Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse

Kara Silverman’s Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse is a unique and detailed analysis on how we perceive fashion in today’s society and how it has evolved over time. One point that I thought was fascinating was the clothing we wear makes us makes our bodies culturally visible. This statement is very valid in the sense that we are constantly judging each other by the clothes we wear. We buy certain clothing to impress or attract the opposite sex, even seen through advertisements that depict how their clothing should be worn and who would normally wear it. When relating our clothing to how gender is portrayed, today’s clothing seems to fit with one’s sexual identity. Both women and men’s clothing seem to extenuate physical features that attract the opposite/same sex, and the clothing that doesn’t is considered to be “ugly”. In addition, it was interesting to read that literature tended to focus less and less on physical attributes rather then the materialistic side of beauty.

I must disagree with the author when she expresses her opinion that clothing is no longer a means to establish class but rather on gender distinction. It is important to note as well that this article dates back to 1986, where movements in “gender” were fresh new ideas that slowly became more and more popular. In my opinion we tend to link how someone dresses to ones social-economic status rather than a certain gender classification. In the 21^st century we have a very open and unique mixture of how people dress, with women and men wearing clothing that would normally be worn by the opposite sex. This idea goes with the author’s reference to Laplanche who states that our clothing is our envelope in which our ego and body is contained. Clothing has always been seen as a means for self-expression, and this idea that how we dress should reflect on whom we are is certainly true today.