The Social Function Of Fashion
The social function of fashion is here elaborated. “Fashion is all about taste”, wrote Immanuel Kant in his anthropological studies in 18th century. We have seen the significance of fashion through the history. Fashion is something which is always changing and dynamic. Over the course of the centuries, fashion has always been discussed in many fields; culture, art, social, economy, politics, and so on. Here, I would like to discuss fashion from sociological point of view which means by looking at fashion as a social fact and also at the same time as a cultural dynamic in everyday life.
Staring at fashion through the sociological eyes is quite often rendering us to a bunch of contradictions. On the one hand, people of fashion can be perceived as superficial being because they are only following trends that no essence. On the other hand, they can be perceived as ones who produce the meaning of style or even culture itself. People of fashion are cursed and also adored at the same time. Therefore, being fashionable is always controversial.
To me personally, -adopted an opinion from a sociologist Georg Simmel-, following fashion is still better than totally reject it. I like fashion as far as it has a social function in society. For instance, I will dress batik up when I am in a formal meeting talking about how love I am with batik. It is important to make sense of my presence in community. Or when I am invited to one’s wedding event, I will dress up a proper dress. Fashion must be dealt with its social function.
But if one said that fashion is just a sort of trend, I will declare myself that I am an unfashionable one. I don’t like the musim in fashion world because it is rapidly changing and so superficial. Every time I watch on Fashion TV channel, for example, I get confused. It just doesn’t make sense to me at all. I see on TV, every new style of fashion is exhibited on Milan, Paris, New York, and other cities of fashion around the world almost every day. Yesterday it was exhibited in Paris and today it is displayed on department stores on your city, so you can fulfill your desire of fashion whenever you want.
One thing which has also something closely to do with fashion is identity. Some say fashion is all about identity. To this argument, I do agree and disagree. The concept of identity in fashion matters because it deeply related to the way in which we define ourselves and play our role in public life. I agree that sometimes we need to show up our identity through fashion. For example, I’ll show my love to my country by wearing batik –as Indonesian intangible heritage- every Friday. That context of fashion matters. On the other side, I totally disagree if our concern is solely to show ourselves in symbolic way through fashion. Meaning by that, fashion is simply used to manipulate our social and economic statues.
Our concern with fashion should be functionally social and substantial, not merely in symbolic term.
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