ABSTRACT
Fashion is in many ways an extreme of cultural activity. It is concerned with a basic human need, clothing, but goes far beyond the simple biological necessity. Fashion as a cultural product has a mediating position between extremes; it partakes of art and of craft. It may be an esoteric art form, but its importance lies as well in mass production. It partakes of many special fields, in stage performances as well as in fine arts, besides being important for its own sake. Fashion prescribes novelty and redundancy within and between individuals. Fashion, even in its aspect as a craft, faces the same task as the artists who produced modernism, namely, to mediate a place for the individual in an increasingly complex mass society. Social identity manifested in a wealth of messages corresponds better to the social conditions of modernism than the older sumptuary conditions based on social class.
