Can Marxism make sense of fashion?
Capitalism both bombards us with the ideal of clothes as individual expression, and denies us the means to attain anything truly distinctive. Sarah Bates looks at how Karl Marx can help us make sense of the contradiction
Hip hop street styles in the 1980s borrowed from designer chic—in the form of a Gucci T-shirt. Gucci then grabbed the style for itself
Friday 03 January 2025
SOCIALIST WORKER Issue
At this time of year, the high streets—what is left of them anyway—are filled with red and white banners declaring it’s our “last chance to buy”. We are bombarded with urgent demands to grab a bargain that will give us some longed-for confidence and social success.
Cheap “fast” fashion rightly gets a lot of stick for being environmentally damaging and made by workers in extremely poor conditions.
Socialists want clothes that don’t cost the earth and decent workplace practices for garment workers. But that only takes us so far. Thanks to the writings of Karl Marx, we can investigate the fashion industry from the perspective of both producer and consumer and explore how they relate to each other.
Marx wrote about the contradiction between the glamour of luxury goods and the terrible conditions that workers experienced when producing them. “It is a curious fact that the production of precisely those articles which serve the personal adornment of the ladies of the bourgeoisie involves the saddest consequences for the health of the workers,” he said.
But it’s not just the fact that workers can’t afford the objects they produce or services they deliver. The capitalist workplace is organised around the needs of accumulation of profit, not to respond to our wants and needs.
Clothes are more than simple objects to keep us warm or cover our naked bodies. Choosing clothes can be part of the way we express our personality and our individuality. What we wear is tied up with our gender expression, sexual orientation, cultural identity and class position.
Clothes are a way to both set yourself apart from the crowd and to place yourself in a social and cultural context.
This expression of identity can feel particularly important when many of us wear uniforms for much of our lives. We get our very first pair of polished black school shoes in early childhood.
Uniforms at work and school reflect hierarchies. Often the boss wears a suit while the workforce is forced to wear gaudy polyester. Sometimes, bosses will implement “casual Fridays” as a little treat or to impose a contrived sense of informality.
Most of us buy cheap, mass produced fashion from supermarkets, online retailers or clothes shops. But whether you shop in H&M, Shein or Sainsbury’s, the clothes look largely the same because they’re produced by similar designers using the same fabrics made in the same factories.
Despite the reality of being sold the same clothes as most other people, we’re also sold the myth of “individuality”. We’re told if we just buy the right clothes and wear them the right way, it will fulfil our desire for individual expression.
The concept of the self and individual identity are part of how we are encouraged to see ourselves under capitalism.
The capitalist fashion industry wants consumers to seek out individuality while stamping on their ability to achieve it.
But there’s more to the relationship between the fashions of the rich and the clothes the rest of us wear. Under capitalism, the fashions of the rich and poor interact with each other.
Designers regularly lift ideas straight from youth subcultures—think of the safety pin studded denim and leather of the punks, or dramatic black stylings of goths.
As young people figure out their own sense of identity, clothes operate as a way for us to tell the world who we are, and to develop unique styles.
But these organic street styles—often pioneered by the young people from oppressed groups and from the working class—are quickly snapped up by luxury designers. The way that sportswear companies, such as Nike with its “just do it” catchphrase, market trainers is a good example.
The firm pitches its products as essential for athletic brilliance and as symbols of vibrant street youth culture. Nike uses the music, imagery, language and wider cultural references of its intended customers to situate its products within their world.
Only a tiny minority of the rich can wear the finest exclusive fashions that are made to order and produced from the most luxurious materials. These garments display designers’ creativity, which is bought by celebrities for display at the gala dinner or red carpet event.
The cost of designer clothes vastly outstrips either the raw materials or the wages paid to the workers who make it. It is a hugely exploitative industry whether clothes are made in Bangladesh or Paris.
But the real point of one‑off designer clothing is to show that the wearer has a distinct and individual personality—something few of us get the opportunity to express.
Some working class people save up to splash their hard‑earned cash on designer clothes that sell at greatly inflated prices. Partly, that is about status, but it also an attempt to grab a slice of that “individuality” seen on the red carpet.
The Marxist concept of alienation helps to explain why fashion plays such an important role in our lives. The fashion industry, like other industries, is both a source of exploitation and an opportunity for creativity.
Most people have no choice but to work for majority of their lives. But they’re denied any control over how they work and what the end results look like. Marx described this lack of control over how and what we produce as alienation.
Working together with others has the potential to be creative and fulfilling. But in capitalist society it is more likely to be frustrating, tedious and exhausting. Work robs us of our creativity and makes us sick.
For Marx, the untapped creativity of workers was one of the key distinctions between humans and other animals. He described how “spiders conduct operations which resemble weavers” and bees produce honeycombs.
These structures can appear as miracles of nature and are certainly the products of effort—but they do not contain the same constituent elements as human labour.
Marx argued that while other animals led narrow lives defined by instinct and survival, humans had the capacity to think beyond immediate need and behave creatively. Alienated labour under capitalism, wrote Marx, created “marvels and beauty beyond necessity” but at the same time it produced “suffering” for the worker.
It is this potential that is wasted in the capitalist workplace. Bosses want us to be spiders, endlessly creating the same web over and over again—but we could build so much more.
We have a capacity for imaginative labour that is untapped by the lives we lead. At every stage of fashion production, the workers who create, who do the sewing, cutting, trimming, the marketing and selling, know more about their jobs than the bosses.
Take sewing machinists as an example. Machinists are forced to work on a production line, which is boring and can be dangerous.
Or consider people who spend long hours picking cotton in fields. They are forced to repeat the same physical labour all day, even though some of it could be shared or automated. The cotton picker and the machinist have ideas and experiences that would make their work better.
But they are denied that chance because the current system needs to maximise profits. The bosses need workers to be obedient, to accept harsh discipline and the authority of those who exploit them.
The fact that most people working in the garment industry are poor women from the Global South makes it easier for corporations to ignore them, their abilities and their ideas.
We live in a deeply disheartening world. And we are told that it is primarily through the acquisition of commodities that we will find the fulfilment and the social connections that we need. Fashion and consumption choices are one way in which people constantly seek ways to fulfil themselves and buy into an illusion of choice.
The fashion industry reinforces the feeling that something is missing in our lives and then profits from our insecurities. This is possible because alienation shapes our need to clothe ourselves within a wider context of capitalist society.
Think about how Cuban heels make men appear taller and “Spanx” promise to smooth out any lumps and bumps our bodies have the audacity to possess.
Marx’s theory of alienation is not simply an exploration of how capitalism is responsible for human misery.
The theory of alienation is a deeply optimistic analysis. Marx argues that working class people have the potential to produce what they need collaboratively and creatively—and to become masters of their own destiny.
He did not think we had to spend our days weaving the bosses’ webs—and he was right.
At this time of year, the high streets—what is left of them anyway—are filled with red and white banners declaring it’s our “last chance to buy”. We are bombarded with urgent demands to grab a bargain that will give us some longed-for confidence and social success.
Cheap “fast” fashion rightly gets a lot of stick for being environmentally damaging and made by workers in extremely poor conditions.
Socialists want clothes that don’t cost the earth and decent workplace practices for garment workers. But that only takes us so far. Thanks to the writings of Karl Marx, we can investigate the fashion industry from the perspective of both producer and consumer and explore how they relate to each other.
Marx wrote about the contradiction between the glamour of luxury goods and the terrible conditions that workers experienced when producing them. “It is a curious fact that the production of precisely those articles which serve the personal adornment of the ladies of the bourgeoisie involves the saddest consequences for the health of the workers,” he said.
But it’s not just the fact that workers can’t afford the objects they produce or services they deliver. The capitalist workplace is organised around the needs of accumulation of profit, not to respond to our wants and needs.
Clothes are more than simple objects to keep us warm or cover our naked bodies. Choosing clothes can be part of the way we express our personality and our individuality. What we wear is tied up with our gender expression, sexual orientation, cultural identity and class position.
Clothes are a way to both set yourself apart from the crowd and to place yourself in a social and cultural context.
This expression of identity can feel particularly important when many of us wear uniforms for much of our lives. We get our very first pair of polished black school shoes in early childhood.
Uniforms at work and school reflect hierarchies. Often the boss wears a suit while the workforce is forced to wear gaudy polyester. Sometimes, bosses will implement “casual Fridays” as a little treat or to impose a contrived sense of informality.
Most of us buy cheap, mass produced fashion from supermarkets, online retailers or clothes shops. But whether you shop in H&M, Shein or Sainsbury’s, the clothes look largely the same because they’re produced by similar designers using the same fabrics made in the same factories.
Despite the reality of being sold the same clothes as most other people, we’re also sold the myth of “individuality”. We’re told if we just buy the right clothes and wear them the right way, it will fulfil our desire for individual expression.
The concept of the self and individual identity are part of how we are encouraged to see ourselves under capitalism.
The capitalist fashion industry wants consumers to seek out individuality while stamping on their ability to achieve it.
But there’s more to the relationship between the fashions of the rich and the clothes the rest of us wear. Under capitalism, the fashions of the rich and poor interact with each other.
Designers regularly lift ideas straight from youth subcultures—think of the safety pin studded denim and leather of the punks, or dramatic black stylings of goths.
As young people figure out their own sense of identity, clothes operate as a way for us to tell the world who we are, and to develop unique styles.
But these organic street styles—often pioneered by the young people from oppressed groups and from the working class—are quickly snapped up by luxury designers. The way that sportswear companies, such as Nike with its “just do it” catchphrase, market trainers is a good example.
The firm pitches its products as essential for athletic brilliance and as symbols of vibrant street youth culture. Nike uses the music, imagery, language and wider cultural references of its intended customers to situate its products within their world.
Only a tiny minority of the rich can wear the finest exclusive fashions that are made to order and produced from the most luxurious materials. These garments display designers’ creativity, which is bought by celebrities for display at the gala dinner or red carpet event.
The cost of designer clothes vastly outstrips either the raw materials or the wages paid to the workers who make it. It is a hugely exploitative industry whether clothes are made in Bangladesh or Paris.
But the real point of one‑off designer clothing is to show that the wearer has a distinct and individual personality—something few of us get the opportunity to express.
Some working class people save up to splash their hard‑earned cash on designer clothes that sell at greatly inflated prices. Partly, that is about status, but it also an attempt to grab a slice of that “individuality” seen on the red carpet.
The Marxist concept of alienation helps to explain why fashion plays such an important role in our lives. The fashion industry, like other industries, is both a source of exploitation and an opportunity for creativity.
Most people have no choice but to work for majority of their lives. But they’re denied any control over how they work and what the end results look like. Marx described this lack of control over how and what we produce as alienation.
Working together with others has the potential to be creative and fulfilling. But in capitalist society it is more likely to be frustrating, tedious and exhausting. Work robs us of our creativity and makes us sick.
For Marx, the untapped creativity of workers was one of the key distinctions between humans and other animals. He described how “spiders conduct operations which resemble weavers” and bees produce honeycombs.
These structures can appear as miracles of nature and are certainly the products of effort—but they do not contain the same constituent elements as human labour.
Marx argued that while other animals led narrow lives defined by instinct and survival, humans had the capacity to think beyond immediate need and behave creatively. Alienated labour under capitalism, wrote Marx, created “marvels and beauty beyond necessity” but at the same time it produced “suffering” for the worker.
It is this potential that is wasted in the capitalist workplace. Bosses want us to be spiders, endlessly creating the same web over and over again—but we could build so much more.
We have a capacity for imaginative labour that is untapped by the lives we lead. At every stage of fashion production, the workers who create, who do the sewing, cutting, trimming, the marketing and selling, know more about their jobs than the bosses.
Take sewing machinists as an example. Machinists are forced to work on a production line, which is boring and can be dangerous.
Or consider people who spend long hours picking cotton in fields. They are forced to repeat the same physical labour all day, even though some of it could be shared or automated. The cotton picker and the machinist have ideas and experiences that would make their work better.
But they are denied that chance because the current system needs to maximise profits. The bosses need workers to be obedient, to accept harsh discipline and the authority of those who exploit them.
The fact that most people working in the garment industry are poor women from the Global South makes it easier for corporations to ignore them, their abilities and their ideas.
We live in a deeply disheartening world. And we are told that it is primarily through the acquisition of commodities that we will find the fulfilment and the social connections that we need. Fashion and consumption choices are one way in which people constantly seek ways to fulfil themselves and buy into an illusion of choice.
The fashion industry reinforces the feeling that something is missing in our lives and then profits from our insecurities. This is possible because alienation shapes our need to clothe ourselves within a wider context of capitalist society.
Think about how Cuban heels make men appear taller and “Spanx” promise to smooth out any lumps and bumps our bodies have the audacity to possess.
Marx’s theory of alienation is not simply an exploration of how capitalism is responsible for human misery.
The theory of alienation is a deeply optimistic analysis. Marx argues that working class people have the potential to produce what they need collaboratively and creatively—and to become masters of their own destiny.
He did not think we had to spend our days weaving the bosses’ webs—and he was right.
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