ABSTRACT
In the classical European humanistic tradition fashion was always thought to be antithetical to good taste. A person blindly following the whims of fashion was without style, whereas a man of style – or a gentleman – was using his own power of judgment. Immanuel Kant shared this conception with many of his contemporaries. Georg Simmel’s famous essay on fashion can best be understood as a somewhat ironic commentary on Kant’s idea of a sensus communis: the community of fashion is the real, even though ephemeral, community of universal taste.
