Sigmund Freud: More than a fetish: fashion and psychoanalysis

The chapter critiqued the limitations of current Fashion Studies‘, arguing that it has demonstrated a tendency to privilege concepts that assisted in understanding fashion as a social phenomenon. This, the chapter argued had largely contributed to the underuse of psychoanalysis within the discipline, because of its focus on the individual and despite its successful application to many other aspects of culture. As such, the chapter was an original contribution to knowledge in its evaluation of the benefits and limitations of psychoanalysis as a methodology with which to study fashion, arguing that much could be learned by a reassessment of the relevance of these ideas to fashion, because it offered a clear methodology by which fashion could be simultaneously understood as both a creative pursuit and a social one.