Fashion: Seductive Play

In Germany, 1969, Eugen Fink’s Fashion: Seductive Play was published. This first English language edition, updated with an introduction by Stefano Marino and Giovanni Matteucci, makes available Fink’s philosophical investigation into fashion to an English-speaking audience. One of the greatest figures in the ＂phenomenological movement,＂ Fink here investigates fashion at various philosophical levels - aesthetic, ethical, social - and in relationship to other forms of human culture, especially contemporary culture.

Although there have been many transformations and changes in the world of fashion since the late 1960s, from prêt-à-porter to fast fashion, fashion’s connection to both high culture and popular culture, and the new relationship between fashion and the advent of social media, Fink’s insights allow wide-ranging and far-reaching inquiries into fashion’s philosophical essence. Fink’s extraordinary lucidity and his unique conceptual capacities have made his work crucial to the study of the philosophy of fashion today. His work, like that of Simmel’s, Veblen’s or Benjamin’s, is as essential and important now as when it was first published.

Eugen Fink (1905-1975) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Stefano Marino is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna, Italy.

Giovanni Matteucci is Full Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna, Italy.