From Brodovitch to Gucci Style

Considerations on aristocratic style, luxury and hedonistic redemption

Abstract

The essay aims to offer some conceptual elements for understanding the question of style applied to fashion and contemporary imaginary. Starting from some theoretical and sociological authors such John Clark and Pierre Bourdieu, this essay intends to highlight the paradoxes and “dialectical overturns” that occurred in the course of different episodes of modern culture and postmodern culture: from the aristocratic taste of the photographer and art director of the first half of the twentieth century Alexey Brodovitch, to neo-baroque linked in last years to the excess of the style of some particularly successful brands and fashion designers, who have expressed with their production, in a paradoxical way, the demand for social revenge by young generations through the ostentation of luxury.