Fashion Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion

While fashion and philosophy might initially seem at odds - one is focused on dressing and adorning, the other on exposing the reality beneath - Fashioning Philosophy argues that they ultimately have the same quest: creatively exploring the meaning of things. Gwenda-lin Grewal argues that fashion and philosophy (at their best) are both searching for truth, beauty and authenticity and are both haunted by the fear of meaninglessness.

Philosophy has traditionally had an antipathy towards fashion, often characterising it as frippery and superficial and irrelevant to the serious quests in life. Yet, what we wear and how that expresses who we can reveal a huge amount about how we see ourselves and what kind of self we want to be. Indeed, much of fashion could be interpreted as creative attempts at developing a knowledge of self, a more visual and external self than those of the philosophers perhaps but one that has definite existential and aesthetic import.

Grewal argues fashion needs philosophy and philosophy needs fashion! The nuanced concepts and aesthetic adventures in fashion and what they say about how we live now are crucial to any philosophy that takes real, lived experience seriously. Drawing on thinkers from right across philosophy including Herodotus, Kant, Carlyle, Primo Levi, Gandhi and Anscombe, and a wealth of classic and contemporary designers, Fashioning Philosophy asks us to think more imaginatively and playfully about philosophy might be. And asserts that what we wear and how we wear it can open up vistas of self-knowledge and depth of thinking.