Theodor W. Adorno on the Aesthetic Truth and Untruth of Fashion

Abstract

This article is focused on Theodor W. Adorno’s critical interpretation of the truth and untruth of fashion, as it emerges from his influential Aesthetic Theory, in relation to some fundamental categories of his thought that can be derived from his most important writings, such as Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Max Horkheimer), Minima Moralia, Prisms, and Negative Dialectics. Although Adorno cannot be said to be a systematic theorist of fashion, nonetheless some paragraphs of his unfinished and posthumously published Aesthetic Theory clearly testify his interest in this topic. However, little attention has been paid yet to Adorno’s philosophical account of fashion, which was clearly influenced by the general approach of his critical theory of society. It is important to take into consideration this aspect of Adorno’s aesthetic thinking to understand his views of the relation between fashion, art, and the culture industry. Moreover, an analysis of fashion as a site of intersection between Adorno’s aesthetics and his rejection of the culture industry, and a reconstruction of Adorno’s critical theory of fashion from his brief writings on the subject, is also useful to prompt a re-evaluation of other aspects of Adorno’s thought, including his unique conception of truth as dialectically interwoven with its opposite (namely, untruth).

Keywords: Theodor W. Adorno, aesthetics, critical theory, culture industry, fashion