Fashion Studies: Contradictions, Conflicts, and Concepts

The article traces the complex attitude of scientists to the phenomenon of fashion, which is ambiguous and controversial. For centuries, fashion has been virtually ignored by researchers, but if they did consider it as an object of study, it was rather superficial and without delving into its complex nature. Among the philosophers who really paid attention to fashion are A. Smith, I. Kant, G. Hegel, V. Benjamin, T. Adorno, G. Simmel and J. Lipovetsky. As a universal phenomenon, fashion has spread to all types of human activity. The study of this phenomenon requires a polysystemic approach, taking into account the contradictions and conflicts of our time. A lot of literature has been developed, but rapid evolutionary processes bring to the surface new challenges and a deeper interpretation of the term “fashion”, outline trends of development, and possibly decline. Fashion has exacerbated the contradictions between ideas about the future and the past, the hopes and anxieties of society. Social, military, religious, political, cultural conflicts, growing fears of environmental disasters, which prompts design schools to develop separate courses in eco-design, are all clearly visible in fashion, the work of designers of different generations and European schools. These issues require careful and in-depth research. The range of application of conceptual ideas in the experiments of designers, which we consider in this article, is quite wide. However, it is significant that in the twenty-first century clothing is becoming a semantically filled cultural object, a reflection of a person's individuality, and forms its own unique image. The article briefly analyses the collections of recent years of a number of brands, including Schiaparelli, Gucci, Belanciaga, J.P. Gaultier, Chanel, Ferragamo, etc. By the end of the twentieth century, a new course ‘Fashion Theory’ was being formed among researchers and in educational institutions, some of whose issues were considered in the integrated disciplines “History of Costume and Art” and “History of Fashion”. What research questions are raised by scholars and what thoughts about fashion have been relevant in recent years, from the end of the twentieth to the third of the twenty-first century, can be traced in a number of works by contemporary fashion theorists, such as B. Winken, Lee Edelkort, W. Steele, T. Agins, R. Arnold, and others. The broad field of fashion offers the inclusion of knowledge in gender and cultural studies, art and architecture theory, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, semiotics, communication, media and design.