Herbert Blumer and the Study of Fashion: A Reminiscence and A Critique

Recounting my late 1940s graduate student contacts with Herbert Blumer on the topic of fashion, 1 go on to assess his important contribution to the sociological study of fashion. Conceptually rich, the corpus of Blumer's writing on fashion is yet surprisingly small. His major opus on fashion, anticipated only in part by several of his earlier, less exhaustive writings on the subject, did not see print until 1969 with the publication of the justly famous Sociological Quarterly piece “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection.” There Blumer pursues two aims: (1) to challenge the then prevalent functionalist view of fashion as a “trickle down” symbolic mechanism for effecting social class differentiation, a view associated with such sociological eminences as Simmel and Veblen, and (2) to offer in its place his own quite original approach to fashion as a massive “collective selection” process wherein choices are guided more by the elusive lure of modernity than by invidious class tinctions as such. Prominent among the strengths of Blumer's position is the demonstrably greater empirical validity of “collective selection” as compared to “class differentiation.” Among its shortcomings are Blumer's slighting of a salient social psychological theme in Simmers dialectical approach to fashion and, more important, his failure to address in any sustained way the role of the fashion industry in the fashion process. The recently emerging, symbolic interactionist concept of social world offers a means for redressing this omission and for advancing further upon the ground opened by Herbert Blumer's still exciting breakthrough in the sociology of fashion.