essay by EMANUELE COCCIA Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia has written numerous essays on the nature of living. This year he will release a book on fashion co-authored with fashion designer Alessandro Michele, titled the life of form: philosophy of the re-enchantment. It will be published this spring in Italy (Harper Collins), and later in France (Flammarion) and the USA. The contemporary system of fashion does not coincide with the millennial and transcultural history of costume. It is not the simple contemporary version of the series of appearances or fabrics placed on a surface. Arising in the moment when the European artistic avant-gardes set art the supreme task of coinciding with life and defending its freedom from the standardization produced by the Industrial Revolution and mass societies, fashion became not only one of the arts but also the most radical and universal form of artistic practice, of manipulation and use of…