Fashion | Sense

On Philosophy and Fashion

Dr Gwenda-lin Grewal

$140

Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
11 August 2022

Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500; Philosophy: aesthetics; Fashion & society

"""Deeply erudite but also playful and full of wit.""

Salman Rushdie

Fashion | Sense is designed to explode “fashion,” and with it, the stigma in philosophy against fashion’s superficiality. Fashion appears to be altogether differently occupied, disingenuous and insubstantial, even sophistic in its pretense to peddle surfaces as if they were something deep. But is fashion’s apparent beguilement more philosophical than it seems? And is philosophy’s longing for exposed depth concealing fashion in its anti-fashion stance?

Using primarily ancient Greek texts, peppered with allusions to their echoes across the history of philosophy and contemporary fashion and pop culture, Gwenda-lin Grewal not only examines the rift between fashion and philosophy, but also challenges the claim that fashion is modern. Indeed, fashion’s quarrel with philosophy may be at least as ancient as that infamous quarrel between philosophy and poetry alluded to in Plato’s Republic. And the quest for fashion’s origins, as if a quest for a neutrally-outfitted self, stripped of the self-awareness that comes with thinking, prompts questions about human agency and our immersion in time. The touch of reality’s fabric bristles in our relationship to our looks, not simply through the structure of clothes but in the plot of our wearing them.

Meanwhile, the fashion of our words sharpens our meaning like a cutting silhouette. Grewal’s own writing is playfully and daringly self-conscious, aware of its style and the entrapment it arouses from the very first line. The reactions provoked by fashion’s flair, not only among the philosophical set but also among those who would never deck themselves out in the title, “philosopher,” show it forth as perhaps philosophy’s most important and underestimated doppelgänger."

By: Dr Gwenda-lin Grewal
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
ISBN: 9781350201453
ISBN 10: 1350201456
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 11 August 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Note to Reader Preface: The 'Other' Ancient Quarrel 1. Fashion Sense 2. Phantom Selves 3. The Dead 4. The Dandy 5. Divine Tailoring 6. The Beauty of Ugliness 7. The Question of Fashion's Beginning Bibliography Index

Gwenda-lin Grewal is the Onassis Lecturer in Ancient Greek Thought and Language at The New School for Social Research, USA. Her other publications include English translations of Plato’s Phaedo (2018) and Cratylus (forthcoming) and the book, Thinking of Death in Plato’s Euthydemus: A Close Reading and New Translation (2022). She is also the recipient of the Blegen Research Fellowship in Greek and Roman Studies at Vassar College and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Humanities at Yale University, USA.

Reviews for Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion

"Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion is a brilliant book... The book is extremely original in writing and thinking. Grewal has style in spades, and this style creates (or rather is) her considerable substance. The book thrums with energy and wit, and it was an absolute pleasure to read. It took my breath away. * Fashion Theory * Gwenda-lin Grewal’s Fashion Sense should be read more than once, for it moves conceptually, on multiple levels, and stylistically on many others. If you read it for its insights into Ancient Greek philosophy, you will find yourself returning to it for its sharp criticism of contemporary society—mores and looks. On a third time, you may want to reread it just for its prose. * British Journal of Aesthetics * This rich, knowledgeable, variegated book challenges easy assumptions about fashion’s modernity. Grewal juxtaposes contemporary manifestations of fashion with situations and characters from ancient literatures in an expert pursuit of fashion-thinking, where “fashion-thinking” means philosophy’s engagement with dress, but also fashion’s own mode of reflection. * Nickolas Pappas, Professor of Philosophy, The City University of New York Graduate Center, USA * A fascinating book by a great new talent which wholly successfully drags philosophy out the closet. In writing that is at once clear and deep, classically informed and very funny, Grewal makes a wholly convincing case for the kinship of philosophy and fashion. Highly recommended."" * Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, The New School for Social Research, New York * FASHION | SENSE is Gwenda-lin Grewal’s brilliant meditation, deeply erudite but also playful and full of wit, on clothing as disguise, revelation, acquiescence, transformation, identity, and second self, as the ""bodies we put on."" In Grewal’s hands the “age-old argument” between philosophy and fashion, the things of the mind and the things of the body, is scintillatingly renewed. * Salman Rushdie, Distinguished Writer in Residence, New York University, USA * Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion by Gwenda-lin Grewal explores how philosophers underestimate fashion's power in their search for the naked truth. Mercifully devoid of academic jargon and pomposity, the book is studded with brilliant and often witty observations on the unexpected parallels between philosophy and fashion. * Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, USA *"