The Era of Fashion and Birth of New Pluralism

Abstract

The paper is a contribution to contemporary discussion of fashion in general and modem pluralistic tendencies in fashion in particular. A historical analysis, starting with the beginnings of fashion at the dawn of new era, its spreading throughout Europe and global prevailing of fashion in garments in the West and individual societies, indicates there were three stages in the development of fashion as a contemporary phenomenon - phase of imitating, phase of creative polycentrism and modem pluralistic phase. Furthermore, analysis of various theories of fashion discloses their fast deterioration and substitution of the old with a new one. It also shows that fashion is not only one of the most dynamic global phenomena, with a number of diversified faces and possibilities of approach, but is also, together with the new cybernetic technology and fine arts, a key of rapid and irreversible transformation of contemporary way of life and thinking. Finally, the paper lists postmodern authors and trends of most successful ways of thinking in the field.