Incompatibility Of Fashion Essay

1. Introduction and hypothesis

Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Nazi party grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. The state party sought absolute control over nearly all aspects of German life in order to promote German pride and anti-Semitism. From the Nazis’ perspective, fashion was an alternative, non-physical power that serves as a vehicle of individual expression and sophisticated visual language. The fickleness and ambiguity in fashion presented a challenge to the totalitarian regime’s model, such that they are fundamentally incompatible (Lipovetsky, 1994). Fashion was a threat to the repression and containment of the citizenry, but rather than declaring it as a public enemy, it was gradually adopted by the Nazis as a measure of National Socialist success. During the Nazi era, fashion played a crucial role in communicating political and cultural identity statements. The hypothesis of this research paper states that fashion was used

Fashion has played an important role in promulgating new national identity and ideals rooted in the regime’s political goals and interests. It is clear that political ideologies had great influence on the styles that people were forced to comply to, which led to the repression of individual freedom in dress within the regime’s borders. Looking back at the Nazi regime’s effort to manipulate fashion, citizens’ apparel became ever more conspicuous and volatile, as national pride, international acclaim, economic gains, and cultural independence were put at stake. Hence it was paramount for the state party to create Nazi Germany citizens’ images and ideals such as the farmer’s wife and female in uniform that were consistent with their anti-Semitic, anti-French agenda, and autarkic