Entre padrões de estetização e tipologias econômicas: a economia estética na moda contemporânea a partir da passarela de Alexander McQueen (1992-2010)

Abstract

In the context of an advanced modernity, the capitalist system of production and circulation of commodities is reorganized. New standards and public consumers emerge, as well as unprecedented practices that ratify, in many cases, the substitution of the object for its image. In the age of an artist capitalism responsible for aestheticizing and monetizing any typologies of products and experiences, a theme becomes central: the aesthetic economies of culture. Using conceptual fashion as a case study, namely the one produced by the British designer Alexander McQueen between 1992 and 2010, this text seeks to elucidate the functioning and the developments of this phenomenon, punctuating pertinent issues in the process as the artification and the elaboration of a sociologic framework of this community, helping us to learn such formatting. Structured in three chapters, this study initially retrieves questions related to the aestheticization of everyday life and its applicability to the universe of culture (art and fashion), and then identifies and discusses them in the English context of the 1990s. The composition of this social scenario will finally allow us to experiment our hypothesis: by applying such dialogues to the creation of McQueen from his fashion shows, we come to feel the tenuous balance established between aesthetics and economics in contemporary productions.