What would Labubu say about Luhmann? Fashion, systems, and struggles

This commentary critically engages Van de Peer and Laermans's article on fashion and systems theory. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu, they propose a transversal sociology of fashion grounded in the in/out distinction. While their approach commendably elevates fashion beyond materialist and stratification frameworks, it risks reduction by collapsing diverse modalities into binary semantics. I argue instead for plural and trans-scalar logics of fashion – spanning science, art, industry, and everyday practice – and highlight dimensions neglected by systemic abstraction: affect, memory, sustainability, disciplinary politics, and decolonial critique. Fashion must be read not only as a system of distinctions but as a lived site of aspiration, exclusion, and struggle. Through three media/cultural cases – The Devil Wears Prada, Pose, and the global phenomenon of Labubu – I demonstrate both the explanatory power and the limits of systems theory, urging a general sociology of fashion that is plural, embodied, and porous to interdisciplinary insight.