Notion of Prosperity in the Aesthetics of Fashion

The notion of prosperity has its own religious genealogy: in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber famously linked the notion of prosperity with the Protestant Reformation. As crucial as Weber’s theory is for different approaches to luxury, this paper focuses, instead, on a different understanding of prosperity in fashion, thus paving the way for a new religious genealogy of the notion. This genealogy imagines an approach to fashion that sees prosperity as happiness. Indeed, from a religious and ethical perspective, prosperity is, first and foremost, the search for happiness in this life. Several monotheistic traditions overlap the notion of prosperity with that of divine grace or blessing, meaning that true prosperity can only be achieved through the exercise of virtues. Thus, only virtues can create a new meaning and new aesthetics of prosperity in fashion. By offering a more theoretical reflection on the notion of prosperity in fashion, this paper intends to determine whether different forms of aesthetics might offer a clue for the understanding of prosperity and wealth in order to herald true prosperity in fashion.