Is Fashion Modernity Itself, Its Sibling, or Its Child?

Don’t let my relentless critiques of technology—the most unregulated sphere of our age in terms of law and ethics—or my rebellion against our enslavement to the engineer’s mind and the money that controls it mislead you. We must acknowledge that our fundamental problem does not lie, as commonly assumed, in the fields of physical sciences and technology, but rather in philosophy and the humanities. Let me try to explain.

Today, we remain passive spectators on decisive issues such as modernity, urban life, and culture. We label only the evaluations and debates carried out in the field of fiqh as “religious.” “Theology” has become detached from both human beings and life itself, degenerating into little more than “the history of theology”—a pursuit of truth reduced to the eloquence of a select few. As a result of all this, we find ourselves spinning endlessly in a vicious circle, with a need for belief at one end and fanaticism at the other. In my opinion, or more precisely, in light of our current lamentable state, the true cause of this condition is our failure to produce great scholars in the humanities—especially in sociology and psychology…

If we had intellectuals like Georg Simmel and Zygmunt Bauman—individuals with an insight capable of both embracing and deeply penetrating lived experience, and a conceptual framework through which they could articulate what they observed—our critiques would not remain so shallow and saturated with rhetoric, nor would the gap between us and our youth widen further with each passing day. Even if we had fallen behind in the physical sciences and technology, we would not regard this solely as a source of shame, nor would we see imitation as the only way to bridge the gap. More importantly, our fuqaha would cease to label themselves merely as “Islamic scholars,” and they would no longer issue fatwas at will without consulting those scholars in whom we trust for their understanding of the human being, society, and the pursuit of truth…

Our readers are likely familiar with the name Georg Simmel. In my analyses and criticisms of modernity, I draw particularly on his still-unsurpassed insights into money and modern urban life. For some time now, I have been striving to write about contemporary society through the lens of “consumption,” and about how we are being swept along by the great current of capitalism. After this introduction, it is now the perfect moment to present Simmel’s views on fashion, as expressed in his book Conflict in Modern Culture (İletişim Publishing). For “fashion” too is one of those cellars in which modern life locks us—supposedly in the name of freedom—and one of the whirlpools that twists and turns us into its own image…

When Simmel speaks of “society,” he does not concern himself with domains associated with concepts such as structure, system, or institution; rather, he focuses directly on human interactions. Starting from the psychology that gives rise to human relationships, he seeks to grasp sociology and to understand the “incidental fragments” of interaction within society. “Each day, each hour, such knots are tied—some unravel, are retied, give way to others, intertwine with new knots. The interaction between the atoms of society lies here—but these are interactions visible only through a microscope trained upon the soul…” One of the areas where Simmel directed this soul-focused microscope was fashion. Why do people, under the banner of fashion, strive to resemble one another? Why did they do this even more so in modern times? This was the question he sought to answer.

According to him, fashion was linked to the dual nature of the human being. Human beings desire both to attach themselves to a social group and dissolve into it, and simultaneously to be distinct from everyone else. Fashion arises from the tension between the psychological inclination toward imitation and the opposing drive toward individual differentiation. Thanks to fashion, people walk a path already trodden by others while also gaining an opportunity to express the individuality they otherwise lack. Fashion-like behaviours have been present in societies throughout every historical era, but in modernity—where social life has become fragmented and the division of labour has intensified—fashion attained an unprecedented dominance over culture; it spread widely and accelerated. “One of the reasons why fashion now dominates the consciousness to such a degree is the gradual weakening of fundamental, lasting, unquestioned convictions… The break with the past increasingly concentrates the mind on the present.” (p.42) “The feeling experienced by the follower of fashion is a reasonable blend of approval and envy. Fashion is the primary realm of activity for individuals who are internally deprived of autonomy and dependent upon something external, yet who need to stand out, attract attention, and achieve uniqueness in order to become aware of their own self.” (p.212)

Fashion is inherently class-based; on the one hand, it holds a particular social milieu together, and on the other, it renders that milieu closed off to others. The fashions of the upper and lower classes differ; when those below begin to adopt the fashions of those above, the latter immediately abandon them and create new ones. Fashion emerges in metropolitan areas not from the upper or lower classes, but from the middle class. It reflects their desire to stand out. That is why what is fashionable in modernity is not more expensive than in previous eras… Every fashion longs to live forever, but this is impossible; like the circulation of commodities, fashion too eventually fades and is replaced by something else.

I have no objection to those who, saying “This has always been our fashion,” consistently prefer a traditional style of dress—I respect them. However, in light of what has been said, there ought not to be a modern fashion with an “Islamic” appearance. The fact that fashion is both a marker of class and a defining element of consumer society should prompt a moderate Muslim to steer clear of it. The details of this discussion can be found in the book Preferences: Reflections of Social Change in Everyday Life, published by İlem Publishing, in an excellent sociological analysis by Professor Alev Erkilet. In her remarkable article titled The Transformation of Privacy: The Becoming of Modesty Practices a Matter of Preference, she offers a compelling evaluation of women’s fashion magazines that claim to be “Islamic.”

If we restrict knowledge solely to fiqh, close our eyes to how religion and faith view human beings and their desires, and turn a deaf ear to the kind of world that the “test” truly demands, then as we witness our wealthy and our children who have become the military wing of capitalism, we find ourselves exclaiming in bewilderment, “There’s something wrong here, but what is it?” and repeating, “May God have mercy on us!” In such a condition, of course, we cannot even begin to discuss the question posed in the title of this article; we fail to recognise that both modernity and fashion are bound to the present, with no regard for either past or future.