Organization Studies 32(5) 603–613 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0170840611405424 www.egosnet.org/os Originality through Imitation: The Rationality of Fashion Elena Esposito Universitá di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy Abstract Fashion, apparently irrational and whimsical, presents on the contrary a non-random way of managing the limits of rationality in the relations between individuals. Fashion is an inherently paradoxical phenomenon, as was observed at the beginning of its diffusion in the 17th century, a time that discovered, like the recent theory of organization, the necessity and the strategic role of disorder. Fashion relies on the stability of transition (everything changes, and this is the only thing we can rely on) and on the conformity with deviance (everyone wants to be original, and in this desire is like everyone else). Fashion works combining these paradoxes and neutralizing them in the form of banality. What can the theory of organization learn from the trivial mystery of fashion, that prevails on everyone just because nobody takes it seriously? Keywords disorder, fashion, individualism, irrationality, modernity, paradoxes I. Is Fashion Rational? What is happening today with fashion? Until just a few years ago the interest in fashion was exclu- sive to sociology and social history; now it is becoming a theme which is spanning many different areas, often quite far afield from one another, and distant from its original scope. The relevance of fashion is being discovered in science, in economics (even in finance) and particularly in organization theory – which is our special interest here. But what is really uncovered when one approaches the issue of fashion? In many cases simply the existence of trends and fads, and not necessarily fashion as a specific object of analysis: one uncovers fashions, but not always fashion as a question. This makes a big difference in the way you deal with the issue: when one uncovers fashion one usually runs up against a problem, a form of irrationality that surreptitiously enters a field and influences its procedures, as happens when science is guided by fashion instead of theory, or when finance follows trends instead of the fundamentals of the economy (often with disastrous results – as the current financial situation has been illustrating every day). When it comes to Corresponding author: Elena Esposito, Facoltà di Scienze della Comunicazione e dell’Economia, viale Allegri n.15, 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy Email: elenaesposito_010@fastwebnet.it Special Themed Section