It is no secret that fashion has been one of the most influential phenomena on Western civilization since the Renaissance. It has overshadowed quite a few modern human activities and has become very much ‘second nature’. Therefore, our understanding of fashion will contribute to our understanding of ourselves and our actions. However, philosophers throughout the ages had ignored the issue of fashion despite its importance, and perhaps this was due to the prevailing belief that fashion, which seemed to them at the time the most superficial phenomenon, was not a subject of study that amounted to a “deep” field of knowledge such as philosophy. But if philosophy is a field concerned with attaining self-understanding, and if fashion is—and indeed still is—as influential a phenomenon as I claim here, then it ought to be made an object of philosophical study.
