The Child of Thought with Thoughtlessness

Fashion is usually seen as a superficial, shallow, conforming, self-indulgent or even self-deprivating pastime based purely on appearance, an "effort to increase the attractiveness of the self, especially under conditions which impair the integrity of the ego; the sense of oneself is regained and heightened through novel yet socially sanctioned departures from prevailing social forms" (Blumer, 387). Through the sociocultural approach of the theory of fashion, one can detect a not-so-underlying notion of importance to what we spend out time and thoughts on how to present ourselves to the general public. Georg Simmel's and Herbert Blumer's thoughts, though over half a century apart, introduce readers into the sociological, cultural, and even economic value in the theory of fashion, it's evolution, and it's reflection of society as a whole.

Georg Simmel, author of one of the first theoretical approaches to fashion, is viewed as one of the most important sociologists even a century after his time. Simmel discusses the sociological content of fashion in which opposites play a main role. Past and Future create the ultimate present on which fashion is based, and the energy created by differences and similarities of the upper and lower classes are focused on in his 1895 published essay Fashion.

According to Simmel, "Fashion is the imitation of a given example and satisfies the demand for social adaptation; it leads the individual upon the road which all travel, it furnishes a general condition, which resolves the conduct of every individual into a mere example." He draws upon Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class in which the sociologist proposes his trickle down theory. While the upper class continuously creates new fash...

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...to play. "The fashion mechanism appears not in response to a need of class differentiation and class emulation but in response to a wish to be in fashion, to be abreast of what has good standing, to express new tastes which are emerging in a changing world" (384).

Simmel and Blumer introduce us to fashion as a means of social distinction and a foundational element of zeitgeist. Both theorists focus on the elitism of fashion; the one a intricate high class that dictates fashion, the other elite group able to be expanded and added to, open to all. While neither of them have a clear definition of fashion, each convey a distinct knowledge of what fashion is. It seems that not exact boundaries are here of importance but the larger picture on how fashion, whatever it may be, influences and defines the various societal issues associated with and based on it.