Fashioning the political statement : A qualitative study into the duality of postfashion

Abstract: The aim of this study is to examine the interrelationship between contemporary French luxury fashion and political struggles by examining the garments with explicit political statements from the ready-to-wear spring/summer 2015 Chanel runway, the ready-to-wear spring/summer 2017 Dior runway and the menswear fall/winter 2017 Balenciaga runway analysis as to discern the possible reasons and effects of the making of these statements. The focus of this thesis is to examine the way political struggles, as immaterial social relationships, can be commodified into garments, as according to the Marxist situationist theories of Guy Debord, and how the commodification in question by haute couture houses, rich with the sociological notion of cultural capital as described by Pierre Bourdieu, can have a potential effect on the formation of both fashion discourses and political discourses by using Foucauldian discourse analysis. The results of the study showed that there is an inherent duality to luxury postfashion, the notion of postfashion being the one described by Barbara Vinken, as it is a phenomenon which thrives on the principles of exclusion through its price-points and small target groups, but at the same time strives to deconstruct the notions of exclusivity by incorporating political statements into their products which reference and encourage the togetherness of political struggles such as socialism and feminism.