INTERCONNECTION OF FASHION AND GENDER AS MECHANISMS OF SELF-EXPRESSION AND SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN MODERN SOCIETY
Authors: Zhukov Dmitriy Andreevich 
Published: October 2021

Problem setting. The problem is that modern society focuses on politics of multiculturalism and tolerance. The main reason of this tendency is globalization process that grows rapidly because of Internet development. In this situation, we consider that Institute of Culture changed the most. Nowadays, such phenomena as gender and fashion affect our global society more than it was at the past century.

Recent research and publications analysis. Separately from gender, phenomenon of fashion have been considered from the 20th century to the present in the works of T. Veblen, G. Simmel, P. Blumer, P. Burdeau, R. Bart, J. Baudrillard. As well as phenomenon of gender considered separately from fashion in the works of E. Durkheim, T. Parsons, K. Bales, R. Connell and I. Goffman. As we can see, nobody from aforementioned didn’t connect fashion and gender in their works, ignoring obvious interconnection of these phenomena.

Paper objective. The objective of the article is to identify the interconnection between mechanisms of fashion functioning and gender’s dimension of society that forms gender’s priorities of modern fashion.

Paper main body. The classic paradigm of fashion as a socio-cultural phenomenon created by T. Veblen and G. Simmel doesn’t match modern challenges in society. Because of active development of mechanisms such as mass-market and digital technologies we can’t say that modern fashion is only for rich people. That’s why the most appealing concept to us is M. G. Pakhomova’s sight of fashion like “the mirror of epoch that shows us current mood dominating in society, socio-political situation and the level of production’s development”. Considering gender, in this article we focus on the concept of social construction of gender as a certain system of interpersonal actions that create understanding of “masculine” and “feminine” as a social order’s basic categories. Analyzing modern theories of fashion created by H. Blumer, R. Bart, P. Bourdieu and J. Baudrillard we came to idea that gender is an integral part of any fashion tendency. Nowadays, every tendency in fashion forms across mechanism of collective selection that include many social groups. One of these groups will become a referent for an individual. That’s why we should consider that this kind of social group has certain standards broadcasting specific norms and patterns of behavior that unite actors among themselves.

Conclusions of the research. Thus, summarizing, we should note that fashion and gender in modern society are interdependent phenomena. Also, fashion includes the tendency for social subjects to demonstrate gender characteristics to some extent, deliberately emphasizing them and giving them the opportunity to realize their identity to the fullest, as they wish. Modern fashion is designed to provide an individual with a variety of choices, aesthetic pleasure, non-standard stylistic solutions, which provokes the individual to actively search for his place in this world and a unique way of socialization. In many ways, all of the above elements add up to a single gender system, which gives us full grounds to synthesize two areas of sociological thought: gender studies and the sociology of fashion.