A Dialectical Journey through Fashion and Philosophy

This book takes an in-depth look at the integration of fashion and philosophy. It challenges the deeply rooted prejudice or misconception that fashion is a field limited to body-oriented and appearance-related themes and practices. It also reveals that fashion is intermeshed with distinctively modern issues that belong to the realm of the mind as well as the body. In doing so, it refashions philosophy and philosophizes fashion, which ultimately amount to the same thing. The book argues that while the philosophization of fashion can give a clearer understanding of some esoteric areas of philosophy and fashion’s close connection to modern societies and politics, it also shows that philosophy can assist in redeeming fashion from the objective, bodily world, positioning it as an indispensable part of the humanities. This is because fashion manifests critical aspects of human culture in our time, and is an expression of the zeitgeist, which is interwoven with the unfolding of history. This book will be highly relevant to students and researchers in fashion studies who are looking for the theoretical underpinnings and insights for their own work. It will also be of keen interest to scholars in the field of philosophy who are seeking to apply philosophical concepts to both everyday life and our empirical world.

• Fashion and philosophy
• Philosophy of fashion history
• Fashion history
• Philosophy and cultural history
• Fashion as a utopian impulse
• Consumption of fashion
• Redemption of fashion
• Modernity in the context of philosophy
• Modern social theory of fashion and philosophy
• Philosophization of fashion
• Metaphysics of self pursuit
• Fashion and freedom
• Dialectical image of fashion
• Consciousness, experience and fashion
• Philosophy of fashion
• Fashion and culture
• Pursuit of the self through fashion

• Department of Fashion Design, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

  Eun Jung Kang

Eun Jung Kang is an adjunct professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. She earned her PhD at Cornell University in 2012, her MA from New York University in 2005, and her BA from Sungkyunkwan University in 1997. Her MA thesis examined the relationship between art, design, and popular culture from the 1890s to the 1920s in the US, while her PhD dissertation delved into fashion through the lens of critical theory, political theory, and modern social theory. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, and they touch upon various fields of study, such as art, design, cultural studies, sociology, philosophy, and visual culture. She has received various fellowships, grants, awards and honors for her research, and has published several articles on her areas of research. She has also served as a referee for Theory, Culture & Society.

Policies and ethics