Fashionable Resistance and the Danger of the Multi-Colored Cloak
Illustration by Mike Thompson
Fashion is not politically neutral, and in this series I set myself the task of philosophically unpacking the relation between fashion and politics. The title “Fashionable Resistance” refers to the following: (1) fashion can be a medium for political resistance, (2) political resistance presents itself in certain fashion, understood as dress and manner, including what one wears and how one speaks, and (3) the fashion, and manner, of political resistance is never completely free from fashionable and unfashionable trends that pull this resistance in different ways. This last claim is what political resistance and fashion struggle most against: to fight the current that demands that fashion and politics, the garb and gears of social justice, only be of the current times, and not break free from the center of gravity holding them to just a passing concern. I hold, in contrast to this worry, that fashion and political resistance have an escape velocity, a force that allows them to escape from the center of gravity of the mere present, to aim toward change today and for tomorrow. Philosophy provides us the venue, I think, to unravel these claims and better understand their implications.
This claim might, at first blush, seem inappropriate if not a stretch of the seams. After all, when philosophy dares to assess the catwalk and other venues where fashion presents itself, is it not on shaky ground? On the one hand, fashion deals with the here-and-now, the day to day, and ephemeral sensibilities. On the other hand, philosophy deals not of this earth, but abstract principles, of universal systems, those that extend beyond the here and now. Though there certainly is a fashion to philosophy, as all disciplines go through books and methods that fall in and out of vogue, this fashion is seen as passing and simply one form of appearance to philosophy. Similarly, though all designers and couturiers have a philosophy, that which their fabrications seek to express in a myriad of ways, that philosophy is a guiding thread to their overall goal. In each of these cases, both philosophy and fashion can use one another to reach their own goals; rarely, if ever, are they in conversation with one another.
At best we can say that fashion and philosophy deal with separate spheres of existence — the former with the concrete yet ephemeral, the latter with universality but also abstraction — and should be kept separately. These stilettos, to paraphrase Nancy Sinatra, were not made for thinking. It’s debatable, however, whether they were even made for walking. This attitude, that philosophical inquiry and fashion are distinct spheres of human activity that cannot interact without one undermining and sullying the other, was captured quite nicely by Daniel Day-Lewis’s character Reynolds Woodcock, couturier of the eponymous fashion house, in the 2017 film Phantom Thread. In one scene, Reynolds discusses the loss of an important client with his sister and business partner, Cyril (played by Lesley Manville). Cyril claims the move to another house stems from the clients wanting something new, fashionable, and chic, to which Reynolds explodes:
“Chic?! Oh, don’t you start using that filthy little word. Chic! Whoever invented that ought to be spanked in public. I don’t even know what that word means. What is that word? Fucking chic! They should be hung, drawn, and quartered. Fucking chic!” [1]
It is entirely reasonable to assume a similar response to the claim that philosophy and fashion have anything to say to one another, and it would be taking such ridiculousness further to bring politics into the mix.
Yet, it is Plato himself who philosophically weaves politics and fashion together in his dialogue on justice, The Republic. It is specifically in the context of the cycles of government, when discussing democracy — progenitor of, and just one step removed from, the most unjust form of government, tyranny — that fashion enters the fray. Democracy is the only form of government, for Plato, that admits of the greatest variety of people. Since democracy means the rule of the people, it allows the rule of each person, that each person can set the rule not only for themselves but for one another and for life in common. What follows deserves to be quoted in full. Socrates claims:
“Then it [democracy] looks as though this is the finest or most beautiful of the constitutions, for, like a coat embroidered with every kind of ornament, this city, embroidered with every kind of character type, would seem to be the most beautiful. And many people would probably judge it to be so, as women and children do when they see something multicolored.” [2]
There’s quite a bit to unpack here. Rather than dealing with democracy, Socrates attacks ideas associated with democracy and its appearance as a beautiful multi-colored coat or cloak. The guiding problem, for Socrates, is that democracy appears in a manner other than how it actually is. Democracy appears to be beautiful, but we shouldn’t be fooled. That is actually a false appearance, democracy’s mask. This mask is made up precisely of the admittance of such a rich variety of diverse people, diverse in all aspects. As apparent beauty, moreover, it appeals most to the de facto uneducated or non-citizens of that time, women and children. Democracy is also, so the argument goes, emasculate and effeminate. No mention of slavery is made since, it is to be assumed that, in theory — thus in contrast to how it actually was in Ancient Greece — democracy is incompatible with slavery.
Democracy as multicolored cloak. This has, for me, a nice ring to it, and I like the implications of the image. One reading of this, however, that I would wish to oppose immediately is identifying Plato’s depiction of democracy with a contemporary form that democracy in the industrialized, so-called first world, has assumed. This would be the kind of democracy apparent in a Coca Cola commercial, [3] and that embodies what I call a United Colors of Benetton Politics. According to this politics, diversity and all else are acceptable so long as it does not upset the bottom line of the accounting books. That is to say, diversity in all of its forms and diverse thoughts are tolerated only if they do not upset profits. If profits increase as a result of such apparent democracy, a democracy that is only in name without addressing freedom and equality of all by all, so much the better. It’s best not to talk about how profit incentives actually further inequality and class antagonisms. I think that, if anything, Socrates’s criticism of democracy is more apt for how capital today appropriates democratic principles and a diverse social fabric for its own profit-driven purposes.
“Democracy, understood as multicolored cloak, is the only form of government that admits all differences, including elements that undermine its own efficacy.”
I would rather like to focus on the danger that such a multicolored cloak raises, for Socrates, and also what possibilities it provides. What is this danger, and why compare democracy to a cloak, multicolored or not? According to ancient Greek aesthetic sensibilities, all works (including arts and crafts) had to be assembled according to the law of proportion. No part of a figure should be larger than it actually was, in proportion to the whole that it was a part of. The forms we see with cubism, for example, are unthinkable as aesthetic forms for the ancient Greeks. Second, this law of proportion and hierarchy extended to color combinations and the measure of musical tone. Each part of the whole should not only be in proportion with other parts, but the color combinations should not upset any established hierarchy or sensibility decreed by certain abstract principles. One shouldn’t, therefore, overuse a certain color or mix and match colors that clearly aren’t complementary. Kitsch and gaudy combinations are frowned upon. Furthermore, multiple colors invite complexity, which is strictly forbidden in Socrates’s just city.
The answer, to be clear, is not that one should identify what such a multi-colored cloak might look like, if it even ever did exist. Such an issue is for historians, archaeologists, and ancient scholars. Again, I am not interested in how effective a judge Socrates would be on Project Runway. I’m more so interested in the danger of this multicolored cloak. The danger it presents as an idea. That is to say, imagine a fabric assembled by all diverse and disparate colors, constituted out of the infinite variety of people. Democracy, understood as multicolored cloak, is the only form of government that admits all differences, including elements that undermine its own efficacy. It furthermore grants legitimacy and a space for any form of expression without reducing that expression to an arbitrary hierarchical order. It is, most important, the only form of government that as a principle extends the rule of law to all of its members with no prerequisites. Here democracy, as multicolored cloak, goes even beyond just a form of government or regime and signals a way of life and way of being in common. This way of life holds that all, as both independent part and member of a whole, are able to participate in ruling with everyone else. Their participatory activities extend to both their own lives as well as the lives of others. Insofar as one participates in the multicolored nature of this coat, one shares in constructing the very fabric of life in common with one another. That is precisely what no other system of government can tolerate, that one chooses to both be part of and constitute such a multicolored and diverse cloak.
Notes
[1] Universal Pictures, “Phantom Thread Reynolds Woodcock's Quotable Confrontations” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LAKU5LF_WU&feature=youtu.be&t=59
[2] Plato, Republic, 557c-d. In Plato: Complete Works, Ed. John Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.
[3] Coca Cola, “Hilltop, I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke,” 1971, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VM2eLhvsSM&feature=youtu.be
