Fashion | Dictatorship of fashion

A text about fashion that doesn't contain the moldy Lagerfeld quote about the sweatpants, we promise! (See here: the new collection "Ready to wear" by Vivienne Westwood) Photo: IMAGO/Bestimage Our beautiful new fashion world bears witness to Europe's victory: No matter where you go in the world, people walk around everywhere in the same things, namely jeans, T-shirts and flip-flops and so on. As fashion professor Diana Weis points out, it becomes particularly noticeable when you go to Los Angeles. Because where rich and poor live together in typical American fashion, close together (yet socially miles apart), both groups wear the same streetwear uniform of baseball caps, hoodies and sneakers. Physical class markers therefore become social differences: dazzling white teeth, clear skin, silky hair.

The fact that the really rich, on whom the entire hypocritical business model of luxury fashion brands depends, now prefer to spend their money on expensive facial treatments rather than overpriced items of clothing is one of the many insights that can be gleaned from Weis' wonderfully titled fashion book "Under Naked." True to the subtitle “The rise, decadence and end of fashion as we know it,” it undertakes a forced march through the history of fashion, beginning in the early modern period, up to the present day of the 21st century.

Above all, Weis wants to demonstrate that fashion is never just surface.

Although its critical presentation rests on a solid academic basis, the endnotes including bibliography take up a full 50 pages, and the excellently written “Under Naked” never reads as cerebral or pretentious. This is not least because Weis structures her observation period into highlight-like case studies. She focuses on fashion for women and men and also highlights associated areas such as cosmetics or media body images. Above all, Weis wants to demonstrate that fashion is never just a surface, but always penetrates to our core, even if we don't care about fashion trends.

Her book uses countless examples to demonstrate how fashion approaches our bodies like a parasite in order to spread through all areas of society. »No area of ​​modern life is free from it. Because fashion not only lives from and on people's bodies, it also dominates their thinking," says Weis. By tracing the constant circulation of fashion through the centuries in such a knowledgeable and well-founded way, "Under Naked" also becomes a political social history, as a closer look reveals the great conflicts of history in fabrics and cuts: fashion is not just about sexual desire, psychological self-esteem or the desire for individuality, but above all about power and domination, violence and splendor.

Weis shows how fashion was early on shaped by the social advancement of privileged classes and the global exploitation of colonized workers, although nothing has structurally changed to date. She explains how fashion installs a history of social order in order to shape bodies and create desires. It becomes clear how domination is inscribed in fabrics, silhouettes and images. And how what was originally supposed to be differentiation, freedom and self-invention turns out to be a machine for the exercise of social power and capitalist commodification. Not even protest escapes fashion, as Weis shows not only using the example of punk, but also using the young Henry VIII, who dressed as a prince in the rebellious look of Landsknecht fashion.

Such surprising connections abound in “Under Naked.” Weis shows what Gen Z has in common with the baroque and tells almost unbelievable stories about when women first cut their hair short or appeared in public with a cigarette. What she has to say about the neurotoxin Botox is also fascinating. And so forth.

“Under Naked” is a treasure trove of astonishing anecdotes and deep insights into the phenomenon of fashion, which is currently in a state of decline. An eye-opening book about our world of rapid wear and hollow promise, of fast fashion that is increasingly being thrown onto the consumer market and meaningless luxury brands.

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