ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, fashion and clothing were considered as reproductive practices. They were explained as ways in which class and gender identity were constructed, signalled and reproduced, as ways in which people accepted and reproduced their circumstances and conditions. Fashion and clothing, then, were explained as having a role in ensuring the continued existence of both the specific class and gender identities and the unequal positions of power and status that go with those identities. In the well-known and much quoted introductory section to ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Marx comments on the use of clothing in times of revolution. He suggests that, just when people seem to be engaged in ‘revolutionising themselves and things’, just as they seem about to create something that has never yet existed, they borrow their costumes from the past and dress themselves up in the detritus of world history (Marx and Engels 1968: 96). This chapter will consider fashion and clothing as revolutionary practices. It will explain them as ways in which existing class and gender identities may be challenged or contested, as ways in which people may transform their circumstances and conditions. The ability of fashion to perform such a task is not guaranteed. Nathalie Khan (2000) argues that, if fashion is conceived as a set of momentary and current trends, then ‘fashion can reflect, but it cannot renew society’ (2000: 116). She says, therefore, that fashion can only be radical when it challenges ‘its own systems and structures’ (ibid.). Her essay then investigates the ways in which the catwalk shows of people like Alexander McQueen, who has used ‘severely disabled’ models in his shows, question notions of physical beauty and ‘walking beautifully’ (ibid.: 119 and see Evans 2000). This chapter will try to look beyond fashion’s own structures and it will try to explain how fashion and clothing may indeed question and oppose the continued existence of class and gender identities in society, and show how they may be used to dispute and disrupt the positions of power and status that go with those class and gender identities.
