The elegant casualness

reflections on slow fashion through brands of São Paulo city

Abstract

Since Pierre Bourdieu published La Distinction, contemporary culture has undergone significant transformations, leading to a fruitful debate about his concepts. With this in mind, we researched slow fashion brands in the city of São Paulo between 2023 and 2024, asking to what extent the emergence of ecological concerns and the concern with “sustainability” may have altered fashion consumption to the point of rendering Bourdieu’s concepts, particularly that of distinction, inoperative. Our investigation into the proposals and trajectories of slow fashion producers, as well as the profiles and motivations of its consumers, demonstrated that, rather than disappearing, mechanisms of distinction are redefined and reaffirmed on new foundations within this social space, where supposedly only “politically correct” values prevail.