Fashion as a glorification of everyday life: The woman's version of dandyism in the urban culture of postmodernity

The article discusses the gender aspects of fashion as a social practice indicative of the urban culture of postmodernity. It has been demonstrated that the study of urban culture requires a flexible analysis methodology. The question was raised about the agent of everyday experience at the intersection of phenomenology, urban studies and gender theory. It is shown that the redistribution of gender positions, associated with the weakening of the traditional gender confrontation, accelerated in cities. The fundamental points related to the specifics of the urban diversion were highlighted by Georg Simmel. They remain crucial for the methodology of all levels of urban studies, and form their common logic: a big city is the quintessence of the modern form of life and habitual environment of the bearer of a special type of consciousness. The priority strategy is to describe the emotional expenses of a metropolis resident, the psychological side: to present and to reflect the urban focus as an emotional focus, to emphasize the phenomenological description of a megalopolis resident as a spokesman for a new modus of everyday existence. The subject of the discussion is the question of what renders the profane subject: this applies to most of the values of the life zone, especially constitutive for the physical, bodily manifestations of an individual. The phenomenon of dandyism in its woman's version is thematized. It is shown that the female variety of dandyism structurally repeats the path traversed by the European Dandy from its appearance to the present time, which is reflected in the configurations of historically changing “gender contracts” and “gender compositions” as expressions of male or female strategies of “presenting oneself”. The article reveals the perspectives of “dandy's discourse” as a branch of post-feminist ideology.

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