Moda e politica. La rappresentazione simbolica del potere

What unites Louis XIV and Elizabeth I with the modern heads of state and government? What is behind the traditional costume of Gandhi and the trouser suits of Angela Merkel? What drives revolutionary leaders to show a maniacal attention to the details of their dress? They are all symbolic representations of power that refer to shared codes in their respective contexts and that tell something of the complex relationship between fashion and politics. In fact, politics has to do with the regulation of associated living and refers to the great systems of ideas, destined to leave a mark on history. As an expression of power, however, it needs to activate legitimation processes, which often draw on the symbolic dimension, of which fashion is a fundamental manifestation. The volume investigates this relationship, according to a common thread that runs through modernity, its ideological manifestations, revolutions, class struggle and the affirmation of democracy up to the current phase of post-ideological politics, readily represented by fashion.