Georg Simmel - Simmel On Fashion

Simmel On Fashion

Fashion is a form of a social relationship that allows those who wish to conform to the demands of a group to do so. It also allows some to be individualistic by deviating from the norm. In the initial stage everyone adopts what is fashionable and those that deviate from the fashion inevitably adopt a whole new view of what they consider fashion. Ritzer writes,

Simmel argued that not only does following what is in fashion involve dualities so does the effort on the part of some people to be of fashion. Unfashionable people view those who follow a fashion as being imitators and themselves as mavericks, but Simmel argued that the latter are simply engaging in an inverse form of imitation.

— George Ritzer Georg Simmel 2008,

This means that those who are trying to be different or “unique,” are not because in trying to be different they are become a part of a new group that has labeled themselves different or “unique.”