Fashion Myths

... with Roman Meinhold

Why should I read this book?

After you have read the book you might re-enter shopping malls in a different way you used to, viewing fashion and advertisements from a radically new perspective. We are wearing clothes and using fashionable products every day, but we hardly reflect deeper why we are buying what we wear. The book makes us aware of that fact by critically analyzing cultural and philosophic-anthropologic implications of our everyday consumer culture.

2. Which new perspectives does your book open up?

From consumer's perspective the book makes evident that marketing of consumer products is more manipulative than usually perceived, since the marketing strategies employing meta-goods draw on deeply rooted motives of consumption based on human nature. From philosophical perspective the book once and for all makes clear that fashion indeed is a serious philosophical matter if analyzed with an intellectual, rigorous and systematic approach. From Cultural Studies perspective the book uncovers the highly important connection between the apparently superficial phenomenon of fashion and serious reflection about deeply rooted and foundational philosophic-anthropological traits.

3. What is the signifiance of the issues covered, especially in the context of current research? This is the only available book critically analyzing the culture of fashion from philosophic-anthropological perspective. There are only very few philosophical books on fashion anyway, since in general fashion is not regarded as a serious issue that is worth of deeper reflection. This philosophical approach to a cultural critique of fashion complements research undertaken in the areas of cultural studies, fashion studies, psychology, sociology, and economics by closing some of the research gaps left by these disciplines.

4. With whom would you like to discuss your book?

With Santa Claus, Alexander McQueen, Aristotle, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, Diotima of Mantinea, The Oracle and Morpheus in the Matrix, Karl Marx, Hypatia of Alexandria, Adam Smith, CG Jung, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Marcel Mauss, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Mircea Eliade, Georg Simmel, Werner Herzog, ETA Hoffman, Ernest Callenbach, Socrates, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Arvo Pärt, Aung San Suu Kyi, Stuart Hall, Richard Branson, Oscar Wilde, and Sigschlundine Freude.

5. Your book in one sentence:

Fashion-myths and meta-goods are highly attractive since they make us believe that we actually can buy ›lifestyle‹, but analyzed critically they even reveal fundamental aspects of our human nature.