Fashion and Politics

What unites Louis XIV and Elizabeth I to the modern heads of state and government? What lies behind Gandhi's traditional costume and Angela Merkel's trouser suits? What drives the revolutionary leaders to show obsessive attention to the details of their dress? They are all symbolic representations of power that refer to shared codes in their respective contexts of reference and that tell something of the complex relationship that unites fashion and politics. In fact, politics has to do...
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What unites Louis XIV and Elizabeth I to the modern heads of state and government? What lies behind Gandhi's traditional costume and Angela Merkel's trouser suits? What drives the revolutionary leaders to show obsessive attention to the details of their dress? They are all symbolic representations of power that refer to shared codes in their respective contexts of reference and that tell something of the complex relationship that unites fashion and politics. In fact, politics has to do with the regulation of associated living and calls into question the great systems of ideas, destined to leave an imprint on history. As an expression of power, however, it needs to activate processes of legitimation, which often draw on the symbolic dimension, of which fashion is a fundamental manifestation. The volume investigates this relationship according to a common thread that crosses modernity, its ideological manifestations, revolutions, class struggle, and the affirmation of democracy up to the current phase of post-ideological politics, readily represented by fashion.