Fashioning Society, or, The Mode of Modernity

Clothes make the man, people say. That fashion makes society modern, is the central argument of this book. Only if there is fashion in the double sense of something to wear and something to follow can society find stability in otherwise endless reciprocal observations. This study reveals which modes of seeing and presenting, which forms of describing and depicting, of producing and selling, of trading and advertising dress are necessary so that fashion can fulfil its role at the heart of modern society. As a paradigmatic case for the emergence of fashion, the book examines the society of London in the early eighteenth century by looking at newspapers and conduct books, Defoe and Hogarth, trade manuals and handbills, novels, prints and engravings, Pamela, Fantomina and the Harlot s Progress. By means of these and other representations of fashion, people became able to adjust their behaviour according to a new, second reality, an imaginary normality produced by the media. Taking a multiperspectival approach, this book combines cultural and media studies, sociology, costume history and literary studies to show that modern society is founded on something as ephemeral and frivolous as fashion whether we like it or not.