Loschek, I. (2009) When Clothes Become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems Oxford: Berg. Available from: https://www-bloomsburyfashioncentral-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781847883681&tocid=b-9781847883681-introduction1&pdfid=9781847883681.0004.pdf [Accessed 16 November 2022]

Cultural sciences and theories of art, design and media, as well as sociology including gender studies, provide key impulses to innovative starting points of research and help to push progress from costume studies towards a science of fashion. (Loschek, 2009, p.1)

fashion displays self-perpetuation through its continual generation of new creations from within, without being part of the economic, art or media system. Clothing and fashion are explained both causally and in conjunction with their social demands. (Loschek, 2009, p.1)

In fashion we find the high end and the low end; as with the distinction between serious and popular music, we have haute couture and designer fashion on the one hand, and everyday clothing on the other. We must take both into account along with their respective claims to innovation. (Loschek, 2009, p.2)

While the emphasis was on semiotics in the 1960s, on human behaviourism in the 1970s, and on communication science and gender studies during the 1990s, innovation research at the start of the twenty-first century calls for new starting points of scientific study. Here in particular, theory should be given access to practice. (Loschek, 2009, p.2)

On the one hand, clothing is very concrete; a product that apparently surrounds us all the time, one that permanently contains us. On the other hand, however, fashion is extremely abstract, since it is negotiated within society. The aforementioned social constructs are what make clothing into fashion. Fashion requires the places and means to reach its addressees. In a similar way to art, in fashion the attention of the viewer is captured so that he can be approached with further messages—some of which are encoded, symbolic in form. If the message is not verbalised by the designer himself or herself, it is the task of fashion theory to formulate and convey it. As with all products, clothing cannot reach its market without communication. Clothing needs images and texts for its global mediation. It employs semiotics to make it recognisable as a social reference. (Loschek, 2009, p.2)

Fashion has abandoned chronology and—parallel to today’s social structure—is now characterised by diversification. This state of affairs makes it logical to examine fashion along with its plurality of styles and to demonstrate the conditions under which fashion may be evaluated as applied art or design. (Loschek, 2009, p.3)

Theory in the sense of perception and reflection is also a creative process and a form of design. Its field of application is universal, for it refers to everything that can be observed. Research is concerned with uncertainty, with searching and thought processes and with contingencies (context, coincidence). However, this does not mean that it has no method. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

Complex value concepts in art or fashion are never transferred from the object to the viewer via contemplation alone; they are negotiated or mediated in a communicative way (cf. p. 139). This communication is not realised in one direction but is based on reciprocal interaction between the designer, object and viewer. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

Fashion (like art) incorporates categories of creative techniques and innovative processes as well as the potential for social exchange. It is presented as an internal viewpoint—that is, reflection that develops from the genuine practice of the creator (artist, designer)—and also as an external viewpoint, which is its social, aesthetic or cultural role. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

The sensory perception of structural qualities, like the visual perception of the colour, form and texture of a brightly coloured piece of cloth, is one thing; the recognition of what it is—for example a dress—is quite another. It is the quality of meaning, the recognition of a board with four legs as a table, which requires socially or individually acquired knowledge. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

The physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz recognised as early as 1850 that ‘[s]ensations, like the eye’s recognition of areas of colour within our field of vision, are signs to the consciousness; the brain must learn to interpret their significance.’^[3] (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

Peirce distinguishes between what is perceived (the percept) and our perceptual judgement. The percept is the sign linking the object and a perceptual judgement. Access to objects always comes about via the reproduction of the percept as a sign. The sign has the form of a sensory impression—in other words, the form of an image, a sound and so forth. The percept is interpreted as something. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

Another example is a piece of cloth which—on the basis of experience, the form or the white shirt surrounding it—one can recognise as a necktie. The more often repeated perceptual judgements are confirmed, the more often they will be internalised as true and subsequently develop into habits of thought and behaviour, like the wearing of a necktie together with a white shirt. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

In philosophy, recognition or cognition is the mental processing of what we have perceived. Perception according to psychology is the sum of various steps of sensory information—reception, interpretation, selection and organisation—and, indeed, of only the information that is received for the purpose of the perceiver’s adaptation to his environment or its alteration (modification). Perception varies due to the individual content of the perceiver’s memories, moods and thought processes, which are used to construct a mental model. As a consequence, every living creature has its own perception. (Loschek, 2009, p.8)

A flexible brain is the obvious prerequisite to humans’ lifelong ability to learn and relearn, but also to imagine new things and accept them, and indeed to constantly organise and reorganise itself. (Loschek, 2009, p.9)

Vestimentary^[9] constructs have been passed down orally since the beginning of historical time, and since the sixteenth century as drawn construction plans—so-called patterns. Since then they have been available in books of patterns and constructions, and as concepts in fashion lexica and encyclopaedias. (Loschek, 2009, p.10)

fashion theory cannot subsist without descriptive costume studies and fashion history as its basis; these analyse styles, forms, cuts and materials on the basis of both objects (artefacts) and visual or verbal descriptions, and place them in the relevant historical contexts. In addition, the specifics of clothing arise as a result of their combination with the human body (cf. p. 158) (Loschek, 2009, p.10)

In clothing, a reference to man—anthropomorphism in the sense of man having two arms and therefore a pullover requiring two sleeves—continues to be valid knowledge. Notwithstanding this, clothing is not measured against human body forms a priori; it also follows its own rules of design (cf. the crinoline), which are asserted insofar as they are evaluated positively in a society. (Loschek, 2009, p.10)

Following the system theory of Niklas Luhmann, the definition of clothing and fashion evolves through form and medium (cf. p. 25). The ‘what’ that we see is followed by turning to ‘how’ we see it. In other words, after the ‘what’ has been clarified as a traditional definition, observation of the ‘how’ begins—as individual, cerebrally synthesised processing. The essence and significance of fashion are thus analysed individually, above and beyond the form of clothing. (Loschek, 2009, p.10)

Duchamp came to the conclusion that the viewer ‘makes’ art. Duchamp’s conclusion can be transferred to fashion, inasmuch as the viewer ‘makes’ clothing into fashion. This meets the extravagant haute couture model’s claim to be fashion, just as an item of clothing becomes the fashion only when it is worn by a specific group within society. (Loschek, 2009, p.10)