Fitting in fashion: In,out and in-between – A response to Van de Peer and Laermans

Abstract

Dismissing fashion goes in and out of fashion easily in academia. This is why it is particularly welcome to introduce new angles expanding the debate. Van de Peer and Laermans's intervention achieves that with both a specific choice of approach – stated in the title What Would Luhmann Say? – and a wide ouverture to what that relatively neglected approach could contribute to fashion studies of all kinds and focus. The article takes us through ways of seeing with a fashion lens not only the clothing industry, its main domain, but also two further areas of influence: the visual arts, and social sciences and humanities. This is effective both in stimulating curiosity for Luhmann and for opening up this relatively new discipline still in search of a clear identity, or (à la Luhmann) differentiation. In my commentary, after some reflections on wider social theory issues this potentially opens up, I take the lead from the focus of the article, the specific operation fashion performs, to explore a little two related areas: first, the arts (not in the sense of how art is also fashion, as the authors discuss, but the opposite, how fashion is also art); second, the body, or perhaps individuality, as the interpretive key of differentiation, pivotal in Luhmann, seems particularly apt also to pursue these parallel paths.