Fashion and identity: how clothes express who we are

Clothing expresses identity because it is read before its wearer speaks: it points to a group, a taste, a social position or a disagreement. Sociology has described this mechanism since Georg Simmel (1904), then Roland Barthes (1967) and Pierre Bourdieu (1979). The idea that clothes also act on the person wearing them, tested in a lab in 2012, remains debated: a 2019 replication did not find the effect. This article separates what is established, what is debated and what is commentary.

At a glance

• Simmel (1904): fashion serves to imitate one group and set oneself apart from another.
• Bourdieu (La Distinction, 1979): tastes, including the way people dress, mark social positions.
• Enclothed cognition: first experiment in 2012 with 58 students; a 2019 replication found no effect.
• Subcultures: from punk to Harajuku, clothing becomes a sign of belonging.
• Gender: pink and blue have not always meant girls and boys.
• Second-hand: 38% of French people bought some in 2023 (Refashion).

Fashion and identity in ten landmarks

What Simmel, Bourdieu and Barthes say

Georg Simmel published “Fashion” in New York’s International Quarterly in October 1904 (reprinted in the American Journal of Sociology, May 1957). For him, fashion is a form of imitation, so of social equalization, but by changing constantly it separates one period from another and one social stratum from another: the elite launches a fashion, the mass imitates it, then the elite drops it. Sergio Benvenuto points out that some fashions come from marginal groups, which elites then adopt.

Pierre Bourdieu published La Distinction with Éditions de Minuit in 1979. According to Wikipedia, the book draws on surveys from 1963 to 1968 and argues that tastes, learned in childhood, sort people into social classes; style of dress counts among the markers of cultural capital, with speech and education.

In Système de la mode (Seuil, 1967), Roland Barthes analyzes the statements that two women’s magazines devoted to fashion over one year, rather than worn clothes (Universalis). He starts from the idea that fashion facts are symbolic and that their meaning fully appears when language takes charge of them.

Is fashion a language, then? The comparison helps, but it has limits. Fred Davis (Fashion, Culture, and Identity, University of Chicago Press, 1992) asks what our clothes say; his publisher stresses that the link between the private self and the public image is unstable, which makes clothing choices hard to predict.

Enclothed cognition: what the 2012 study measured

“Enclothed cognition” is a term proposed by Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (vol. 48, no. 4, July 2012, pp. 918 to 925). Their hypothesis: a garment acts on its wearer through its symbolic meaning and through the physical experience of wearing it. They tested the laboratory coat, which a pretest linked to attentiveness and carefulness.

What was measured. In the first experiment, 58 students took a Stroop test (naming the ink color of a word while ignoring its meaning), either in a lab coat or in their own clothes. On incongruent trials, coat wearers made about half as many errors (BPS, Wikipedia). In experiments 2 and 3, participants had to spot differences between two nearly identical images, a sustained-attention task: those in a coat presented as “a doctor’s” found more differences than those in a “painter’s” coat, and more than those who only saw the coat or wrote about it.

What was not measured. Identity, self-esteem, the effect of a style in daily life. The study tests students, in a lab, on attention tasks.

Replications. In 2019, Burns and colleagues ran a preregistered direct replication of the Stroop effect (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 83, pp. 150 to 156): no effect, and any effect would be too small to detect with the original protocol, they estimate. Adam and Galinsky replied that the general principle still held (Wikipedia). A meta-analysis by Horton, Adam and Galinsky (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2025, online since July 2023) covers 105 effects from 40 studies (3,789 participants): the early studies raise replicability doubts, while those published after 2015 show evidential value. Both 2012 authors co-signed it.

The takeaway: a plausible hypothesis, still being tested. Nothing allows anyone to promise that a garment will make you more attentive or more confident.

Subcultures: clothing as a sign of belonging

In Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), Dick Hebdige reads the styles of British working-class youth (teddy boys, mods, rockers, skinheads, punks) as forms of symbolic resistance. According to Wikipedia, he then describes a cycle: entrepreneurs commercialize the style, and its power to challenge fades. The table covers seven movements, with their dates and sources.

Movement	Time and place	What the style expresses	Sources
Zazous	Paris, under the Occupation (1940s)	Swing and American jazz, long fitted jackets, umbrellas in fine weather. The Germans and Vichy judge this culture delinquent and unpatriotic. In June 1942, some Zazous wear homemade yellow stars marked “swing” or “Zazou” to protest the ordinance targeting Jews: Sophie Roberts reads this as an act of dissent.	Roberts, 2010 ; Wikipedia (French) ; Paris ZigZag
Mods	London, late 1950s and 1960s	Tailor-made suits, Vespa or Lambretta scooters, parkas over the suit. More money and free time than earlier generations, spent on clothes, music and nights out. Clashes with rockers in Brighton, Margate and Clacton in 1964.	Wikipedia ; Museum of Youth Culture
Punk	London, 1970s	Pieces sold at 430 King’s Road by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren: SEX (spring 1974), then Seditionaries (December 1976). Fetish wear, slogan T-shirts. Westwood says in 1977 that she wants to provoke a confrontation; many punks cannot afford these pieces, and some make their own.	Wikipedia ; London Museum
Hip-hop	The Bronx and Harlem, 1970s and 1980s	On August 11, 1973, the party thrown by DJ Kool Herc and his sister Cindy Campbell in the Bronx raises money for Cindy’s back-to-school wardrobe. In 1982, Dapper Dan opens his Harlem boutique and turns luxury monograms into made-to-order pieces.	The Henry Ford ; Wikipedia, Kool Herc ; Wikipedia, Dapper Dan
Streetwear	New York and California, 1980s and 1990s	Born from New York hip-hop, then from Los Angeles surf and skate culture (Wikipedia). Shawn Stüssy, a surfboard shaper, prints his name on T-shirts from 1980 (Complex), then moves to exclusive sales to create scarcity (Wikipedia).	Wikipedia ; Complex
Harajuku	Tokyo, from the late 1970s to the 2000s	Streets closed to traffic on Sundays from 1977 (Wikipedia). A mix of kimono and Western punk or goth clothing (Dazed). Shoichi Aoki launches the magazine FRUiTS in 1997 and describes this fashion as not being a rebellion; he blames its decline on the end of the pedestrian zone, social networks and fast fashion.	Wikipedia ; Dazed ; i-D ; Japan Foundation
Kogal	Tokyo (Shibuya and Harajuku), 1990s	High-school girls who shorten the uniform, wear loose socks, and have tanned skin and lightened hair. An editor at the magazine egg sees a rejection of pale skin and black hair as the beauty ideal. A 1993 television special brings them to a mass audience (Wikipedia).	Wikipedia ; Metropolis

The pattern repeats from one case to the next: a style is born in a group, then the market takes it up. See also our articles Rap and fashion and trends from the 1960s to the 1990s. The end of Harajuku’s pedestrian zone is dated between 1997 and 1999 depending on the source.

Fashion and gender: recent, shifting codes

Colors offer an example. According to historian Jo Paoletti, cited by Wikipedia, a pink-and-blue coding was known from the late 1860s without being dominant; between 1900 and 1930, children’s clothes were distinguished by cut and decoration, not by color. National Geographic places around 1940 the moment when pink and blue became strongly tied to girls and boys; Wikipedia puts the spread across the United States in the 1950s.

Among adults, Yves Saint Laurent presents Le Smoking, a tuxedo for women, in his autumn-winter 1966 haute couture collection. According to Dazed, the couture clientele received it poorly and younger customers adopted it through the Rive Gauche ready-to-wear line, launched in September 1966. For Wikipedia, many saw it as a way to give women a garment associated with men of influence and power.

On November 13, 2020, Vogue revealed its December cover: Harry Styles is the first man alone on the magazine’s cover, in a lace Gucci gown created by Alessandro Michele, with a tuxedo jacket (Wikipedia, ET Online). He says that removing the idea of separate clothes for men and women opens up more room for creative play (ET Online).

Cultural appropriation: describe before judging

Wikipedia describes cultural appropriation as borrowing elements of another culture or identity in a way seen as inappropriate or unacknowledged, mostly charged against borrowing by a dominant group from minorities. The debate turns on power relations; Minh-Ha T. Pham notes in The Atlantic that such accusations often get the answer of cultural “appreciation”.

A dated legal case. On February 28, 2012, the Navajo Nation sued Urban Outfitters in a federal court in New Mexico, for trademark violations and violation of the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act, over products sold under the name “Navajo”, including a pair of underwear and a flask (NBC News). A settlement came in November 2016: confidential terms, with a planned collaboration on authentic Native American jewelry (Philadelphia Magazine).

Borrowing in both directions. Dapper Dan’s Harlem atelier, opened in 1982, reworks luxury-house monograms; it closed in 1992 after legal action (Wikipedia, Refinery29). In May 2017, Gucci showed in Florence a jacket that echoes a piece Dapper Dan designed in 1989 for Olympic athlete Diane Dixon. After the criticism, Gucci called it a homage (Refinery29); a partnership was reported in September 2017, and the atelier opened on Lenox Avenue in 2018 (Wikipedia).

Sustainable fashion and second-hand: dated figures

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (report of November 28, 2017), clothing production doubled in fifteen years with fast fashion. In Europe, the European Environment Agency (March 26, 2025) puts textile consumption at 19 kg per person in 2022, including 8 kg of clothing. The European Parliament (September 9, 2025) cites 12 kg of clothing and footwear waste per person per year, and fewer than 1% of textiles recycled into new products worldwide.

The European Commission adopted its strategy for sustainable and circular textiles on March 30, 2022. According to Debevoise, Directive (EU) 2025/1892, adopted in September 2025, requires member states to set up extended producer responsibility schemes for textiles by April 17, 2028 at the latest; producers will pay for collection, sorting and recycling (European Parliament).

In France, ADEME and ObSoCo surveyed 4,000 people between January 2024 and February 2025 and opened about forty wardrobes. According to FashionUnited and Reporterre (June 2025), more than half of the clothes in wardrobes go unused, about 120 million new pieces. Refashion counts 42 new garments bought per French person in 2024, one more than in 2023 (press release of June 17, 2025).

On the second-hand side, Refashion estimates that 38% of French people bought second-hand in 2023 (7.3 pieces on average), or 63.5 kt and 7.1% of the tonnage of clothing, footwear and household linen consumption; purchases between individuals (Vinted, Leboncoin) account for 46% of that volume. The European Environment Agency also notes that 1.4 million tonnes of used textiles were exported in 2023, with varied fates: reuse, but also landfill or incineration. None of these studies measures what buyers want to express: the link with identity remains to be documented.

Create your own pieces

Do you design your own clothes? These HYTRAPE files are design resources for preparing and presenting your creations. They have no link with the brands, designers or movements named in this article.

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• TECH PACK CLOTHING TEMPLATE (BLANK) : a technical sheet template in .ai format (Adobe Illustrator): vector design, measurements, materials, colors and quantities per size.
• Clothing Mockup Set (FREE) : a free pack of high-resolution T-shirt, hoodie and zip-jacket mockups (4000×4000 px, 300 dpi).

All HYTRAPE mockups.

Read next

• Rap and fashion: a mutual influence as undeniable as it is historic
• The 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s in today’s fashion: dated examples
• The history of the Yankees cap: from sport to global culture
• 10 independent brands to watch in 2026: our selection

Sources

• Simmel, « Fashion », International Quarterly, octobre 1904 (réédition American Journal of Sociology, mai 1957)
• JASSS, compte rendu de « Fashion » de Simmel par Sergio Benvenuto
• Wikipédia, La Distinction de Pierre Bourdieu
• Bibliothèque de l’université Palacký, notice de La Distinction (Minuit, 1979)
• Bibliothèque de l’université de Kyushu, notice de La Distinction (Minuit, 1979)
• Encyclopædia Universalis, « Mode, sociologie », Barthes et le Système de la mode
• Wikipédia, Roland Barthes (Système de la mode, Seuil, 1967)
• CiNii, notice de Système de la mode (Seuil, 1967)
• University of Chicago Press, Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity (1992)
• Université de Bath, résumé de « Enclothed cognition » (Adam et Galinsky, 2012)
• Wikipédia, Enclothed cognition
• BPS Research Digest, « Introducing enclothed cognition » (1er mars 2012)
• Burns et al., réplication préenregistrée, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2019
• Université de Bath, Horton, Adam et Galinsky, méta-analyse (PSPB, 2025)
• Wikipédia, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Hebdige, 1979)
• Routledge, Subculture: The Meaning of Style
• Wikipédia, boutique SEX (430 King’s Road)
• London Museum, Vivienne Westwood et Malcolm McLaren, King’s Road
• Wikipédia, Mod (sous-culture)
• Museum of Youth Culture, les mods
• Sophie B. Roberts, French History, 2010, zazous et étoile jaune (juin 1942)
• Wikipédia, Zazous
• Paris ZigZag, histoire des zazous
• The Henry Ford, « In the Seams of Sound: Hip Hop & Fashion »
• Wikipédia, DJ Kool Herc
• Wikipédia, Dapper Dan
• Refinery29, Gucci et Dapper Dan (11 septembre 2017)
• Wikipédia, Streetwear
• Complex, histoire orale de Stüssy
• Wikipédia, Harajuku
• Dazed, FRUiTS et la mode de Harajuku
• i-D, entretien avec l’éditeur de FRUiTS (10 avril 2017)
• Japan Foundation Sydney, Tokyo FRUiTS (2017)
• Something Curated, FRUiTS et Harajuku (31 mars 2020)
• Wikipédia, Kogal
• Metropolis, extrait de Brian Ashcraft sur les kogals
• Wikipédia, Le Smoking
• Dazed, Yves Saint Laurent et Le Smoking
• Wikipédia, associations de genre du rose et du bleu
• National Geographic, « Pink and Blue » (janvier 2017)
• Wikipédia, robe Gucci bleue de Harry Styles (Vogue, décembre 2020)
• ET Online, Harry Styles en couverture de Vogue (13 novembre 2020)
• Wikipédia, Appropriation culturelle
• NBC News, la Nation navajo poursuit Urban Outfitters (29 février 2012)
• Philadelphia Magazine, accord Urban Outfitters et Nation navajo (23 novembre 2016)
• Fondation Ellen MacArthur, A New Textiles Economy (28 novembre 2017)
• Agence européenne pour l’environnement, Circularity of the EU textiles value chain in numbers (26 mars 2025)
• Parlement européen, nouvelles règles sur les déchets textiles (9 septembre 2025)
• Commission européenne, stratégie pour des textiles durables et circulaires (30 mars 2022)
• Debevoise, directive (UE) 2025/1892 (octobre 2025)
• Refashion, communiqué du baromètre 2024 (17 juin 2025)
• FashionUnited, étude ADEME et ObSoCo sur les placards (juin 2025)
• Reporterre, étude ADEME sur les vêtements non portés (26 juin 2025)

Updated October 23, 2026. Complete rewrite based on sources checked on this date. Several rows of the table rest on Wikipedia or on a single source (Harajuku’s pedestrian zone, the Rive Gauche line), and the ADEME study is reported by the press.