Art seen from outside: Non-artistic legitimation within the field of fashion design

• Art and fashion are two fields of cultural production marked by shifting boundaries.
• The interaction produces cross-fertilization, metamorphosis, identity, and legitimation.
• Milanese fashion designers do not use art as a means to acquire legitimacy.
• They seek to legitimate their cultural production through a culture of wearability.
• Field of cultural production can seek legitimation in ways other than artification.

This article focuses on the relation between art and fashion—two fields of cultural production marked by contrasts and shifting boundaries—by investigating it in light of the perceptions of art among ordinary fashion designers. Drawing on an institutional perspective that conceives fashion and art as social fields, we summarise the effects produced between the two fields, and we outline the processes of identity formation and the legitimation of fields of cultural production. Empirical research on a sample of Milanese fashion designers allow us to determine whether or not fashion designers use art as a means to acquire legitimacy and to create an identity, thereby institutionalising their field of cultural production (fashion) as artistic. Our argument is that identification with art is often rejected by ordinary fashion designers, who seek to legitimate their cultural production, not through art, but through a culture of wearability. The case of Milanese fashion adds breadth and depth to the theory of artification and to the production of culture theory by showing that comparison with the fine arts by actors in a field of cultural production in constant search of legitimation may come about through channels other than assimilation into the world of art.