WHAT IS FASHION?

When one wants a word defined, the first action that is taken is looking the word up in a dictionary. According to Oxford dictionary, fashion is “a popular or the latest style of clothing, hair, decoration, or behavior. Or a manner of doing something.”[1]Regarding this definition the question arises: How can you understand the word fashion? Fashion can be seen as a mode of dress, etiquette, furniture or style of speech which is adopted by society [2]over a certain amount of time. 

Ingrid Loschek says that the reason fashion cannot be defined correctly is because our language makes no distinction between the terms clothes and fashion. She defines fashion in relationship to clothing, “the word fashion encompasses all forms of clothing and accessories without making any statement about their actual fashionable status.”[3]When referencing different scholars, the opinions of the word “fashion” fall into different categories. Clothing for example is a raw material,[4]that becomes a subject of fashion for a certain time period. A piece of clothing is realized by the means of a design process. This product is then determined by society, a group in society or a single community as a fragment of “fashion” according to Loschek.[5]Yuniya Kawamura distinguished that fashion has little to do with clothing. Clothing is a material production, tangible and a necessity while fashion is a symbolic production, intangible, excess and has a status function.[6]  Fashion is different from clothing, whereas clothing is a subject category of fashion.[7]To conclude the correlation between clothing and fashion, Elizabeth Rouse says, a style that is expressed through clothing is acknowledged as fashion when it is worn by some people and groups.[8]A style is seen as a “manner or way of doing something”.[9]This leads to fashion being linked to the attitude and behavior of society which makes fashion in strongly correlated with time.

Theorist Georg Simmel views fashion as being a process of imitation and a phenomenon in understanding that society that derives from social hierarchy embedded in a system.[10]The process of fashion results from individuals making choices to pursue a new fashion. DeLong says that the central turning point of fashion is the relationship between the designed product and how it is distributed.[11]This leads to fashion being strongly linked to a matter of time and a life cycle. Everett Rogers suggests that this lifecycle is categorized into five stages: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption[12](Figure 1). The distribution starts with someone first adopting a style and then communicating it to others.[13]As fashion cannot be defined into an actual product category, it can be seen as a certain style that gets adopted and leads into being “in fashion”. By a leader adopting a style for example, the leader influences the distribution of fashion among a larger group. Also seen as the trickle-down theory which is when a style is first offered and adopted by people at the top of society who seek distinction and distance from those below but that certain style then gradually becomes accepted by those in the lower hierarchy. So “fashion is considered a vehicle of conspicuous consumption”.[14]Once the fashion is adopted by the majority, the leader rejects that style and seek for something new. Thus, fashion implies a continual change over different periods of time.[15]

In conclusion, fashion cannot be categorized into something stationary or fixed as it is always changing. Fashion can be seen in a broader sense as a certain style that gets adopted by more and more people over time. However, fashion is a phase that decreases over a certain period of time but can also reemerge again. Whereas clothing is a stationary that is used as a certain style to be fashion. 

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[1]Oxford Dictionaries, s.v. “Fashion”, accessed September 23, 2017, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fashion.

[2]Yuniya Kawamura, Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies(New York, Bloomsbury USA Academic, 2018), 3.

[3]Ingrid Loschek, "When Is Fashion?", In When Clothes Become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems, 133–166, 1, accessed September 21, 2017, doi.org.library.scad.edu/10.2752/9781847883681/WHNCLOTHBECOMFASH0014.

[4]Kawamura, 3. 

[5]Loschek, 1.

[6]Yuniya Kawamura, "Introduction: Clothing and Fashion", The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion: Dress, Body, Culture. Dress, Body, Culture. Bloomsbury Fashion Central, accessed September 2017, doi.org.library.scad.edu/10.2752/9781847888907/JREVPARFASH0005, 1.

[7]Malcolm, Barnard, Fashion Theory: A Reader(London: Routledge, 2010), 3.

[8]Elizabeth Rouse and Carol Rouse, Understanding Fashion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 52.

[9]Barnard, 3. 

[10]"What Fashion Strictly Divided", In Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System, edited byVinken, Barbara., 3–40, Oxford: Berg, 2005, accessed September 23, 2017, doi.org.library.scad.edu/10.2752/9780857854094/FASHZEIT0004, 4.

[11]Marilyn Revell DeLong, "Fashion, Theories of," In The Berg Companion to Fashion, edited by Valerie Steele. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010, accessed September 21, 2017, https://0-www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com.library.scad.edu/products/berg-fashion-library/encyclopedia/the-berg-companion-to-fashion/fashion-theories-of, 1.

[12]Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations. 4th ed. (New York: Free Press, 1995).

[13]DeLong, 1.

[14]Ibid.

[15]Ibid.