A Study on Walter Benjamin's Thoughts on Fashion Phenomenon

This study is focused on Walter Benjamin’si belief about one of the consequences of modernity:the phenomenon of fashion. After the industrial revolution, which took place in the ۱۸th and ۱۹thcenturies, fashion appeared in the second half of the ۱۹th century, in Paris, as it can be seen inImpressionist paintings. In the beginning, it was considered as a mere covering style, but in theearly ۲۰th century, especially after World War II, while women’s social and commercial activitiesdecreased, it started to play an important role as an important kind of art in all of the fields relatedto modern life, such as power policies, sexism and even protestant movements.Walter Benjamin, one of the most renowned philosophers, art theorists and literary cultural criticsof the ۲۰th century, who was also among the famous thinkers of Frankfurt School, called Paris “thecapital of the ۱۹th century.” Charles Baudelaireii, a lyric poet in the era of high Capitalism, in hisunfinished luminous work The Arcades Project. In some sections of this book, Benjamin criticizedthe modern period as the age of technological reproduction, and also studied the fashion issue.Moreover, regarding the works of Surrealist painters, he studied the collection of The Devil inParis of Grandvilleiii, as an urban organism.The purpose of this research is to study Benjamin's thoughts on the phenomenon of fashion and itsrelationship with the industrial communities in Europe. The main questions are: According toBenjamin, what factors caused the birth of fashion phenomenon? And how did it become one of themost important forms of modern art. My approach in this study was descriptive-analytic method, inorder to explain the ideas of Benjamin in the field of fashion.

Keywords:

Walter Benjamin , Charles Baudelaire , Fashion Philosophy , Roland Barthes , Surrealism