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Fashion in the Light of the Modern Attitude.

Academic research

Fashion in the Light of the Modern Attitude

Olivier Assouly

The concept of modernity is the subject of numerous theories that variably situate its birth, development and high point between the Renaissance and the 20th century. At least all of the analysis tends to agree on the emergence of the individual, and aesthetic, social and political emancipation (thanks to the reason and power of scientific, technological or political rationality) as well as the importance of the present as a criteria for evaluation as opposed to the traditional. On the surface, fashion also presupposes the individual, a form of emancipation and a link with the present. If these three factors benefit fashion to make it the field of expression of modernity, must we then affirm that fashion and modernity are like two sides of the same coin, linked by the same progression and heading for the same destination? To what extent do fashion and modernity correspond to the same attitude?

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