The theme of fashion as a cultural phenomenon of the 19th century in Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin

Abstract

This paper aims to present the analysis of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940) on the subject of fashion. In a first and brief moment, I bring forth and justify the philosophical approach to a very recurrent topic in our culture, which is fashion; then I compare Benjamin’s epistemological approach to Georg Simmel’s theory and his Lebensphilosophie. Concerning this approach, I shortly present the presence of the city of Paris and Baudelaire’s poetry as sensitive devices for the author's reflection. Lastly, I seek to problematize the decisive influence of Karl Marx in Benjamin’s treatment of the theme of fashion as a cultural phenomenon of the 19th century. From Marx, Benjamin borrows the concepts of fetish and phantasmagoria, which are central in all of his later works
and comprise his version of fashion.