The Aesthetic Economy

TLDR

Fashion modelling offers a case study for understanding how aesthetic values are produced in culturally rich industries. The article maps the operations of a fashion‑modeling aesthetic economy and proposes a framework for studying other aesthetic economies. Using Bourdieu and Blumer, the author shows that economic calculations in fashion modeling are tied to cultural knowledge, capital, taste, and institutional relations, and that a model’s body is valorized culturally to generate high fees.

Abstract

This article delineates the operations of one particular ‘aesthetic economy’, focusing on the way in which aesthetics in the field of fashion modelling are central to the economic calculations of this market. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and Blumer, the author argues that economic calculations are intertwined with cultural concerns, bound to forms of cultural knowledge, capital and acquired taste, and to social, cultural and institutional relations. A culturally valued look (the model’s body) is produced through processes of cultural valorization within the fashion modelling network, which, in time, aim to translate into economic value in the form of high fees. Fashion modelling provides an interesting case study which might shed light on how aesthetic values are generated in other fields of cultural production with a strong aesthetic component. In setting out this case study the author delineates an approach to the study of other aesthetic economies.