TASTE AND FASHION - THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF FASHION AND STYLE

In the classical European humanistic tradition. fashion was always tho ught to be antithetical to good taste. A person blindly following the whims of fashion was without style, whereas a man of style - or a gent leman - used his own power of judgement. Immanuel Kant shared this con ception with many of his contemporaries. It is well known that Georg S immel's idea of a formal sociology was influenced by his reading of Ka nt's aesthetic writings. Even Simmel's famous essay on fashion can bes t be understood as a somewhat ironic commentary on Kant's idea of a se nsus communis: the community of fashion is the real community of unive rsal taste. To Simmel, fashion is a societal formation always combinin g two opposite forces. It is a socially acceptable and safe way to dis tinguish oneself from others and, at the same time, it satisfies the i ndividual's need for social adaptation and imitation. Furthermore. the charm of novelty offered by fashion is a purely aesthetic pleasure. F ashion helps to solve - at least provisionally - the central problem o f the philosophy of life, also expressed in the antinomy of taste as f ormulated by Kant. It teaches the modern man how a person can be a hom ogeneous part of a social mass without losing his individuality, or ho w he can both stick to his own private taste and expect others - who r ecognizably also have a taste of their own - to share it. Simmel's sug gestion of the 'stylized life-style' further develops the same idea. I n modern society, both style and fashion are functional equivalents to 'good taste'.