Simmel on Fashion. A Commented Reading of the 1911 Essay

"The monographic essay by Giovanni Matteucci, Simmel on Fashion, is an original philosophical reinterpretation of the famous contribution on fashion offered in its accomplished final version of 1911 by the German scholar. Such version (not available in English yet) is thoroughly examined by Giovanni Matteucci - scholar of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna - who, among other interesting observations, questions the widespread interpretation of Simmel as advocate of the well-known "trickle-down" phenomenon in the diffusion of fashion.
Matteucci, instead, proposes a fresh interpretation of Simmel's thought based on fashion as a valued model of a special form of life, a paradigm of the constitution of social groups, which establish social relationships especially in the new metropolitan society that often break free from deep rooted contents. Hence the various implications of the phenomenon of fashion, in the creation of identity and permeating function of the aesthetic, make careful reading of Simmel's essay still useful.
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