」 English: It is a paradox that the 'last mode' to descend from mode is the 'latest mode'. This could also mean that fashion design has begun to enter a phase (a mode of mode, or a meta-mode) in which it constructs itself through its own self-consciousness as mode.
by Washida Kiyoshi (from the epilogue of 'The Last Mode')
In 'WORDS OF MODE', the editorial staff of Fashion Headline submits words that they would like to archive within the flow of fashion. The second installment is a passage from the epilogue of 'The Last Mode', Washida Kiyoshi's second book on fashion theory. The passage explains the background to the book's title, and was written in October 1993. Published during the recession following the collapse of the bubble economy, the book has since been cited in many contexts discussing fashion as a philosophy. Incidentally, three months after this passage was written, a further passage that could be considered an explanation of the epilogue was published in the Asahi Shimbun, so I would like to introduce it here.
"For example, the highly consumerist society that gave birth to such grotesque terms as 'product differentiation' was itself aware that the proliferation of 'subtle differences' ironically leads to the disappearance of differences.
(omitted)
In the field of fashion, where the logic of differentiation is most brutally applied, a paradoxical phenomenon has arisen in which anti-mode, which resists the 'seasonal winds' of fashion that change styles with each season and rejects the very value of modishness (the latest trends) along with the values of elegance and luxury, is at the forefront of none other than fashion. Amidst this phenomenon, designers have begun to imagine the possibility of clothing that breaks away from the institution of fashion."
(Quoted from "Sociology of Recession 7," evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun, January 13, 1994)