ABSTRACT
There are two paradoxical criticisms of fashion: On the one hand, that it is elitist and therefore only accessible for the economically privileged, and on the other, that it is vulgar by virtue of having to appeal to a broad mass of people. This chapter takes the example of the recent rise of streetwear into the ranks of luxury fashion to analyse how these two positions are dissolved or even turned around. Established models of fashion influences that “trickle down” from the upper to the lower classes or “bubble up” from marginalised subcultures to the elites are no longer valid in this case. Instead, there are novel approaches to social and habitual power dynamics shaped by factors like class and race that manage to productively blur the line between supposedly fixed binaries like high and low, rich and poor, or elitist and vulgar.
