Fashion: The Significance Of The Fashion Industry

The main goal of this research is to explain and to evaluate in the light of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy the significance of the fashion industry not only in terms of material and economic progression, but most especially the significance of the abstract phenomenon of fashion. When it comes to this industry, there is a standard notion that it is always related to capitalism and materialism. Nonetheless, in this project, the researcher will highlight that fashion also has immaterial significance. Immaterial pertains to an internal factor that contributes to cultural and self-reflection, plus social and moral emancipation. The framework of this paper will show the gradual shift from the material to the immaterial significance of fashion. On

The fashion industry comprises design, manufacturing, marketing, and advertising of clothes. Thus, fashion is constantly attributed to commerciality. It is also one of the reasons why scholars considered fashion as a key player in the development that leads to modernity. Lars Svendsen for example, wrote in his book entitled Fashion: A Philosophy, the relevance of recognizing the dynamics of fashion to the adequate understanding of the modern world. Fashion as part of the commercial industry, explains the prevalent research themes that are pursued with reference to the aforesaid. Some of the example topics are as follows: an inquest to the rapid change in fashion trends; the analysis of the market of fashion; and even the celebrity trendsetters. The main goals of these studies are seemingly directed towards economic pursuits and materiality. Despite these, there could also be substantial inquiries about fashion that divert from the standard notion. These include the studies about the system of meaning and signification of fashion. In connection to these kinds of inquest, the study about the psychological aspect of fashion is considered as the

This school is composed of philosophers, literary critics, sociologists, psychologists, economists, and political scientists. He is one of the major figures in this discipline together with Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann, and Friedrich Pollock. The Frankfurt School was founded in the mid-1920s as an association of the Left intellectuals. The concept of critical theory originates from the traditions of Kantian critical philosophy and of Marxian critique of ideology. The former’s notion of critique pertains to the analysis of the conditions of possibility and the bounds of rational faculties commenced by reason itself, while the latter refers to the explosive confrontation of the true and false dimensions of existing theories of reality as exemplified by Marx’s critique of political economy. In addition, the Neo-Kantianism works towards the broadening of Kant’s meaning of critique by making the cultural and social history the primary theme of transcendental or critical self-reflection. Hence, from Dilthey and Rickert to Simmel and Max Weber, the implicit and/or explicit project of philosophy became a ‘critique of historical reason’. On the contrary, Marx’s method in his critique is rooted in Hegel’s Phenomenology and Philosophy of Right than in Kantian tradition. Nonetheless, unlike Hegel who viewed history as