Fashion, Georg Simmel said, is distinguished from history in that its changes are without significance.
If only that were true. That’s not to say that Simmel’s thoughts on fashion aren’t complex (indeed, he’s a rich thinker and I hope to read more in the future), but rather that the quote itself, when subjected to a conceptual elaboration (durchdekliniert, perhaps), ultimately needs to be rethought in the wake of a post-Base/Superstructure conception of materialist sociology.
For me, it seems that there are at least four significant elements with respect to a sociological analysis of fashion: who is wearing it, what they’re wearing and how, and whom they’re imitating (imitation is for Simmel a central component of fashion). The implication is that fashion is not only a distinct phenomenon amongst different classes, but that there are substantial implications that depend upon what a particular class chooses to imitate in its fashion decisions.
To provide a bit of context: I went to Mauerpark today (1st of May) to sing the Einheitsfrontlied (or at least hear the Internationale) and read Marx in what has been for me one of my favorite “public sphere” spaces in Berlin. Unfortunately, it was quite disappointing – the park was filled with painfully hip 20 and 30-somethings sporting various permutations of the short on the sides, long and swooped on top Hitlerjugend haircut, with the ubiquitous but equally obligatory tight/loose top and bottom combo and if you’re a woman, lots of confusing and heavily patterned layers around your neck and torso.
To wit: 
And this is ostensibly part of the Berlin leftist scene! Absurd – not only does everyone look from the neck up like they jumped straight out of casting for a Riefenstahl film, it appears as if the next stage of the Klassenkampf will be fought in Burberry scarves and designer sunglasses. Seriously, I cannot honestly believe that within 70 years, it has literally become fashionable to wear something called a “Hitlerjugend Haircut”. What the fuck is the matter with people? Makes me want to re-read the [excellent] Sontag article “Fascinating Fascism”, on the bizarre appeal of fascist iconography to fashion.
I sought consolation in one of my favorite Marx texts, the Letter to Ruge from 1843, in which Marx expounds on the importance of critique as the ability to tease out the immance of class struggle in existing social and political structures. In essence, his argument is that one should, like Hegel, see the state as the expression of a certain development of political consciousness and struggle, but (and here’s the divergence) that the actual meaning and telos of this struggle is only latent, not self-present and not complete. Essentially, this is (to use a term from Deleuze) an overcoding of what were for Marx contemporary political and religious debates to indicate the truth of the class struggle. To wit:
“We do not say to the world: ‘Stop fighting; your struggle is of no account. We want to shout the true slogan of the struggle at you.’ We only show the world what it’s fighting for… the reform of consciousness consists only in enabling the world to clarify its consciousness, in waking it from its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions… then it will transpire that the world has long been dreaming of something that it can acquire if only it becomes conscious of it.“
The quote is of course very well known, and Nancy Fraser takes the closing line from the letter to be a sort of call-to-arms for Critical Theory. The difficulty, I think, is that there’s something profoundly optimistic about Marx’s viewpoint – it is nonetheless teleological and seems to possess a certain feeling of necessity. I find this necessity difficult to locate in the people at Mauerpark – it strikes me as a bankrupt lifestyle Leftism that is, at its core, extremely conservative. Maybe my ressentiment is in overdrive today, but the fashion obsession (and a neo-fascist aesthetic, at that) seems like such a profound and significant distraction from any sort of political consciousness.
I guess that to some extent I wasn’t aware of the role that this plays in many people’s lives – I think Dani is relatively neutral about these things, and my approach to dressing myself is by necessity relatively Spartan, since I spend all my money on books and can’t afford Raybans – but I was told in the process of an extensive conversation last night that the European conception of a “typically American” look, which I apparently represent, is pulling things out of your closet, saying “looks OK” and putting them on. I wasn’t particularly distressed by the remark, partially because it’s certainly true of how I dress myself and no doubt also because a certain level of intellectual elitism allows me to comfortably believe that the relatively little thought I give to my wardrobe is a positive statement on my intellectual priorities and my political commitments.
With that in mind, I’m left thinking about a few key questions in the relationship between fashion and politics. Is this, as Simmel suggests, merely a change without significance, or is there perhaps a similarity between history (conceived through the lens of Marxist materialist historiography) and changes in fashion? Is fashion merely an index of the class struggle, or a relatively autonomous structure at least partially determining it?
I think there’s something alarming about a co-opting of a leftist demographic by a fashion that both plays at [read: romanticizes] poverty-chic and dissembles its own class origins. This is not to suggest that a faux-poverty (but always carefully distinguished from actual poverty – the best hipster outfits usually include one extremely expensive item) affected by middle and upper-classes is anything new; either basic observation or a casual reading of Bourdieu would quickly relieve anyone of that illusion. Clearly, Wayfarers are not cheap, and haute couture has always been the province of the upper classes. However, the confluence of form [heroin-chic, simple yet erotic shapes and cuts], content [a sort of vaguely anti-corporate, blue-collar affiliation] and imitation [neo-fascist/art deco looks] adopted by the youth set that has traditionally vocally represented leftist politics in Europe makes me wonder if late capitalist fashion isn’t somehow fundamentally altering the landscape of resistance. When Mauerpark and the 1st of May become a venue for hipster fashion, are we not seeing precisely the aestheticization of politics that Benjamin warns of?
What would an acceptable, leftist fashion look like? What would that mean? How do we think a post-Marxist or progressive concept of fashion, and what sort of obligations would it put on us for the marking and articulation of bodies? Is fashion itself necessarily opposed to a leftist politics?
