ruling social categories’ habits, he also determines that it couldn’t cause the shift of styles throughout time. According to him, this particular shift is caused by the ruling classes’ will to distinguish themselves from the others: "Social advance above all is favorable to the rapid change of fashion, for it capacitates lower classes so much for imitation of upper ones, and thus the process characterized above, according to which every higher set throws aside a fashion the moment a lower set adopts it". On the matter of fashion’s inconsistency, the American linguist Edward Sapir provides a genealogical study of fashion movements: they begin as a deviation from the institutional norm, and then, they are adopted by wider audiences, turning a "deviant behavior" into a new norm to follow. According to Sapir, fashion is the story of the spreading and the validation of individual deviations from the norm, or what he specifically calls the "custom": shifts are caused by individual moves, while it is for the group to validate them.

Simmel’s theory comes with a critic of fashion as a system: for him, fashion supports and increases the social division as the richer are presented as a model to follow, that no one cares to question. By allowing elites to keep differentiating themselves from their followers through new styles, fashion doesn’t reduce the distance between social categories. for him, fashion is insignificant, as no objective criteria of aesthetics or functionality prevails in the shifts that orchestrate its rhythm. fashion is the sign of nothing other than the desire of powerful social groups to manifest their overlooking status.

Sapir distinguishes between two "validating" profiles: 
*those who adopt shifts "by conscious interest", in order not to appear as “members of a past generation or dull people who cannot keep up with their neighbors", 
*those who actively participate to the renewal dynamic, because they "realize most keenly the problem of reconciling individual freedom with social conformity which is implicit in the very fact of fashion" 
Fashion, for Sapir, is the answer to the profound desire of the individual to emancipate herself from the ruling principles of society, from "the customs". Through the stylistic changes it imposes, fashion demonstrates a "step aside" from the norm, 
while being a form of social expression: being fashionable is to adopt new styles as they become popular, and to differentiate oneself from those who stick to a conservative appearance, dictated by customs.

Sapir offers another conclusion on this matter: for him, fashion cannot be reduced to the vain whims of an elite looking for statutory validation. By distinguishing between the transitory fads and true ‘Fashion’, Sapir observes that "those features of fashion which do not configurate correctly with the unconscious system of meanings characteristic of the given culture are relatively insecure". In other words, according to Sapir, fashion is absolutely not arbitrary: it expresses the beliefs, the desires, the anguishes, a whole unconscious collective imaginary. The only problem lies in our capacity to interpret fashion’s discourse, and as Sapir recognizes, it is not an easy task, since fashion’s meanings are culturally and contextually determined.

 As Sapir writes: “The chief difficulty of understanding fashion in its apparent vagaries is the lack of exact knowledge of the unconscious symbolisms attaching to forms, colors, textures, postures and other expressive elements in a given culture”.

https://www.drapersonline.com/retail/the-imitation-game-fashions-intellectual-property-crisis/7033992.article