{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","uuid":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","normalized_title":"timeconsumptionandeverydaylifepracticematerialityandculture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%2C%20Consumption%20and%20Everyday%20Life%20Practice%2C%20Materiality%20and%20Culture","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/search"},"page":{"printed_page":130,"pdf_page":131,"physical_index":131,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a54be4fde65cc0189ffa752d22dfff17d43ead2a064734b20f484b06c1d7d636"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"Even though the same stylistic elements can repeat themselves or disappear without any trace from one cycle to another, once they are in fashion they become equally binding and compelling. Last year’s models are totally out of fashion and look ridiculous on their bearers. The same fate, as we all know, awaits this season’s fashion in the near future. The paradox of fashion is that, at the same time as it establishes its socially binding and pseudo-normative power over consumers as the only possible alternative at the moment, there is no rule – other than the fashion itself – which dictates what the present fashion should look like. There is no reason why legs of trousers should be long or short, broad or narrow. Following Georg Simmel (1902), one could claim that the decisive test of whether fashion cycles can operate in any one field of culture is to ask if things could just as well be otherwise. In other words, fashion is contingent; it constitutes a self-dynamic social process (Mayntz and Nedelmann 1987). The economic function of fashion is to make commodities prematurely obsolete and to accelerate the circulation of goods, but to fulfil this function any design is good enough, as long as it is new and succeeds in establishing itself as a fashion with its claim of exclusive validity. A particular fashion design does not have any other function. It could just as well be something else. Fashion offers us novelties for sake of the novelty.\n\nThis does not mean that ‘anything goes’ – what is fashionable at any one time is always quite exclusive and obliging. Despite trend-setters and their active efforts at marketing the next, or the next-next fashion, fashion itself retains a strong element of mystery. This does not mean that some fashionable novelties do not meet active and strong resistance. Not every consumer is willing to accept and adopt them. Such resistance against fashion can be of a dual nature. It can be directed either towards the whole institution of fashion, which can be experienced as external social coercion unnecessarily requiring us to comply with its power. Such resistance can be a sign of traditionalism and cultural inertia but can equally well be a result of an anti-consumerist consciousness. But resistance can also signal that a specific fashion design threatens some existing cultural or moral norms. Clear breaks with the traditions of clothing have often been connected with gender and generational rules of clothing. In post-war Europe many, for instance, experienced boys with long hair or girls in trousers as a serious threat to the traditional, established social order. In such cases, when appearing for the first time, a new fashion can make a real difference. Aesthetic taste has often had an ethical dimension (Gronow 1987). But once resistance has been broken and new habits have been established, a new fashion like the mini-skirt can peacefully join the available repertoire of fashion designs. It can circulate eternally as ‘just’ one more fashion.\n\nFrom the point of view of the producer or seller of fashion, a new design is always genuinely innovative and is often a result of a tedious creative process, but fashion does not really make any difference in the world. Fashions are ‘only’ functional equivalents to one another (Meyersohn and Katz 1957: 595).\n\n130\n\n• Jukka Gronow","previous_page":129,"next_page":131}