The Derridean (Un)Hostility of Fashion: Thinking Fashion Through Deconstruction

Abstract

“There is, to all appearances, a philosophic hostility to fashionable dress” – writes Karen Hanson in “Dressing Down Dressing Up: The Philosophic Fear of Fashion”. Hanson’s study identifies several points – from the ever changing nature of fashion to the ethicality of the fashion industry – from which philosophy has historically criticized and continues to criticize fashion as a social phenomenon, industry, and art form. In this sense, deconstruction indicates new critical design practice and (self-)critique of the fashion industry. The notion of “hostility” in the vocabulary of deconstruction and psychoanalysis is identical to the event of resistance. It is thus a genuinely defining feature. At the same time, its self-positioning consists of the creation and reception opened up by the object. Its developers (Freud, Derrida, de Man) recognized that in this “counter-feeling,” or resistance, a new layer of interpretation and experience, previously only felt but not thought of, operates. Fashion’s deconstructive processes exist in this resistance. There have been many attempts to link fashion research and the designers’ conception of design to deconstruction. As Flavia Loscialpo already puts it this way: “Deconstruction fashion, which is always already in-deconstruction itself, involves, in fact, a thorough consideration of fashion’s debt to its own history, to critical thought, to temporality and the modern condition.” In my paper, I will make some arguments from the side of deconstruction concerning fashion in general, but also try to describe the nature of a postmodern “fashion process” (including the design thinking, the materiality of clothing or textiles, and even the theoretical perception of fashion). Through the writings of Derrida and Freud, I examine the critical fashion practices of Martin Margiela.