Abstract

One of the few philosophers who comments on fashion, Kant claims in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View that fashion should be classified as vanity and foolishness. He writes ‘it is novelty that makes fashion popular, and to be inventive in all sorts of external forms, even if they often degenerate into something fantastic and somewhat hideous, belongs to the style of courtiers, especially ladies. Others then anxiously imitate these forms, and those in low social positions burden themselves with them long after the courtiers have put them away. – So fashion is not, strictly speaking, a matter of taste (for it can be quite contrary to taste), but of mere vanity in giving oneself airs, and of rivalry in outdoing one another by it.’ (Anthropology, 2006, 7: 246) Kant’s condemnation of fashion depends on him associating fashion exclusively with mere novelty in production (as opposed to true originality) and imitation in fashion’s wearers. In this paper I distinguish fashion understood as invention for its own sake followed by slavish imitation with a true fashion, which like art, involves both taste and ‘genius’ as understood by Kant. Taste involves a judgement of a particular to be, for example, beautiful. This judgement must be one that we can communicate to others. Genius is in fashion that is original and provides a model to others. (See Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgement, 5: 308) While notable designer fashion provides the most obvious examples, this way of looking at fashion does not preclude the possibility of this kind of genius developing outside or alongside the fashion industry. Furthermore, wearers of fashion have to exercise their sense of taste in choosing what to wear and how to wear it. This sense of taste appeals to others and requires an enlargement of our thought just as our taste in art does. Thus seen, fashion and interest in fashion has a potential for improvement of the self as other forms of taste arguably do.