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against orthodoxies in fashion and elsewhere on an individual level. Even
more than a manifesto for transgressive fashion, this is a manifesto for le-
gitimising difference and uniqueness not only in fashion, but in any aspect
of humanness.
Some decades ago, the science of clothing and fashion needed a radical
epistemological break to arrive at an understanding of clothing not only as
a material artefact but as a symbolic practice. Another deep epistemologi-
cal cut had to follow in order to usher in understanding and acceptance of
the fact that fashion is not, in fact, simply an exclusive practice but rather
an everyday one. Then this science had to face another daring epistemo-
logical transgression; our everyday clothing practice is no longer seen in
terms of a natural clothing register but rather as always already a register
of masquerade (briefly: the difference between masquerade and fashion
that fits ‘naturally’ is in that the former is seen as something performa-
tively enacted, non-authentic, akin to camouflage and hence fake, while
‘natural fashion’ seems perfectly ‘spontaneous’ and ‘authentic’ in its real-
isation, a permanent given, a thing-in-itself, and hence trustworthy). The
next epistemological step was made in the direction of no longer treating
fashion as simply a clothing practice but also as an (external or comple-
mentary) bodily practice (that is, fashion as a means of transforming the
body). Meanwhile, uncomfortably, that science needed yet a further epis-
temological revision to reach an understanding of fashion not merely as a
Western capitalist practice but a generally human, multicultural, and inter-
cultural one. And now, not least with this book, the increasingly powerful
and irrefutable entrance of transgender, transgenerational, transcultural,
and other types of transgressive bodily identities into our fields of vision
brings about a new epistemological challenge to the science: to understand
fashion not only as an external or complementary bodily practice (cloth-
ing as what assists the body in its transformation) but as an internal, ac-
tivational bodily practice (the body itself as a changeable yet specifically
autonomous mechanism that does not need the help of fashion in order
to radically transform fashion as it appears on the body or comes into con-
tact with the body; it is true that common sense ascribes certain potentials
for transformation to the body, yet these bodily transformations tend to
be imagined in advance and accepted exclusively within the boundaries of
the orthodox order of those bodily identities that are considered to be per-
manent and unchangeable givens).
In order to truly achieve this new epistemological breakthrough in the
conceptual understanding of the constitution of fashion and its clothing
244
against orthodoxies in fashion and elsewhere on an individual level. Even
more than a manifesto for transgressive fashion, this is a manifesto for le-
gitimising difference and uniqueness not only in fashion, but in any aspect
of humanness.
Some decades ago, the science of clothing and fashion needed a radical
epistemological break to arrive at an understanding of clothing not only as
a material artefact but as a symbolic practice. Another deep epistemologi-
cal cut had to follow in order to usher in understanding and acceptance of
the fact that fashion is not, in fact, simply an exclusive practice but rather
an everyday one. Then this science had to face another daring epistemo-
logical transgression; our everyday clothing practice is no longer seen in
terms of a natural clothing register but rather as always already a register
of masquerade (briefly: the difference between masquerade and fashion
that fits ‘naturally’ is in that the former is seen as something performa-
tively enacted, non-authentic, akin to camouflage and hence fake, while
‘natural fashion’ seems perfectly ‘spontaneous’ and ‘authentic’ in its real-
isation, a permanent given, a thing-in-itself, and hence trustworthy). The
next epistemological step was made in the direction of no longer treating
fashion as simply a clothing practice but also as an (external or comple-
mentary) bodily practice (that is, fashion as a means of transforming the
body). Meanwhile, uncomfortably, that science needed yet a further epis-
temological revision to reach an understanding of fashion not merely as a
Western capitalist practice but a generally human, multicultural, and inter-
cultural one. And now, not least with this book, the increasingly powerful
and irrefutable entrance of transgender, transgenerational, transcultural,
and other types of transgressive bodily identities into our fields of vision
brings about a new epistemological challenge to the science: to understand
fashion not only as an external or complementary bodily practice (cloth-
ing as what assists the body in its transformation) but as an internal, ac-
tivational bodily practice (the body itself as a changeable yet specifically
autonomous mechanism that does not need the help of fashion in order
to radically transform fashion as it appears on the body or comes into con-
tact with the body; it is true that common sense ascribes certain potentials
for transformation to the body, yet these bodily transformations tend to
be imagined in advance and accepted exclusively within the boundaries of
the orthodox order of those bodily identities that are considered to be per-
manent and unchangeable givens).
In order to truly achieve this new epistemological breakthrough in the
conceptual understanding of the constitution of fashion and its clothing
244
