ABSTRACT
Few card-carrying literary or cultural theorists construe it as a compliment when theory is compared, one way or another, with fashion. The comparison invariably disguises a wish to disarm theory or to make it disappear. The relations among theory, fashion, and the surrounding political economic order are much too entangled and complex for the theory fashion comparison to address adequately. If we examine the fashion industry, we immediately encounter an array of defining features unrelated to theory. Among these are fashion's appeals to possessive individualism; its reliance on sweatshops; its broad use of dyestuffs and the resulting ecological destruction; its fascination with alluring physical commodities; its planned obsolescence. In other words, some theorists themselves promulgate the theory fashion analogy, but they put a positive spin on it. It is frequently left to the more ‘flexible’ operations to deal expeditiously with change. As everyone knows, such entities fall prey, more readily than departments, to the theory fashion label.
