Dry and undressed: A response to the interlocutors of ‘Sociology of fashion: What would Luhmann say?’

Abstract

We address the five interlocutors of our article ‘Sociology of fashion: What would Luhmann say?’ in a deliberately dry manner. Their perceptive remarks concern both the limitations of our expanded systems-theoretical approach and the rich potential it offers for future conceptual and empirical exploration. While reiterating the partial incommensurability between a systems-theoretical perspective on fashion and the premises underlying several responses – particularly the systems-theoretical view that interaction, rather than the individual, constitutes the lower threshold of social analysis – we nonetheless attend closely to those remarks that can be productively examined through a Luhmannian lens.

Niklas Luhmann's favorite drink was a Riesling wine. We found it fitting to celebrate the publication of this article and the rich conversation it sparked in Dialogues in Sociology over a shared bottle of this white wine. Luhmann, after all, preferred his wine like his sociological analysis: dry. We follow the same path, offering our arguments in a style as dry and undressed as Luhmann's preferred wine.

We read the five responses to our article ‘Sociology of fashion: What would Luhmann say?’ (Van de Peer and Laermans, 2025) with great interest, paying close attention both to the rich potential for future conceptual and empirical exploration that several interlocutors carefully outline, and to the perceptive remarks concerning the limitations of our expanded systems-theoretical approach. We will address these comments selectively, leaving several pertinent observations unanswered. Before turning to more specific points, we would first like to emphasize the substantial differences – indeed, in some respects the incommensurability – between a systems-theoretical perspective on fashion and the premises underlying several of the responses.

First, Luhmann's analytical mode of reasoning, with its strong emphasis on conceptual distinctions and its focus on functional or horizontal differentiation, cannot be easily reconciled with the critical perspective that informs most of the commentaries, most explicitly those of Marco Pedroni (2025) and Tommy Tse (2025; see, however, Amstutz and Fischer-Lescano, 2013). Systems theory does not, of course, deny the existence of power asymmetries along dimensions such as class, gender, and race. However, these structural inequalities, or forms of vertical differentiation, assume different configurations within distinct subsystems according to the code that predominates in each, such as payment versus non-payment (economic inequality), passing or failing exams (educational inequality), and so forth (Luhmann, 2012).

In their autonomous operation, systems actively mobilize pre-existing inequalities – for example, inherited cultural or educational capital from one's parents – as internal resources, thereby reproducing inequality. This latent function, however, is realized only through the fulfillment of the manifest, primary societal function, such as the transmission of specialized knowledge in the educational system. Bourdieu, whose perspective strongly informs Pedroni's position, by contrast, regards the reproduction of class inequality as the primary function of education, art, and other cultural fields, since he foregrounds vertical rather than horizontal differentiation from a critical standpoint.

The distinction between primary and secondary, manifest and latent functions can also be applied to reconstruct global inequalities in the garment industry. Nevertheless, Tse rightly points out that most systems theorists tend to underemphasize the connection between a system's operations and the (re)production of inequality. Stated bluntly, systems theory has traditionally excelled in analyzing functional differentiation, yet often at the cost of under-theorizing power differentials. Critical theory, by contrast, is strong in addressing structural inequalities but frequently less effective in analyzing the intrinsic relationship between their reproduction and the specific operational logic of a given societal subsystem.

Second, acknowledging the insufficient theorization of inequality within systems theory, we sought to critically dynamize our formal analysis of fashion across three subsystems and to account more effectively for power mechanisms by incorporating key insights from Bourdieu's field theory. When Pedroni criticizes our limited realization of an integration between Bourdieusian and systems-theoretical perspectives on fashion, we agree that such an endeavor cannot fully succeed, given the previously noted and several additional differences in the foundational assumptions of the two theoretical frameworks (see Nassehi and Nollmann, 2004). Nevertheless, we maintain that their friction can be intellectually productive, and we will provide further examples of this below. Moreover, each theory can learn from the blind spots of the other, potentially allowing for the kind of partial ‘appropriation’ we have proposed.

Third, and most importantly, in systems theory, interaction, rather than the individual, constitutes the lower threshold of social analysis. This does not align with the presumed emphasis on agency, habitus, and personal experience (including embodiment and affectivity) found in several of the commentaries. In contrast to the older Parsonian variant, Luhmannian systems theory places individuals at the margins (or, as Luhmann put it, in parentheses) and does not focus on socially structured yet individually bound practices (Luhmann, 1996). Like (post-)structuralism, systems theory decenters the subject, implying – in Hans-Georg Moeller's apt formulation – a shift ‘from souls to systems’ (Moeller, 2006).

Its focus on communication as the basic unit of social systems necessarily entails a form of structural coupling with individuals and digital infrastructures. However, the individual level as such is not analyzed; it functions merely as a conditioning factor. Consequently, the timely – and, to gesture to Susan Kaiser's (2025) much appreciated reformulation of the fashionable or the in – ‘fleshy’, embodied readings of clothing-fashion, inspired by the affective and material turns in fashion studies, can be addressed only insofar as their direct communicative effects are concerned.

Despite the specific self-limitations of systems theory, several poignant remarks can nevertheless be productively examined through a Luhmannian lens. More specifically, we identify the following possibilities for constructive exchange. First, Tse underscores the challenge of analyzing the everyday lived experience of dressing and observes that fashion studies have empirically demonstrated how the value of clothing-fashion resides not only in systemic novelty but also in affective continuity – sustained over time through emotional and embodied attachments. We interpret this ‘affective archive’, as Tse terms it, not individually but communicatively: as intrinsically intertwined with a constellation of past micro-level interactions with significant others. Affective attachments to clothing function as communicative traces: material manifestations, in the present, of communications that once occurred.

Second, in her commentary essay on our work, Anna-Mari Almila (2025) identifies multiple promising avenues for future conceptual and empirical exploration, several of which can also be addressed within a systems-theoretical framework. She calls upon the sociology of fashion to substantially expand its engagement with fashion-historical insights that enable long-term, processual perspectives. This is indeed necessary, and we suggest that one possible approach is to devote greater attention to the historical semantics of fashion (Morgner, 2022).

Traditionally, modernity has been characterized by the positive valorization of newness. The current debate on sustainability within the fashion industry unfolds within this semantic of newness, particularly in relation to the emerging limits of the continuous pursuit of novelty as the cultural and affective engine of the industry's growth logic. Empirically, it is crucial to investigate whether and how this historical semantics of newness is currently transforming, and to consider what such potential shifts may imply for power dynamics and inequalities within the contested fashion field. For instance, in the context of clothing consumption in the Global North, minority groups are often moralized as participating more than others in the overconsumption (Hakansson, 2014) that stems from the cultural value ascribed to novelty, while predominantly (young) women are called upon to take responsibility for their (fast) fashion clothing consumption (Horton, 2018).

Third, we greatly appreciate Almila's emphasis on anti-fashion and non-fashion. The distinction among fashion, anti-fashion, and non-fashion is highly pertinent to both artistic and scientific domains. In the arts, the category of ‘the classical’ – conceived as a general stylistic trait independent of historical periodization – resonates with the notion of non-fashion. In scientific contexts, empirically oriented quantitative researchers often align themselves with non-fashion, asserting that they ‘simply conduct good research’, whereas others adopt an explicitly anti-fashion stance, drawing on validated, ostensibly robust insights or models and occasionally invoking ‘the classics of the discipline’. Within the domain of clothing, it is worthwhile to investigate how the boundary between fashion and these other forms intersects with the semantics of material ephemerality versus material longevity. These concepts, while part of a broader sustainability discourse, are especially salient in debates surrounding clothing. Fashion scholarship has primarily explored how this semantic tension manifests within the fashion side of the fashion/anti-fashion divide. For instance, Brans (2025) showed that policy documents aimed at regulating the fast-fashion industry are grounded in an overtly material discourse. Meanwhile, experiential learning approaches to sustainable fashion suggest that engaging individuals with the materiality of garments can foster transformative experiences that reshape perceptions of disposability (Willett et al., 2022).

Fourth, Monica Sassatelli's (2025) reflections on the relationship between fashion and corporeality are particularly pertinent and invite systems theory to reconsider the structural coupling with individuals in the environment. Luhmann (1996) emphasizes the relationship with consciousness, but in his reflections on art, he notes that, for example, paintings use bodily perception as a medium of communication (Luhmann, 2000). Following Lehmann (2006) in his analysis of the art system, it appears more productive to distinguish clearly between communication media in the strict sense (e.g. truth, money, and law) and human media such as attention, sensuousness, and, more broadly, corporeality.

That fashion and corporeality have a communicative function goes without saying; this function is central to approaches that study the social role of fashion in reproducing differences in gender, class, and race. Neither clothing nor art can function as social systems without a structural coupling with the body as a human medium. Specifically in relation to clothing-fashion, the body functions both as a mannequin, in the generic sense of a medium that supports communication, and as a normative model, communicatively reproduced through publicity and other social media.

Fifth, we would also like to connect Sassatelli's insightful coda on Luhmann's personal dress to his theoretical framework. According to Luhmann, each functional system positions individuals in the environment through the roles they occupy, such as student or researcher, and selectively as persons with particular characteristics. Individuality is thus defined differently across social contexts: a person may be eager to learn (education), curious (science), norm-oriented (law), profit-driven (economy), or in search of deeper meaning in life (religion). Bodily appearance, clothing, and the relation to fashion allow this individuality to be further expressed and differentiated at the level of interpersonal interaction: for example, within the scientific system, in terms of sérieux, or, conversely, frivolity.

In line with Sassatelli, following Simmel, we can speak of a simultaneously individual and communicative stylization of the individuality defined by a subsystem. To the extent that this occurs through fashion, a further transversal field of inquiry emerges: how, and to what extent, do individuals within different subsystems use clothing-fashion to position themselves communicatively in interaction?

Sixth, we welcome Kaiser's rightful emphasis on Luhmann's affinity for paradoxes, as well as her insistence that the temporality of in/out must be complemented by the paradox of timelessness and timeliness. To avoid unnecessarily complex formulations, we refrained from defining fashion in a quasi-Hegelian sense as the paradoxical unity of in (present) and out (past), simultaneously anticipating the reproduction of this paradox in the near future. More importantly, Kaiser's productive emphasis lies in the conceptual distinction, or form, between timelessness and timeliness.

We suggest considering the constitutive in/out form of fashion as one instantiation of timeliness. This, in turn, opens an interesting avenue for comparative research: which other socially institutionalized instantiations of timeliness exist alongside fashion? In this context, Almila's distinction between fad, fashion, and trend is highly pertinent. It demands further elaboration, particularly in relation to fast-fashion, which might be better understood as a momentary fad. We have argued that, partly due to the role of social media, the distinction between attention and disattention becomes fully intertwined with the in/out logic of fashion.

We take the opportunity to highlight an interesting connection between Kaiser's essay and Almila's intervention concerning the manifestation of timeliness – or the mutable fashionable status – within canonized and ostensibly timeless cultural phenomena. Almila demonstrates that ostensibly timeless commodities, such as champagne, can themselves acquire varying degrees of timeliness, for example, through societal developments such as the growing interest in organic foods. Similarly, in the arts – more specifically literature – the works of the Bloomsbury Group, though long canonized, have recently experienced a notable revival of timeliness, both in academic scholarship (see Sheehan, 2018) and in journalistic writing (Porter, 2023). This resurgence has again occurred under broader contemporary societal influences, such as renewed attention to the Bloomsbury Group's engagement with queer (dressing) practices and with non-heteronomous, non-monogamous forms of intimate relationships.

More generally, we can distinguish – and here we again encounter intriguing paradoxes – between a fashionable and a non-fashionable canon. Connecting back to Kaiser's emphasis on temporality and its negation, this distinction reflects a re-entry of the in/out form within the broader distinction between timeliness and timelessness, but now operating on the side of timelessness.

Last but not least, we wish to underscore the limitations of our systems-theoretical argument for a transversal sociology of fashion. An earlier version of our text was somewhat arrogantly titled ‘Towards a generalized theory of fashion’. The reviewers rightly noted that this was inconsistent with an approach that, despite its claim to be a ‘super-theory’, has undeniable blind spots, allowing it to observe certain phenomena only on the condition that it cannot observe phenomena appearing on other theoretical screens. We have indicated that although systems theory can address issues such as power inequalities, corporeality, or affectivity, this is possible only within certain limits, and often requires complex conceptual reconstructions.

We understand that researchers of clothing-fashion may find these elaborations overly abstract, particularly when, within the framework of qualitative studies, they are primarily interested in ‘thick descriptions’. Luhmannian systems theory also does not share the critical orientation of much fashion sociology, where approaches such as gender studies, postcolonial studies, and queer studies provide important tools for in-depth analyses of how clothing is experienced in temporal, spatial, and historical terms, and the role that cultural norms and forms of inequality play therein.

In brief, systems theory stands apart from other frameworks within the social sciences, such as symbolic interactionism or Bourdieusian field theory. This rigorous mode of making analytical distinctions and recombining them into conceptual configurations characteristic of Grand Theory also differs substantially from disciplines such as anthropology, history, cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and critical theory – and, for that matter, psychoanalysis, which we continue to regard as a crucial foundation for any inquiry into fashion.

Thus, fashion studies will remain a pluriverse, as well as a space for dialogue among different approaches and disciplines, each of which must acknowledge its limits. Yet, as sociologists, we are sufficiently Bourdieusian to maintain that dialogue may also involve conflict and, to paraphrase Immanuel Kant, that ‘the struggle between faculties’ will continue.