While music derives much of its power from its invisibility, fashion is one of the most visible markers we have in contemporary society to express affiliation, lifestyle choice and identity. Yet paradoxically, its utter ubiquity also affords it a status – similar to that of music – beyond questioning or criticism. We may make decisions about what clothes to buy, or what shoes to wear, or cattily dismiss someone's choice of apparel, but few of us ever stop to wonder why fashion exists, why it changes so rapidly or what those changes mean about our society.A hat is never just a hat.Consequently fashion, like music, enjoys a social power that far exceeds its apparent role in our lives. A hat is never just a hat, and we rarely wear one simply to guard against the cold. Arguably fashion is by definition the symbolic coding of social power through apparently innocuous means such as shape, texture or color. This is evident in the breadth and scope of its social functions. It has been used as an index of social rank in Victorian England, and as a gauge of social mobility in 20th century America. It has been used to express ideological conformity and allegiance, as in the case of the Mao Suit, and social unrest or nonconformity, as in the case of the 1960s Flower Power movement. Throughout time, fashion has been used to communicate a dizzying array of social signifiers, such as class, gender, occupation, regional identity and religion.18 The brilliance of fashion is that, for the system to work, all people have to do is wake up in the morning and get dressed.Although fashion may seem innocuous and simple on an individual level, religions, governments and other large organizations long have seen the value of fashion as a form of social control, dictating uniforms and dress codes, and prescribing and proscribing everything from shoes to hats to underwear. In the Middle Ages in England, for example, livery – uniform clothing or the badge or cloak color of the lord's family – was heavily regulated. If a person took a nobleman's livery, he became his servant and owed him loyalty and other required services. A liveried servant also shared his nobleman's identity to a certain extent, granting him legal privileges he would not have enjoyed otherwise.Similarly, during Elizabethan times, Sumptuary laws restricting lavish dress were passed in order to maintain the boundaries between the nobility and the rising bourgeoisie. Elizabethan lawmakers feared that "letting anyone wear just anything must lead inexorably to moral decline. If you couldn't tell a milkmaid from a countess at a glance, the very fabric of society might unravel."19 Fashion, like music, was redefined by the advent of modern capitalism. In contemporary society, fashion serves as a commercial entity, driven by the same forces of manufactured demand and planned obsolescence that characterizes everything from movies to breakfast cereals to presidential candidates. This commodification of fashion historically has interacted with America's social mobility and class competition, in effect producing an almost feverish obsession with fashion among many Americans, particularly women.In the last few decades, as more traditional notions of social class have given way to increasing fragmentation based on cultural interest, consumers have had greater freedom to construct their social identities based on other parameters, such as participation in certain fashion-related lifestyles. Leather-clad dominatrix, polo-wearing Connecticut preppie and So-Cal surfer all are accessible identities to anyone with a credit card. To paraphrase Hamlet's Polonius, "the clothes make the man." This change, from class identification to lifestyle articulation, suggests that fashion offers a greater level of individual agency today than in earlier eras. In contemporary culture, "consumption is conceptualized as a form of role-playing, as consumers seek to project conceptions of identity that are continually evolving."20 Thus, both music and fashion act as social stealth agents, regulating and reflecting cultural roles and expectations while eluding scrutiny through their ubiquity. Music's stealth is aided by its literal invisibility, while fashion functions in spite of, and because of, its hypervisibility. In contemporary society, both music and fashion generally are regarded in primarily capitalistic terms. Songs and apparel are conceived of as products, and most people relate to them as consumers. However, both music and fashion originate within creative communities, which are built on a different kind of relationship: that between an artist and a work.
While music derives much of its power from its invisibility, fashion is one of the most visible markers we have in contemporary society to express affiliation, lifestyle choice and identity. Yet paradoxically, its utter ubiquity also affords it a status – similar to that of music – beyond questioning or criticism. We may make decisions about what clothes to buy, or what shoes to wear, or cattily dismiss someone's choice of apparel, but few of us ever stop to wonder why fashion exists, why it changes so rapidly or what those changes mean about our society.A hat is never just a hat.Consequently fashion, like music, enjoys a social power that far exceeds its apparent role in our lives. A hat is never just a hat, and we rarely wear one simply to guard against the cold. Arguably fashion is by definition the symbolic coding of social power through apparently innocuous means such as shape, texture or color. This is evident in the breadth and scope of its social functions. It has been used as an index of social rank in Victorian England, and as a gauge of social mobility in 20th century America. It has been used to express ideological conformity and allegiance, as in the case of the Mao Suit, and social unrest or nonconformity, as in the case of the 1960s Flower Power movement. Throughout time, fashion has been used to communicate a dizzying array of social signifiers, such as class, gender, occupation, regional identity and religion.18 The brilliance of fashion is that, for the system to work, all people have to do is wake up in the morning and get dressed.Although fashion may seem innocuous and simple on an individual level, religions, governments and other large organizations long have seen the value of fashion as a form of social control, dictating uniforms and dress codes, and prescribing and proscribing everything from shoes to hats to underwear. In the Middle Ages in England, for example, livery – uniform clothing or the badge or cloak color of the lord's family – was heavily regulated. If a person took a nobleman's livery, he became his servant and owed him loyalty and other required services. A liveried servant also shared his nobleman's identity to a certain extent, granting him legal privileges he would not have enjoyed otherwise.Similarly, during Elizabethan times, Sumptuary laws restricting lavish dress were passed in order to maintain the boundaries between the nobility and the rising bourgeoisie. Elizabethan lawmakers feared that "letting anyone wear just anything must lead inexorably to moral decline. If you couldn't tell a milkmaid from a countess at a glance, the very fabric of society might unravel."19 Fashion, like music, was redefined by the advent of modern capitalism. In contemporary society, fashion serves as a commercial entity, driven by the same forces of manufactured demand and planned obsolescence that characterizes everything from movies to breakfast cereals to presidential candidates. This commodification of fashion historically has interacted with America's social mobility and class competition, in effect producing an almost feverish obsession with fashion among many Americans, particularly women.In the last few decades, as more traditional notions of social class have given way to increasing fragmentation based on cultural interest, consumers have had greater freedom to construct their social identities based on other parameters, such as participation in certain fashion-related lifestyles. Leather-clad dominatrix, polo-wearing Connecticut preppie and So-Cal surfer all are accessible identities to anyone with a credit card. To paraphrase Hamlet's Polonius, "the clothes make the man." This change, from class identification to lifestyle articulation, suggests that fashion offers a greater level of individual agency today than in earlier eras. In contemporary culture, "consumption is conceptualized as a form of role-playing, as consumers seek to project conceptions of identity that are continually evolving."20 Thus, both music and fashion act as social stealth agents, regulating and reflecting cultural roles and expectations while eluding scrutiny through their ubiquity. Music's stealth is aided by its literal invisibility, while fashion functions in spite of, and because of, its hypervisibility. In contemporary society, both music and fashion generally are regarded in primarily capitalistic terms. Songs and apparel are conceived of as products, and most people relate to them as consumers. However, both music and fashion originate within creative communities, which are built on a different kind of relationship: that between an artist and a work.
