Are Fashion and Identity Inseparable Companions?
The search for identity through fashion
Identity as a serious topic of study evolved in western cultures from a more historical interest in notions of the self, subjectivity, and personality. The origins of identity can be located in the rise of more self-aware notions from the 16th century onwards about the existence of the fashioned individual. Identity-based sartorial trends continued across centuries as consumers continued to personalize their clothing relationships so that by the 19th-century identity was firmly connected to possessions especially in urban centers where the opportunities for retail and personal display or conspicuous consumption both enabled and encouraged this tendency. The seismic shift from class-based to consumer fashion was complete by the 20th century as an expression of urbanized modernity.
This trend also accords with Gregory Stone’s ideas about identity founded on personal appearance as an interpretation of the self-negotiated through social interactions and based on recognized identification with, and differentiation from others. Hence, racial, ethnic, gender, generational and sexual identities can be expressed, negotiated and challenged through deliberate fashion and style choices to conform to the system — think school or office uniforms.
Possessing fashion as identity
The ownership of fashion and clothing is considered by some theorists to reflect at the macro-level social, cultural, political economic fluctuations across time, space and place, while at the same time communicating modernity, progress and the zeitgeist so it is a mirror, but also a definer of historical change and societal trends. Essential to this understanding is the notion of constant change and renewal based on a fashion cycle involving the constant production and distribution and consumption of design products that are collectively selected and purchased by groups of people responding to clothing trends which have accelerated with the advent of fast fashion.
On a micro level, the fashion consumer taps into this larger fashion system reflecting the duality of individualism and collectivism given that fashion is a “cultural practice that is bound up with the specification of our sense of self both as individuals and members of groups.” (Craik, 2009: 2). So, fashion can be used to identify an individual with a group or style tribe — such as punks or Goths — while at the same time emphasizing their unique personality.
Hence, appearance matters and fashion and accessories project the identity of the wearer and their aspirational social role. This is made possible because fashion and clothing styles represent a dynamic, constantly shifting coded system (Davis, 1994) as opposed to being a fixed “language” visual and verbal linguistic system (Barthes, 1983). The codes of fashion are able to express basic demographic characteristics of an individual wearer such as their age, sex, status, occupation, in addition to more nuanced aspects of their persona — such as their interests and lifestyles.
While clothing an fashion have historically been used to express status and wealth in terms of materiality and social order (Entwistle, 2015), the changing interpretations and performances on 18th century notions linking beauty and fashionable dress with submissiveness in contrast to the serious nature of men’s dress equated with power that found its ultimate expression in the 20th century male business suit (Breward, 1995).
The ‘massification’ of fashion across the 20th century fuelled by industrialization and the arrival of a working class with disposable income co-joined with the availability of clothing items and accessories at all price points for a wide demographic range, also allowed it to become widely available across all sectors of society and a way of expressing identity, status, difference, and belonging. In a postmodern sense, fashion in its most fluid state has enabled expressions of alternative or new identities as challenges to older ways of being and thinking.
The style influences of fashion within its system of production and consumption have also changed direction as the traditional top-down influence of elite fashion system from catwalk to consumer has been upended as we see urban-wear dominating the aesthetic inspiration for all levels of fashion, including couture and ‘catwalk chic’ based on expressions of authenticity (Fury, 2016).
The active communication of identity through body modification and the clothed body today can either manifest itself as a way of locating identity in recognized, yet ambiguous categories of ethnicity, gender, age, religion or occupation or in the reinterpretation of the real individual self.
As Craik suggests,
The combination of roles and performances compose our sense of self and identity…Individuality, then is a specific contingent social construction unique to our culture and our repository of social performance…in history and in other cultures identity has been and is composed by family membership, regional belonging, class position or gendered performances, in our culture we struggle to project a unique sense of self…we have greater freedom of choice to fashion our identity and our identity becomes a social entity in itself. Maintaining individuality requires content maintenance and fashioning (Craik, 2009: 138).
References (and Readings)
Barthes, R. (1983), The Fashion System, transl. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, New York.
Breward, C. (2003), Fashion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Breward, C. (1995), The Culture of Fashion, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Craik, J. (1994), The face of fashion: Cultural studies in fashion. London: Routledge.
Craik, J. (2005). Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression. Oxford: Berg.
Craik J. (2009), The Face of Fashion: the key concepts. Oxford: Berg
Davis, F. (1994), Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Entwistle, J. (2015), The Fashioned Body: Fashion, dress and social theory. London: John Wiley & Sons. 10
Fury, A. (2016), How Streetwear Crossed Over from Urban Cool to Catwalk Chic: the triumph of aesthetic honesty, The Independent, 21 March, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/how-streetwear-crossed-over-from-urban-cool-to-catwalk-chic-the-triumph-of-aesthetic-honesty-a6944721.html
