Project Runway, high fashion, and philosophy

I am not ashamed to admit that I am an avid Project Runway fan - I've been hooked since season two. For the uninitiated, Project Runway is a reality television show on Bravo that pits fashion designers against one another and weeds them out to determine a winner. Even though I don't pay a whole lot of attention to high fashion (I'm wearing jeans, a fleece pullover, and Merrell shoes as I type this), the show is still enthralling.

Many of the fashion creations on the show are totally bizarre and over-the-top (like this or these), and it's easy to believe that the world of "high fashion" is utterly separate from the comparatively lame fashion world that I inhabit (and not just because they mostly design for women).

The judges of the show are quick to point out, however, that the apparent disconnect between high fashion and so-called "everyday" street fashion is not as big as you'd think. They'll remind us that even though the designs on the runway are often bizarre, it is these very designs that influence the clothes you and I are wearing right now (I apologize to my supermodel readers for this assumption). The general look of a line of clothing, the color palette, and the style of fabric all make their way down the fashion hierarchy to influence the designs of clothes we buy at Gap, Target, Dillard's and the like.

Philosophy exhibits a similar characteristic.

When you hear the word philosophy, you might visualize an old white male thinking and/or writing about totally abstract and complex ideas that have almost no relevance to everyday reality. But much like Project Runway's high fashion designs soon infiltrate the aisles of your local Target, these seemingly abstracted philosophical ideas slowly trickle down and influence our everyday thoughts and actions.

In a class I'm teaching at my church right now, we've been exploring how the concepts of postmodern philosophical thought are influencing our lives (and our church). Many of the adults in the class didn't even have a basic understanding of postmodernism (and that's okay), nor did they realize that many aspects of the general American cultural condition have a lineage that can be traced back to various forms of "high philosophy".

Case in point: In a book titled "The Postmodern Condition," published in 1979, French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard wrote, "Simplifying in the extreme, I define postmodernity as incredulity toward all metanarratives." Twenty-eight years later, singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson penned a song called "Heartbreak World" which essentially says the same thing, albeit with rhyming words and a melody. I doubt that Nathanson has ever seriously studied Lyotard's postmodern philosophy, yet he has created a piece of art (and pop culture) that shows a recognition and understanding of supposedly abstract philosophical concepts.

My point is this: don't write off philosophy as an elitist and irrelevant enterprise. Like it or not, it is the philosophers who are the true prophets of our time; it would behoove us to pay a bit more attention. The philosopher David Hume's words still ring true:

And though a philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. (1737)

Tagged as: david hume, matt nathanson, philosophy, pop culture, postmodernism, project runway