Mimesis, Clothed in Violence

For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.

—Psalms 73:3–6, New International Version

Fashion is a mimetic phenomenon. It thrives in the pleasures and desires of imitation. As sociologist Yuniya Kawamura notices in her book Fashion-ology, early sociologists, such as Veblen, Tarde, and Simmel, all regard fashion as a "concept of imitation."¹ Even if their specific theories differ, Veblen, Tarde, and Simmel saw fashion as an imitative "flow" most dominantly from the superior to inferior, and this became known as the "trickle-down" theory. Even if these ideas have been complemented by many other sociological, psychological, and communicative models, imitation is a central trope in the analysis of fashion, yet little attention has been put to the microdynamics of imitation. Or to put it more poignantly, little attention has been put to the human price of the process of trickle-down, to the fact that rivalry, exclusion, and bullying play a part in the demarcation between fashionable and unfashionable, or to the fact that the distinction between "in" and the "out" is as much conceptual as social and spatial. Using the mimetic theory of René Girard may help put a spotlight on this dynamic and put scapegoating as a central trope in the othering of the style and person who is considered "out": an aesthetic form of scapegoating. As will be made explicit, the ambiguous meanings and significations of dress act as a perfect alibi for such rejections and violence, as the "shallowness" of fashion makes it much harder for the victim to point toward the transgression and retaliate.

The argument follows this trajectory: The first section introduces the reader to some of the basic dynamics of fashion, and the following section ties fashion to the pleasures of mimesis as the third section examines more around the competing forces of rivalry, envy, and status anxiety as played out in fashion. The fourth section examines in more detail how fashion becomes an interface that facilitates bullying and how fashion becomes an aesthetic form of Girardian scapegoating. In the final discussion we see how the "shallowness" of fashion allows bullying in the realm of dress to often go unnoticed.

INTRODUCTION TO THE BASIC DYNAMICS OF FASHION

Fashion is per definition a social phenomenon. We desire to be popular and beautiful and surround ourselves with popular and beautiful people, and fashion can be seen as a materialization of the current desires. However, in a poignant observation, fashion journalist Susanne Pagold argues for a more simple formula to describe the essence of fashion: "to dress like everyone else, but before everyone else."² Following this, fashion can never be totally unique, or experienced in isolation; it cannot be private. Yet we habitually speak of fashion as an individual style, a kind of mind trick that also reinforces the idea of the fashion subject who can forge his or her own luck. Yet this is not only typical of fashion, but the cult of the individual is part of the narrative of our time. The signifying goods are all the more available through cheap and accessible "fast" fashion, as well as through copies, but the positional competition intensifies. Social position is more a zero-sum game than we like to think; for every "in" there is an "out."³

But as Pagold also highlights, fashion is a race; it is about being an "early adopter," and as such, fashion may act as a central arena for our current culture of competition where the prime insult of our time is to be a "loser." As we present an idealized version of ourselves online, we build on expectations that our social lives should be more like those portrayed by others, thus building an arms race in loneliness veiled under aestheticized community. The struggles of the individual to escape being a "loser" may seem remote from the daily life of fashion...