Utopia, the Anti-Fashion Statement

The current study aims to 1) investigate how fashion is perceived in societies that utopian novels were born and 2) what fashion means in utopian worlds by content analyzing two utopian novels, Thomas More�s Utopia and William Morris�N ews from Nowhere. The analyses of More�s Utopia and Morris�s News from Nowhere revealed that both utopian societies made corrections from our (imperfect) societies to increase happiness of people. Dresses of those two utopian societies were described as comfortable, pleasant, and attractive. There was a difference in design in that More considered simple and natural designs as the best whereas Morris considered human processed, labor intensive designs as the most attractive. However, fashion did not exist in either utopian world. It is reasonable to say that utopian societies were anti fashion in general due to the conflicting natures of fashion and utopia.