Ambiguity as a Tool to Seize Power and Fashion as a Political Manifesto

Luigi Vitali in conversation with Emanuele Coccia

Engaging with a series of philosophical quotes from Michel Foucault to Mircea Eliade and from Max Weber to Judith Butler, we sit down with philosopher Emanuele Coccia to explore the intersection of fashion and philosophy in his latest book, co-authored with designer Alessandro Michele. As Coccia asserts, fashion is far more than just ‘springlike’ or ‘youthful’—it is a profound philosophical expression akin to art taken to its highest form.

La Vita delle Forme: Filosofia del Reincanto (The Life of Shapes: Philosophy of Re-enchantment), published by HarperCollins, is more than a reflection on the practice of fashion. It’s a transformative manifesto that breaks the boundaries of conventional fashion discourse and reveals the philosophical foundations of Fashion and its artefacts.

Among the various themes, the central one we discuss with Coccia is the ability to embrace ambiguity as a potent force that can reshape personal identity and challenge societal norms. Ambiguity, he says, becomes a political tool to transcend binary opposition and rebellion, embodying instead a philosophy of transformation and integration and paving the way for a more inclusive, equitable world—one where diverse identities and experiences are not only recognised but celebrated.

Luigi Vitali – This book, co-written by you and Alessandro Michele, intertwines your two lines of thought, integrating and complementing each other like—as you mentioned—the commentaries of the Talmud. Let’s start then with a quote from the Talmud:

“Iron sharpens iron; so one man sharpens another.” (Ta’anit 7a).

How has the process of defining and ‘sharpening’ each other unfolded in this dialogue about fashion, which is more than just the sum of its parts?

Emanuele Coccia – Well, actually, as Alessandro also mentioned in his interview, everything happened very naturally. We met through Vanni, his partner, who is a lecturer in urban theory at the University La Sapienza in Rome. He had shown him the video of a conference I had given twelve years before. And it seems that Alessandro said, “It’s incredible; he understands everything about me.” However, that conference dated back to 2010, before he ever designed a collection. Our first meetings took place during Covid, in long conversations on Zoom. We immediately clicked. So, our relationship began, and a few years later, he proposed that we write a book together. Writing a philosophy book for him was particularly important because it was one of the things that distinguished his practice as a creative director. Alessandro has always claimed that philosophy is the appropriate language for discussing fashion. In my work, I do the reverse task, affirming that the privileged object of philosophy is fashion. Why? Because fashion is the only avant-garde that has succeeded in aligning art and life. So, every true philosophy can only become fashion or reflect on what fashion practices are. We had very river-long conversations that became mutual psychoanalytic sessions.

For me, it was quite a rare opportunity. I have been studying and working on the concept of fashion for a long time, but, as you know, fashion has a bizarre, almost adolescent relationship with words. Unlike other arts, such as painting, architecture, and sculpture—where words are preserved, enriched, published, and commented upon – in fashion, nothing is known about what happens in the ateliers. The legacies and works are often hidden for ridiculous fears of being copied, and the artist’s word is usually not considered pertinent. So, having an almost live exchange with one of the greatest designer minds of our current times was an enormous gift.

Alessandro is not just a designer but an intellectual and an artist. I recall a couple of times when he explained why porcelain, more than industry itself, has been the true driving force of modernity in art for him. Porcelain forces art to practise gestures and daily rituals, filling everyday objects with stories. This is one of his strongest poetic traits: covering clothes with stories and symbols. This vision is also a narrative of art history and a very Italian one as well.

I learned a great deal from him. It was such a strong process of osmosis that it was difficult to distinguish what came from him and what came from me. I believe this exchange has allowed both of us to say new and important things about what fashion is today, about the relationship between fashion and other arts, and between fashion and culture. Conversations with him were the cocoon of metamorphosis, the consequences of which I am only now beginning to measure. But I couldn’t describe them well, also because a butterfly does not remember having once been a caterpillar.

L.V. – You just mentioned how Alessandro is an intellectual and an artist. With that in mind, I’d like to share a quote by Michel Foucault:

“I believe the role of the intellectual is to destroy evidence and universalities, to break stereotypes, to disperse what is known, to make visible what is not, to make people feel that everything is possible.”

These words are very similar to those you use to describe a designer’s work, yet they are not often associated with fashion in common thought.

E.C. – The intellectual figure and the designer are inherently overlapping. Only a very dusty and academic tradition could think that the intellectual is the one who writes words and that the designer, working with materials, is not. However, things are constantly evolving. In our everyday way of thinking, the conception of an intellectual artist includes writers, painters, sculptors, and architects, even though it has not always been this way. In the Middle Ages and late Antiquity, there was a fundamental division between the liberal arts, belonging to a free man, and the mechanical arts, belonging to slaves. Being a painter, sculptor, or actor was reserved for slaves and considered a less noble art.

A passage from Plutarch illustrates this idea well: being a sculptor meant kneeling, getting dirty, breathing stone dust, and having a miserable life. This was the opposite of the spiritual life achieved through contemplation. Then, in the 15th and 16th centuries, a generation of artists began to rebel against this idea. Alberti, in his De Pictura, demonstrated that painting is a liberal art: to paint, one must be a great mathematician, tell stories like in rhetoric, etc. Art then became the expression of freedom through the manipulation of matter. This insight, which did not exist in Ancient Egypt or Rome, turned all artists into great intellectuals. They are capable not only of writing but also of inventing formulas of freedom by working with matter.

Fashion is no different; in fact, it is an art that takes as its subject the artefact closest to the human body, something that everyone must wear, and with that, it produces tools of universal freedom. A fashion designer is an intellectual to the nth degree. A true fashion designer frees the body and soul simultaneously, transforming bodies and offering continuous liberation. Fashion is the art par excellence.

L.V. – Let’s delve into how you arrive at defining fashion as the art par excellence. We begin by citing a quote by an artist of the 20th-century avant-garde movement, Umberto Boccioni, who famously stated,

“We must invent and rebuild the universe, making it serve our daily needs.”

Additionally, we can consider a later quote by avant-garde musician John Cage,

“Art is not different from life. It is a way of expressing our life.”

It is within the avant-garde movements of the 20th century that the individual—with all its desires, tumults, and capacity to create and perceive the world—became the centre of its universe. What you assert in the book is that the art form that best encapsulates the essence of the artistic movements of the first half of the 20th century, particularly the synthesis between art and life, is precisely fashion.

E.C. – Yes, fashion is the only avant-garde that has succeeded if you think about it. At a certain point in the early 20th century, artists realised that art and life must coincide. That’s why design or decorative arts entered the fine arts canon at that time. At that moment, the Bauhaus school began to assert that art is not only architecture, sculpture, and painting but also the way you design a coffee cup, chairs, and tables. The idea that emerged at that time is that art must approach everyday existence as closely as possible. Fashion, among all the arts, is the only one that can fulfil this demand because it is an integral part of everyday life. Chanel knew very well that fashion is avant-garde. fashion is both a creator and an interpreter, an art form with which we interact every moment of our day. And it’s a living art that exists among people. It’s no coincidence that all creators say, “I draw inspiration from the street,” because in the end, you have to make clothes that people wear. An outfit that only exists in a museum is not fashion; it’s a costume.

Fashion cannot be like other art forms because it must be worn. And the fashion system demands further freedom: the freedom for everyone to use the forms artists produce. Fashion is the only avant-garde that has realised this desire and has made it into a system.

L.V. – Herbert Marcuse writes,

“Art subverts the dominant order because it refuses to envisage or project a world that can be accepted as it is.”

Similarly, fashion refuses definitive definitions of our present, our bodies, and our identities, subverting the dominant order more than other art forms. But in a society where everything is accessible, repeatable, and shareable, how can fashion still be liberating?

E.C. – Fashion maintains its liberating value, even more so despite the flaws and all the valid criticism directed at it, from its current structure to being held hostage by huge commercial and financial empires. We mustn’t forget that its liberating power has deep roots. Looking at the history of fashion, we can take Chanel’s birth as a reference point, the first great female designer. The elegance introduced by Chanel is extraordinary because, in an era of simplification, she transformed sportswear—a functional and practical garment—into a symbol of elegance. This process of purifying late 19th-century ostentation was significant because it wasn’t simply an aesthetic change but a true anthropological revolution. Through this new approach, Chanel implicitly stated that to understand a woman’s garment, one must understand what it means to be an athlete. In an era when the female body was segregated, this represented an incredible form of liberation.

Fashion, therefore, didn’t originate as mere decoration but as a means of liberation. Through aesthetics, identity can be liberated and redefined. This anthropological revolution allowed the history of fashion to evolve. Initially, this practice was limited to a certain social class, such as the upper bourgeoisie or the former European aristocracy. However, fashion has become a more inclusive phenomenon over time, and it is capable of addressing a wider audience.
From the 1950s and 1960s, when the first major houses began designing ready-to-wear lines, there was an aesthetic community between the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie, and the upper bourgeoisie. A uniformity of appearance between different classes began to be created, and the tools of liberation were socially extended, making fashion something that no longer had to express belonging to a certain social class but rather standing for one’s own freedom.
In the 1960s, with brands like Yves Saint Laurent, fashion began to express the present time, no longer social superiority but an identity common to everyone, from the poor to the rich. Adhering to one’s own time means freeing oneself from classic sociological determinations.

In the 1980s and 1990s, fashion became a global language with brands like Armani, Versace, and later Prada, and with the birth of large financial groups. Fashion, once a European or Western language, became a universal phenomenon. Today, no human being is indifferent to fashion. Even if someone decides to oppose it, they cannot ignore its existence. Fashion is a global phenomenon that allows anyone to express an identity, transcending place, tradition, religion, and social class. Fashion has thus remained a tool of freedom and liberation, a global language that speaks to a worldwide audience, shaking our idea of freedom. Today, more than ever, fashion has a considerable stake; we must understand how to create a more exciting and less conservative system.

The current problem is the need for more awareness among designers about the fact that fashion is the source of planetary culture.

For example, appointing Pharrell as a creative director is a problem not because it’s a commercial choice but because it’s outdated. It’s OK to be commercial, but if you appoint Pharrell, you’re pushing the past ahead, not the future. He represents the last vestige of a finished American pop and entertainment world in terms of liberation. It cannot be considered a liberating expression like 1970s rock music; it’s rather dated and boring.

Perhaps we need to appoint someone with stronger needs and a more refined form of imagination, less formatted. I mean, all the great designers of the last 15-20 years, like Alexander McQueen, Demna, Virgil Abloh, were able to master and show this ability. Even Virgil Abloh was a much smarter, avant-garde, and refined choice. Virgil had such a sophisticated message that he asked questions like how little needed to change in a product to make it different. His answer was 3%, a level of very refined minimalism.

L.V. – One of the central themes of current fashion is sustainability. E.F. Schumacher writes,

“Development is not just economic growth, but growth of everything that makes human life worth living.”

In this sense, what role does this aspect play in the theoretical discourse of fashion?

E.C. – So, it must be said that sustainability, while crucial, is just one facet that cannot singularly determine the value of a piece or a collection. There’s an issue in the discourse. For example, recently, when writing a presentation for young designers, I was asked to emphasise that the focus for these designers should be on being responsible and eco-friendly. I was irritated because using recycled paper doesn’t make you a great writer. You have to use recycled paper to respect the environment primarily, but to be a great writer, you have to add something. The same goes for designers: using natural processes is the foundation; it’s not a virtue; it’s more about following the law because now it’s a European regulation to be sustainable. Making fashion or art is another thing that has nothing to do with eco-sustainability.

The issue is being misunderstood. Aesthetic judgement criteria are being taken and mistaken for purely legal or common-sense facts. It’s not that Lessico Familiare is a good brand because it does upcycling and is responsible, but because of the stories it tells. The nature of fashion is to be revolutionary, not responsible. If Rambaldi or Panconesi today tell completely different stories from those of Armani or the great Italians of the past, it’s not because they want to be good or country priests saying let’s love each other, but because those stories are extraordinary and break everything. They are not responsible; in fact, they are irresponsible, like Armani, who made the female work outfit cool. Reducing these categories diminishes artistic genius and the liberating value of those who take risks by making certain gestures. Designers shouldn’t want the consolation prize of being good citizens or good Christians. The issue of eco-sustainability then needs to be framed. A well-made garment with good material lasts twenty or thirty years. Surely, the system needs to be reformed because it’s outdated, lagging behind other industries, and unsustainable. But this depends a lot also on fast fashion, which, despite needing deep regulation, has, in a way ensured the overcoming of class differences. It’s such a socially complex problem that discussions are often conducted with great superficiality.

Fast fashion has allowed huge population segments to speak through their clothes and say something different from their class affiliation. Benetton first, and then Zara, have allowed anyone to express their moods every time they dress and not just based on how much they earn per month. Socially, this has a huge function. We can’t take all of this away; otherwise, we will reproduce a social fracture with immense political and economic costs. Today, in every democratic or semi-democratic society, everyone can express personal and particular things by dressing. Fast fashion allows this and is an essential element of democracy. We can’t just say that those who use it are idiots. Fast fashion’s role in democratisation is enormous; we can’t eliminate it, but we must find new forms.

L.V. – Let’s move from one extreme to another in this game of quotations. From the standardisation and low quality of mass fashion items to the foundational and symbolic quality of sacred objects. In this regard, Mircea Eliade writes:

“The sacred object is so charged with meaning that it becomes the centre through which a world can be constructed, lived, and understood.”

In a sense, however, fashion also manages to evoke a multitude of meanings that, in our daily lives, have the power to transform everything around us. Can we even say, with hyperbole, that fashion exists as a centre from which reality can be built, lived, and understood? As if, by realising it, we confer upon it a certain ‘sacredness’.

E.C. – Yes, but I would say almost the opposite.

The mystery of fashion is that a garment is an extension of the soul, and you realise that the soul exists much more in things than in yourself.

You need a supplement of the soul that can be provided through objects and can express who you want to be. It is a strange materialist religion that tells you that God can be found in things.

There is a beautiful anecdote about Heraclitus, who one day while baking bread, turned to his guests and said: “Come, come,” pointing to the oven, “the gods are also here.” It is as if fashion makes us understand that matter is divine and has the ability to give soul to our bodies. We do not infuse our soul into clothes; the clothes themselves give us soul, identity, freshness, and freedom.

This is a painful and difficult mystery to accept because we must constantly seek this supplement of the soul in objects. The idea of freeing oneself from the slavery of things is naive. Human bodies are not self-sufficient: we must eat to live and complete our appearance through other means. No human culture has ever been entirely naked. We need to cut our hair, get dressed and do other things to maintain our identity. Fashion has discovered and domesticated this need. It is like the discovery of fire: when humans domesticated fire, everything changed. Fashion has domesticated matter, transforming it into a tool to expand our souls daily.

L.V. – After all, it is for this reason that you speak of fashion as a ‘Philosophy of Re-enchantment’.  Let’s reconstruct the origin of this word together. Max Weber wrote in 1918,

“The fate of our epoch is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. The clarification of thought drives away magic” and again, “The increasing intellectualisation and rationalisation, therefore, do not mean an increasing general knowledge (…) it means something different: (…) that all things can – in principle – be mastered through rational calculation. But this means the disenchantment of the world.”

In this book—as stated in its subtitle—you refer to the tradition of those who, in reaction to this ‘disenchantment’, rather oppose a ‘re-enchantment’, the mystery, and the coexistence of multiple meanings. How did this subtitle—which is the poetic declaration of this project—come about?

E.C. – The suggestion to use ‘Philosophy of Re-enchantment’ came from Vanni, who followed the making of the book in a discreet, attentive, and very generous manner. When we had to decide on the subtitle, the idea was to remove the word ‘fashion’ from the title—which initially did not please the publishers, especially the foreign ones. Vanni suggested this title, which is perfect because it reflects a central theme of the book. As you say, Weber described modernity as an exercise in rational mastery of the world, allowing for current living conditions that are incomparable to those of the past. However, the price to pay was the extinction of the world’s mystery: everything became predictable and calculable. However, there is an aspect that Weber did not consider, and that is everyday and personal life, especially the interaction with one’s own identity and that of others. This aspect is impossible to disenchant. The relationship each of us have with ourselves is a constant relationship of faith and divination; we have no idea who we really are.

Fashion is an exercise in auscultation and divination. We try to understand if that outfit reflects our soul when we dress. Fashion forces us to admit that there is a psychic aspect to our relationships with ourselves and others, in which enchantment is impossible to dissolve. We cannot master enchantment or psychic and identity unpredictability.

Once fashion was created, social identities exploded. The soul is in a continuous flare-up, and we cannot predict what will happen when we give it space. There are those, like Alessandro, for example, who manage to see what is emerging; they neither dominate nor calculate it. They just try to give voice to what they observe. Fashion is, therefore, a tool of re-enchantment and proof that we cannot be completely disenchanted when it comes to the most intimate experience we have of ourselves and others.

L.V. – Re-enchantment is closely tied to the concept of ambiguity that you discuss in the book. In this regard, a quote by Heidegger is relevant:

“Ambiguity is the way in which the truth is revealed,” as well as a phrase by Bertrand Russell, “Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts that it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.” 

As you explain in the book, can we say that the closeness of philosophy to fashion lies in their mutual concern with expressing and giving voice to our intrinsic ambiguity? This aspect is fundamental in the poetics of Alessandro Michele. Can you explain how?

E.C. – Certainly. Think about his first collection. The one from January 2015 that he created in 10 days even before being appointed artistic director. I don’t know if you remember it, but in that collection, there was a recurring element concerning all the boys: the lavallière. This choice demonstrates a deep understanding of sartorial language and history because the lavallière was the tie that the Duchess of Lavallière took from the body of King Louis XIV, her lover, as an extraordinary gesture of empowerment: a woman taking a symbol of male power and using it for herself.

The lavallière has traversed the entire history of feminism, from the garçonnière to Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, to powerful women like Thatcher and cultural icons like Peggy from Mad Men. Putting the lavallière on men suggested that today, males need to take the symbols of power from women. This gesture was sophisticated and powerful, revealing a mastery of a complex and layered language.

Fashion is a commentary on social norms, not a norm in itself. It is a reflection and a change of norms. Regarding the division of heteropatriarchal genders, modern fashion was built in a very paradoxical way without there being an equal male-female division. On the contrary, it was born as a very perverse division, where the masculine represented the zero degree of communication, and the feminine the maximum degree.

This happened in the mid-19th century during the ‘great renunciation’. The man, a child of industrialisation, renounces the forms and complex language of garment construction, opting for dark colours and simplified forms, defining himself through the inability to communicate. The male suit, jacket and tie, a reworking of the late 19th-century English casual suit, is a way of saying: ‘I remain at the zero degree of communication because I only need to show that I produce wealth.’ It is left to women to use this language arbitrarily to express everything: age, belonging, sentimental status, etc.

All subsequent attempts to overturn this opposition have failed because they represented only different versions of cross-gender, that is, putting a feminine garment on a man and vice versa. But cross-gender is just a poetic licence. When you adopt a poetic licence, you do not change the grammar; you are saying, ‘I am making an exception.’ However, an exception is not a revolution; it is an exception that confirms the rule. When, for example, you put a skirt on a man, to make it readable, you must continue to associate the skirt with its feminine meaning. So, you do not change anything at all.

On the other hand, especially in the 90s, the idea of no gender or unisex was actually a form of cross-dressing and an extension of the patriarchal domain. The masculine is neutral in fashion; it is not a specific form. So, no gender meant forcing everyone, especially women, to dress like men. Again, it was not a great revolution.

Alessandro’s brilliant idea was not to simply invert gender roles but to create clothes that were simultaneously masculine and feminine. This insight is enormous. He started with a minimal gesture, putting a lavallière on men’s clothes. Alessandro radicalised this ambiguity, opening the floodgates to a new way of thinking about gender in fashion. He introduced the idea that an outfit should not confirm or deny identity but allow one to have multiple identities simultaneously. This concept is beautiful, and even today, gender theory struggles to fully conceive of it.

L.V. – Speaking of gender theory, let’s see what one of its most famous theorists, Judith Butler, says:

“Gender is not a stable identity but is instituted through a stylised repetition of acts. These acts, gestures, and enactments establish what is socially accepted as gender and are both the products and the producers of power.” 

According to your thinking, what is the relationship between ambiguity and power?

E.C. – Gender theory is still very much about identity, tied to identity fetishes like pronouns. In this, Alessandro’s fashion is ahead of academic thought, surpassing even theories like Judith Butler’s. It’s not just about saying that gender is performance and a product of power, but rather saying that every gender is simultaneously at least two genders. Alessandro does not formulate these ideas with words, but his clothes embody this philosophy.

From a technical point of view, ambiguity is much more radical than transgression. When you transgress a norm, you let the norm continue to dictate your behaviour. Transgression is taking and opposing the norm, so you remain in a dialectic of cops and robbers. With ambiguity, it is unclear whether you obey or disobey, whether the law has been realised or not. This makes the norm and its application completely disoriented.

From a political point of view, ambiguity is a much smarter and shrewder strategy than the current political debate, which is crude and often based on a master-servant dialectic. Even the postcolonial and feminist discourse is still trapped in this old dialectic and continues to repeat things said at least 50 years ago without inventing new forms. Alessandro has begun to develop clothes that could inspire a broader, more interesting, and less adolescent political theory. Ambiguity draws the political map of the future, beyond ‘68, beyond the 70s, beyond Foucault and all the great maîtres à penser of the late 20th century.

Ambiguity is a powerful political intuition that needs to be developed, radicalised, and reimagined. Imagine what it would mean to think about ambiguity in terms of national entities; it would have enormous implications, rejuvenating European and American culture that is currently very conservative, binary, and almost reactionary.

Fashion often proves to be much more advanced than other forms of culture. The political and aesthetic debate is backward and crude in comparison. Even the debate on fashion itself is at a less than zero degree. Fashion journalism, apart from rare exceptions, is ridiculous. An art critic who goes to see an exhibition in Tokyo or at the Tate cannot write that the exhibition is ‘springlike’, ‘youthful’, and ‘feminine’. A fashion journalist who sees the Chanel Cruise collection can say this and get away with it, but in any other field, they would be fired on the spot. Fashion houses cultivate the idea that those who spend 4,000 euros on a blouse do not want to hear complicated things. It’s nonsense: those who spend that much want to know that the blouse has theoretical value. If someone spends a lot of money on an object, like a Picasso painting, it’s because a lot of life has passed through it.

L.V. – Let’s stay on the topic of ambiguity and contextualise it in common usage.
I start with this quote by Søren Kierkegaard:

“Irony is a qualified negativity that serves to provide a portrait of ambiguity.”

In contemporary times, irony has become one of the most recurrent expressions in our way of communicating, expressing ourselves, and creating. It is as if the most communicable form of expressing ambiguity is irony.

E.C. – Irony is indeed the quintessential postmodern tool and has entered common usage. But it represents a transitional stage preceding ambiguity, as has just been discussed, because irony only temporarily suspends the meaning of a word without changing it. When you are ironic, you improperly use a word, but its meaning remains the same so that the irony is understood and evokes a smile.

As we mentioned, Jean Paul Gaultier, for example, who is postmodern, puts a skirt on a male body, which is ironic. Ambiguity, on the other hand, changes the meaning of words. A word can mean two different things simultaneously. This is a step forward. We should enter a post-ironic world where the issue is no longer about distorting ordinary meaning but about expanding and transforming it. Irony is still tied to the concept of ‘queer’, that is, taking an insult and turning it into a means of pride. This was fine in the 60s. But today, those who define themselves as queer are, in some ways, conservative. We should be at a level of reclamation where we are all simultaneously heterosexual and homosexual, embracing the anthropological complexity of desire and all the drives that coexist within us. Society often discusses itself with theories from our grandparents’ era, not paying attention to what is happening daily. The important thing to understand is that ambiguity does not aim to subvert power but to take it. Postmodernism, nourished by Foucault, created the misunderstanding that power is to be fought for. But power and tyranny are not synonymous. Power can be positive, allowing the existence of a functioning democracy. Renouncing power means renouncing the transformation of the world.

Foucault, unfortunately, fueled an adolescent anarchism that dominates militant political philosophy in Europe and the United States. The idea that power must be denounced has made it impossible to accept that, as human beings, we must exercise power over our surroundings because we have a vision and a desire for how the world should be. This is called politics, and it must exist. There are excesses and frictions, but we cannot renounce them. The West has renounced politics, and irony fundamentally represents this renunciation.

Ambiguity, on the other hand, does not renounce politics and does not aim to subvert power. Ambiguity understands that power should not be subverted but taken because we need it to shape the world as we want it to be. Ambiguity has taken power, digested it, and accomplished what it wanted to do.

L.V. – Let’s conclude with a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre:

“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”

This concept encapsulates everything we have talked about so far. Fashion, philosophy, and art are all ways to intensify and magnify our freedom.

E.C. – All the arts have a particular connection with freedom. Art serves this purpose: to increase our freedom. When we go to a museum, we unconsciously know that even by seeing ugly works, we become freer and more in control of ourselves. We don’t go to the museum to learn but to experience this inner freedom. Fashion has an even greater power in this sense because it allows you to have this experience daily without having to go anywhere. You wake up, open your wardrobe, and face an experience that puts you in touch with who you are, connecting you with your freedom. Fashion is, in this sense, art to the nth degree.