This paper is written in response to Kaiser, Nagasawa, and Hutton's (1995) reliance on symbolic interactionism in an effort to develop a bridge between micro and macro level phenomena to explain how individual fashion consumers come to accept new appearance styles and attach meaning to them. By examining the macro-micro distinction in the social sciences suggested by Ritzer (1990), I argue that symbolic interactionism cannot possibly facilitate these goals. I then use Ritzer to develop a heuristic model of macro-micro level phenomena that influence the way fashion consumers attach meaning to fashion forms and appearances. My primary concern in this paper is with macro-level phenomena, which includes cultural-system arbiters that, in turn, influence fashion-system arbiters. I argue that these two categories of macro-level phenomena then influence micro-level phenomena, including the negotiation of meanings among individuals, although influence between macro and micro levels is not unidirectional, and the more micro-level phenomenon of self-negotiation is a process whereby individuals ascribe meaning to fashion. Finally, I call for the systematic exploration of levels of analysis in assessing existing fashion theory to discover areas of scholarship that remain neglected.
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