ABSTRACT

The revolution in appearances was sustained by means of a new economy and by the growth of a new conception of social matters. Clothes played their peculiar part in transforming an organic and unequal world, and in establishing a society which saw itself and conceived itself as egalitarian and individualistic. It is not necessary to look for a hierarchy of determinations and consequences in this process, we must rather try to grasp what it tells us about the way temporalities are interwoven, and how the different elements of a changing system-i.e. the consumption of clothes-are linked. In these reciprocal and alternating movements of the real and of representations of the real, three points may be distinguished:

1. the socio-economic aspects which make for changes; 2. the effects induced, especially for consumers; 3. the moral and philosophical debates which express, interpret and modify

innovations.