Fashion, Identity and Social Actors

This chapter first considers the overall problem of clothing by identifying its peculiarity in the wide world of material good consumption. It considers then the connections and gaps between clothing and identity, keeping in mind our body, and namely our dressed body, as a basic element of our identity. To frame the cultural dynamics underlying the fashion system and the meanings it brings into our lives, we have to map the many actors involved on the side of both production and consumption. This consideration gives us the opportunity to perceive that in both cases fashion is not cultivated only in view of an aesthetic accomplishment, but also to achieve ethical and social goals so far considered in decline in the postmodern age. To support empirically my theoretical reasoning, I provide some examples drawn from research carried out in Milano.