ABSTRACT
Mannequins have been strategically placed throughout the mall to draw attention to and create desire for the fashions that are for sale. “Fashion”, like “woman” is not an undifferentiated object in-it-self which suddenly appears on the stage of history; nor should it be easily reduced to a mere reflection of social and economic developments, to what Freud called a “master key” which seems to account for the manifestation of the object. Women’s relationship to fashion and the fashion industry is said to reflect the positioning of women within patriarchal capitalism. The intertextual constitution of subjectivity and objects has repercussions for what has been the standard Marxist and feminist interpretation of fashion. The fashion industry is constantly resurrecting histories and cultures, placing us all in a perpetual schizophrenic present, the experience of fashion and clothing is contradictory for women.
