Cultura materiale e nuovi valori : il caso della moda etica

The article explores the phenomenon of ethical fashion from the beginning to nowadays as an example of material culture where the role of new values is particularly visible. Fashion, long-considered the most frivolous/useless/negative way of consumption, is framed by the author through the categories usually employed when explaining the passage from rational productive modernity to the aesthetic consumer culture of postmodernity. Ethical fashion seems to contrast this dichotomous mentality and expects to integrate aesthetic innovation and morals, sustainability and shared welfare, production and consumption. A new Ethical Imagination, supported by advanced digital instruments and the recent sharing economy values, drives toward work/consumption solutions that promise to subvert old hierarchies and alienated relations as well as gender bias.