What Is the Role of Social Class in Fashion - Assignment Example

Amna Al-Ansari First draft 76-101 Ludmila Hyman March 8, What is the role of social in fashion? Fashion is a kind of social phenomenon that appears in all societies in different forms and the issue of fashion’s relation to social classes might be considered from multiple perspectives, because anyway society is based on social hierarchy and each of its members belongs to some social class. Pierre Bourdieu, Kate Fox, Georg Simmel, and Thorstein Veblen considered the relation between social classes and fashion from different points of view and came to different conclusions concerning the issue, even though the subject of their consideration was the same. However, all of them admitted that fashion indeed relies on social classes, their differentiations, and inherent changes. The difference between the theories concerns the fact that Fox and Simmel claim that fashion relates to social classes in form of social recognition that helps people to identify which class they belong to; Bourdieu and Veblen argue that fashion is following the standards that higher classes place in society, so people follow the standards striving to become better. The differences in the theories exist because all the authors considered the same phenomenon from different points of view, although they all made great points which are indeed applicable in consideration of the relation between social classes and fashion. The following analysis will consider in what the authors agreed and will reveal the crucial different in their consideration. Fox and Simmel claim that the social standards of fashion exist in order to differentiate social classes and help people to recognize which class they belong to. Both authors claim that fashion is a consequence of specific human nature, which is expressed in human striving to belong to some social group and society in general. Thus following fashion standards allows people to be nothing different than other people in a social group (Simmel 1957). In the meantime, fashion plays a role of social identificator that helps people differentiate themselves from majority and this is where the relation between fashion and social classes appears. Each and every social class has its own standards of appearance, so in order to point on one’s belonging to a certain social class, a person needs to keep all the patterns of uniform considered to be acceptable in the social class (or group, which becomes more tribal kind of differentiating than a social class one) (Fox 2014). The difference between Fox’s and Simmel’s assumptions on the matter is in different interpretation of human nature that makes people strive to follow fashion standards. Both of their texts start with explanation of humans as social creatures who strive to live in society, so in order not to confront with society they need to obey social standards including following fashion trends; in addition, the human nature the authors described also requires human personal need to put some signs of identification on themselves, because this mark would mean who exactly the person is within a social mass. Both authors don’t consider fashion as an independent phenomenon that could have existed apart from the specific features of human psychology, vice versa they claim that fashion is a logical result of human need to adapt socially and be united with others, simultaneously maintaining personal diversity. However, Fox mostly focuses on the point that lower social classes strive to the higher because they consider that their taste or status is better, when people from higher classes don’t really care about what to wear as fashion for them is just a mark of their belonging to a higher class (Fox 2014). Simmel bases his theory on people’s imitation of others which lets them feel that they belong to society, so they are not alone. Thus following fashion standards means looking the same way as everybody else around in order not to feel alienated from society (Simmel 1957). A commonality between Veblen and Bourdieu is in their similarity of perspective concerning the issue, because both of them make a phenomenon of consumption as a starting point of their exploration. As far as consumption often depends on social classes (because they differ people’s opportunities in buying goods), people of higher social classes dictate trends for those of the lower classes, which is based on human striving to live better and richer. Thus they look at fashion as an economical and sociological category that determines human behavior. Veblen develops his theory on the roots of economical terms of consumption behavior and claims that human preferences in fashion are determined by social relations and relative positions of people in the social hierarchy. Thus people base their purchasing choices according to the preferences of individuals who occupy higher positions in society (Veblen, 1899). Bourdieu claims that not only social hierarchy determines what people of lower classes would want to consume but they also make their consumption choices based on social determinant; which means that fashion and its attributes become social markers that determine human status in society (Bourdieu, 2005). Thus it turns out that the authors have significant commonality in their assumptions and Bourdieu’s theory agrees with Veblen in many crucial ideas. Moreover, the authors’ points converge because they work in the same realm of exploration, using sociological and economical approach. They show fashion as a kind of consumption determinant that influences people’s choices; in turn, the appearance of the phenomenon of fashion they describe in terms of social hierarchy that is a required element of any society. Thus they add the factor of society as phenomenon into their explorations, so it turns out that people’s striving to follow fashion standards is not a psychological consequence but it is more engaged with human inherent instincts of social organization. Fox and Simmel diverge from Bourdieu and Veblen because they consider the relation between fashion and social classes from different perspectives. Even though they might describe the same phenomena, still they explain them differently. For instance, Fox and Simmel argue that people indeed tend to copy fashionable trends from upper class representatives, although they do it not because the tastes of different classes are supposed to differentiate and alienate one class from another, like Bourdieu and Veblen assert, but because vice versa they strive to unite with other people and cohabitate with them in society. Fox’s main argumentative line is based on analysis of British taste and fashion. The author claims that the fact that British have a pretty bad taste in clothes can be explained by specific feature of their mentality, which is oriented to following established rules and standards. Thus fashion becomes a kind of distinctive feature of social norms that helps people stick together in society. Fox differentiates certain rules engaged with fashion; these rules help in discerning such kinds of fashion like tribal (the one that deals with subcultures), mainstream (general mass fashion) and social class one (specific style of clothing that defines representatives of a particular social class and status). In fact, all the differentiations in fashions play role of social codes that help people to discern representatives of their social class in order to unite with them. Actually, Simmel’s conclusions about the nature of fashion look pretty similar to the Fox’s ones, because he tries to defend the same essence of human behavior in terms of fashion. However, Simmel considers some concrete human feelings that make them follow fashion standards, which are fear of loneliness and striving to social adaptation. It turns out that the roots of fashion lie in the fact that people don’t want to differentiate from others. Even though they have certain social roles, which they play, still the purpose of these roles is adaptation. As far as social classes create behavioral patterns, which all their representatives are supposed to follow; by following an acceptable fashion people try to make their personalities blurred in society and blend into the crowd. Notwithstanding that Fox’s and Simmel’s assumptions look similar, their main difference concerns the deep human motives that make them keep up with fashion. Fox claims that people need standards because their choices are determined by society and they just pick up an idea from common norms, which they consider as acceptable for themselves, and simply follow the rules; when Simmel explains the choice as human aspiration to be hidden in a crowd, simultaneously keeping some individual features. Veblen and Bourdieu start and continue the same theory. Veblen defines human consumer choices as striving to a particular social status that each and every person considers a higher than one’s own. Thus rich people need to emphasize their capability of acting demonstratively idly (1899) and people of lower classes desire to have the same lifestyle. The wish to demonstrate the best lifestyle possible, according to the current criteria of value, makes people follow fashion trends, because somehow appearance is a sign that means a person’s status in the society. Unlike Veblen, Bourdieu doesn’t assert that social hierarchy is the only cause of fashion following; he adds that social environment and need of division of society also influence human consuming choices. Concerning social classes he argues that the similarity of people’s appearances within the same social group allows representatives of the class to follow specific consumer standards, which eventually lead to the simpler recognition of other representatives of their social class (Bourdieu, 2005). The difference between the two authors is about the scopes of their points of view. Veblen obviously misses the fact that as far as there are a lot of people who are not concerned with fashion standards, the fact that they wear clothes at all means that it is society in general that makes them buy and wear clothes, and social hierarchy bears no relation to their consumer choice. Bourdieu’s implications of fashion following are consistent because they explain that fashion is a social code that is supposed to help people recognize other representatives of their class in order to conduct a communication based on social hierarchical division. The main point why all the researches considered above haven’t come up with the same roots of the issue is because considered the relation between fashion and social class from different perspectives. Thus Fox and Simmel based their assumptions on human nature and specific features of people’s psychology, so in their exploration, fashion is happened to be a consequence of human special psychological nature; when Veblen and Bourdieu considered fashion as a self-contained social phenomenon that causes a certain behavioral response in people. References Bourdieu, P. (2005). Taste of luxury, taste of necessity. In C. Korsmeyer (Ed.), The taste culture reader (pp. 72-78). Oxford: Berg. Fox, K. (2014). Watching the English: the Hidden Rules of English Behavior. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Simmel, G. (1957). “Fashion”. American Journal of Sociology. 62(6): 541-558. Veblen, T. (1953) [1899]. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, the Mentor Edition. Introduction by C. Wright Mills. New York: The Macmillan Company. Read More