Fashion-Wise [1 ed.] 9781848881600, 9789004371965

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Fashion-Wise

Critical Issues Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Ken Monteith

Lisa Howard Dr Daniel Riha

Advisory Board James Arvanitakis Katarzyna Bronk Jo Chipperfield Ann-Marie Cook Peter Mario Kreuter S Ram Vemuri

Simon Bacon Stephen Morris John Parry Karl Spracklen Peter Twohig Kenneth Wilson

A Critical Issues research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ The Ethos Hub ‘Fashion’

2013

Fashion-Wise

Edited by

Maria Vaccarella with Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-160-0 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Fashion-Wise Jacque Lynn Foltyn Part 1

Extended Meanings: The Evolution of Fashion Hoop Dreams: The Rise and Fall of the Crinoline in Second-Empire France Leonard R. Koos Art Nouveau and the Symbolic Blurring of Women’s Spatial and Corporeal Environments: The Contradiction of Organic Inspiration in Fashion and Interiors Angie G. Dowell and Denise Bertoncino

Part 2

ix

3

13

The Fashion Revolution of Avant-Garde Japanese Designers: Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto Flavia Loscialpo

21

Standing Tall: The Stiletto Heel as Metamorphosis of the Self Francesca D’Angelo

33

The Rationalisation of Consumption Reasons for Purchasing Outdoor Recreational Outfits Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Silje Elisabeth Skuland

43

The Dog Walk: Canine Chic, Companion Animals and Consumer Culture Jacque Lynn Foltyn

53

Women and Fashion: Weaponising and Empowering Marginal Bodies Fashions for Woman with a Future: Women, World War II and the Language of Uniforms Alexandra Elias

67

‘Glamazons’ of Pop: The Enigma of the Female Military-Styled Pop Star: Kate Bush and Madonna Michael A. Langkjær

79

It is the Attitude: Fashion Designs for Women with Disabilities Elizabeth Kaino Hopper Developing ProAesthetics: Disability as Fashion Discourse Olga Vainshtein Part 3

103

Style Statements: Good and Bad Taste (and ‘Girls’) ‘But What do I Wear?’: A Study of Women’s Climbing Attire Claire Evans Vintage Clothing Cultures: The Comforts of History Sarah Lloyd Audrey Hepburn and the ‘Funny Face’ of Post-World War II Humanism Jayne Sheridan The Slut at School: Sex, Dress and Authenticity Felicity Grace Perry

Part 4

91

115 123

133 141

Fashion Performances, Representations and Style Communities Humour as a Strategy in Contemporary Fashion Orna Ben-Meir Vintage Paperback Meets Vintage Couture: How Tom Ford Brought Christopher Isherwood out from behind the Lens Kathryn Franklin Fego DNA Schemas: The Projection of Schematic Constructed Non-Fictional Anxiety within the Styling Design of Fictional Character Dress Michael Ivy (Michiel Germishuys) Street-Style: Fashion Photography, Weblogs and the Urban Image Jess Berry

151

161

169

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On the Style Site: Face Hunter as Node and Prism Charlotte Bik Bandlien Part 5

The Politics of Fashion: Identity, Exclusion and Belonging La Biaiseuse Susie Ralph

203

Couture: Tool of Belonging Julie Thomas

215

‘Fashion in Auschwitz’: Concentration Camp Clothing during World War II: Heretofore Unknown Aspects of Personal Experiences Sofia Pantouvaki Schwarz Rot Gold is the New Black Karolina M. Burbach Nigerian Clothing Tradition: Preservation and Restoration of Used Alaari Fabrics among the Ondo People of South Western Nigeria Sunday Roberts Ogunduyile and Evelyn Omotunde Adepeko

Part 6

191

225 235

247

African Fashion from Dual Directions: Representing Self and Other Victoria L. Rovine

259

The ‘It’ Factor: In Pursuit of the Commoditisation of Fashion Nathaniel Dafydd Beard

267

Marketing: From Fashion Cities and Forecasting to Eco-Fashion, Facsimiles and Fakes ‘Fashionalisation’: Urban Development and the New-Rise Fashion Weeks Wessie Ling

285

From Fashion Forecasting to Coolhunting: Previsional Models in Fashion and in Cultural Production Marco Pedroni

295

Fashion Apps: Altering the ‘Fashionscape’ through Smartphone Technology Mario J. Roman Ecology and Fashion: Development Lines and Prospects Ines Weller and Sabine Walter

Part 7

305 323

Taste and the Rise of Branded Cult Items: Secondary Lines, Counterfeited and Look-Alike Luxury Cecilia Winterhalter

335

Re-Framing Fashion: From Original and Copy to Adaptation Tiziana Ferrero-Regis

347

Stopping the Clock: A Case Study in Archival and Curatorial Practice The Lipperheide Costume Library: An Archive of Clothing and Fashion Susan Ingram

361

Introduction: Fashion-Wise Jacque Lynn Foltyn Welcome to Fashion-Wise, a book that reflects the themes of the ID.Net research Fashion Project, specifically the papers presented during the 2nd Global Conference Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues, held at Oriel College, Oxford University, September 23-26, 2010. During this annual meeting we continued our mapping of fashion as a statement and a stylised form of expression, which displays and begins to define a person, a place, a class, a time, a religion, a culture, subcultures, and even a nation. The papers that were presented at the conference sought to explore the historical, social, economic, political, psychological and artistic phenomenon of fashion. Gathered together from twenty-two countries, the delegates - who come from the humanities, social sciences, the fine and performing arts, from academic institutions and museums - discussed fashion as a powerful component of contemporary culture. To understand and learn about fashion, examine how it is disseminated and represented, and explore the ever changing fashion-industrial complex, the delegates spent four days together, and presented papers in twenty-one sessions. We discussed how individuals emerge as icons of beauty and style; cities and nations are identified as centres of fashion; and the billions of dollars per annum business of fashion, an all encompassing, growing global industry that employs millions of people. We sought to assess the history and meanings of fashion and to evaluate its expressions in politics, business, pop culture, the arts, consumer culture, and social media. Fashion’s impact on identity was another area of focus, as we talked about its effect on gender, sexuality, class, race, disability, age, and nations. The work of fashion specialists and designers were other important topics, as were costume collections, museum curatorial practices and new trends and directions. In keeping with the ethos of the ID.Net, the conversations continued during coffee breaks, shared meals in college and in local restaurants and pubs, and while walking the beautiful grounds of Oriel College. The volume’s diversity of topics is a reflection of the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary nature of the conference itself. Although not every paper presented at the conference is included in this book, the reader will nevertheless find a breadth of topics and viewpoints. The book consists of thirty-two chapters and has been organised into seven parts, an overview of which follows below. In Part 1, ‘Extended Meanings: The Evolution of Fashion,’ the authors explore the progression of fashion’s designs, materials and meanings, and its relation to the body. In the first chapter, ‘Hoop Dreams: The Rise and Fall of the Crinoline in Second-Empire France,’ Leonard R. Koos examines the history of the crinoline in Second Empire France and ponders its significance as a social, political, and cultural phenomenon. The chapter discusses the social milieu, industrial context,

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__________________________________________________________________ and gender politics within which the crinoline skirt’s tremendous popularity developed. ‘Art Nouveau and the Symbolic Blurring of Women’s Spatial and Corporeal Environments: The Contradiction of Organic Inspiration in Fashion and Interiors,’ authored by Angie G. Dowell and Denise Bertoncino, considers how the natural world permeated women’s spatial and corporeal environments during the period of Art Nouveau, when organic motifs such as botanical imagery, fluid lines, and nature-inspired shapes, found their way into interior spaces, home furnishings, and décor, as well as fashionable attire. The chapter explores the symbolic blurring of the feminine fashioned body with the external environment. In the third selection, ‘The Fashion Revolution of Avant-Garde Japanese Designers: Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto,’ Flavia Loscialpo moves the discussion of the evolution of fashion east, to the avant-garde Japanese designers of the 1970s and 1980s, who made their presence felt on the international fashion scene. Loscialpo deftly examines how their work challenged canons about the relationship between the body and the garment that had dominated Western fashion design. In ‘Standing Tall: The Stiletto Heel as Metamorphosis of the Self,’ Francesca D’Angelo continues with the themes developed by Koos, Dowell and Bertoncino, and Loscialpo regarding the intersection of fashion and the female body. Are stiletto heeled shoes exploitive or empowering of the women who wear them? Or are they both? Through a phenomenological as well as psychoanalytic approach, D’Angelo’s chapter compares Canadian and Italian women’s personal reflections and interpretations about the wearing of the heels and finds that gender and somatic transformations remain at the heart of their popularity. Sportswear, the largest segment of the clothing fashion industry, 1 is the focus of the chapter by Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Silje Elisabeth Skuland, ‘The Rationalisation of Consumption Reasons for Purchasing Outdoor Recreational Outfits.’ The extended meanings of fashion are explored by the authors in their study of how fashion is interwoven with the Norwegian valuing of nature and outdoor physical activities. Like Dowell and Bertoncino, Klepp and Skuland understand the importance of nature in the evolution of fashion design; their chapter discusses the Norwegian consumer’s objectification of the outdoors, and the evolution of what is considered ordinary and necessary outdoors wear. Technological innovations within clothing and fabric for optimal performance in skiing, running and biking are discussed, as well as how outfits for outdoor activities are being integrated as part of a skills and knowledge set to perform and participate in outdoor activities. As fashion opens and expands its markets, the extended meanings of fashion have found expression among our four legged friends. In ‘The Dog Walk: Canine Chic, Companion Animals and Consumer Culture,’ Jacque Lynn Foltyn examines why dressing our pups has become a billions of dollars per annum industry,

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__________________________________________________________________ enfolding dogs into the global empire of fashion. The chapter moves beyond the fun and the moralising and considers the trend itself as an expression of what Lipovetsky 2 called ‘consummate fashion,’ as well as some of ethical issues involved in making dogs ‘accessories’ and fashionistas. The theme of Part 2 is ‘Women and Fashion: Weaponising and Empowering Marginal Bodies.’ The focus here is on gender’s influence on fashion, specifically women’s fashion. In the history of human beings, the status of women has been regarded as marginal in comparison to men, and their lesser status, whether they be able or disabled ‘bodies,’ has influenced the statements made in their everyday wear, uniforms, and costumes. In the first two chapters we see how women’s marginality has figured in the ‘weaponising’ of their bodies through fashion, whether serving in the military or in pop music bands. In ‘Fashions for a Woman with a Future: Women, World War II and the Language of Uniforms,’ Alexandra Elias discusses the ways in which the social institution called the military symbolically constructs woman through uniforms. According to Elias, the look of the uniforms women wore during World War II was critical to the recruitment of women into the American military machine, providing a visual language for understanding what society expected of and feared from its female soldiers. Michael A. Langkjær’s compelling ‘“Glamazons” of Pop: The Enigma of the Female Military-Styled Pop Star: Kate Bush and Madonna,’ delves into the phenomenon of female pop stars adopting a military look to transform themselves by the wearing of archetypically male qualities. Langkjær finds that the women do indeed ‘empower’ themselves, but also use the qualities to make ironical, aggressive and ‘caring’ statements. The next two chapters focus on fashion and the disabled women, who experience a two-layer marginal status, first as women and then as women with physical challenges, attempting to dress fashionably and be viewed as ‘normal.’ In ‘It is the Attitude: Fashion Designs for Women with Disabilities,’ Elizabeth Kaino Hopper discusses how fashion designers regularly alter the ‘normal’ human silhouette with their designs, in ways that require the wearer to alter her movements, creating a temporary form of ‘disability.’ But designers, notes Hopper, have avoided the dress needs of women living with actual disabilities, i.e., disabilities not acquired by choice. It is obvious that women with disabilities need more clothing choices, especially fashionable business attire, and Hopper argues that the skills needed in the creative design process to disable an ‘able’ body are not dissimilar to the ones needed to enable a ‘disabled’ one. Olga Vainshtein’s ‘Developing ProAesthetics: Disability as Fashion Discourse,’ explores the moveable margins and extended bodyscapes formed by body parts, dress, accessories and characteristic gestures. Using a case study of the American actress, model and athlete Aimee Mullins, who had both legs amputated below the knee in childhood, Vainshtein considers how Mullins became a subject of controversy when she dared to display her disabled legs and make fashion choices that

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__________________________________________________________________ highlighted them, and when designers such as Alexander McQueen featured her limbs to expand ideas about what fashion is and what it can do to alter the human body. The chapters of Part 3, ‘Style Statements: Good and Bad Taste (and “Girls”),’ live up to the section’s name. Continuing with themes established in Part 2, the focus here is on questions of ‘appropriate’ and emulation worthy ‘looks’ for women. In the first chapter, ‘“But What Do I Wear?” A Study of Women’s Climbing Attire,’ Claire Evans examines ‘proper’ mountaineering attire for 19th century women struggling with the social conformity demanded of established dress codes. Evans shows that as women became more politically active, they began to participate in sports that required them to break dress codes. The chapter provides a developmental outline of changes in women’s climbing and climbing clothing from 1806 to the 1910 and relates it to their struggle for inclusion and recognition. Today, the clothing worn by the mountaineering women of a century ago may be found in vintage boutiques and be prized by collectors for its rarity and ‘good’ taste. In ‘Vintage Clothing Cultures: The Comforts of History,’ Sarah Lloyd (with Andrew Conroy) argues that it is through the vintage market’s emphasis on authenticity and rarity that individuals in an era of conspicuous consumption have found new ways to express their individuality, style, and high standards. The author finds that collectors of vintage fashion emphasise ‘connoisseurship’ as part of their identity; she discusses the ways in which the collectors’ socio-economic class and status are factors used to establish and affirm that their taste for vintage clothes is indeed ‘good.’ As vintage fashion has become a sign of good taste and higher socio-economic status, savvy retailers have embraced the aesthetic and brought it to the British high street. The next chapter in Part 3, ‘Audrey Hepburn and the “Funny Face” of PostWorld War II Humanism,’ by Jayne Sheridan, focuses on one of the most famous icons of beauty and fashion of the last century. While Audrey Hepburn’s ‘face’ itself was a popular culture ‘event,’ so too were her hair styles, slender body, and her clothing, all of which were widely copied by her admirers. Sheridan discusses these developments, relating them to Hepburn’s film career and charitable work for UNICEF, both of which enhanced her image. In the 21st century, Hepburn, who died in 1993, continues to be named at the top of every ‘most stylish’ list and to ‘appear’ in magazines, on posters, in videos and, occasionally, in the promotion of clothes or jewellery. Sheridan argues that the key to Hepburn’s longevity is not to be found only in her iconic film roles, but in her loveable ‘imperfections,’ charisma, and embodiment of ‘class’ as well as humanity. The final chapter in the section ‘The Slut at School: Sex, Dress and Authenticity,’ by Felicity Grace Perry, considers the figure of the ‘skank’ or ‘slut,’ whose ‘bad’ girl style and behaviour are the antithesis of what Audrey Hepburn represents. Perry’s research site is an urban high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand,

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__________________________________________________________________ where the students are not required to wear uniforms. Perry uses the skank or slut, which she finds to be a gendered, raced, aged, and classed concept, to explore the relationships between appearance and identity, fashion and sex, and self and others. Perry is particularly intrigued with why certain high school females adopt the style, when others are likely to associate it with deviant sexual practices, low intelligence and lack of authenticity. She ponders the transfer to high school of the aesthetic, which is frequently worn by fashion models on the catwalk, in fashion editorials and in advertisements, and finds that the students’ reactions to the barely there clothing in the fashion media context versus the school context illustrates the complexity of appearance-norms at work. Part 4, ‘Fashion Performances, Representations and Style Communities,’ focuses on how humour, film, photography, the internet, and social media can provide fashion oriented individuals from around the world with opportunities for consuming fashion and becoming members of ‘style communities.’ In ‘Humour as a Strategy in Contemporary Fashion,’ Orna Ben-Meir considers humour’s role as a powerful cognitive tool for drawing attention to fashion. Tracing the history of a good laugh’s influence on the aesthetic and on the artistic values of Dada, Duchamp, and the Surrealists, Ben-Meir discusses how these values went on to infiltrate the designs of Elsa Schiaparelli and later designers and members of subcultures who violated established sartorial and aesthetic codes. According to Ben-Meir, the performance and representation of humour in contemporary fashion have become strategies for gaining commercial visibility and loyalty among consumers. Upon the release of Tom Ford’s cinematic adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel, A Single Man, which critics hailed as a perfect marriage of style and substance, there was renewed interest in not only Ford and Isherwood, but in the representation of fashion and style of the early 1960s and in how identity, sexuality, and cultural values are expressed in narratives motivated by fashion. In ‘Vintage Paperback Meets Vintage Couture: How Tom Ford Brought Christopher Isherwood out from behind the Lens,’ Kathyrn Franklin explores the linkages among fashion, literature, film, and sexuality ‘style’ communities, which are not always well defined. The third chapter of the section, ‘Fego 3 DNA Schemas: The Projection of Schematic Constructed Non-Fictional Anxiety within the Styling Design of Fictional Character Dress,’ by Michael Ivy, is an exploration of how the emotions of the members of an audience are affected by the fashioning of the characters’ dress. We are all performers concerned about what Goffman termed ‘impression management,’ 4 and Ivy proposes the term ‘dress cognology’ to connote the study of various groupings through the persuasive communicative styling design of character dress. In the next two chapters, the focus is on the representations and performances found on street style websites and blogs. Jess Berry’s ‘Street-Style: Fashion

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__________________________________________________________________ Photography, Weblogs and the Urban Image,’ shows how the street has become the predominant backdrop for not only fashion photography in magazines and advertising, but also an important feature of fashion oriented blogs such as the Sartorialist and Facehunter. Such sites, argues Berry, offer ordinary fashion enthusiasts a democratic platform to comment on what people are wearing from Sao-Paolo to Shanghai and to challenge the hegemony of elite fashion cities such as Paris, London, New York, and Milan with the homogenous all-encompassing ‘city’ of the Internet. In the final chapter of Part 4, the focus is on how such style sites can become style communities. In ‘On the Style Site: Face Hunter as Node and Prism,’ Charlotte Bik Bandlien, like Jess Berry, is intrigued by the global influences of street fashion blog sites. How are such street fashion sites contributing to the construction of real - or imaginary - transnational fashion oriented internet communities? The chapters of Part 5, ‘The Politics of Fashion: Identity, Exclusion and Belonging,’ explore the politics of regional, national, and global identities. We start in early twentieth century France, with Susie Ralph’s investigation of the then long-standing prejudice of equating seamstresses with prostitutes in ‘La Biaiseuse.’ Though the stereotype is surprising to those of us living one hundred years later, it was registered then in the 1912 popular French song, La Biaiseuse, whose lyrics provide details about the working and private life of a young woman employed in the French fashion industry. Using content analysis of the song’s lyrics as her method, Ralph analyses how the working practices of the Parisian couture trade affected the lives of the women employed within it and gave rise to idealised figure of the popular imagination, the Parisienne. From Belle Époque France, we move to contemporary France, in Julie Thomas’s chapter ‘Couture: Tool of Belonging,’ a chapter that also examines the status of women involved in the business of making clothing. Thomas explores how couture is being used as an agent of transformation for marginalised women from diasporic communities seeking to integrate into French society. For these ‘new French’ women, Thomas finds, couture is a socio-economic tool and form of cultural capital, a way to forge their social inclusion, through the recycling of second-hand fabrics and garments into couture creations. From France, we move on to Germany, where the focus in the next two chapters is how fashion and identity are built and maintained in response to political ideologies and regimes. In the fascinating ‘Fashion in Auschwitz: Concentration Camp Clothing during World War II: Heretofore Unknown Aspects of Personal Experiences,’ Sofia Pantouvaki discusses how the clothing of prisoners confined in the Nazi concentration camps served to not only cover their bodies but identify them as prisoners. Unlike in popular representations of the camps, prisoners did not always wear striped uniforms; rather, they wore a wide range of other garments, including civilian clothing marked in specific ways to identify them as inmates. Pantouvaki finds that even in the prisons, fashion remained

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__________________________________________________________________ important as prisoners expressed aspects of personal identity through their clothing and did what they could to look good; being well-dressed could facilitate their daily lives, and sometimes improved survival and opportunities for escape. In ‘Schwarz Rot Gold is the New Black,’ the focus is present-day Germany and the production of national identity through contemporary popular culture. Karolina M. Burbach’s theoretically guided empirical discussion of the controversial role of fashion in the creation of a new patriotism in Germany, focuses on how fashion reflects the social struggles and transformations of the nation, by the use of the German national colours and motifs such as the imperial German eagle. In the next two chapters, the continent of attention is Africa. In ‘Nigerian Clothing Tradition: Preservation and Restoration of Used Alaari Fabrics among the Ondo People of South Western Nigeria,’ the setting is Nigeria. The authors, Sunday Roberts Ogunduyile and Evelyn Omotunde Adepeko, explore the nation’s immense cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, out of which the Ondo are but one people who produce and restore woven fabrics that are important for their ethnic identity. In ‘African Fashion from Dual Directions: Representing Self and Other,’ Victoria L. Rovine examines the role of fashion in the forging of contemporary discourses about African personal and cultural identity. The chapter discusses two sides of Africa’s presence in the modern and contemporary fashion markets, by discussing the work of African fashion designers and the representation of Africa and its cultures through Africa-inflected garments that are made by Western designers. Rovine brings together these two ‘fashioned Africas,’ while highlighting their differences and their implications for understanding contemporary global cultures. Part 5 concludes with the role of the internet and social media in not only the production of regional and national pride but of international political influence. In ‘The “It” Factor: In Pursuit of the Commoditisation of Fashion,’ Nathaniel Dafydd Beard concentrates on how fashion may be used as a political weapon in the assertion of regional or international prestige. Like art and architecture before it, fashion, argues Beard, has become commoditised to demonstrate both commercial nous and political acumen. His examples include national fashion exhibitions and fashion museums, commercial events, and the supposed rivalries among fashion icon consorts of political leaders, such as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy of France, Princess Letizia of Spain, and Michelle Obama of the United States. Beard finds that there has been a shift away from fashion as a ‘product’ to fashion as ‘ambience’ and high-fashion brands, to be packaged and sold in the newly democratised world of fashion bloggers and ‘fast-fashion.’ Part 6, ‘Marketing: From Fashion Cities and Forecasting to Eco-Fashion, Facsimiles and Fakes,’ takes on new developments in the business of fashion, from ‘fashionalisation’ and ‘coolhunting’ to fashion apps, facsimiles and fakes. In the first chapter, ‘“Fashionalisation”: Urban Development and the New-Rise Fashion Weeks,’ Wessie Ling considers the tradition of Fashion Week, as it has

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__________________________________________________________________ expanded into smaller venues in the international calendar, now numbering more than a hundred around the world. Ling’s chapter focuses on the objectives of these ‘new-rise’ Fashion Weeks and the rationale behind the hosting the events, discussing how cities exploit fashion to achieve varied objectives beyond serving the fashion industry. In the next chapter, Marco Pedroni discusses how the transition from haute couture to prêt-à-porter in the 1960’s created a revolution in both production and consumption in the fashion-industrial-complex. In ‘From Fashion Forecasting to Coolhunting: Previsional Models in Fashion and in Cultural Production,’ Pedroni directs our attention to ‘coolhunting,’ the professional process of predicting future trends. What interests Pedroni is the shift from research focused on fads to research focused on larger socio-cultural trends that involve the symbolic imagination of the customer. In ‘Fashion Apps: Altering the “Fashionscape” through Smartphone Technology,’ Mario J. Roman explores new developments in fashion media, concentrating on how Smartphone ‘apps’ are changing the ways that consumers and retailers interact with fashion products, media, and each another. The subject of ‘Ecology and Fashion: Development Lines and Prospects,’ by Ines Weller and Sabine Walter, is the production of sustainable fashion materials, which has ideological as well a practical business applications. The authors discuss ecological innovations implemented by textile and clothing manufacturers in the past 30 years; development lines in eco-fashion; ecological sustainability criteria; and the potential of eco-fashion developments for shifting consumption and production patterns. In the next chapter, Cecilia Winterhalter’s subject is the burgeoning fakes market that the fashion industry has had only moderate success regulating. In ‘Taste and the Rise of Branded Cult Items: Secondary Lines, Counterfeited and Look-Alike Luxury,’ Winterhalter discusses the contradiction between the importance attributed to the good taste that is expressed by the growing consumption of luxury products among the fashion minded, and the contemporary rise of branded counterfeits of these luxury products. Whether real or fake, the branded cult items coveted by consumers allow them to construct new identities. Like luxe items, counterfeit and look-alike products have an enormous impact on fashion markets and transnational identities, Winterhalter finds. The demand for the facsimile is continually growing, she notes, endangering the luxury market by their increasing quality, popularity and social acceptance. Tiziana Ferrero-Regis continues the discussion of what constitutes a ‘copy’ in her thought-provoking ‘Re-Framing Fashion: From Original and Copy to Adaptation.’ Her study discusses the role consumers play in the adaptation process; suggests the need for a contextual requalification of concepts such as original, copy, imitation and copyright; and finds that while these categories have been played against each other, they are in fact interdependent.

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__________________________________________________________________ The final section of the book, Part 7 ‘Stopping the Clock: A Case Study in Archival and Curatorial Practice,’ contains just one chapter, ‘The Lipperheide Costume Library: An Archive of Clothing and Fashion.’ Susan Ingram spotlights the Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek (Lipperheide Costume Library) in Berlin, the largest library and graphic collection focused on the cultural history of clothing and fashion, and provides a history of the collection and the collectors who amassed it. She also considers the collection’s influence, particularly how it has been able to navigate the ‘slippage’ among the concepts of costume, dress, and fashion to its own advantage. In challenging intellectual exchanges, both in formal sessions and in informal venues, we came away from the 2nd Global Conference Fashion with more knowledge and insight about this vastly complex and fascinating topic we call ‘fashion.’

Notes 1

G. Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993 [1987]. 2 Ibid. 3 Fego: fictional ego. 4 E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday, Garden City, 1959.

Bibliography Goffman, E., The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, Garden City, 1959. Lipovetsky, G., The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993 [1987].

Part 1 Extended Meanings: The Evolution of Fashion

Hoop Dreams: The Rise and Fall of the Crinoline in SecondEmpire France Leonard R. Koos Abstract Crinoline, while originally referring to a stiff linen cloth woven with horsehair and used for petticoats in the 1830s, ultimately became associated with the caged or hooped underskirt frames which became increasingly popular in the course of the 1850s. The crinoline skirt, while often regarded as an aberrant frivolity of women’s fashion of the mid-nineteenth century, nonetheless evoked a surprisingly controversial and ideologically varied amount of commentary during the period. This chapter examines the history of the crinoline in Second Empire France and considers its significance as a social, political, and cultural phenomenon. First, this chapter discusses the social and industrial context within which the crinoline skirt’s tremendous popularity developed, namely the cultural and economic transformation of Paris under Louis-Napoleon and Eugénie. Next, it examines the history of the crinoline in relation to gender politics during this period as it relates to the Empress Eugénie who was instrumental in its popularisation in the 1850s as the latest in Parisian fashion. By examining a variety of historical documents and literary works, this chapter demonstrates how the hotly debated arguments for and against the crinoline not only constitute a fundamental critique of the Second Empire and the political power that Eugénie had attained in it, but also a generalised cultural narrative that expresses the fundamental anxiety of a society in which traditional gender roles were being threatened by the processes of modernisation and industrialisation. Key Words: Crinoline, Empress Eugénie, gender, modernity. ***** In the end, everything you are saying does not affect me in the least; I will continue on my path, I will follow my route triumphantly and joyously, like a queen of fashion, despite everything that is said against me. 1 On the 12th January 1858, the musical review Paris-Crinoline by popular playwright Roger de Beauvoir opened at Paris’ Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique. De Beauvoir’s witty play features the title character on a tour of the personified novelties of the capital that include a newspaper gossip column, a restaurant menu, posters, a painting exhibition, and characters from current popular plays. The character Paris-Crinoline, whose ample skirt a street sweeper claims clears more refuse off the macadam pavement than he does with his broom, describes in song

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__________________________________________________________________ her inauspicious beginnings and current prominence: ‘the crinoline insinuated itself in families; little by little, its empire grew. I conquered in every way. Gigantic hoops, ferocious flounces, colossal cages, astounding petticoats…’ 2 ParisCrinoline’s rival, La Fée Epingle then appears, musically stating her goal: ‘I pop false skirts and false balloons, let’s pop every false glory, every deceptive success.’ 3 Paris-Crinoline, however, prevails, promising that the New Year will be filled with new plays, new dress fashions, and unparalleled marvels. From the outset, de Beauvoir’s play proposes a suggestive conjunction of contemporary discursive values, ultimately revealing just as much about its conception of the crinoline as it does about the nascent fashion system and the culture in which it developed in Second Empire France. As the play’s stage directions indicate, the eponymous character initially appears on the Rue de Rivoli across from the Nouveau Louvre. This portion of the Rue de Rivoli, up to the Rue de Sévigné, had been reconstructed and reopened in 1856, soon thereafter becoming the architectural emblem of Haussmann’s reconstructed Paris. 4 Just as the hyphenation in the name of the title character couples the new cityscape with the novelty of the hoop crinoline, so too does this play implicate an image of the emergent fashion system with the Second Empire’s proposed culture of theatrical display and ostentation in which traditional signifiers, like the streets of old Paris, were being demolished and replaced with those of a new politics of vision. In this manner, de Beauvoir’s play, taking the crinoline skirt as an exemplar of the material and convulsive changes being effected, heralds a new network of social relations and activity in which values like modernity, public theatricality, and fashion become cultural manifestations of significant shifts in the French cultural landscape of the mid-nineteenth century. 1. Expansionism The history of the crinoline skirt in nineteenth-century France comprised a hotly and perhaps surprisingly debated proposition in circles far beyond those conventionally concerned with matters of dress. The word crinoline, which etymologically refers to ‘crin’ (horsehair) and ‘lin’ (flax, linen), enters written French in the 24th May 1829 issue of Le Courrier Commercial which reported that an inventor named César Louis Oudinot-Lutel had recently presented to the king a hunting vest made of the newly developed fabric. 5 Later in 1829, fashion journals reported that the crinoline fabric was also being used for women’s petticoats. Women’s dresses and skirts, following the simplicity of Empire neoclassical styles, tended during the Bourbon Restoration and early constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe towards more volume, greater size, and a more rounded silhouette. The stiff crinoline fabric facilitated this tendency. By the 1840s, the word crinoline designated the style of the skirt rather than just the fabric that went into its composition. Beyond the stiffened crinoline petticoat, a variety of other elements were employed to create the desirably larger shape like flounces, as many as six

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__________________________________________________________________ petticoats, cartridge pleats, double flounced skirts, stiffened cords sewn into the petticoat hem, and so forth. The resulting bell-shaped silhouette, however, had the disadvantages of restricting movement and being extremely uncomfortable and unhygienic, such that by the early 1850s this style was falling out fashion. Dressmakers in the 1850s experimented with the introduction of pieces of wood, whalebone, rubber tubes, then steel wire, into a petticoat’s hem in order to create a stable structure beneath the primary skirt. In Raoul de Lamorillière’s 1855 Crinolines et Volants, while clearly indicating the continued existence of the crinoline skirt of the 1840s, as well refers to steel wire used in the composition of some crinolines. 6 In the 22nd November 1856 issue of L’Illustration, Philippe Busoni for the first time refers to a young woman whose ‘steel hoops supported her skirts.’ 7 While most fashion historians agree that the hoop or cage crinoline composed of steel wire undeniably appeared in second half of 1856, they cannot precisely identify a specific origin for this innovation. 8 Beyond details of entrepreneurial ingenuity in the development of the hoop crinoline in mid-1850s, other factors significantly contributed to its extraordinary popularity. First and foremost, the crinoline was a fashion that the young Empress Eugénie favoured and photographs from late 1856 suggest that she was already wearing a structure reinforced with whale bone or a cage of steel wire construction. Another important catalyst for the hoop crinoline fashion in France was the popular play by Philippe Dumanoir and Théodore Barrière Les Toilettes Tapageuses which premiered at Paris’ Théâtre de la Gymnase on the 4th October 1856. The play features the character Emma who, in her desire to impress high society with her ever more opulent and eye-catching outfits, appears on stage in a dress ‘with an enormous width and a miniscule hat,’ 9 a satirising exaggeration of a current fashion as well as of women’s seemingly blind participation in it. According to Maxime du Camp, ‘the day after the premiere, the dress was ordered by more than twenty society women, and eight days later, the crinoline had doubled its dimensions.’ 10 The determination of the origin of the cage crinoline in France or elsewhere is less important than its significance as a consumer product and a cultural phenomenon. In France, England, and the United States, steel processing factories quickly shifted their operations to producing the thin wire used for the hoop crinoline. In 1857, for example, Jules and Emile Peugeot, long before producing bicycles and automobiles, bought a second facility in Beaulieu where their flattening mills processed annually up to eight tons of light steel wire which was then sent to their nearby factory at Valentigney and as many as 25,000 cages were produced per year. 11 While comparable to the ready-to-wear future of clothes facilitated in the 1850s by the perfecting of the sewing machine and the emergence of the modern department store, the mass production of the cage crinoline was first and foremost an industrial proposition. Beyond that, its design, which recalls the introduction of steel into contemporary architecture as with Joseph Paxon’s 1851’s

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__________________________________________________________________ Crystal Palace, the metal-based cage crinoline was a triumph of entrepreneurial innovation and industrial ingenuity. 2. Dress to Empress The vogue of the ever larger, dome shaped crinoline of the late 1850s was initially and inextricably associated with the young Empress Eugénie who, following the birth of the imperial prince on the 16th March 1856, became a far more visible and influential arbiter of public taste in Second Empire France. Manufacturers and distributors alike seized upon this association and marketed a variety of fashion products with Eugénie’s name and title attached to them, including W. S. Thompson’s popular Empress crinoline model of the 1860s. As Eugénie’s persona and role evolved during her eighteen year reign, so to did the form of this perceived association with fashion. 12 In 1859, fashion and politics decisively collided as the Empress was named Régente while Louis-Napoléon was engaged in the Italian Campaign. For the next decade, in pivotal political events like the disastrous 1862 Mexican expedition and the issue of Papal authority, Eugénie asserted a position that was frequently at odds with that of Louis-Napoléon and his ministers. 13 The aggrandised political presence of Eugénie, in many respects, corresponded to the conspicuous size of the hoop crinoline and the new approach to fashion that it embodied. The phenomenon of the toilette tapageuse, as initially represented in Dumanoir and Barrière’s play, was analogous to both the crinoline and Eugénie’s fashion sense. In that play, the protagonist Emma wants a sensational new outfit for an appearance at a reception, her husband ultimately consenting to his wife’s overwhelming whim. Although Emma causes a sensation in an absurdly large crinoline, she is undone by the revelation that a notorious courtesan had been seen in the same dress. Having been shamed into her lesson, Emma vows to organise ‘a sainted crusade against the abuse of adulterated skirts.’ 14 On one level, the toilette tapageuse departs from the previous restrictive codes of appropriate dress that had dominated the upper-class French woman’s sartorial existence. The crinoline as a toilette tapageuse definitively breaks with conventional codes of dress in a visual and physical spectacle of displayed excess of size, fabric, and color. On another level, the toilette tapageuse in the example of the crinoline delineates a shift in a woman’s social authority. In Les Toilettes Tapageuses, the husband Beaupertuis laments that ‘when I get out of the carriage, I seem to be coming out of her pocket… At the theatre, I disappear completely, submerged in silk and lace.’ 15 In short, the crinoline represents a challenge to his traditional authority as a husband and a man. The issue of gender looms prominently in the ways in which the cage was represented in public discourse, so much so that it was frequently figured as an instrument of female power. Moreover, while the crinoline may have been cumbersome particularly as women learned to maneuver its increasing proportions,

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__________________________________________________________________ its weight was considered by many women writing in fashions journals as liberating in comparison to the heavy multi-petticoats of the 1840s. 16 While the majority of the supporters of the cage were women, several prominent men also defended its use. For example, in the anonymous 1857 Défense de la Crinoline, the primary argument for the crinoline was its ability to permit treatment of maladies and conditions without compromising the patient’s vanity. Théophile Gautier, in an 1858 essay De la Mode defended the cage as a quintessentially modern fashion that opposed the natural since it modified the visual proportions of its wearer’s shape and established a sculptural effect as it created ‘a pedestal for the bust and the head.’ 17 The most dramatic conflation of the crinoline and female power was Hippolyte Coignard’s musical comedy La Reine Crinoline which premiered at Paris’ Théâtre des Délassements Comiques on the 11th October 1863. In the play, Frivolin and Citronet find themselves shipwrecked on an unnamed island ruled by a group of women led by La Reine Crinoline. Clearly an indirect criticism of the Empress Eugénie’s perceived political power, La Reine Crinoline presides over a pleasurefilled society in which traditional gender roles have been inverted. The play ends with Frivolin leading a successful revolt of the island’s men which seeks to ‘break up the empire of the skirt’ 18 and reestablish a conventional politics of gender by rendering the women nominally submissive to male authority. In the final musical number, however, La Reine Crinoline, militarily defeated yet in love with Frivolin, slyly sings ‘From now on let’s leave to the men all the appearance of power; we will keep it in reality.’ 19 In Coignard’s play, as elsewhere in Second Empire cultural discourse, the crinoline conveyed a transgression of traditional codes of societal signification. On a variety of levels from the practical to the philosophical, the argument in favor of the cage crinoline in its motivated departure conventions in women’s nineteenthcentury dress marked it as a disruptive signifier of social change and modernity as well as an equally destabilising presence in the gender topology of the Second Empire. 3. In the End In the rapidly developing discourse on fashion in Second Empire France, the first prominent critic of the new fashion was Philippe Busoni whose weekly column in L’Illustration provided a running commentary on the crinoline mania from mid-1856 on, prematurely predicting in the 28th March 1857 issue that ‘this evil that spreads terror among husbands’ 20 was reaching its end. Another rhetorical strategy for attacking the crinoline, as seen in Albert de la Fizelière’s 1859 Histoire de la Crinoline, was to reduce the impact of its novelty by associating it with previous court styles like the sixteenth-century vertugadin or the eighteenthcentury panier. 21 Still another commonly articulated criticism of the crinoline was

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__________________________________________________________________ to underscore how the crinoline transgressed standards of good taste and elegance. 22 The most effective catalyst to crinoline criticism from 1856 onwards can be found in the pages of the illustrated and satirical press. In Le Charivari, Le Journal pour Rire, and Le Journal Amusant, among others, leading illustrators of the day like Henri Daumier, Charles Vernier, Alfred Grévin, Félix Nadar, Edouard Riou, and Emile Marcelin, implacably established a visual iconography analogous to print criticism of the cage crinoline. Images of women physically distanced from their husbands or dance partners, having trouble fitting into architectural spaces like staircases or hallways, or being victims of windy weather corresponded to similarly humorous anecdotes in Parisian and provincial newspapers. The most extraordinarily hyperbolic moment in the crinoline controversy transpired on the 22nd June 1865 when André Dupin, while speaking on the floor of the Sénat, took the occasion to rail again the ‘unbridled extravagance of women’ in the example of the crinoline. Dupin’s diatribe against the crinoline begins as a critique of the Second Empire fashion system in which ‘the excess of dress that throws everyone off their path’ 23 leads to ruinous expenses. The crinoline is then evoked, in comparison to the classic La Fontaine fable in which the frog desires to be as large as the cow and, in the end, bursts. Dupin’s quasi-nationalist anticrinoline argument ends with a call to action to the mothers of France to impose decency and restraint on their dress habits by rejecting the superfluous styles of Second Empire fashion. Although André Dupin’s attempt to create a senatorial solution to the crinoline craze only resulted in an equally heated backlash particularly from women, 24 the eventual decline of the cage crinoline took place in the second half of the 1860s through a series of modifications of women’s dress silhouettes. In these successive changes, the work and influence of the couturier Charles Frederick Worth was instrumental and decisive. Worth, a favorite designer of the Empress Eugénie, began to reshape the dress silhouette in the 1864 season by flattening out the frontal width of the crinoline and increasingly shifting volume to the back, first in a conically-shaped cage called the crinolinette, then with the introduction by 1869 of the fan train, and finally culminating with his world famous Princess line of soft bustles in the early 1870s. 25 The hoop crinoline, emblematic of a new fashion sensibility, played the role of a complex cultural signifier on the discursive stages of Second Empire France. As a product of industrial manufacture and entrepreneurial marketing, the crinoline constituted a harbinger of things to come in clothes production and consumption. In the gender politics of the period, similarly, the cage crinoline decisively demarcated a divide between the men and women, in this way relatable to other proto-feminist murmurings of the period. For its detractors, the crinoline represented an outrageous attack on good taste and decency, and an immorally ruinous excess, a sure sign of the decadence of an entire society and era. While we

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__________________________________________________________________ might understandably ask how a mere fashion could fulfill all of these diverse roles, what becomes apparent in the Second Empire crinoline controversy is how that mere fashion was transformed into a flexible and ultimately indeterminate figure onto which was projected the enthusiasm and anxiety of a society in transition from tradition to modernity.

Notes 1

F. E. Pecquet, La Grrrrande Colère de Monsieur Calicot contre Madame Crinoline, Michel et Augustin, Paris, 1862, p. 7. All translations from the French, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s. 2 R. de Beauvoir, Paris-Crinoline, Michel Lévy, Paris, 1858, p. 2. 3 Ibid. 4 One of the most curious works on the crinoline during this period was P. F. Mathieu’s Les Nouveaux Embarras de Paris, ou le Macadam et la Crinoline (F. Malteste, Paris, 1858), based on a poem read at the Athnénée des Arts on 11th April 1858, which comically criticised both of these novelties of the modern metropolis. 5 Le Courrier Commercial, No. 15, 24th May 1829, p. 4. 6 R. de Lamorillière, Crinolines et Volants, n.p , Bordeaux, 1855, p. 44. 7 P. Busoni, ‘Courrier de Paris’, L’ Illustration, Vol. 28, 22nd November 1856, p. 322. 8 In this respect, the history of patents for cage crinoline is equally ambiguous. While patents for cage-like contraptions began to appear as early as the late 1840s, none of these were ultimately employed in the mass production of cage crinolines in the late 1850s. For more on this issue, see M. Peteu and S. Gray, ‘Clothing Invention: Improving the Functionality of Women’s Skirts, 1846-1920’, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 20, 2008, pp. 1-17. 9 P. Dumanoir and T. Barrière, Les Toilettes Tapageuses, Michel Lévy, Paris, 1856, p. 15. For more on the suggestive conjunction of fashion and the Parisian stage during the Second Empire, see B. Wehinger, Paris-Crinoline: Zur Faszination des Boulevardtheaters und der Mode im Kontext des Urbanität und der Modermität des Jahres 1857, W. Fink, Munich, 1988. 10 M. du Camp, Paris: Ses Organes, ses Foctions et sa vie Dans la Seconde Moitié du XIXe Siècle, Vol. 4, Hachette, Paris, 1869, p. 192. 11 For more on the Peugeot brothers’ early industrial work, see R. Sédillot, Peugeot, de la Crinoline à la 404, Plon, Paris, 1960. 12 For more on Eugénie’s association with fashion and the crinoline, see the catalogue to the Musée Galleria’s recent exhibition, Sous L’empire des Crinolines, Musées de Paris, Paris, 2008. 13 For more on the relationship between Eugénie’s political role and fashion in the Second Empire, see T. Dolan, ‘The Empress’s New Clothes: Fashion and Politics

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__________________________________________________________________ in Second Empire France’, Women’s Art Journal, Vol. 15, 1990, pp. 22-28, and ‘Skirting the Issue: Manet’s Portrait of Baudelaire’s Mistress Reclining’, Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, 1997, pp. 611-629. It is also noteworthy that as the Second Empire crumbled during the Franco-Prussian War and fell in its aftermath, a number of virulent pamphlets attacking Eugénie and her political role appeared. The most well known of these were the La Femme Bonaparte (published under the pseudonym Vindex) Martinet, Paris, 1870 and the anonymous Madame Napoléon, Au Bureau du Petit Journal, Brussels, 1871. 14 Dumanoir and Barrière, p. 15. 15 Ibid. 16 Despite the cage crinoline’s immense size (by some estimates, up to six feet in diameter at the height of its popularity by the end of the 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s), its light weight makes it comparable to the American bloomer which had appeared in 1851 as part of a proto-feminist attempt at women’s dress reform. 17 T. Gautier, De la Mode, Actes Sud, Arles, 1993, p. 30. 18 H. Coignard, La Reine Crinoline, Michel Lévy, Paris, 1862, p. 15. 19 Ibid., p. 16. 20 P. Busoni, ‘Courrier de Paris’, L’ Illustration, Vol. 29, 28th March 1857, p. 195. 21 In this work, which is less of a history and more of a critical commentary, Albert de la Fizilière insists several times, on the fact that the vertugadin was a Spanish fashion that influenced the French court, an indirect reference to the Empress Eugénie. 22 For example, the Comtesse Drohojowska wrote a number of works on fashion, decency in dress, and public manners, La Vérité aux Femmes sur L’excentricité des Modes et de la Toilette (1859) being the best example of this sort of guide to good taste. For more on these types of works, see P. Perrot, Le Dessus et le Dessous de la Bourgeoisie, Fayard, Paris, 1989. 23 A. Dupin, Opinion du Procureur Général dur le luxe Éffréné des Femmes à L’occasion d’un Pétition contre la Prostitution Rapportée par M. Goulhot de Saint-Germain, Plon, Paris, 1865, p. 5. This pamphlet reportedly sold many thousands of copies in the weeks following its publication. 24 See, for example, the equally popular anonymous pamphlet Les Dames ont Toujours Raison! Réponse de Certaines Femmes Portant Crinoline à M*** de Bordeaux, E. Crugy, Bordeaux, 1865, which makes the argument that Dupin was motivated by financial gain in publishing his pamphlet as well as ascribing his misogyny due to the eighty-year old senator’s questionable virility. 25 For more on the career of Worth and the emerging world of high fashion in the second half of the nineteenth-century, see D. DeMarly, Worth: Father of Haute Couture, Holmes and Mier, New York, 1990.

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Bibliography Busoni, P., ‘Courrier de Paris’. L’Illustration, Vol. 28, pp. 322-323. —––, ‘Courrier de Paris’. L’Illustration, Vol. 29, 1857, pp. 195-196. Coignard, H., - La Reine Crinoline. Michel Lévy, Paris, 1862. De Beauvoir, R., Paris-Crinoline. Michel Lévy, Paris, 1858. De Fizilière, A., Histoire de la Crinoline. A. Aubry, Paris, 1858. Défense de la Crinoline. Maillet Schemistz, Paris, 1857. De Lamorillière, R., Crinolines et Volants. n. p., Bordeaux, 1855. DeMarly, D., Worth: Father of Haute Couture. Holmes and Mier, New York, 1990. Dolan, T., ‘The Empress’s New Clothes: Fashion and Politics in Second Empire France’. Women’s Art Journal, Vol. 15, 1990, pp. 22-28. —––, ‘Skirting the Issue: Manet’s Portrait of Baudelaire’s Mistress Reclining’. Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, 1997, pp. 611-629. Doncourt, Chevalier A. (Comtesse Drohojowska), La Vérité aux Femmes sur L’excentricité des Modes et de la Toilette. Perisse Frères, Paris, 1858. Du Camp, M., Paris: Ses Organes, ses Fonctions et sa vie Dans la Seconde Moitié du XIXe Siècle. Vol. 4, Hachette, Paris, 1869. Dumanoir, P. and Barrière, T., Les Toilettes Tapageuses. Michel Lévy, Paris, 1856. Dupin, A., Opinion du Procureur Général dur le Luxe Éffréné des Femmes à L’occasion d’un Pétition contre la Prostitution Rapportée par M. Goulhot de Saint-Germain. Plon, Paris, 1865. Gautier, T., De la Mode. Actes Sud, Arles,1993. Le Courrier Commercial. No. 15, 24th May 1829.

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__________________________________________________________________ Les Dames ont Toujours Raison! Réponse de Certaines Femmes Portant Crinoline à M*** de Bordeaux. E. Crugy, Bordeaux, 1865. Madame Napoléon. Au Bureau du Petit Journal, Brussels, 1871. Mathieu, P. F., Les Nouveaux Embarras de Paris, ou le Macadam et la Crinoline. F. Malteste, Paris, 1858. ‘Modes’. Le Courrier Commercial, No. 15, 24th May 1829, p. 4. Pecquet, F. E., La Grrrrande Colère de Monsieur Calicot contre Madame Crinoline. Michel et Augustin, Paris, 1862. Perrot, P., Le Dessus et le Dessous de la Bourgeoisie. Fayard, Paris, 1989. Peteu, M., and Gray, S., ‘Clothing Invention: Improving the Functionality of Women’s Skirts, 1846-1920’. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 20, 2008, pp. 1-17. Sédillot, R. Peugeot, de la Crinoline à la 404. Plon, Paris, 1960. Sous L’empire des Crinolines. Musées de Paris, Paris, 2008. Vindex, La Femme Bonaparte. Martinet, Paris, 1870. Wehinger, B., Paris-Crinoline: Zur Faszination des Boulevardtheaters und der Mode im Kontext des Urbanität und der Modermität des Jahres 1857. W. Fink, Munich, 1988. Leonard R. Koos is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Mary Washington in the United States. He is a specialist on nineteenth-century French literature and is currently completing a book on nineteenth-century French colonial culture in North Africa.

Art Nouveau and the Symbolic Blurring of Women’s Spatial and Corporeal Environments: The Contradiction of Organic Inspiration in Fashion and Interiors Angie G. Dowell and Denise Bertoncino Abstract The natural world permeated women’s spatial and corporeal environments during the period of Art Nouveau. Organic motifs - characterised by representations of botanical imagery, fluid lines, and nature-inspired shapes - found their way into the interior spaces in structures, home furnishings, and décor, as well as the popular fashion styles donned by women in the Western world. Additionally, Art Nouveau styles featured whiplash curves, symbolising energy and movement. Such aesthetic elements visually fused a woman’s bodily display with her external environment. Particularly between 1890 and 1910, lines and motifs found in nature were seen in such items as furniture upholstery and women’s dresses and accessories, symbolising a seamless transition between women’s external environments and their fashioned bodies. As organic forms inspired interior and fashion design symbolically blurring the boundary between the two, their ‘naturalness’ existed in some of the most inorganic of ways. Paradoxically, organic inspiration was found in some of the most opulent of interior and fashion styles. For example, a gown by couturier Charles Worth, c. 1900, contains a plant pattern that seems to grow upward from the hemline toward the bodice, as a plant would grow up from the soil toward the sun. Victor Horta’s Tassel House in Brussels represents the natural environment in the curvilinear iron railing and light fixtures, and had stencilled wall coverings that seem to be moving as living vines. 1 Both examples, while containing earth-inspired lines, are within objects that are otherwise very intricate and lavish. In this chapter, we will explore the symbolic blurring of the feminine fashioned body with her external environment, and discuss how organic forms were born into some of the most inorganic fashionable styles. Key Words: Art Nouveau, fashion, interiors, design, organic motifs, femininity, industrialisation. ***** 1. Themes in Visual Culture By the late nineteenth century, movement became a central theme in the arts due to the rise of urban development and spatial reconfiguration of public spaces. 2 Walking became a real-life leisure activity during this period paralleling the pace of the city and its new forms of transportation, as well as individuals’ expansion into public life. Forgione argues that ‘walking required the walker to engage with her surroundings, blending self-awareness with her environment.’ 3 Many paintings

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__________________________________________________________________ of this period focused on this theme, and interior motifs also emphasised movement and fluidity in decorative fixtures, wall coverings, furniture, and fabrics. Curved lines were aesthetically privileged over straight ones, as straight lines were regarded as synthetic whereas fluid ones better emulated the natural lines of the earth. 4 ‘The principal ornamental characteristic of Art Nouveau is the asymmetrically undulating line terminating in a whip-like, energy laden movement.‘ 5 Movement and rhythm became a central theme in the visual arts. Simultaneous to this trend was the trend of bringing the outdoors inside. Concurrent with the rise of industrialisation, Westerners sought to incorporate environmental elements in their everyday living. Flannery notes that people during certain periods of history experience ‘biophilia - the innate urge to have contact with other species.’ 6 This is especially pertinent during times of transition, which was definitely the case at end of 1800s with the rise of the industrial world. A publication by the Lowe Brothers, a paint and wall finishing company, includes this introduction to its Home Colour Harmonies: Nature’s Key to Them: A very busy business man in a big city, who was inclined to become excited and annoyed with his business problems, complained to me that he found it very hard to do business day in and day out without an opportunity to get into the country and open spaces, where he might think and dream. In our conversation, I asked him what he usually did when he was most annoyed, and what he preferred to do. Said that he preferred to go to a wooded lane he knew, and that in walking down this lane felt rested, could think clearly, and felt good toward the whole world. Asked him why he didn’t bring this tingle of Nature’s readjustment influences home. He said it had never occurred to him; he heartily wished it could be done. So that is what we did. This man’s library was remodelled along Nature’s own harmony hues. 7 Reconnecting with the lost experience of one’s natural world had mass appeal, a topic so pervasive that it was included in home interior publications by the nineteen-teens. Additionally, this period saw an influx in the interest of taxidermy and the opening of natural history museums. 8 The general public began to enjoy learning about the natural world, and incorporated this interest in the ways they furnished their homes and dressed their bodies. Academic formality of art was replaced by the study of plant life and human silhouettes. 9 Tolini describes this movement as one during which nature was converted to ornament, signalling individuals’ awareness of the rapid change occurring in their public lives. 10 As such, insects, plants, and animals found their way into home and fashion motifs.

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__________________________________________________________________ Another general trend in home interiors during this period is what Hartzell explains was the ‘feminization of interiors.’ 11 By the 1890s fabrics and detailing formerly seen only in fashion was used more frequently to soften the hard contours of furniture, and velvets, in particular, were used to pad walls and provide draping along borders, and were also used for window coverings. 12 Advancements in textile technologies brought about the opportunity for intricate patterns and wider availability of decorative trims which could then be incorporated into home décor as easily as feminine fashions. Improvements to the jacquard loom, for example, made the production of patterned fabrics, particularly floral and other organics, easier. This linkage between femininity and interiors is not just a twenty-first century revelation; writers from the period under discussion themselves noted the similarities between the fashioned body and decorating the home. Some writers and designers during this period likened dwellings to feminine bodies, even at times referring to interiors as ‘skins.’ 13 Plants and organisms that have sentimental connotations were described in feminine ways; common descriptions of organics in décor included a ‘coquettish petunia,’ ‘melancholy iris,’ or a ‘fragile butterfly.’ 14 Fashion designer Paul Poiret himself noted the importance of bridging one’s living environment with her personal aesthetic. In the early part of the twentieth century, Poiret established an interior design service in tandem with his couture business in an effort to create unity among his clients’ wardrobes and home décor. 15 JewishParisian designer Sonia Delaunay designed feminine fabrics that were fashioned for dual purposes as either carpets or clothing. 16 Like fashion designers, interior designers themselves married the concepts of fashion with the home. Art dealer Siegfried Bing designed a model house for the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Focusing on the unification of style throughout the house, he oversaw the selection of every aspect of design, from the furniture, wall coverings, and tapestries, to fashion accessories like jewellery to be placed in the house. ‘Walls were hung with pastel fabric, and rugs repeated the floral shapes that had been incised into the wood furniture.’ 17 These examples from writers and designers are interesting because they show how ingrained it was in late-nineteenth and early twentieth century society that decorating the home was importantly connect to decorating one’s body. ‘The languishing and mysterious image of the female became a decorative theme adopted in advertising before appearing in architecture the decorative arts in the same way as plants or abstract lines.’ 18 Art Nouveau thus found commercial success in many arenas, particularly those catering to a primarily feminine clientele. 19 Whether in silhouette, curved lines, braiding, fabrics, or the various trims employed, a woman’s appearance transitioned fluidly into the aesthetics of her home surroundings. 2. Inorganic Implementation of Organic Inspiration The second axis of our chapter is to go beyond explaining why and how fashions and interiors incorporated natural elements during this period to further

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__________________________________________________________________ explore how the ‘organic’ décor was employed in some of the most inorganic of ways. To begin, it is important to recognise that the western employment of Art Nouveau was heavily influenced by the asymmetry of Japanese art. 20 This was largely due to the opening of Japan to the West in the late nineteenth century, and the opulent Asian-inspired costumes of the Ballets Russes. 21 There were stylistic variances in how the Asian and organic forms were employed from one western culture to the next. For example, French design particularly emphasised floral motifs, stressing growth and movement, whereas Scandinavia and Scotland promoted more animal inspiration in their designs, all the while maintaining elegance and graceful motion of living creatures. 22 Some Western countries incorporated organic forms less literally by instead transforming natural shapes into almost unrecognisable abstract motifs. Even though stylistic differences existed among the Western world, by the twentieth century ‘whether through colours, textiles, or style ... fashion had completely invaded the design of domesticity.’ 23 Interestingly, though, some of the most opulent methods and materials were used to achieve the fashionable home. Decorating the home was an activity enjoyed fully only by those with the monetary means to do so. Even though increased technologies improved the availability of textiles, and nature-themed activities became popular among the masses, ability to transform one’s home to meet the widespread interest in organic-inspiration was limited to those with available discretionary income - the newly emergent middle class and above. As described by a furniture maker during the time period under consideration, decorating one’s home was a ‘uniquely bourgeois activity’ 24 and served as an outward symbolic expression of one’s wealth, importance, and stature. Hartzell suggests that ‘textiles functioned not only as protection from modernity the plush padding of the private interior shielding its occupants from the public nakedness of iron-and-glass factories, exhibition halls, and department stores - but also to facilitate the modern consumerist paradigm of suspended gratification.’ 25 This consumer class incorporated organic inspiration into the fashions and living spaces, but at an inorganic price. Typical of Art Nouveau styling was privileging craft and hand tradition, while implementing new technologies and materials. It was an intentional break between the fine and applied arts, and importantly considered elements of the ‘everyday’ employing laborious and expensive materials to recreate naturalness in the arts. An example was the curvilinear shaping and intentional exposure of iron. Many artefacts from this period were very ornate, and while inspired by the beauty found in nature, did not consider functionality among their chief purposes. As mentioned previously, various trims were used as were luxurious velvets, all of which were costly items. Many women’s dresses were replete with detailing lots of embroidered organic motifs, beading, floral laces, and above all, the use of several layers of fabric. ‘The great merit of an outfit is to seem natural and improvised when it has cost hours of study and preparation for those who wear it

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__________________________________________________________________ and those who made it.’ 26 French designers sold their exquisite and costly pieces in America and garnered quite a following among the socialites and elite members of high society. 27 And for those who could afford them, such fashions were most desirable in fine silks dyed with the rich colours new chemical dyes made possible. 28 Here, one among many paradoxes exists. No longer were colours available only through the use of vegetable dyes, but were instead largely replaced by synthetics. 29 So, dyes that were used to privilege naturalness in lines, shapes, and motifs were themselves unnatural. Certainly the methods through which Art Nouveau styling was implemented varied from one artist or designer to the next. Some more firmly upheld the standards of handicraft, while others embraced the uses of new materials and technologies in creating their pieces. Regardless of the individual interpretation, their creations were nevertheless paradoxical; they were at once privileged themes found in nature, and at the same time opulent. 3. Conclusion Even though organic-inspiration garnered mass appeal, its most peculiar use is that it was largely a lavish movement. In fact, the style is said to have not survived the turmoil of World War I, most logically because of the expense an Art Nouveau lifestyle commanded. 30 So the final paradox can be seen; the very principles driving the development of the Art Nouveau movement themselves were the cause of its eventual demise. Costs involved in producing most pieces were very high, and mass production of them was impractical. The movement infiltrated home interiors and the feminine dressed body, blurring the distinction between the wearer and her environment. And as it created unity across the arts - from furniture, to paintings, to jewellery, to dress, Art Nouveau lost sight of providing beautiful, nature-inspired pieces for all people and instead remained exclusive and costly.

Notes 1

D. Hanser, Interior Design and Architecture, Oklahoma State University March 2010, School of Architecture, viewed on 22nd . 2 N. Forgione, ‘Life in Motion: The Art of Walking in the Nineteenth Century’, Art Bulletin, Vol. 87, No. 4, 2005, pp. 664-687. 3 Ibid., p. 665. 4 A. C. Pellicer, 1900 en Barcelona, Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, 1972, p. 37. 5 S. Madsen, Art Nouveau, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p. 14. 6 M. Flannery, ‘Jellyfish on the Ceiling and Deer in the Den’, Leonardo, Vol. 38, No. 3, 2005, pp. 239-244.

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R. Maddock, Home Colour Harmonies: Nature’s Key to Them, Lowe Brothers Company, Dayton, 1919, p. 4. 8 M. Tolini, ‘Zoological Fantasy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Dress’, NineteenthCentury Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth Century Visual Culture, viewed on 12th July, 2010, . 9 Pellicer, p. 37. 10 Tolini, ‘Zoological Fantasy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Dress’. 11 F. Hartzell, ‘The Velvet Touch: Fashion, Furniture, and Fabric of the Interior’, Fashion Theory, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2009, pp. 51-82. 12 Ibid., p. 53. 13 Ibid., p. 57. 14 Pellicer, p. 41. 15 A. Myzelev and J. Potvin, Fashion, Interior Design, and the Contours of Modern Identity, Ashgate, Oxford, 2010, p. 3. 16 Ibid. 17 D. Silverman, ‘The 1900 Paris Exposition, from Art Nouveau in Fin-De-Siecle France’, in The Design History Reader, G. Lees-Mafei and R. Houze (eds), Berg Publishers, Paris, 2010, pp. 75-80. 18 F. Aubry, Reseau Art Nouveau Network, viewed on 12th July 2010, . 19 M. Battersby, Art Nouveau, Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., London, 1969, p. 13. 20 M. Battersby, The World of Art Nouveau, Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1968, p. 11. 21 Kyoto Costume Institute (ed), op. cit., p. 326. 22 Battersby, The World of Art Nouveau, pp. 15-16. 23 Myzelev and Potvin, p. 3. 24 Ibid., p. 4. 25 Hartzell, pp. 67-68. 26 P. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996, p. 135. 27 Ibid., p. 254. 28 Kyoto Costume Institute (ed), p. 253. 29 Perrot, p. 101. 30 No Author, ‘Art History: Art Nouveau: 1880-1910’, Absolute Arts - World July 2010, Wide Arts Resources, viewed on 12th .

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__________________________________________________________________

Bibliography ‘Art History: Art Nouveau: 1880-1910’. Absolute Arts - World Wide Arts Resources, viewed on 12th July 2010,

Aubry, F., Reseau Art Nouveau Network. Viewed on 12th July 2010, . Battersby, M., The World of Art Nouveau. Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1968. —––, Art Nouveau. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., London, 1969. Flannery, M., ‘Jellyfish on the Ceiling and Deer in the Den: The Biology of Interior Decoration’. Leonardo, Vol. 38, No. 3, 2005, pp. 239-244. Forgione, N., ‘Everyday Life in Motion: The Art of Walking in Late-Nineteenth Century Paris’. Art Bulletin, Vol. 87, No. 4, 2005, pp. 664-687. Hanser, D., Interior Design and Architecture. Oklahoma State University March 2010, School of Architecture, viewed on 22nd . Hartzell, F., ‘The Velvet Touch: Fashion, Furniture, and Fabric of the Interior’. Fashion Theory, vol. 13, no. 1, 2009, pp. 51-82. Kyoto Costume Institute (ed), Fashion: A History from the 18th to the 20th Century. Taschen Books, Koeln, 2002. Maddock, R., Home Colour Harmonies: Nature's Key to Them. The Lowe Brothers Company, Dayton, Ohio, 1919. Madsen, S., Art Nouveau. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967. Myzelev, A. and Potvin, J., Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity. Ashgate, Oxford, 2010. Pellicer, A. C., 1900 en Barcelona. Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, 1967.

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__________________________________________________________________ Perrot, P., Fashioning the Bourgeoisie. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. Pevsner, N., Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius. Yale University Press, London, 2005. Silverman, D., ‘The 1900 Paris Exposition, from Art Nouveau in Fin-De-Siecle France’, in The Design History Reader. G. Lees-Maffei and R. Houze (eds), Berg Publishers, Paris, 2010, pp. 75-80. Tolini, M., ‘Zoological Fantasy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Dress’. NineteenthCentury Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth Century Visual Culture, viewed on 12th July 2010, . Angie G. Dowell is an Instructor of Fashion Merchandising in the Department of Human Environmental Sciences at Fontbonne University, St. Louis, Missouri. Denise Bertoncino is a Professor of Interior Design in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas.

The Fashion Revolution of Avant-Garde Japanese Designers: Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto Flavia Loscialpo Abstract During the 1970s and throughout the 1980s avant-garde Japanese designers made their first appearance and consolidated their presence within the international fashion scenario. Their work represents a significant contribution that, at the time of their breakthrough, was destined to challenge, put into question and subtly affect the canons that till then had dominated Western fashion. The present chapter focuses on the moment Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto entered the Paris scene, in the 1970s and 1980s. The impressions the ‘Japanese’ designers raised among Western critics and reporters, as well as the revolutionary valence of their creations, clearly emerge from the controversial reactions they provoked at the time. Through the decades, Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto have questioned and contributed to rethink the relationship between the body and the garment. The unconventional forms, the dark shades, the tattered fabrics, induced some journalist to speak of ‘post-Hiroshima look,’ which was in complete contrast with the perfection and opulence typical of the time. Nevertheless, beyond the uncanny appearances of their creations, those designers have been strenuously pursuing a critical and constant experimentation with materials, volumes and voids, to show how the body in motion transforms the ‘piece of cloth’ and discloses unexpected shapes. The question of the Japanese identity has then to be reconsidered, paying attention to the positions assumed in this respect by the designers themselves. The common thread uniting their oeuvres is in fact to create, as stated by Issey Miyake, ‘a new fashion genre that is neither Japanese nor Western.’ As emerges from a look at some of the most representative exhibitions and tributes dedicated through the years to Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto, the role that such designers play within the contemporary fashion landscape continuously opens up new possibilities to experimentation and is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for younger generations. Key Words: Japanese fashion, avant-garde, Japanese identity, Western fashion, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, nationality, transnational. ***** 1. The Japanese Avant-Garde in Fashion: A Question of Time and Identity The significant impact that ‘Japanese fashion’ made on the international fashion scene, in the late 20th century, has been studied, displayed and recognised by almost any fashion theorist, historian, design critic and curator, as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto contributed to rethink the very basis of

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__________________________________________________________________ fashion. Many are the exhibitions that during the past decades have been devoted to avant-garde Japanese designers, for instance, the recent commemorative exhibition Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, at Barbican centre, London (October 2010), which comprehensively surveys avant-garde Japanese fashion. Curated by Akiko Fukai, Director of the Kyoto Costume Institute, it follows the work of Japanese designers from their appearance on the Western scenario, in the 1980s, to the work of younger generations. Significantly, through their long careers, Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto have conveyed images of their fashion through methods other than making clothes. They view fashion, in fact, as one among the many different expressive media available to them. Rei Kawakubo has once stated: ‘by no means does the expression of the things I imagine reach completion through fashion alone.’ 1 What consolidated the idea that Japanese designers were avant-garde was exactly their active intervention in the creation of images. Through the decades, Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto have constantly worked to carefully generate images that embody their own creative attitude, as books, catalogues, biannual magazines, featuring work from acclaimed artists and photographers. 2 These images, although occasionally abstract, allusive and enigmatic, disclose an insight into the designers’ vision. The tendency to work transversally, beyond the borders of fashion has created, since the 1980s , the opportunity for ‘Japanese designers’ to attract the attention of art critics, curators and other professionals. Alongside exhibitions dedicated to the individual designers, many shows have celebrated the experimentation, innovation and skill of Japanese fashion, as: The Cutting Edge: Fashion From Japan at Powerhouse Museum in Sidney (20052006), Radical Fashion, at The Victoria & Albert Museum (2001) displaying the critical fashions of eleven designers among whom Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe, and Yohji Yamamoto; the exhibition Visions of the Body, at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (1999), showing experimental works by Japanese designers and pieces by contemporary artists; and more recently Stylized Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Fashion from Tokyo Costume Institute, at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2007), and Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Mary Baskett Collection, at Cincinnati Art Museum (2007). Among the first exhibitions focusing on the experimental practice of Japanese designers are Japon des AvantGardes (1910-1970) at Pompidou Centre in 1986 and, even before, A New Wave of Fashion: Three Japanese Designers, at Phoenix Art Museum (1983), entirely dedicated to Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto that were presented here as ‘avant-garde designers.’ Both these exhibitions showed to a broad audience a cultural side of Japan in a period of economic strength and rapid growth. They also, and more importantly, contributed to define the tropes for an interpretation of Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto’s work as ‘avant-garde’ and ‘Japanese,’ that is, distinguished from Western fashion. A question then emerges: what is exactly contemporary ‘Japanese fashion’?

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__________________________________________________________________ Could it be grasped by a univocal definition? An attempt to explore this problematic would indeed require a survey of the use that the label ‘Japanese’ had in the 1980s, as well as an analysis of the aesthetics expressed by the so-called ‘Japanese designers,’ and finally an examination of their work and the discourses that proliferated around it. 2. The ‘Japanese Invasion’: Reactions, Reviews and Reconsiderations ‘Paris looks Japanese’ was one of the many newspaper headlines referring to the A/W 1982 season in Paris. With the word ‘Japanese’ disseminated through them all, the articles reported in shocked tones on the designs of the unknown Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto. Both designers were already successful in Japan when they decided to present, in April 1981, their collections in Paris for the Autumn/Winter season. A year later, almost every major newspaper in Europe and the United States allocated a large portion of their fashion pages to the Japanese designers. Nevertheless, ‘Japanese designers’ is a label many of these designers themselves avoid, and what counts as ‘Japanese’ appears as a highly vexed issue. Many desire not to be characterised in terms of nationality, nor to be seen as relying on a specific tradition. Fashion, according to them, should exceed nationality (mukokuseki). Kawakubo, Miyake and Yamamoto in fact tend to present themselves as internationalists and are dismissive of any categorisation of their work based on ethnicity, traditional culture or the dichotomy Western/Eastern. In respect to this, Miyake has often declared his intention to create ‘a new universal clothing,’ neither Western nor Japanese but beyond nationality. 3 The label ‘Japanese designer,’ on the contrary, imposes stereotyped limits to this vision of a design with universal aspirations. At the beginning of Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto’s careers, the attempt to escape ghettoisation has often resulted in a search for individual recognition within a fashion scenario they did not belong to, and where they were often lumped together as a racially/nationally characterised, artistic, economic and geopolitical rivals. Yet, while in the early 1980s labels as ‘Japanese designers’ and ‘the Japanese invasion’ were rather diffused in the press, to speak of ‘Japanese fashion’ seems highly problematic. Given that ‘Western’ fashion (yofuku) was the fashion of Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto themselves, 4 marking their work as ‘Japanese’ is a shortcut dissolving the originality and individuality of the single designers in a blend of Asian stereotypes. Moreover, as acknowledged by the majority of fashion theorists, the successful advent of designers from Japan has gradually contributed to redrawing the anatomy of the contemporary fashion scenario. As observed by Craik, rigid distinctions between fashion systems hide their mutual influence:

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The Fashion Revolution of Avant-Garde Japanese Designers

__________________________________________________________________ not only have fashion systems become internationalised, so too have discourses surrounding fashion. Thus, consumer fashion simultaneously draws on discourses of exoticism the primitive, orientalism, and authenticity. While these terms reiterate distinctions between western and other fashion systems, in fact their deployment crosses such boundaries although it is geared towards specific conditions of social interchange and environments. In this process, exotic impulses merely allude to sites of difference, insecurity and transgression in each cultural milieu. 5 The peculiarity of Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto manifests itself as an uncanny transversality that characterises their work and experimentation. As Fukai remarks, what the Japanese designers showed in the 1970s (Miyake) and in the early 1980s (Kawakubo and Yamamoto) was not the ‘East’ as portrayed through the eyes of Western designers as Paul Poiret, but rather a fashion that fused Eastern and Western cultures ‘as seen through the eyes of the East.’ 6 At the time of their debut, Kawakubo and Yamamoto embodied an aesthetics that was removed from the context of European culture and at the same time did not correspond to the image of the East built in the past by Western observers. Deprived of a familiar term of comparison, reporters were disoriented and paradoxically stigmatised these designers by means of their provenience. Although the clothes by Kawakubo and Yamamoto were just as new for the Japanese, it has been argued that the aesthetic of traditional Japanese culture, particularly of the kimono and the wabi-sabi, 7 were inherent within their work. 8 And yet, Kawakubo in an interview with Dorinne Kondo, resists definitions of Japanese identity that re-inscribe conventional notions of traditional culture. 9 Her world can more appropriately be characterised as transnational, rather than traditionally Japanese. Important is that this new version of identity that Kawakubo represents, as Kondo states, ‘displaces and shifts the terms of an East/West dichotomy, in a Japan that is itself constituted through incorporation of the West.’ 10 Grouping on the basis of race and nationality, instead, tends to undermine the individual work of any ‘Japanese designer,’ to assimilate it to a simplified notion of tradition, and to affirm Japan’s secondary status in the world of fashion. The revolution provoked by the second generation of designers from Japan, constituted by Kawakubo, Yamamoto and partly by Miyake, was not the result of this fashion being simply different, ‘other,’ that is ‘Japanese,’ or their creations belonging to a foreign universe they embodied in all its aspects. More precisely, it was because they contributed to put into question and ‘deconstruct’ the staples of Western fashion, as symmetry, the idea of perfection, a mimetic relationship between the garment and the body, and the eroticisation of the femininity. Initially the response to their designs was suspicious and often derisory but within few

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__________________________________________________________________ years the new aesthetics they sketched came to have a major influence on fashion. As Sudjic summarises, ‘Japanese fashion in the eighties provided a new way of looking at fabric, texture, cut and image.’ 11 Following Sudjic’s observation, the framework within which interpreting the ‘newness’ of Japanese designers, at the time of their debut, can be articulated into three main motifs -

-

fabric: showing the particular commitment to materials of Japanese designers and their experimentation with textures and techniques. In particular, the texture of the fabric is fully revealed only by the body in motion; cut: embodying the intrinsic relationship that for Japanese designers exists between form and material; image: questioning the decorative ‘prettiness,’ the exaggerated feminine silhouette proposed in the 1980s by the majority of fashion designers, and more generally the idea of clothes as means to enhance women’s eroticism.

Although Kenzo Takada, Hanae Mori and Issey Miyake had been well established in Paris since the early 1970s, it was not until 1981, when Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo made their first international appearance, that a concerted Japanese assault seemed to be launched. Indeed a rhetoric of war recurred in the press and in popular fashion magazines. For example, in French and international articles on Japanese fashion appeared expressions as ‘l’offensive japonais’ or ‘the Japanese invasion,’ where Kawakubo, Miyake and Yamamoto were regularly categorised on the basis of nationality. What divided many of the newspaper reporters was the shock of garments unveiled especially by Kawakubo and Yamamoto. Their dark, enigmatic dresses defied human body shape and looked as if they had been ‘shredded in a bomb attack.’ The French newspaper Le Figaro, with its leaning towards the establishment and haute couture, expressed its discomfort by recalling the designs ‘yellow perils,’ and declaring them to be ‘WW3 survivors’ and ‘rags.’ 12 To its supporters, Japanese look was instead symptomatic of a new attitude towards clothes and image, and appeared as the ‘supreme modern style.’ 13 It should be reminded that, around 1982-1983, the articles on Japanese fashion outlined by European and American journalists began to include a distinctive idea of Japan, respectful and curious of the vigour that Japanese economy was showing at the time. In an article entitled ‘Feminist versus Sexist,’ the London Times correspondent Suzy Menkes described Kawakubo’s S/S 1983 collection: ‘down the catwalk, marching to a rhythmic beat like a race of warrior women, came models wearing ink-black coat dresses, cut big, square.’ While declaring to stand ‘intellectually with the Japanese in their search for clothing that owes nothing to outworn

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__________________________________________________________________ concepts of femininity,’ even Suzy Menkes in the end conceded that French ‘can have my body to dress.’ 14 The creations by avant-garde Japanese designers embodied in fact a look that was very distant from an accentuated and pretty femininity. Fashion in the early 1980s was all about colour, while Kawakubo and Yamamoto deliberately made heavy use of black. Along with shapeless and torn clothing, black soon became synonymous with Japanese fashion. 15 Hostile journalists labelled the look in funereal or atomic terms, as resembling a ‘nuclear bag lady,’ and some observers, as designer Sonia Rykiel, even concluded that the Japanese must have been ‘afraid of the body.’ 16 Finally, with the direct mail for Comme des Garçons featuring photographs by Cindy Sherman, Rei Kawakubo explicitly challenged the conventional idea of sexiness, and threatened the conception of clothes as things designed to make women appear beautiful. 17 The creations of Japanese designers were not characterised by the dialectic of concealing and revealing, and the associated conventions of sexuality, but rather by the depth of layered fabrics and the changing forms that a garment can assume as the body moves. Not bound by European-style couture, which involves giving three-dimensional form to fabric by using curved lines and darts to fit it to the body, Japanese designers often recurred to flat patternmaking. 18 Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto took this basic technique, used also in the construction of the kimono, to the heights of contemporary fashion and to a wider international audience. 19 This new approach to clothing design capitalised on the versatility of ‘ma:’ 20 clothes of flat construction do not adhere to the body, and create spaces that do not follow the body’s contours. This ‘superfluous’ space - the ‘ma’ - between the garment and the body is more than simply a ‘void;’ it is in fact a rich space that possesses incalculable energy, for it gives rise to freestyle forms, unintended arcs or lines as the body moves. The body in motion reveals also the surface texture of the fabric. Japanese fashion designers are in fact inclined to be textile-orientated, and in their clothes the materials and the final forms combine organically. The creative process seems to begin with the material and continues to the point where the designer discloses a dialogue with the wearer via the clothes. Their hidden sculptural quality is rendered three-dimensional by the wearers and their bodies. These characteristics are perhaps most clearly expressed in dance costumes, as those created by Miyake for William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, or those by Kawakubo for Merce Cunningham’s Scenario, which are inspired to the famous Comme des Garçons S/S1997 collection. Especially in relation to these creations, it is possible to detect the interpretation that Japanese designers give of the relationship between the clothes and the body. 21 In addition to refiguring such relationship, Kawakubo, Yamamoto and younger designers, as Watanabe, have been engaged in rethinking the decorative prettiness in fashion. In Kawakubo’s pieces of the early 1980s, as the ‘lace sweater,’ the seemingly random pattern of holes was the result of careful thought and

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__________________________________________________________________ technology. Miyake, Kawakubo, Yamamoto, as well as Watanabe, have thoroughly dissected dressmaking, often by making the functional decorative, and vice versa. They have transformed couture techniques into design motifs 22 or designed garments back to their starting point. 23 The avant-garde quality of their work, inherited by younger generations of designers, seems not derived from the diligent realisation of a Japanese aesthetics but rather from their dialogue with Western fashion practices. It is hence derived from a tension. Whether implicitly or more eloquently, Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto have worked through the decades at: a redefinition of the relationship between dress and body, at the interplay revealing-concealing, that is the code used to eroticise the body, and also at the idea of perfection. Mining a consolidated Euro/West-centric tendency within the fashion system, they have proposed designs with a universal appeal, which cannot be confined as an expression of a marginal culture or interpreted in the frame of an outdated Orientalism. If the ‘Japanese’ succeeded in their disfiguring, refiguring and deconstructing practices this is also because they have been immersed into a dialogue with Western fashion, which was also ‘their’ fashion. It was their fashion to a certain extent, as at their background laid different encodings of the relationship between the sexes through clothes, as well as a different relationship between the fabric and the body. What they represented at the moment of their debut, and still represent today, is then an endless traversing of boundaries.

Notes 1

Interview with Rei Kawabubo, by Yoshiko Ikoma, cited in Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, C. Ince and R. Nii (eds), Merrell Publishers Ltd, London, 2010, p. 21. 2 For instance, the long and fruitful collaborations of Miyake with Irving Penn, of Kawakubo with Hans Feurer, Cindy Sherman and Peter Lindbergh, and of Yamamoto with Ferdinando Scianna, David Simms and Nick Knight, have progressively established and consolidated in the print media the designers’ own style. 3 Miyake (1984) cited in D. Kondo, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre, Routledge, London, 1997, pp. 60-61: ‘I have been trying to create something more than Japanese or Western for over ten years and, ironically, I find myself as one of the leaders of the new Japanese craze. I hope I will be around a lot longer than this sudden interest.’ 4 The kimono started to be replaced by Western clothing during the Meiji era (1868-1912), when men working in public services were ordered to abandon the traditional kimono and adopt yofuku. Gradually, also women’s clothing was Westernised and yofuku, by the 1930s, became predominant.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5

J. Craik, The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion, Routledge, London, 1993, pp. 41-43. 6 C. Ince and R. Nii (eds), Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion. Merrell Publishers Ltd, London, 2010, p. 14. 7 Wabi-sabi represents a comprehensive worldview and aesthetics centred on the acceptance of transience, and according to which everything that exists is not permanent, possesses imperfections and does not reach completion. On this, (L. Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, Stone Bridge Press, Pont Reyes, CA, 1994, p. 47). See also A. Fukai, ‘A New Design Aesthetic’, in The Cutting Edge: Fashion from Japan, L. Mitchell (ed), Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney, 2005. 8 According to Harold Koda and Patricia Mears, Kawakubo and Yamamoto’s early works have been influenced by the contemporary distillation of traditional aesthetics, and should be contextualised in relation to Zen philosophy and the wabi-sabi aesthetics (H. Koda, ‘Rei Kawakubo and the Aesthetics of Poverty’, Dress: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 11, 1985, pp. 5-10; P. Mears, ‘Être Japonais: Une Question D’identité’, in XXIème Ciel: Mode in Japan, 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2003, pp. 65-99). 9 See the interview released to Dorinne Kondo in Kondo, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre, p. 67. 10 Ibid., p. 67. 11 D. Sudjic, ‘Japan Style’, in Excess: Fashion and the Underground in the 80s, M. L. Frisa and S. Tonchi (eds), Edizioni Carta, Milano, 2004. 12 See Le Figaro, 21st October 1982. 13 C. DuCann, Vogue Modern Style, Century, London, 1988, p. 48. 14 S. Menkes, ‘Feminist versus Sexist’, The Times, London, 22nd March 1983, p. 11. 15 As Kondo recalls, ‘in Japan the unrelenting black-on-black aesthetic earned devotees of Kawakubo and Yamamoto the nickname karasuzoku, the crow tribe’ (Kondo, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre, op. cit., p. 66). 16 Quoted in K. Fraser, Scenes from the Fashionable World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987, p. 70. 17 See Kawakubo’s affirmations in N. Coleridge, The Fashion Conspiracy, Heinemann, London, 1988, p. 89. 18 In respect to this, Arata Isozaki explains: ‘in Western clothing the fabric is cut to the bodyline and sewn. The form of the attire is modelled after the body, with a shell similar to the shape of the body thus being created. In so doing, the space between the two is eliminated. In the case of Japanese attire, a technique which simplifies cutting to the minimum is predominate; the set width of the material itself, like and invariable constant, given importance’ (A. Isozaki, ‘What are

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__________________________________________________________________ Clothes? ... A Fundamental Question’, in Issey Miyake: East Meets West, K. Koike (ed), Heibonsha, Tokyo, 1978, pp. 55-56). 19 Miyake’s preoccupation, since the 1970s, has been in fact the development of a garment that was reduced to its simplest elements. The ‘A Piece of Cloth’ line featured in fact garments that wrapped the body in a single length of fabric. 20 The word ‘ma’ in Japanese means ‘space,’ ‘pause,’ or ‘gap.’ 21 The mentioned Comme des Garçons S/S 1997 collection, emblematically called ‘Dress Becomes Body Becomes Dress,’ is cited by every fashion scholar as the embodiment of Kawakubo’s disrupting practice. Here the lumps and bumps emerging from beneath the fabrics seemed to be forcing the boundaries between the body and the dress. The collection came in Vichy polyester stretch fabric, with pockets into which the removable pads could be slipped and displaced. 22 See Yohji Yamamoto A/W 1993-1994, and S/S 2000 collections. 23 For instance, Junya Watanabe collection for Comme des Garçons A/W 1998/1999.

Bibliography Coleridge, N., The Fashion Conspiracy. Heinemann, London, 1988. Connor, S., Postmodernist Culture. Blackwell Ltd., Oxford, 1989. Craik, J., The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. Routledge, London, 1993. De La Haye, A., The Cutting Edge, 50 Years of British Fashion. V&A Publications, London, 1997. DuCann, C., Vogue Modern Style. Century, London, 1988. Evans, C., Fashion at the Edge. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003. Evans, C. and Thornton, M., Women and Fashion: A New Look. Quartet Books, New York and London, 1989. Frankel, S., Visionaires. Interviews with Fashion Designers. V&A Publications, London, 2001. Fraser, K., Scenes from the Fashionable World. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987.

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__________________________________________________________________ Fukai, A. (ed), Fashion: The Collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute, a History from the 18th to the 20th Century. Taschen, Köln and London, 2002. Grand, F., COMME des GARÇONS. Thames and Hudson, London, 1998. Ince, C. and Nii, R. (eds), Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion. Merrell Publishers Ltd., London, 2010. Isozaki, A., ’What are Clothes?...A Fundamental Question’, in Issey Miyake: East Meets West. K. Koike (ed), Heibonsha, Tokyo, 1978. Kawamura, Y., The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2004. Koda, H., ‘Rei Kawakubo and the Aesthetics of Poverty’. Dress: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 11, 1985, pp. 5-10. Kondo, D., About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre. Routledge, London, 1997. Koren, L., New Fashion Japan. Kodansha International, Tokyo and New York, 1984. Koren, L., Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. Stone Bridge Press, Pont Reyes, CA, 1994. Lambourne, L., Japonisme. Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West. Phaidon, London and New York, 2005. Martin, R. and Koda, H., Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress. Harry N.Abrams, New York, 1994. Menkes, S., ‘Feminist versus Sexist’. The Times, London, 22nd March 1983, p. 11. Mears, P., ‘Être Japonais: Une Question D’indentité’, in XXIème Ciel: Mode in Japan. 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2003. Mitchell, L. (ed), The Cutting Edge: Fashion from Japan. Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney, 2005.

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__________________________________________________________________ McDowell, C., McDowell’s Directory to Twentieth Century Fashion. Muller, London, 1987. Richie, D., The Image Factory. Fads and Fashions in Japan. Reaktion Books, London, 2003. Skov, L., ‘Fashion-Nation: A Japan Globalization Experience and a Hong Kong Dilemma’, in Re-Orienting Fashion. The Globalization of Asian Dress. S. Niessen, A. M. Leshkowich, C. Jones (eds), Berg, Oxford and New York, 2003. Skov, L., ‘Fashion Trends, Japonisme, and Postmodernism, or “What is so Japanese about Comme des Garçons?”’, in Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture. J. W. Treat (ed), Curzon, Richmond, 1996. Sudjic, D., ‘Japan Style’, in Excess: Fashion and the Underground in the 80s. M. L. Frisa, S. Tonchi (eds), Edizioni Carta, Milano, 2004, pp. 398-400. Sudjic, D., Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons. Rizzoli, New York, 1990. Tanizaki, J., In Praise of Shadows. Vintage, London, 2001. Three Women: Madeleine Vionnet, Claire McCardell, and Rei Kawakubo. Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, 1987. Tobin, J. J., Re-Made in Japan. Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1992. Van Assche, A. (ed), Fashioning Kimono: Dress and Modernity in Early Twentieth Century Japan. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2006. Visions of the Body: Fashion or Invisible Corset. The Kyoto Costume Institute, Kyoto, 1999. Wilcox, C. (ed), Radical Fashion. V&A Publications, London, 2001. Flavia Loscialpo is Dr in Philosophy, and currently Senior Lecturer in Fashion, at Solent University, Southampton, UK. As researcher and curator she has collaborated with several institutions as Barbican Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum, London College of Fashion. Her areas of expertise are avant-garde

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__________________________________________________________________ movements, fashion theory, philosophy of language, aesthetics, curation and visual culture.

Standing Tall: The Stiletto Heel as Metamorphosis of the Self Francesca D’Angelo Abstract At the crossroads of much debate, the stiletto heel has been considered, since its onset in the early 1950s, as both exploitive and empowering for the female image in society, yet much of social constructivist interpretations overlook the intimate transformation engendered by the stiletto heel. Through a phenomenological as well as psychoanalytic approach, this chapter compares a group of Canadian and Italian women’s personal reflections and interpretations on wearing stiletto heels. This research builds primarily on the important work of psychoanalyst Paul Ferdinand Schilder as well as Lee Wright’s historical review of the stiletto heel, Joanne Entwistle’s exploration of ‘embodied practices,’ and Mike Featherstone’s examination of consumer culture’s ‘reflexive project’ in order to explore the relation between fashion and the human body. According to Schilder, dress alters the postural model of the body engendering a somatic reaction within the individual wearer. With reference to wearing stilettos, the surveyed women responded that they experience an increased sense of height, an elongation of the body proper. Although stilettos function and appear within a social realm their use or incorporation is not wholly accountable by functionalist interpretations, as they do not function as a form of protection or as an exemplar of modesty or as a mere piece of adornment, nor are they strictly communicative, as in structuralist perspectives, nor do they correspond with feminist discourses that see the stiletto as a symbol of female subordination, but rather their physicality enables women to alter their Body-Image, and gain a heightened sense of corporeality, as the body physically ‘enlarges and spreads itself out.’ A comparative field research approach was used to survey participants: face-to-face interviews were conducted; as well, participants were recruited via online Internet sources, such as email, listservs, Facebook and Twitter. Key Words: Stiletto heels, the body, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, sociological constructivism, structuralism, consumer culture, fetish. ***** By’r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of chopine 1 1. Introduction Through a phenomenological as well as psychoanalytic approach, this chapter looks at a group of women’s relations to and impressions on wearing stiletto heels. The group of 50 women ranges in age from 22-70. In order to conduct a

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__________________________________________________________________ comparative cultural analysis, I chose only those women who identified as Canadian and Italian for this research. 2. Theoretical Review The survey responses present a challenge to psychoanalytic theories that stress the relevance of the ‘other’ in shaping our existence, social constructivist theories that see the role of the collective as superseding and conditioning the individual, and consumer culture discourses as well as semiotic discourses that see exchange and communication as our primary mode of being. Roland Barthes, as well as Jean Baudrillard, called fashion a system (systems signify communication - meaning making); but, I would argue that to subsume the act of dressing oneself, initially a very private, personal act, under a classificatory system is to do an injustice to the will of the individual to gain something him/herself alone from the act. Colin Campbell, presents a challenge to semiotic analyses in his essay, ‘When the meaning is not a message.’ 2 Here Colin points to the ways in which sociologists have picked up on the ubiquitous nature of clothing and used this feature to fuel discourses on the communicative power of clothing; he notes: ‘The critically important point is that … since consumer’s cannot avoid wearing clothes they are unable to prevent others from “reading” meanings into the clothes they wear… it does not follow that because they wear [a particular thing] they therefore intend to send such a message.’ 3 In fact, only 7 of the 23 Canadian respondents replied that they dressed to please others; of the Italian respondents none felt they dressed for others. There was a sense in many of the responses that the women liked the way in which they were immersed in their own senses; 50% of the total women surveyed specifically noted that they liked the way they felt and looked in stiletto heels. Therefore, the hypothesis of this work suggests that we do not necessarily dress only for ‘others’ or because we want to emulate ‘others’ as psychoanalysis argues, as well as sociology and structuralist thought, but that when we dress, the physical sensation that we derive from the clothing is a much more self-reflexive activity, as in some instances, like the stiletto, there is a physicality about them that lends women a heightened sense of their body, the pain they mention also works to create an increased sense of corporeality, of being in the world, almost like a metamorphosis of sorts, a transformation of the body proper. Joanne Entwistle’s social constructivist analysis of the body is also considered here, in order to highlight the current relevant work in the field, as well as to challenge this approach through contrast with Schilder’s physiological/biological body. My finds seem to suggest that an element of individual autonomy exists when we dress ourselves; the woman surveyed can be understood as testing their own limits, evolving into new limits, by using the sources around them, i.e., stiletto heels, provided by their culture, to physiologically advance herself. 4

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__________________________________________________________________ Lastly, Featherstone’s work on the body in consumer culture is also considered and contrasted with Schilder’s psychoanalytic body. Lee Wright’s historical analysis of the stiletto heel is also contrasted with Featherstone’s structuralist interpretation of consumer culture, to explore the complexities that arise when an object enters consumer culture. 3. The Phenomenological Body According to the late psychoanalyst Paul Ferdinand Schilder, dress engenders within the individual wearer a somatic reaction as it alters the postural model of the body. 5 Schilder sees psychoanalysis as a scientific method that must especially consider what the individual experiences in his [or her] own body, and to consider less the purpose and aim of the outside world and still less what is going on in the central sphere of personality. 6 A key point in Schilder’s work that triggered for me much of the interest in this subject appears in a footnote, which addresses Wolfgang Köhler’s work on The Mentality of Apes. Here he summarises how: Kohler found his animals (chimpanzees) prepossessed of a tendency to hang all kinds of things upon their bodies, after which the objects hanging about the body served the function of adornment in the widest sense. Kohler believes that primitive adornment does not depend upon its possible effects upon others but upon a curious heightening of the animal’s body feeling, selfconsciousness and pride. 7 [my emphasis] Of course this comparison will have a few in the humanities squirming, but it is an important one as it highlights a key effect almost never considered in classic psychoanalytic thought, and that is the absolute absence of the ‘other.’ The survey results show that 64% of the Italian respondents and 50% of the Canadian respondents pointed out that stilettos provided them with a sense of height, an elongation of the body proper. On this point, both groups are almost indistinguishable, presenting a challenge to both cultural and social theory, in that wearing stilettos is not perceived by the women as a conditioned cultural response or a tool for gaining more social presence or a matter of imitation, as the women were referring mainly to their physical relation to heels. John Flugel’s interpretations of the Psychology of clothes consider how women who wear stiletto heels desire to physically transform themselves, as he notes that ‘fashion, in its more exuberant moments is seldom content with the silhouette that Nature has provided.’ 8 A point Schilder also raises as he suggests ‘the body-image changes continually and we triumph over the limitations of the body by adding masks and clothes to the body-image.’ 9 The finds discussed here create some interesting obstacles because they highlight that maybe not all clothing is about communication, or that not all

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__________________________________________________________________ dressing is a social act, but possibly a rather primitive primordial thing where the clothing acts as a layer of skin producing all the somatic responses of any other nerve producing impulse. 10 The wearer becomes so tightly in tune with the clothing that they feel an actual metamorphosis or transformation occur; the stiletto, in fact, can be considered a kind of prosthesis, an augmentation of the self. This discussion brings us closer to the domain of biology with regards to understanding dress, rather than any clear social theory. This is not to suggest that only biology can account for the body or our experience of the body, but it is rather to address that accounts of somatic reaction must be taken into consideration when looking at any extension of the body, and Joanne Entwistle attests to that with her look at ‘embodied practices.’ 11 4. Sociological Perspectives Joanne Entwistle’s work in this area is pivotal to my finds, and research approach. Entwistle engages with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach so as to emphasise the role the body plays in forming our analysis and perception of the world. 12 She notes that any analysis of dress needs to: provide an account of dress as it is lived, experienced and embodied by individuals. For example, the existence of the corset in the nineteenth century and the discourses about the supposed morality of wearing one […] tell us little or nothing about how Victorian women experienced the corset, how tightly they chose to lace it, and what bodily sensations it produced. 13 In her critique of sociological and cultural analyses she states that most accounts of body and dress have not considered embodiment nor the ways in which dress constitutes part of the experience of the body and identity. 14 Entwistle calls for an analysis of ‘embodied practices’ because: Dress involves practical actions directed by the body upon the body which result in ways of being and ways of dressing, such as ways of walking to accommodate high heels, ways of breathing to accommodate a corset, ways of bending in a short skirt and so on. 15 As many of the female respondents noted, when wearing stilettos, their gait changed, the pace at which they moved changed, and, as one respondent put it, ‘It’s a little difficult to run after a bus in them.’ 16 This reminds me of Umberto Eco’s comical piece, ‘Lumbar Thought,’ in which he tells us how wearing an item of clothing like jeans that cling to your testicles cannot help but make you think differently. 17

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__________________________________________________________________ Eco’s phenomenological testimony echoes Entwistle’s own look at ‘epidermic self-awareness’ in which she notes that when we dress uncomfortably we become aware of this ‘since the garments impinge upon our experience of the body and make us aware of the “edges,” the limits and boundaries of our body, either bolstering confidence or making one acutely self-conscious and uncomfortable.’ 18 In fact, the women responded in the survey in both ways; but a difference was found with the Canadian respondents, who more often noted the difficulty that stilettos posed to their gait, while a few also noted that they walked straighter. Many of the women expressed an awareness of presence as well; this could be due to a number of reasons, for example, consider the sound stilettos make when they enter a room. The problem Entwistle’s work poses for this research is that she nonetheless attributes postural change to social conditioning. She notes that, ‘A sociological account of dress as an embodied and situated practice needs to acknowledge the ways in which both the experience of the body and the various practices of dress are socially structured.’ 19 She aligns herself with Efrat Tseelon’s work on The Masque of Femininity to suggest that: patterns of body consciousness and dress practice are not individualistic, although they may be experienced acutely by individuals. However, as Tseelon identifies, there are practices of dressing that operate above the level of the individual and must be seen as social and cultural. 20 She also finds support in Marcel Mauss’ essay, ‘Techniques of the Body,’ where he argues that our body is culturally codified and highly gendered, as females and males learn to walk and talk differently. 21 While most of current literature supports these arguments, the question of referentiality continues to plague some of these discourses; for example, Mauss’ theory begs the question of who teaches children to walk differently… and who teaches their parents, and so on? These discourses create an understanding of the social as an external force that wishes to subsume the individual; it is a social that infringes upon the rights of individuals. 5. Consumer Culture and the Body As the stiletto heel is in fact also a cultural object that functions within consumer culture, it is useful to turn a moment to consider Featherstone’s structuralist interpretation of consumer culture. His work provides some useful insight into the role consumer culture plays in promoting certain images, ideologies; but, I would argue that these products of consumer culture are nonetheless, taken up in practice by individuals with differing ideologies that are just making due with what is available to them in the social sphere in an attempt to

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__________________________________________________________________ out perform, test their own bodily selves. And sometimes the social sphere does not even have the capacity to come through, as was the case for stilettos in the ’50s. In fact, Lee Wright’s historical analysis of the stiletto heel considers how despite the ban on stiletto heels in public spaces in the 50’s, their antisocial reputation, their moral denigration, and the chastising from the medical profession that claimed they caused numerous problems, women continued to demand them, and, in fact, technology could not deliver the shoes fast enough because manufacturing technologies were outdated. 22 Featherstone suggests that our current consumer culture promotes selfreflexivity, a self-reflexive awareness in constantly disciplining our bodies to meet some prescribed ideal. He sees clothing as forming part of an active physical process of change that works to turn us into products of consumer culture, in order for us to increase our exchange value. 23 While it is true that ‘the perception of the body w/in consumer culture is dominated by the existence of a vast array of visual images’ it does not suffice to say that these result in a transformation of the self. 24 As Kohler’s chimpanzees show, their desire to transform themselves was not dependent on images. As opposed to the ‘labile’ body Schilder envisions, Featherstone imagines a more rigid body forced to change from the external forces of consumer culture: while the body incorporates fixed capacities such as height and bone structure, the tendency w/in consumer culture is for ascribed bodily qualities to become regarded as plastic - with effort and “body work” individuals are persuaded that they can achieve a desired appearance. 25 His vision leaves little room for individual agency - here the object reigns supreme in ordering life. The body itself becomes object separate from self, a foreign entity that is subsumed under the logic of consumer culture. While this may not be so far from the truth, the responses of the women surveyed seemed to be telling a different story, one that told me they desired the height stilettos provided, and, in a particular instance, the woman interviewed felt like it was an essential part of her being, that it was her right. 6. Concluding Remarks My finds have shown that more than half of the women surveyed agreed that wearing stiletto heels is important to them because of the height they provide, a height that some felt was rightfully their own. Although cultural differences do exist in the responses between the two groups of women that can be explained by social constructivist theories, they do not account for the cross-cultural similarity that found both groups interested in the vertically extended sense of self that stilettos lent them. While the differences are a subject of interest, it is the similarity

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__________________________________________________________________ that was my main interest for this chapter. I wanted to test whether motivations are entirely socially driven, or if like Schilder hints at as well as Campbell, we make use of what the social offers to advance our own sense of self. And as this research suggests, the women surveyed in fact, make use of the stilettos to gain an increased awareness of their own bodily selves. Although the fetish was not fully explored in this chapter, I do want to note here that it played an important role not only in my personal interests, in the research approach, but, as well, in the subject matter of the stiletto heel itself. In fact, I aim to continue my research in this field, to consider the ways in which the stiletto heel is not merely a fetish reserved for male fantasy, but that it plays a constructive role in the identity of women as well.

Notes 1

Hamlet, Act II, Scene II. C. Campbell, ‘When the Meaning is not the Message: A Critique of the Consumption as Communication Thesis’, in Fashion Theory: A Reader, M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 159-169. 3 Ibid., p. 166. 4 Something akin to the element of chance that occurs in evolution. 5 P. Schilder, The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive Energies of the Psyche, International Universities Press, New York, 1970, p. 201. 6 Ibid., p. 201. 7 Ibid., p. 203. 8 J. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes, International Universities Press, New York, 1969, p. 160. 9 Schilder, p. 204. 10 R. Barthes, The Fashion System, M. Ward and R. Howard (trans), University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1990. 11 See J. Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Polity Press, Massachusetts, 2000; ‘The Dressed Body’, in Body Dressing, J. Entwistle and E. Wilson (eds), Berg, New York, 2001. 12 Entwistle, p. 44. 13 Ibid., p. 41. 14 Ibid., p. 46. 15 Ibid., p. 55. 16 Jackie (name has been changed), Canadian, doctoral student. 17 U. Eco, ‘Lumbar Thought’, Fashion Theory: A Reader, M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 315-317. 18 Entwistle, p. 45. 2

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__________________________________________________________________ 19

Ibid., p. 55. Entwistle, The Fashioned Body, p. 31. 21 M. Mauss, ‘The Techniques of the Body’, Economy and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1973, pp. 70-88. 22 L. Wright, ‘Objectifying Gender: The Stiletto Heel’, in Fashion Theory: A Reader, M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 200-202. Up to present day, as an engineer for an airline manufacturer informed me, they continue to confront problems associated with the wear and tear of stilettos on airplane floorboards. 23 Featherstone, ‘The Body in Consumer Society’, in The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, B. S. Turner (eds), Sage, London, 1991, pp. 177-178. 24 Ibid., p. 178. 25 Ibid., pp. 170-178. 20

Bibliography Barthes, R., The Fashion System. M. Ward and R. Howard (trans), University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1990. Baudrillard, J., ‘Fashion, or the Enchanting Spectacle of the Code’. Fashion Theory: A Reader. M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 462-474. Bell, Q., On Human Finery. Hogarth Press, London, 1976. Blahnik, M., Manolo Blahnik Drawings. 1st edition, Thames & Hudson, New York, 2003. Browne, R. B., ‘Academic Fetishes: Articulated Skeletons’. Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishism in Popular Culture. R. B. Browne (ed), Bowling Green University Popular Press, Ohio, 1982, pp. 215-226. Campbell, C., ‘When the Meaning is not the Message: A Critique of the Consumption as Communication Thesis’. Fashion Theory: A Reader. M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 159-169. Douglas, M., Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. Barrie & Rockliff, London, 1970.

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__________________________________________________________________ Eco, U., ‘Lumbar Thought’, in Fashion Theory: A Reader. M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 315-317. Entwistle, J., ‘The Dressed Body’, in Body Dressing. J. Entwistle and E. Wilson (eds), Berg, New York, 2001, pp. 33-58. —––, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Polity Press, Massachusetts, 2000. Featherstone, M., ‘The Body in Consumer Society’, in The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth, B. S. Turner (eds), Sage, London, 1991. —––, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. 2nd edition, SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, 2007. Flugel, J., The Psychology of Clothes. International Universities Press, New York, 1969. La Roche, L., Kick Up Your Heels…Before You’re Too Short to Wear Them: How to Live a Long, Juicy, Healthy Life. Hay House, New York, 2007. Latour, B., ‘Why has Critique Run out of Steam?’, in. Things. B. Brown (ed), University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 151-173. Lyon, J., ‘The Modern Foot’, in Footnotes: On Shoes. S. Benstock and S. Ferriss (eds), Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 2001, pp. 272-281. Mauss, M., ‘The Techniques of the Body’. Economy and Society, vol. 2, no. 1, 1973, pp. 70-88. Schilder, P., The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive Energies of the Psyche. International Universities Press, New York, 1970. Simmel, G., ‘Fashion’. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62, No. 6, 1957, pp. 541-558. Stafford, A., ‘Afterword’, in The Language of Fashion. A. Stafford and M. Carter (eds), Berg, New York, 2006, pp. 118-164.

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__________________________________________________________________ Tseèelon, E., The Masque of Femininity: The Presentation of Woman in Everyday Life. Sage Publications, London, 1995. Wilson, E., ‘Fashion and the Postmodern Body’, in Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. J. Ash and E. Wilson (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, pp. 3-16. Wright, L., ‘Objectifying Gender: The Stiletto Heel’, in Fashion Theory: A Reader. M. Barnard (ed), Routledge, London, 2007, pp. 197-207. Francesca D’Angelo is a PhD student in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her field is Cultural Studies, with a particular interest in material cultural approaches to research.

The Rationalisation of Consumption Reasons for Purchasing Outdoor Recreational Outfits Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Silje Elisabeth Skuland Abstract In Norway, there is a broad consensus that experiencing nature and performing physical activities outdoors is healthy, important and typical Norwegian. The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s expression ‘simple outdoor life’ is a great national symbol. In recent years we have seen a rapid technological development of outdoor recreational outfits and a massive increase of the quantity of different clothing and equipment for these activities on the market. This is due to both a specialisation of clothing for different activities and a fast turn over of these kinds of products. In this paper we will discuss what the drivers for objectification of outdoor leisure are, as seen from the consumers’ point of view. In addressing this question, focus was on how the ‘standard-package,’ that is what is considered as ordinary and necessary, has changed and what consumers tell us about their motivations for buying new equipment and how they explain the necessity and need for new equipment. Technological innovations within clothing and fabric for optimal performance in skiing, running and biking are welcomed by many people, especially high income families. However, this development consists of a dilemma because the consumption growth takes place within activities regarded as simple and in a contrast to modern excess consumption and environmental strains. Our study shows that outfits for outdoors activities are integrated as part of the skills and knowledge to perform and participate in the activities, and that few reactions to the consumption growth arise because the consumption contributes to activities seen as healthy and valuable. Functional clothes and equipment makes the activities safer and funnier, and therefore motivates increased participation. To be outdoors in the nature and do physical activities is something many Norwegians desire to do more often. Key Words: Outdoor recreational clothing, sportswear, outdoor leisure, physical activity, healthy lifestyle, excess consumption. ***** 1. Introduction Although the time spent on recreational activities has been stable in Norway over the last years, we have witnessed a rapid market increase of outdoor recreational clothing and equipment. Between the years 2001-2006 the market import increased with 100%. In 2008, the trade of sports articles amongst the Norwegians was three times higher than the average European citizen. 1 There is a broad consensus that experiencing nature and performing physical activities

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__________________________________________________________________ outdoors is healthy, important and ‘typically Norwegian.’ The Norwegian term for this, ‘friluftsliv,’ is an important part of the Norwegian childhood and is regarded as a contributor to better health and environmental attitudes in sharp contrast to modern excess consumption. In this chapter we will discuss what the drivers for objectification of outdoor leisure are, as seen from the consumers’ point of view. In addressing this question, focus was on how the ‘standard-package,’ that is what is considered as ordinary and necessary, has changed and what consumers’ tell us about their motivations for buying new equipment and how they explain the necessity for it. 2 2. Dressed for Outdoors Life In Norwegian, the term ‘friluftsliv’ (outdoor recreational activities) has a strong passion. A direct translation of the term is ‘free-air-life.’ Henrik Ibsen was the first person using the term in a poem in 1864. However, Fridtjof Nansen is regarded as the establisher of the phenomenon within the Norwegian consciousness. According to the eco-philosopher, Arne Naess, ‘friluftsliv’ has a potential to evoke a deep respect and love for nature and come across as an escape from the urban society, modern technology, stress and noise. For him, ‘friluftsliv’ means a simple life outdoors with little or no equipment and in harmony with nature. This meaning of the term consolidates with the official definition of The Ministry of the Environment and The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management. 3 In Norway there is an ongoing debate on what kind of activities belong to the concept. In our research we wanted to focus on activities most people agree on; hiking, skiing and biking. If we look at the statistics, all of these activities are popular. 80% of the population had participated in hiking in 2007. 47% went on cross country skiing trips, 44% on bike trips, 21% went skiing at slalom resorts, and 8% went on bike trips on rough terrain. All of these activities are also performed in competitions and in organised sports. Today there are two important strains that meet in outdoor recreational clothes. One is the heritage from Nansen, with its emphasis on the simple. The other is motivated by sports clothing. Functionality is central to both. In traditional outdoor life, nature is seen as a contrast to the city and civilisation. In line with this view clothes and equipment are shaped in materials and colours which ‘fit’ nature, such as grey, brown and green colours, and materials as wood, leather and wool. The ideal is few things, natural fabrics and often in association with the traditional. The Inuit inspired jacket called anorak, developed by Nansen and worn by Roald Amundsen in the race to the South Pole in 1911, has been central in outfits for outdoor recreational activities. By contrast, sports clothing is an area where the development is rapid both technologically and aesthetically. New materials and colours and new kinds of clothing are constantly advanced.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Theory and Material The most common way to explain growth in consumption of clothing is fashion. However, if this is the answer it does not explain how and why fashion has become of such importance for this sort of clothing. Fashion change has played a rather modest role in the sort of clothing we deal with here. We need a broader framework for the relationship between leisure activities and material artefacts, between consumers or participants and products or producers. Pantzar and Shove introduced the concept of manufacturing leisure. 4 This concept refers to a process of practical integration of very different elements including ideologies and visions, human beings, technical and cultural infrastructure, skills, procedures and competences, material and artefacts. In Norway there is a rhyming saying: ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.’ 5 Clothes enable performers to do winter sports and activities in harsh and cold weather, without experiencing hypothermia or frostbites. Also, outdoor recreational outfits are manufactured to enable movement, transport humidity and isolate at the same time. Doing the activity and wearing specialised clothes may not be inseparable. The method in this chapter can be characterised as a wardrobe study. 6 The informants where told to show us the different clothes they usually wear when practising these activities. The advantage of this approach is that the dialogue becomes more closely tied to the clothes and therefore also closer to the practice and the materiality rather than to the discourses that surround it. This research consists of in-depth interviews of eight families with strong or weak interest in outdoors recreational activities and different socio-economic standards. All families lived near or in Oslo, the capital of Norway. The city, with around 550,000 inhabitants, is surrounded by forests and has a high frequency of parks and seaside areas, and several ski resorts. 4. Safety: You Cannot Argue against It Clothes and equipment protect the body against rain, wind and cold temperatures, but also against shoves and scratches. Christian and his son were engaged in exciting high risk activities. Safety equipment is essential for these activities. Some of the equipment is mandatory in organised training and competitions. But some of the equipment is optional, as well. Christian’s son had recently bought a neck support for downhill cycling. At first, his father was shocked when he heard that it cost nearly four thousand Kr. 7 But then the son said: ‘Do you want me to be paralysed?’ Christian went to the shop and bought the gear for his son, explaining: ‘The day something eventually happens to him, and he gets paralysed, it is more expensive to buy a wheel chair than the neck support.’ However, it is easier to abstain purchasing it for oneself: ‘No, I rather become paralysed (laughter).’ When it comes to one’s own children the reasoning is quite different: ‘I couldn’t bear it if

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__________________________________________________________________ something happened to him and I had refused to give him this. That’s the point. He also rides rougher than me. He rides faster and jumps higher.’ 8 The relation between the son’s cycling style and protective gear is not clear. Does he ride rougher because he is younger and more skilled, or it is because the protective gear reduces the risk of injuries? The equipment contributes to push the borders of what is possible and safe to do when cycling. The safety equipment also contributes to the appearance of the cyclists, either it is intended or not: ‘If I go downtown on my bicycle I never wear a helmet.’ The risk of being injured in the traffic is considerable, but the helmet does not fit in Christian’s dress code for a trip to the city. It is different, when it comes to the alpine helmet or the gloves: ‘I got stuffed alpine gloves just like the ones you see the professional alpine skiers use. I like them. They give some protection and things like that.’ 9 ‘Things like that’ indicates that there is something more to it than just protection. Our guess is that the gloves, in addition to their functionality, also fit into what Christian thinks is suitable for alpine skiing. It is obvious hard to argue against the use of protection gear either the equipment is mandatory or not. But what we buy - and even more what we choose to use - has not only something to do with real risk, but also with what kind of appearance feels suitable for the specific activity. 5. Motivation, Healthy Activities and Specialisation A lot of people in Norway want to participate more in outdoor recreational activities than they actually do because of the high prestige associated with these activities. Increased attention towards a ‘healthy lifestyle’ contributes to the high status of the outdoor life. New clothes and equipment can be used as motivation for change, but may also proof difficult to desist as new equipment is associated with valuable and healthy activities both for one self and ones children. Anne’s new jacket is part of a process to change her activity level. She never had a jacket specially designed for outdoor activities before because: ‘I have not been a person who practices much outdoor activities.’ She bought herself a new jacket explaining she ‘needed something that could protect against mosquito, wind and weather.’ ‘In the past I have probably not been a clever hiker,’ she said. But from now on she wanted to ‘be clever, and got like the urge for it.’ In other words, the jacket would contribute to change. Notice how the word ‘clever’ is used frequently in the story. The word ‘clever’ is often used in relation to/when speaking about participation in outdoor activities. Confronted with this interpretation of the jacket Anne becomes a bit insecure. ‘I’m not sure whether it helps me walking. I could go hiking with other jackets, as well.’ But, she says: ‘perhaps a bit.’ Later during the interview she mentions the jacket and the change again, as a factor of motivation in relation to her desire for ‘life to get better and that I shall hike and stuff like that.’

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__________________________________________________________________ The jacket also has an aesthetic value/quality/function, as well as it is easy to put on and protects her against what she want it to protect her from. The jacket is green and highly visible: ‘So I feel a little bit sporty (laughter). When people see me they look at a person who is hiking.’ 10 Anne wanted to be a kind of person who is hiking a lot more often than she had earlier, and she felt sportier wearing the jacket. Clothes contribute to transform us, not only in other people’s eyes, but more importantly, in our own eyes. 11 It can be an important motivation factor to feel sporty. It can contribute to more engagement in the practice in which the sport clothes is a part of. Anne’s jacket was about doing more of something she was used to do. Often, new clothes are purchased for doing new activities. Elin had recently been introduced to off road biking by a friend. ‘He pushed me a little to buy quality equipment.’ To begin with Elin wore ‘all sorts of strange clothes’ and noticed that ‘it is heavier. It becomes sweaty or inflexible.’ 12 The motivation to buy functional clothes for a specific activity is the same for children and adults. They need good ski equipment so that ‘it is pleasant and fun to go skiing,’ Frøydis said. In her childhood they wore: Home-knitted wool trousers and wool sweaters and a playsuit which of course was all to warm. It was horrible to wear. You got overheated. It restrained you freedom to move, … and always thick mittens which always made you sweaty in your hands when you went skiing. It is quite uncomfortable. We got (windproof) mittens for the children in our rucksack when we go skiing, because it is very convenient to bring. 13 Later, during the interview, she compares her own childhood in the 1980’s with today: I think some of the reasons that children like to be more active today might be that they have more appropriate equipments. I remember we were complaining a lot. I think all my friends did as well. I don’t think children complain that much today. They rather like being outdoor playing and they are dry and warm. 14 The change from (windproof) mittens, which are cheap, durable mittens, used in all sorts of outdoor activities - to skiing gloves, which have got a high purchasing price, alongside a narrow utilisation area, and are often less wear-proof, is used here as an argument for making it more pleasurable for children to participate in the activity. The fact that this actually works is underlined by the memories of the whimpering children outdoor.

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__________________________________________________________________ Frøydis began the conversation talking about the children’s motivation and joy, but later it became clear that good equipment also involve getting the children to engage themselves in ‘directing effort’ and develop better skills and ‘promoting themselves.’ Organised cross-country skiing is a sport which involves competition. The investment can therefore be understood as a way to improve children’s ability to compete along with learning to love skiing. Success can of course be part of what motivates them, but still these two perspectives are not identical. Parents prioritised cross-country skiing ‘because it is a simple activity which does not cost anything apart from the equipment and that it in a way gives peace and quiet and a certain quality of life.’ 15 Peace and quiet and quality of life is another perspective than self-assertion and pushing your own limits, but both ideas are present in the upbringing and in the parents’ argumentation for better ski equipment. Because physical activity is regarded as important by the parents they are willing to invest a lot to acquire the equipment they need. However, this may mean different things. According to Christian: ‘things like that, sport equipment has never really been given as presents. It has just been something we needed to have. We can’t wait for Christmas or birthdays to get skis or bikes and stuff like that. If we need anything we have to buy it.’ 16 This anticipates having enough financial resources, but there is a large will to purchase among those who have less. Research about consumption patterns among low income families shows that sport equipments are of high priority. Outdoor activities are regarded as important by all the informants, and the right thing to do both for their own sake and for their children’s. Purchasing clothes and equipment serves as motivation factors for the activities. The differences between the informants lie at their economic abilities and how important this part of their spare time is. In addition to the motivation factor, the equipment also develops their skills. 6. A Healthy Consumption In Norway, wearing suitable outfits for the activity and the weather portrays mastering both nature and culture. Clothes and other equipment are central elements in the activities we have studied. But technical and aesthetic development contributes to narrowing the utilisation area and to a rapid consumption growth. This is a dilemma when the growth takes place within activities regarded as simple and in a contrast to modern excess consumption and environmental strains. The reason why there are few reactions to this is because the consumption contributes to activities seen as healthy and valuable. Nevertheless, functional clothing and equipment make the activities safer and funnier, and therefore motivates increased participation. To be outdoor in the nature and to do physical activities is something many Norwegians desire to do more often. Activities of this kind are regarded as important to actualise the good life, give a healthy upbringing of one’s children and improve one’s own health.

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__________________________________________________________________ This way of using spare time is considered to be typically Norwegian and as a mean to cherish and love nature. Good and functional clothes opens up for participation for those that can afford it, but at the same time it might build new barriers for those who cannot.

Notes 1

G. Strømsheim, Vi Brukte 11 mrd. På Sportsutstyr, Aftenposten, February 2010, viewed on 7th June 2010, 15th . 2 The chapter is a part of the project ‘Leisure and Sustainable Development - Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution’ were the overall research question was: what are the drivers of leisure consumption with respect to both structural and individual elements, and what means and policies can be developed to reduce the environmental impacts of leisure consumption, and enhance the transfer of lowimpact practices from leisure to everyday consumption? 3 The Ministry of the Environment, Report No. 40 (1986/1987) to the Storting. Om stotinget, The Ministry of the Environment, 1987. 4 M. Pantzar and E. Shove, ‘Introduction’, in Manufacturing Leisure. Innovations in Happiness, Well-Being and Fun, M. Pantzar and E. Shove (eds), National Consumer Research Centre Publications 1-2005, Helsinki, 2005. 5 In Norwegian: ‘Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær.’ 6 K. Laitala, I. G. Klepp, M. Kjeldsberg, K. Eilertsen, Consumers’ Wool Wash habits - And Opportunities to Improve Them, Project no. 8-2011. SIFO, Oslo, 2011,, p. 12; I. G. Klepp and M. Bjerck, ‘A Methodological Approach to the Materiality of Clothing Wardrobe Studies’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2013 (in press). 7 4000 Kr is approximately 500 €. 8 Christian (50), married, father of one child (age 17). 9 Ibid. 10 Anne (30), married, mother of two children (age 1 and 10). 11 J. Andrewes, Bodywork: Dress as Cultural Tool: Dress and Demeanour in the South of Senegal, Bril, Leiden, 2005; I. G. Klepp, Clothes, the Body and Wellbeing. What Does It Mean to Feel Well Dressed?, National Institute for Consumer Research, Oslo, Project note No 1-2008, 2008; E. Knuts, Något Gammalt, Något nytt- Skapandet av Bröllopsföreställningar, Mara förlag, Göteborg, 2006. 12 Elin (45), single mother of two children (age 11 and 14). 13 Frøydis (40), married, mother of two children (age 7 and 9). 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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__________________________________________________________________ 16

Ibid.

Bibliography Andrewes, J., Bodywork: Dress as Cultural Tool: Dress and Demeanour in the South of Senegal. Bril, Leiden, 2005. Klepp, I. G., Clothes, the Body and Well-Being. What Does It Mean to Feel Well Dressed? National Institute for Consumer Research, Oslo, Project note No 1-2008, 2008. Klepp, I. G. and M. Bjerck, ‘A Methodological Approach to the Materiality of Clothing Wardrobe Studies’. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2013 (in press). Knuts, E., Något Gammalt, Något nytt- Skapandet av Bröllopsföreställningar. Mara Förlag, Göteborg, 2006. Laitala, K., I. G. Klepp, M. Kjeldsberg, K. Eilertsen, Consumers’ Wool Wash habits - And Opportunities to Improve Them, Project no. 8-2011. SIFO, Oslo, 2011, . Pantzar, M. and Shove, E., ‘Introduction’, in Manufacturing Leisure. Innovations in Happiness, Well-Being and Fun. M. Pantzar and E. Shove (eds), National Consumer Research Centre Publications 1-2005, Helsinki, 2005. Rysst, M., ‘Barnet Kommer Først. Preferanser og Utsatthet i Nordiske Barnefamilier’. Tidsskrift for Velferdsforskning, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2006, pp. 88-99. —––, ‘“I Want to be Me. I Want to be Kul.” An Anthropological Study of Norwegian Preteen Girls in Light of A Presumed “Disappearance” of Childhood’. PhD Thesis. Department of Social Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences. University of Oslo, 2008. Strømsheim, G., Vi Brukte 11 mrd. På Sportsutstyr. Aftenposten, 15th February 2010, viewed on 7th June 2010, . The Ministry of the Environment, Report No. 40 (1986/1987) to the Storting. Om Stotinget. The Ministry of the Environment, 1987.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ingun Grimstad Klepp has a PhD in Ethnology and is Heads of Research at the National Institute for Consumer Research, Norway. She wrote her MA and PhD on leisure time and outdoor life at the University of Oslo. Her current field of research is clothing, laundry and leisure consumption. Silje Elisabeth Skuland holds a Master’s degree in Sociology and is a Research Fellow at the National Institute for Consumer Research, Norway. She is currently working with issues concerning leisure consumption and the environment, leisure boating and outdoor recreational clothing.

The Dog Walk: Canine Chic, Companion Animals and Consumer Culture Jacque Lynn Foltyn Abstract From Hound Style to Humane Society Fur Balls, from Scotties modelling Juicy Couture hoodies and Ralph Lauren polo shirts, dressing up our pups has moved beyond the tying of a bandana around the neck of a retriever or the attiring of a Chihuahua in a rain coat. Canine chic is a billions of dollars per annum industry, an extension of what Lipovetsky 1 called consummate fashion, the sphere where conspicuous consumption and leisure; mass markets and advertising; and a love of change and fads have extended fashion into broader realms of collective life. Dogs, sentient non-human beings that have willingly adapted to living with we humans, have been folded into this global empire of fashion. Doggy ‘nudity’ is passé, while dressing up one’s pup for the ‘dog walk’ is au courant. But canine chic is more than barking mad fun; it is a social movement, a major consumer culture trend, and an apparel and lifestyle business, complete with annual pet fashion weeks. Fashion for Fido is of inherent interest for those who find the trend amusing, worrisome, or quite simply ridiculous. This chapter will move beyond the fun and the moralising and examines the trend itself and the ethical issues involved in making dogs fashionistas. Key Words: Fashion, Pet Fashion Week, companion animal, pet, Chihuahua, Papillon, Peter Singer, purse dogs, Paris Hilton. ***** 1. Introduction From Hound Style boutiques to Humane Society Fur Balls, from Scotties modelling Juicy Couture hoodies and Ralph Lauren polo shirts, to The New Yorker cover of dogs in winter coats, 2 dressing our pups has moved beyond the tying of a bandana around the neck of a retriever or the attiring of a short haired breed in a raincoat.

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Image 1: San Diego California, Humane Society Fur Ball, August 15, 2009 (author’s photo). Doggy ‘nudity’ is passé, while dressing up one’s pup for the ‘dog walk’ in wedding and biker attire, sweaters, ties, and visors is on trend.

Image 2: Papillon Wearing Visor (courtesy Z. Kripke). While some find Fashion for Fido amusing, others find the trend ridiculous. For others, it is a worrisome practice, fraught with ethical problems. I confess: while a dog lover, I am not a dog dresser: I have a Papillon named Isabella and the one time I attempted to attire her in a cardigan she went catatonic. This chapter is an exploratory study and moves beyond the fun and the simple moralising about whether canine chic is barking mad fun or simply a mad social trend, and examines the economic, sociological, and ethical implications of dressing our four legged friends. While delving into larger theoretical issues, my chapter is grounded in a qualitative methodology: in-depth interviews with animal

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__________________________________________________________________ league leaders and presidents of dog breed clubs; participant-observation; and content analysis of canine fashion publications. On a micro sociological level I am interested in the social meanings people assign when they dress their dogs. After all, their canine companions do not cloth themselves. On a macro sociological level, I am interested in why dogs have been folded into the fashion system. 2. Haute Dogs: The Business of Canine Chic Canine chic extends beyond sunglasses, collars and coats to dazzling doggy jewellery, ornate beds, spa products, and gourmet treats. For those dedicated to turning their dogs into fashionistas there are style website and books such as Style Hounds 3 and Canine Couture. 4 Peruse the offerings of design houses such as Burberry, Dior, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton and you will find they cater to a canine clientele. Upscale department stores like Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus have pet shops. Since 2002, Pet-a-Porter has been an annual event at Harrods, London, where dog models prance down the runway in designs by Vivienne Westwood and Roberto Cavalli. Canine chic is a billions of dollars per annum industry, an extension of what Lipovetsky 5 called consummate fashion, the sphere where conspicuous consumption and leisure; mass markets and advertising; and a love of change and fads have extended fashion into broader realms of collective life - including to our pets. Today’s fashion has moved from haute couture to haute dogs, with canine models participating in charity galas and annual Pet Fashion Weeks, which are held in the world’s sophisticated cities, places like New York, Paris, Tokyo, San Paulo, London, and Stockholm. 3. Canine Chic: Social Movement and Lifestyle Trend Canine chic is much more than a major consumer culture craze; it is a social movement and a lifestyle trend that has moved animal clothing from the rarefied world of the circus, the couture house, and the royal court, to the mainstream. Ordinary people are turning their dogs into fashionistas, and I would like to know why and into what categories they fall. There are those who will put a coat on a short-haired dog breed to prevent it from becoming cold or wet. They are not the subjects of this chapter. Mine are those who deck out their dogs for no functional reason. There are those who outfit their dogs in costumes on holidays such as Halloween or Christmas. Come Yuletide, my Papillon Isabella wears a Santa hat for about two seconds before she shakes it off.

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Image 3: Isabella Foltyn ‘carolling’ (author’s photo). Special occasions such as birthdays, parades, and sports events bring out the canine dressers among us. An administrator told me he outfits his dogs in team shirts but ‘only for football games.’ In her presentation about German patriotism and clothing, Karolina Burbach showed a small dog wearing a collar fashioned from a German flag. 6

Image 4: German Dog at Football event (courtesy of Christoph Karg). The most common reason people give for attiring their dogs is ‘fun.’ Consider Georgeanne Irvine, Communications Manager for San Diego Zoo’s Development Department, a leader in habitat preservation. ‘George,’ as she goes by, dresses her Boston Terrier Sydney, photographs her, and then sends the images digitally to her co-workers and friends.

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Image 5: Pretty in Pink: Sydney, the Boston Terrier (courtesy of Georgeanne Irvine). When I asked George to discuss this behaviour she replied drolly, ‘I bet there are many more people who dress their dogs than will admit it. They are “closet dog dressers.”’ Recounting how she and her partner developed the habit of dressing up their pup, George revealed: Sydney’s first outfit was pink sweater, when she was an 8 weeks old 4.5 pound puppy. For us doggy fashion began with the need to keep our pet warm, but then it evolved into “just for fun” clothing. As you can see by the photo, she looked absolutely adorable in pink! A month or so later we bought her a pink floral dress. Why do we dress her? The bottom line is because it’s fun, cute, and it makes us laugh really, really hard. And, when we laugh that hard, Sydney gets excited and playful because she knows she’s amusing us and loves the attention. George was careful to mention that Sydney ‘never wears her outfits longer than 15 minutes, and we don’t dress her up very often.’ Finally, there are those for whom dressing their dogs is part of their own selffashioning. The dog is ‘worn’ as an accessory in clothes coordinated with their own. No doubt many are familiar with Tinkerbelle, the Chihuahua who was photographed inseparably from tabloid habitué Paris Hilton in the 2000s. Dressed in pink, a Chihuahua was paired with Reese Witherspoon in the 2001 film Legally Blonde. 7

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. Dog Size and Dog Dress While dogs of all sizes are outfitted in fashion editorials on canine catwalks, you have probably noticed that the most fashionably dressed dogs are tiny breeds. Photos from pet fashion weeks reveal that small dogs get the glitzy clothes. For example, only two of the seventeen dogs featured in the MSBC coverage of New York Pet Fashion Week 2010 were large, and they modelled designer leashes and collars not clothes. 8 Although not necessarily more compliant models, small dogs are smaller and weaker, and thus find it more difficult to resist effort to fashion them.

Image 6: Paps in Stroller (courtesy of Z. Kripke). There are number of other reasons why small dogs are preferred size to dress. 1. Tiny dogs are doll-like and cute. There’s a reason they are called ‘toy’ breeds. 2. Tiny dogs evoke babies and may be dressed like infants, as a friend of mine used to attire her terrier before she had children of her own. Zelda, a 72 year old retired physician, who is the President of the Papillon Club of Southern California, photographs many canine members of the club, including her own, as they are rolled about in strollers, clothed or unclothed. 9 In keeping with the baby theme, I have noticed how common it is to call a small dog ‘baby.’ Interestingly, some individuals fashion their dogs only when they are puppies; the practice is abandoned as the dog grows up. 3. Tiny dogs can comfortably be carried about in a backpack or stashed in a trendy handbag or tote, i.e., they are the natural

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__________________________________________________________________ choice for the ‘purse dog’ practice made popular by socialites and actresses in the early to mid-2000s. 5. Gender, National Origins and Doggy Attire While I occasionally see a man with a dressed up pup, overwhelmingly women and girls are the dog dressers; indeed, the practice is culturally coded as feminine and maternal. Hence the preponderance of not only frilly canine dresses but of the colour pink, favoured not only by George Irvine but Paris Hilton and Elle in Legally Blonde. When I talked with Rob Fisher, the founder and leader of Inter-Disciplinary.Net about this chapter, he noted that dressing dogs appears to be a more socially acceptable in certain countries or cities. He frequently sees fashionably attired dogs in the Czech Republic, for example. Individuals who live in ‘fashion city’ such as New York suggest that the practice appears to be more socially acceptable in cosmopolitan arenas that it might in the streets of a city like Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. More analysis of canine chic will no doubt shed light on human urban, rural, suburban, and national identities and the role of gender. 6. Companion Animals and the Fashion System Since fashion reflects the values and themes of modern consumer society, canine chic tells us a great deal about contemporary culture. What specifically does the trend reveal? First, and perhaps most importantly, in advanced post-industrial societies dogs have achieved a social standing that makes them appropriate targets for fashion. For many, the status of dogs has changed from work animal or ‘pet,’ to friend, companion animal and treasured member of the family. As the average family size has contracted, marriage and children are delayed or forgone, and more people live alone, the status of dogs has been enhanced. It is common for people to refer to their dogs as ‘children.’ Members of the Papillon Club who dress up their dogs or drive them about in strollers often refer to them as their ‘fur kids’ in their email communications. ‘My dogs have always been full persons and members of the family,’ says Z. Kripke. Speaking passionately about the special qualities of the species, she elaborated. I never dressed my hamsters, cats, horses, or chinchillas or parrots. I’ve always only responded to dogs, no other pets, as natural parts of the family and included in every way in our lives. It’s because they uniquely can be included. No other pet can travel, be in a motel, be in the living room in a party uncaged, or go sailing and hiking. Dogs are it.

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__________________________________________________________________ Family member or not, with the demise of sumptuary laws, it is socially acceptable to fashion dogs as well as people. In the past, fashionable clothing was for people of a certain social standing, only. The question as to whether fashion could be extended to animals was moot. Political social revolutions, the industrialisation of fashion, and an expanding middle class made it possible for not only ordinary people but the pets of ordinary people to enter the fashion system. The arrival of what Baudrillard calls Consumer Society 10 means that people look for new places to define themselves by shopping and spending. Fashion for dogs is a form of what Veblen called conspicuous consumption. 11 Not only do people buy fashionable dog breeds as a form of conspicuous display, they buy designer clothes and accessories for the dogs. Luxury markets and branding define modern consumer society and luxe fashions have been extended to dogs. Expressive individuality and narcissism, Lipovetsky 12 would argue, have fed the desire for luxe pet fashion as individuals view their canine companions as embodied extensions of themselves that they can adorn to fashion identity and status. And then there is this: As democracies extend rights to more and more individuals, they are extending these ‘rights’ to companion (and other) animals, redefining them as sensitive, valued beings worthy of our love, care, pampering, and fashion. 7. Ethical Implications What are the ethical implications of all of this? Well, on the positive side, the average dog in a first world country has better legal protection, and is cared for and loved as a family member and companion. The changing status of the dog is reflected in their being deemed fashion as well as family worthy, rather than dismissed as a denigrated species that humans can treat in any way they please, including mistreating them, forcing them to fight other dogs for human amusement, or in some countries, eating them (When I was in China in 1989, I heard a phrase: ‘It is good to eat young dog and old cat,’ and I saw caged puppies for sale in the food markets). However, there are dark sides to the canine chic phenomenon, which I outline below. As the accessories and luxury markets have impacted the social construction of the modern dog, some individuals seem to view dogs as expendable objects rather than as conscious non-human beings that have willingly adapted to living with people. Says, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Los Angeles chapter, President Madeline Bernstein: People think, “How cool. I can go to the store and get a pink shirt and the Chihuahua can get a pink shirt.” And suddenly they realize that the dog also pees, the dog also poops, it’s expensive to go to the veterinarian … The novelty of having an accessory

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__________________________________________________________________ becomes enlightened by the reality of having a pet and the two don’t match. I think what you see here are these impulse purchases of this really cute dog or this need to have what appears to be an essential accessory and not realizing that the dog is a dog and not a necklace. 13

Image 7: Lucky (courtesy San Diego Humane Society and SPCA/Mary Anderson, Photographer). In California, animal welfare and rescue workers have found themselves in the unique position of having too many Chihuahuas. And they blame the glut on attention focused on the breed by celebrities, advertising, movies, and television. 14 Donna Goodman, who heads a Papillon rescue and adoption effort in Southern California, occasionally rescues other small breed dogs, including Chihuahuas. One such Chi was Sprout, an eight week old runt of a litter being sold in a produce box on the streets of Los Angeles (hence the name Sprout). Sprout weighed one pound and was dehydrated,

Image 8: Sprout, at time of rescue (courtesy of Donna Goodman).

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__________________________________________________________________ and malnourished, when Donna purchased her for $20 dollars from the young son of a backyard breeder attempting to cash in on the popularity of the ‘purse dog’ fashion. 15 Goodman’s group spent hundreds of dollars for veterinary treatments to nurse the tiny puppy to health. Animal rights and rescue groups such as those headed by Goodman decry the development of puppy mills, where dogs are cruelly treated as slave breeders to supply pet stores with fashionable animals that may or may not be purchased. Poor breeding practices tied to treating dogs as a commodity in this way often result in severe canine health problems and also to unwanted dogs that may be dumped or killed. California based rescue groups have received permission to transport the too-popular breed other states via hired buses and planes. Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, who is best known for his book Animal Liberation, talks in terms of discrimination and argues that it is irrational and morally wrong to regard sentient beings like dogs as disposable objects, property or play things. 16 In the line with ‘speciesism’ 17 critique, animal rights organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) argue that animals have an inherent worth-a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans-and some have taken the position that it is cruel to dress them up. Returning to the theme of canine clothing, some animal protection leagues in the UK and the USA argue that doggy attire should be made illegal or strictly regulated, claiming that it is an undignified practice and treats the dog as a clown for human amusement. Others argue that fashioning dogs in clothes can affect the health and the comfort of the dog, causing them to develop skin irritations, to be unnaturally constricted, and overheated. And then there is the disturbing trend of having pampered pooches wearing pelts of dead animals: luxe leather jackets, fur coats fashioned from skinned minks, chinchillas, sheep, rabbits, and even other dogs. In conclusion, the love of change and fads and the development of democratic affluent consumer societies and modern advertising have extended fashion into broader and broader realms of collective life, including to ‘man’s best friend.’ However, including dogs in that system is problematic for a variety of reasons, even as it reflects an enhanced status of the species and some regard the trend as fun.

Notes 1

G. Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993 [1987]. 2 A. Juan, ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, The New Yorker, 8th February 2010, viewed on 4th October 2010, . 3 A. Sipala, Style Hounds, Running Press Miniature Editions, Philadelphia, 2010.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4

L. Shahravesh, Canine Couture: 25 Projects: Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories for Designer Dogs, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2008. 5 Lipovetsky, op. cit. 6 K. Burbach, ‘Schwartz Rot Gold is the New Black: The Production of Patriotism in German Fashion’, Session 4a, 2nd Global Conference Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues, 23rd-26th September, 2010, Oriel College, Oxford. 7 Legally Blonde slide show can be seen at , viewed on 4th October 2010. 8 ‘Dogs on the Catwalk,’ The Today Show, MSNBC.com, viewed on 2nd September 2010, . 9 Not only because they are baby-like but to protect them from large dogs and to allow older dogs with health problems to get out (This may also be true of their aging owners, who use the pram to hold on to as they walk). 10 J. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Sage, Thousand Oaks, 1998 [1970]. 11 T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, Macmillan, New York, 1902 [1899]. 12 Lipovetsky, op. cit. 13 E. Jordan, ‘The Golden State Finds Itself with a Chihuahua Overload’, ilovedogs.com, 22nd December 2009, viewed on 2nd September 2010, . 14 Ibid. 15 Goodman made an exception purchasing this dog, noting that purchasing dogs from such operations encourages such inhumane breeding. 16 P. Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation, Avon Books, New York, 1975. 17 Speciesism is the term coined in 1973 by the psychologist Richard D. Dyer, who then argued that it is prejudicial to discriminate against living beings that are not human based on physical differences and to give that prejudice moral value (R. D. Dyer, ‘All Beings That Feel Pain Deserve Human Rights: Equality of the Species is the Logical Conclusion of Post-Darwin Morality’, The Guardian, 6th August 2005, viewed on 1st September 2010, .

Bibliography Baudrillard, J., The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Sage, Thousand Oaks, 1998 [1970].

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__________________________________________________________________ Burbach, K., ‘Schwartz Rot Gold is the New Black: The Production of Patriotism in German Fashion’. Session 4a, 2nd Global Conference Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues, 23rd-26th September, 2010, Oriel College, Oxford. Dyer, R. D., ‘All Beings that Feel Pain Deserve Human Rights: Equality of the Species is the Logical Conclusion of Post-Darwin Morality’. The Guardian, 6th August 2005, viewed on 1st September 2010, . Jordan, E., ‘The Golden State Finds Itself with a Chihuahua Overload’. ilovedogs.com, 22nd December 2009, viewed on 2nd September 2001, . Juan, A., ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. The New Yorker, 8th February 2010, viewed on 4th October, 2010, . Lipovetsky, G., The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1993 [1987]. Shahravesh, L., Canine Couture: 25 Projects: Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories for Designer Dogs. St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2008. Singer, P., Animal Liberation. Avon Books, New York, 1975. Sipala, A., Style Hound. Running Press Miniature Editions, Philadelphia, 2010. Veblen, T. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institution. Macmillan, New York, 1902 [1899]. Jacque Lynn Foltyn, PhD, is Professor of Sociology, National University, La Jolla, California. Her studies focus on human beauty, fashion, and representations of dying and death in art and popular culture, and her cultural critiques have appeared in a variety of forums including fashion magazines, The New York Times, CBS National News, and the BBC.

Part 2 Women and Fashion: Weaponising and Empowering Marginal Bodies

Fashions for Woman with a Future: Women, World War II and the Language of Uniforms Alexandra Elias Abstract Military History is important, if unfashionable. One cannot study nations without studying their conflicts, and one cannot forge a complete understanding of a given culture while ignoring the means by which said culture defends itself against real or perceived threats. Uniforms are arguably the least important aspect of Military History and are most often left to the obsessions of hobbyists and reenactors. However, costume is critical for anyone interested in Cultural History. It is simply the easiest means by which one can gauge the performance of identity. Clothing is after all intentionally designed and worn. Outside absolute utility and the limits of budget, clothing is the most deliberate presentation a person makes to their community. Modes of dress- particularly popular fashions and reactions thereto are important indicators of self-categorisation. There is nothing frivolous about such frivolousness. What then of mandated dress? What of uniforms? If clothing is a key indicator of identity performance, is not institutional clothing a key indicator of institutional identity? To study uniforms is to study how the military wishes to symbolically construct its members, an aspect particularly interesting in periods of transition. I propose that the recruitment of women into the American military machine during World War II be given this treatment. This development represented a dramatic shift in military practices that could not but be expressed in costume. I contend that the development of and gradual changes in women’s uniforms became an obsession among Americans because they provided a visual language for larger issues; that is, what society expected of and feared from its female soldiers. Key Words: Uniforms, women, ready-made, WAC, WAVES, army, navy, WWII, recruitment, military. ***** 1. Arizona and Algiers ‘Fashion Horizons’ is a 1940 TWA-sponsored fashion reel featuring several upand-coming Paramount ‘starlets’ travelling around the southwest United States. While the film is intended to highlight TWA commercial air travel it focuses on the clothes, particularly a ‘patriotic dress complete with chevrons, evidencing the military influence in 1941 fashions.’ 1 The model in the dress, which features red chevrons against navy blue fabric, primly sips her martini, leans back, and smiles at the camera. She is suave, sophisticated, and assertive - we can tell from her wardrobe. The year before Life Magazine had published a Navy-inspired fashion

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__________________________________________________________________ shoot where middy collars were predicted to make a comeback and military mottos marked the visors of stylish hats produced by Lilly Daché. 2 Military build-up and fashion trends intersected. Oveta Culp Hobby was no starlet, but knew a thing or two about marketing. This knowledge landed her a job in the Army Bureau of Public Relations Women’s Interest Section. 3 In 1942 Hobby was promoted directly to Colonel of the new Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. 4 One tour of inspection took her to Algiers in January 1944 - where women slept in full gear and used their steel helmets for bathtubs as well as protection. 5 These conditions were unprecedented for female servicemembers. The trip to Algiers was newsworthy enough that Hobby fielded an interview with the New York Times. The reporter was interested only in the important issues: Hobby ... denied today that recent Wac recruiting had been a “flop” ... When it was mentioned to her that an unidentified Republican Senator had blamed the Wac uniform for keeping down enlistment and she was asked if a change was contemplated, she said: “I would doubt it. We have quite a supply on hand.” 6 Male G.I.s needed rifles made, planes delivered, scarves knit, war bonds bought and reinforcements at the front. What the WAC needed was a more flattering jacket. 2. Why Uniforms? Military History is important, if unfashionable. Uniforms are arguably the least important aspect of Military History. Yet there is nothing frivolous about such frivolousness. Institutional clothing is a deliberate symbol of identity. To study uniforms is to study how the military wishes to symbolically construct its members. By dressing its members uniformly, a given military hierarchy is making its expectations of its members known - in their very appearance, they represent the organization to their community. It is also important to involve civilian fashion when reading uniforms. Just as it is ill-conceived to separate a military from the culture that created it, it is pointless to examine a uniform outside of its fashion context. 7 The recruitment of women into regular military service represented a dramatic shift in American practices. I propose that we examine both institutional decisions and public reactions as a means of understanding this transition through dress. Women’s uniforms became an obsession among Americans during World War II because they provided a safe vocabulary for larger issues; that is, what society expected of and feared from its female soldiers. While several military

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__________________________________________________________________ organisations recruited women, I will focus upon the Army and Navy. 8 I will also emphasise women working in a nonmedical capacity. 9 3. WACs, WAVES and SPARS World War II was the first time the United States military recruited women on a large scale. Women were accepted into the WACs (Women’s Army Corps), the Navy as WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, and the Coast Guard as SPARS (Semper Paratus, Always Ready). Recruits were assigned to a variety of traditionally male noncombat positions as well as more conventional office work. 10 The new female forces were created not to empower women but rather to utilise this last untapped source of personnel. Yet pure utility did not lead to the catchiest recruiting slogans. Materials to recruit women emphasised service itself as much as reinforcement. ‘Share the Deeds of Victory,’ suggested a WAVES poster. 11 ‘This Is My War Too!’ echoed the WAAC. 12 The archetypal Wac or Wave is a fullfledged member of the organisation, with her own individual career and adventure in mind. An Army promotional booklet advertised seven specialist schools. 13 Each of the Wacs depicted within is engaged in a technical, rather than clerical, activity. Recruitment materials thus emphasised comparative expertise with male servicemen. Equality and new occupations are exactly what popular media tended not to emphasise. Reporters could seemingly not help but be more interested in aesthetics. Ruth Cowan of the Evening Independent praised the bravery and technical expertise of war workers while insisting that ‘Madame, your uniform! That’s the feminine history of 1942.’ 14 The reporter in Algiers does not ask whether it is the job itself that could be causing retention problems. Forget what they were doing: did they look good doing it? 4. ‘Fashions for a Woman with a Future’ 1940s fashion was complicated by fabric rationing and general conditions of wartime. Practicality and a business-like, menswear-inspired look were increasingly in vogue and Vogue. New York Times fashion columnist Virginia Pope described the fashionable woman as ‘sophisticated and subdued;’ designers Hattie Carnegie and Henri Bendel stressed neutral colours and narrow suiting. 15 Simultaneously, the German occupation of France had effectively cut off America from Parisian fashions. There were few tears shed over this development: It will be readily recalled that with the fall of Paris there was much enthusiastic talk about America becoming the new fashion center of the world. There was, of course, much sincere regret expressed that the baton had to be passed from enslaved France to other hands. Yet the general public and more intimately all the

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__________________________________________________________________ varied elements of the needle trades could not repress a feeling of excitement... . 16 At this point there was relatively little couture clothing made in the United States. While most American women could not afford such luxuries, it was from French couture styles that readymade clothing took inspiration. 17 American ready-to-wear designers now had to rely on themselves for inspiration. While Life would later lament that designers ‘must concentrate on styles which, at even $100 or more, will produce volume sales,’ it nevertheless highlighted wholesale designers most prominently in its list of important names in fashion. 18 It is no wonder that planners would eagerly turn to popular readymade designers when developing uniforms. It was deemed important that servicewomen never be dowdy; it was decided that Waacs would wear a topcoat designed by Philip Mangone and a light overcoat by Maria Krum. 19 The WAVES chose Mainboucher to design their overall outfit. 20 These choices were publicised: the anonymous editor of an early Life article considered it equally important to include models displaying three WAAC uniforms as images of packed recruiting depots. 21 While the larger WAC was limited to issuing regulation sizes, the much smaller WAVES and SPAR forces offered tailored uniforms at normal clothing stores. 22 This was not a new system; Sideboy, the male Navy Midshipmen’s School cruisebook, advertised custom uniforms available at F. R. Tripler & Co., Lord and Taylor and Browning King & Co. among other well known New York clothiers. 23 Historically the Navy had fostered a more upper-crust image in its officer corps in dress and mannerisms, and the WAVES - including enlisted - were depicted as a particularly classy part of that circle. 24 The first Life article depicting a WAVES uniform was about just that - the uniform. A model in the new outfit is posed in Mainboucher’s studio, being admired by the designer himself. 25 The Army also pursued glamour. ‘Miss Victoria Gleeson’ is a fictional young woman featured in The Waacs, a sort of recruiting-novelisation-cum-manual. 26 Vicky is a 1940 Smith graduate and a ‘real dash,’ a ‘symbol of the new independence of women all over the nation,’ with a job in public relations. 27 She is issued a ‘smart khaki-colored dress cap fashioned after the French kepi’ and blouses that are ‘both very good-looking, so Vicky thinks.’ 28 While she is instructed that tilting her hat back in a more stylishly feminine style ‘may look coy to you, but to the experienced and sophisticated Army eye it looks ridiculous,’ fashion is nevertheless emphasised. 29 Fashion was deemed important enough to take the lead in some advertising. An ad in the New York Times pictured the Wacs as fashion plates wearing ‘the smartest suit in the world right now.’ These were ‘Fashions for a Woman with a Future.’ 30 ‘How to Serve Your Country in the WAVES or the SPARS,’ advertised ‘$200 worth of clothes free ... The trim uniform was especially designed by the famous

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__________________________________________________________________ stylist Mainboucher to flatter every figure and make you look - and feel - your best!’ 31 5. Uniform as Obsession In Army warehouses supply troubles trumped image. Everyone agreed that a Wac looked better in a well fitted and useful uniform, but if none were available she’d have to make do with what was on hand. In its first winter a Daytona Beach headquarters company sent its personnel to Fort Dix in New Jersey wearing ‘summer cottons.’ They stepped off the train in the middle of a snowstorm and were immediately bundled up by the angry receiving unit. Daytona Beach simply had no cold weather clothing to issue the transfers. 32 This situation was not unique. The public was concerned about these inadequate uniforms. However, the definition of what constituted inadequacy differed. Emilee Blair of Poteau, Oklahoma wrote to Life regarding a table of WAAC clothing issue that they had published in the previous issue: My curiosity overwhelms me and compels me to ask, what are the girls going to wear for skirts? I will thank you for an early reply so that I will know that the girls are properly clothed before winter draws on. 33 She was assured by the editor that each Waac would receive three khaki skirts. The tone suggests that Waacs needed not only skirts, but proper skirts. Improper garb was an affront to cultural norms - Waacs in unfashionable uniforms would be especially prone to disrespect. Military nurses did not share this problem. While Army nurses served overseas in such dangerous conditions that they were issued actual combat fatigues, the uniforms that they would have worn stateside were considered less controversial. 34 While in 1943 their dress uniform was changed to that of other female soldiers, they retained unique insignia and a ‘cap which is flat in back, softer, more feminine and more comfortable looking.’ 35 Nurse uniforms were no more traditionally feminine in cut than those of their nonmedical counterparts before their merger, yet this insistence on a distinctly ‘feminine’ hat remained. 36 While the Nurse Corps looked for distinction, the Army issued a shirt and tie for a more ‘military’ appearance closer to the male uniform. Regardless, regulations initially emphasised fashion over function: Tucking the necktie into the shirt in the Army fashion was likewise forbidden because it added a certain undesirable bust fullness to individuals not in need of additional fullness in that respect. This provision had ... to be dropped in favor of the original system, for Wacs complained that the necktie hanging

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__________________________________________________________________ loose flapped in their eyes, became caught in machinery, was dipped in soup ... The extra bust fullness was eventually deemed the lesser evil. 37 They must look feminine, but they must also function like soldiers; what constituted a proper combination was up for debate. As similar suiting was in style, the uniform itself was not particularly daring. Still, nurses drew far less flack for similar garb. Was the mere intention to resemble male soldiers more important than specific tailoring? The April 20, 1942 cover of Life is rather simple. A woman in loose pants and a jacket sits on a fence, making a hitchhiking gesture with one hand. Beneath her in a simple block font: SLACKS. ‘As men are being warned that two-pants suits vests and trouser cuffs will soon be only a memory, women are breaking out in a rash of pants.’ 38 On the editorial page of the next issue James Hsieh of Raleigh, North Carolina appealed to taste. ‘An average woman, 5ft. 3 in. in height and weighing 140lb., would look like a sack of potatoes.’ 39 When the Associated Press published an article about the Los Angeles grandfather who advised his heir not to associate with women who drink, smoke or wear slacks, it is clearly tongue in cheek - but notable. 40 When the St. Petersburg Times’ Mrs. Beeckman insisted that good manners meant one should not ‘loll around in negligees or pajamas or pants when you should be wearing a dress,’ it portrayed slacks as distinctly unsuitable for young women out in polite society. 41 When Hobby insisted that her subordinates wear only skirts barring the field, she was reacting against a popular option among her recruits. Military fashion had become a public issue. When Emilee Blair worries that Waacs may not be properly dressed for winter, she may fear that the omission of skirts is an implication of slacks. And what could slacks mean, but the adoption of unladylike characteristics? This may seem like pure speculation, an overeager researcher cherry-picking articles that serve her purposes. But the uniform obsession of the American media regarding the WAC and WAVES coexists with a near absence of coverage of more dramatic sexual scandals. While rumours briefly spread of women being issued condoms, the issue by and large disappears from major publications afterward. 42 Wacs were certainly accused of crimes ranging from sexual promiscuity to lesbianism to the point that it negatively affected recruitment. Allegations of lesbianism were brought on partly by a perceived ‘mannishness’ of the uniform. The popular soldiers’ comic ‘Male Call’ featured its protagonist Miss Lace mistakenly sleeping with a woman. ‘They should have more distinctive insignia on those WAC uniforms!’ she complains. 43 Most allegations of sexual misconduct came from soldiers themselves. ‘I don’t want you to have a thing to do with them,’ wrote one man overseas, ‘Because they are the biggest hours ... Lousey, boy, they are lousey ... [sic].’ 44 Such scandal coverage that existed was largely limited to debunking and declarations that ‘that

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__________________________________________________________________ womanpower is essential ... in total war.’ 45 If these allegations were as widespread as internal Army histories suggest, the only reason for their omission is censorship. Back to Algiers. The reporter cannot ask Hobby whether these allegations are having an effect on recruitment. Uniforms are fair game. A public obsession with uniforms may have masked these broader concerns. The WAC fought back in the same language, uniforms, eventually issuing off-duty dresses, allowing lighter coloured accessories to be worn with the uniform and engaging in a prolonged argument with Supply about issuing girdles. 46 Female soldiers continued to push boundaries, but would look ladylike while doing so. Clothing provided a language in which to couch concerns regarding femininity - what constituted a ‘smart’ woman, and what her dress said about her, was a safe topic. 6. ‘Women at War’ ‘Women at War’ is a 1943 film produced by Warner Brothers. It combines recruitment with a narrative following fictional Waacs through basic training. As ‘clothing and equipment are of first importance,’ the women are shown in civilian dress progressing through the line to be issued uniforms. At this point the film cuts to a complete dress uniform, laid flat on an orange background. Then other uniform items are arranged in regimented rows. Finally, makeup. ‘Yes, even cosmetics ...’ reads the narrator, ‘they can be purchased at the post-exchange, for a girl doesn’t lose her femininity when she dons a uniform.’ 47 The Army stressed that a Waac is under no fewer style obligations than a civilian woman. This scene weaponises the uniform. The individual items are arranged for filming as would be tanks, planes, or ammunition - whereas the combat branches of the Army had been engaged in finding enough weapons for the fight, the obsession of the Wacs was finding a decent outfit. Perhaps the reporter who stopped Hobby in Algiers was on the right track; while the average G.I. fought with his rifle, uniform was a critical element of the WAC arsenal.

Notes 1

H. D. Donahue, Fashion Horizons, Transcontinental and Western Air, Hollywood, 1940. 2 ‘Modern Living: Fashion Designers Find New Style Ideas in Navy’, Life Magazine, 28th October 1940, p. 83. 3 M. E. Treadwell, United States Army in WWII Special Studies: The Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington,1954, p. 29. 4 The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was the Woman Army Corps’ (WAC’s) precursor. The transition to the WAC and away from ‘auxiliary’ status was to ease integration with the Army at large, as occupations of Waacs had increased far beyond the planners’ original intent. However, an in-depth discussion

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__________________________________________________________________ of this expansion and subsequent transition is not the intent of this chapter. I will use WAAC and WAC when temporally appropriate, but the transition had little to no effect on uniforms beyond some minor changes in insignia. ‘Waac’ and ‘Wac’ and ‘Wave,’ the Navy equivalent - are the slang terms for individual female servicemembers, which I also use where contextually appropriate. 5 J. Barrett Litoff and D. C. Smith, We’re in This War, Too: World War II Letters from American Women in Uniform, Oxford University Press, New York, 1994, p. 124. 6 ‘Col. Hobby Denies WAC Drive Failed’, The New York Times, 20th January 1944. 7 N. Joseph, Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication through Clothing, Greenwood Press, New York, 1986, p. 144; R. P. Rubinstein, Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture, Westview Press, Boulder, 1995, pp. 65-67. 8 The Women Air Service Pilots (WASPs) were a much more daring organisation in terms of both organisation and dress, and worthy of independent research. However they were never officially incorporated into the Army Air Corps and were disbanded shortly before the end of the war. I exclude them for brevity. 9 It may seem odd to deemphasise nurses, as nearly all military women before the 1940s were in medical fields. The problem with nurses is that they nurture - that is, they were in an occupation that was by the 1940s so thoroughly gendered that ‘male nurse’ was an oxymoron. This is not to say that nurses are a less important research topic in general because of their more traditional jobs. This is history, not a girl power rally. However, nurses tended to be separated from the military at large not only by occupation but organisation. 10 This was not the military’s original intention. In the Army the first concepts would have limited women to clerical and menial labour, and were based on the Civilian Conservation Corps example rather than the military itself (Treadwell, p. 15). 11 J. Falter, ‘Share the Deeds of Victory’, Poster, U.S. Navy, 1943. 12 D. V. Smith, ‘WAAC: This is My War Too!’, Poster, Recruiting Publicity Bureau, U.S. Army, 1943. 13 N. Shea, The Waacs, Harper and Brothers Publishing, New York, 1943, p. 141. 14 R. Cowan, ‘Women in Uniform is 1942 Feminine History’, The Evening Independent, 7th December 1942. 15 V. Pope, ‘Fashion Shows Two Wartime Faces; The Sophisticated and the Subdued’, The New York Times, 5th March 1942. 16 H. H. F. Jayne, ‘Renaissance in Fashion 1942’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 5, May 1942, p. 122.

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__________________________________________________________________ 17

L. Welters and P. A. Cunningham, Twentieth-Century American Fashion, Berg Publishers, New York, 2005, p. 100. 18 ‘American Designers’, Life Magazine, 8th May 1944, p. 63. 19 Treadwell, p. 38. 20 N. Baldwin, ‘Waves Uniforms Stir Enthusiasm at “Fashion” Show in Washington’, The New York Times, 29th August 1942. 21 ‘WAAC: U.S. Women Troop to Enlist in Army’s First All-Female Force’, Life Magazine, 8th June 1942, p. 26. 22 L. D. Meyer, Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996, p. 154. 23 Sideboy, USNR Midshipmen’s School, New York, December 1944, pp. 196-238. Lord and Taylor also advertised a military lounge, where officers could enjoy a drink and a smoke while pondering their next uniform purchase. 24 For example, much was made in the press of WAVES being trained in dorms on elite women’s college campuses, while WACS attended a female version of boot camp on normal Army bases (Meyer, p. 66). 25 ‘WAVES Uniforms’, Life Magazine, 21st September 1942, p. 49. 26 While not an official publication, The Waacs features a forward by Oveta Culp Hobby - a sign of approval if ever there was one. 27 Shea, p. 34. 28 Ibid., pp. 62-63. 29 Ibid., pp. 64, 116. 30 ‘Fashions for a Woman with a Future’, The New York Times, 28th February 1944. 31 ‘How to Serve Your Country in the WAVES or the SPARS’, U.S. Navy, Washington, 1942, p. 10. 32 Treadwell, p. 149. 33 ‘Letters to the Editors: WAACS’, Life Magazine, 28th September 1942, p. 2. 34 R. Cowan, ‘New Field Uniforms For Nurses Designed for Invasion’, St. Petersburg Times, 19th December 1943. 35 ‘New Nurse’s Uniform’, The Science News-Letter, Vol. 43, No. 7, 13 February 1943, p. 102. 36 While previous nurse dress uniforms were blue rather than olive drab, they were strikingly similar in cut to those of the WAAC/WAC. 37 Treadwell, p. 535. 38 ‘Men Lose Their Pants to Slack-Crazy Women’, Life Magazine, 20th April 1942, p. 63. 39 ‘Letters to the Editors’, Life Magazine, 11th May 1942, p. 4. 40 ‘Shun Girls Who Wear Slacks, or Smoke, Will Says’, The Milwaukee Journal, 21st August 1940. 41 M. Beeckman, ‘Good Manners’, St. Petersburg Times, 16th July 1941.

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__________________________________________________________________ 42

Meyer, p. 23. Ibid., p. 154. 44 Treadwell, p. 212. 45 ‘The Press: O’Donnell’s Fall’, Time Magazine, 21st June 1943. 46 Treadwell, p. 531. 47 J. Negulesco, ‘Women at War’, Film recording, Warner Brothers, Hollywood, 1943. 43

Bibliography ‘American Designers’. Life Magazine, 8th May 1944. Baldwin, N., ‘Waves Uniforms Stir Enthusiasm at “Fashion” Show in Washington’. The New York Times, 29th August 1942. Barrett Litoff, J. and Smith, D. C., We’re in This War, Too: World War II Letters from American Women in Uniform. Oxford University Press, New York, 1994. Beeckman, M., ‘Good Manners’. St. Petersburg Times, 16th July 1941. ‘Col. Hobby Denies WAC Drive Failed’. The New York Times, 20th January 1944. Cowan, R., ‘Women in Uniform is 1942 Feminine History’. The Evening Independent, 7th December 1942. —––, ‘New Field Uniforms for Nurses Designed for Invasion’. St. Petersburg Times, 19th December 1943. Donahue, H. D., Fashion Horizons. Film Recording, Transcontinental and Western Air, Hollywood, 1940. Falter, J., ‘Share the Deeds of Victory’. Poster, U.S. Navy, 1943. ‘Fashions for a Woman with a Future’. The New York Times, 28th February 1944. ‘How to Serve Your Country in the WAVES or the SPARS’. U.S. Navy, Washington, 1942. Jayne, H. H. F., ‘Renaissance in Fashion 1942’. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 5, May 1942.

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__________________________________________________________________ Joseph, N., Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication through Clothing. Greenwood Press, New York, 1986. ‘Letters to the Editors’. Life Magazine, 11th May 1942. ‘Letters to the Editors: WAACS’. Life Magazine, 28th September 1942. ‘Men Lose Their Pants to Slack-Crazy Women’, Life Magazine, 20th April 1942. Meyer, L. D., Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. Columbia University Press, New York, 1996. ‘Modern Living: Fashion Designers Find New Style Ideas in Navy’. Life Magazine, 28th October 1940. ‘New Nurse’s Uniform’. The Science News-Letter, Vol. 43, No. 7, 13th February 1943. Negulesco, J., ‘Women at War’. Film recording, Warner Brothers, Hollywood, 1943. Pope, V., ‘Fashion Shows Two Wartime Faces; The Sophisticated and the Subdued’. The New York Times, 5th March 1942. Rubinstein, R. P., Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture. Westview Press, Boulder, 1995. Shea, N., The Waacs. Harper and Brothers Publishing, New York, 1943. ‘Shun Girls Who Wear Slacks, or Smoke, Will Says’. The Milwaukee Journal, 21st August 1940. Sideboy. USNR Midshipmen’s School, New York, December 1944. Smith, D. V., ‘WAAC: This is My War Too!’ Poster, Recruiting Publicity Bureau, U.S. Army, 1943. ‘The Press: O’Donnell’s Fall’. Time Magazine, 21st June 1943.

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__________________________________________________________________ Treadwell, M. E., United States Army in WWII Special Studies: The Women’s Army Corps. U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington,1954. ‘WAAC: U.S. Women Troop to Enlist in Army’s First All-Female Force’. Life Magazine, 8th June 1942. ‘WAVES Uniforms’. Life Magazine, 21st September 1942. Welters, L. and Cunningham, P. A., Twentieth-Century American Fashion. Berg Publishers, New York, 2005. Alexandra Elias is a graduate of Canisius College and a current doctoral candidate at Syracuse University. She specialises in modern American Cultural History with a particular interest in military and defence culture.

‘Glamazons’ of Pop: The Enigma of the Female Military-Styled Pop Star: Kate Bush and Madonna Michael A. Langkjær Abstract Female pop stars adopting a military look transform themselves by taking on archetypically male qualities, while at the same time assuming these same qualities for reasons by turns ironical, aggressive and ‘caring.’ But if there is an essential difference between the military look of the female pop star and that of the male, what does it consist in? In this brief review of pop ‘glamazons,’ I deal mainly with Kate Bush and Madonna. Both pushed boundaries in mainstream popular music by their lyrics and imagery. Art pop star Kate Bush has performed as a gun-slinging space cowgirl on the ‘Tour of Life’ (1979), engaged in field combat in ‘Army Dreamers’ and figured as an archetypal female warrior in ‘Babooshka (both: 1980). Pop rock star Madonna appeared smartly in military greatcoat with epaulettes and big, brassy buttons in ‘The Girlie Show’ (1993), but had to pull her ‘American Life’ anti-war fashion statement (2003), while returning to military style on her ‘Re-Invention tour’ (2004). Paradoxes in the military-styled performances of both women are touched on; especially intriguing is that of a red, white and blue bikiniclad, caped and combat booted Madonna, in her ‘Rock the Vote’ TV-spot (1990). In comparing Kate Bush and Madonna, I consider what their military look consisted in - including historical and mythological connotations, and whether the object was aesthetic or political, as well as how it could relate to what is being expressed in the lyrics. Were there common motives behind Kate’s and Madonna’s military looks? Key Words: Fashion, politics, and ideology; style; fashion as performance, gender, sexuality, fashion icons, fashion and music, cultural studies. ***** 1. Introduction: Enigma Variations Female rock artists kitted out in military have run the gamut from wearers of fanciful faux or 60s-style regimental vintage, over ‘embattled urban jungle survivors’ in empowering camouflage, through those whose militant radical chic is ideologically motivated, to incidental users of part of some uniform in promotional news items and fashion reportage. A genuine warrior woman in the shape of Tori Amos and Kate Bush might also appear. For the sake of convenience I have restricted myself to the military styles of Kate Bush and Madonna. The male pop star who adopts a military look need not be doing so to protest or to subvert. He may just be aiming at a strong, aesthetically heroic and erotic visual hook. 1 By their very intrusion into a traditionally masculine preserve, similarly

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__________________________________________________________________ clad female performers would more likely be doing it as a form of irony, as well as playing on the discomfiting notion of the human female as fighter. ‘Glamazons’ are glamorous female pop stars who have incorporated, adapted and revitalized the warrior Amazon archetype in their performance representations of capable, strongspirited women. This does not, however, preclude their also appearing in male guises. It has been said that ‘when it comes to women in rock, confusion breeds confusion’ 2 - a confusion all the more plain when dealing with female performers who are treating images and themes of war, warriors and deeds of arms. The antiwar protests of Kate Bush’s ‘Army Dreamers’ and Madonna’s ‘American Life’ are presumably expressing a female hardwired reflex to be nurturing and to preserve life rather than take it. But you also get macho power projections of the archetypal male attributes of warrior, uniformed soldier and gunfighter, complete with phallic swords and guns, such as in Kate’s ‘James and the Cold Gun.’ And what is one to make of Kate as ‘Babooshka,’ reclaiming the prototypal female warrior of myth and history? Or of the military references and accoutrements that figure in her stage performance of ‘Oh England My Lionheart’ and in Madonna’s martial rendition of ‘Holiday’ and the seemingly satirical ‘Rock the Vote’ TV-spot? Erotic, aggressive and violent imagery is a significant part of the military-styled performances of both women. Their attraction to themes of violence and conflict raises questions of ‘Why?’ and ‘For what purpose?’ Remarks by Kate exemplify the motivating psychologies and aesthetics: ‘What I find so interesting [is] the drive behind human beings and the way they get screwed up’ and ‘Grotesque beauty attracts me. Negative images are often so interesting.’ 3 Madonna says that ‘men have always been the aggressors sexually ... always been in control … sex is equated with power ... and that’s scary in a way ... it’s scary for women to have that power.’ 4 That, along with Kate Bush’s acknowledgement that ‘If you’re female, then it’s up to you to prove yourself,’ 5 suggests that both women adopted the military look in a bid for empowerment. Lots of directed thought went into what Kate Bush and Madonna were doing. In spite of the serious, even tragic dimension in their approach to the military theme, a common element of irony seems somehow always present. Let us examine some different aspects of their military-styled stage and video performances. 2. 1st Aspect: Antiwar Protest The first aspect is the womanly and empathetic one of protest against war and loss, typified by Kate Bush’s ‘Army Dreamers,’ and by Madonna’s ‘American Life.’ 6 According to Kate, ‘“Army Dreamers” is about a grieving mother who, through the death of her soldier son, questions her motherhood.’ 7 Back in 1980 ‘Army Dreamers’ took two differing shapes as a visual choreographic piece: that for the TV show ‘RockPop’ in Germany, and that for the promotional video. For Germany, Kate dressed as a haggard, barefooted cleaning-woman in an improvised costume comprising an old jumble-sale dress, a pair of pink rubber gloves and her

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__________________________________________________________________ mother’s head scarf, kitchen apron and wooden broom. The weary mother reflects on the death of her son, a soldier killed on duty. Kate cringes behind three soldiers, who, in British army camouflage, march, prowl and stand at attention. The song ends with the three soldiers cowering in a group, Kate spread-eagled protectively before them. The promotional ‘Army Dreamers’ video opens with a close-up of a mascararimmed eye blinking each time a rifle bolt clicks home. The camera draws back to show Kate, the band and extras, dressed as soldiers, running through woods dodging pyrotechnics. Kate’s makeup marks her off as undoubtedly female: such a mismatch in costume and makeup tantalises us: Is Kate personifying the mother, waking up from a dream illustrated in the action of the video? Or is she a crossgendered representative of all of us as entranced army dreamers? It is a critique of the military as a perverted dream machine. What caused a ruckus at the April 2003 release of Madonna’s American Life album was her sleeve-image done in the likeness of Che Guevara along with some exquisitely badly-timed scenes of war in the promo-video. For the album sleeve, Madonna is pictured in a black beret mimicking Fidel Castro’s personal photographer Korda’s famous 1960 ‘Guerrillero Heroico’ photo of Che in stark white/red/black, with what some saw as ‘two bleeding gashes on her eyebrow,’ and others as ‘two red stripes daubed like warrior paint on her face.’ 8 Madonna liked what Che represented and was feeling revolutionary, claiming she had recently ‘dreamt a Nazi party had seized control of America’ and that she was a resistance fighter; she and her French techno musician co-producer and co-writer on American Life Mirwais Ahmadzaï ‘both got sucked into the French existentialist vortex. We both decided we were against the war, and we both smoked Gauloises and wore berets, and we were against everything ... I was in a very angry mood, a mood to be political, very upset with George Bush.’ 9 On the single sleeve, the paramilitary theme and the artistic composition invite comparison with the 1974 image of newspaper heiress turned urban guerrilla Patty Hearst looking ‘ferociously chic’ in a Symbionese Army publicity photo. 10 The video starts off with a fashion show with models decked out in military gear strutting down the catwalk accompanied by background images of warplanes in flight. During the chorus, a peak-capped, uniformed Madonna sings against a black screen as orange fireballs erupt over her shoulders. She is first seen with her distraught female army buddies in toilet cubicles, scoring the words ‘protect me’ onto the partition with a combat knife. They kick their way into a sexy dance routine, with Madonna leading as an NCO. She and her four female comrades in military garb then drive a Mini Cooper through the wall and crash onto the catwalk, spraying a roof-mounted water cannon at the paparazzi and crowd, juxtaposed with rapid edits of planes dropping bombs, and mushroom clouds alternating with a fuck-finger. A climax of graphic war images, badly maimed soldiers and blown off limbs ends with Madonna throwing a hand grenade which is

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__________________________________________________________________ caught by a President Bush look-alike, who transforms it into a lighter to light his cigar. 11 On April 1st, one day after it was first shown on a few music channels, Madonna chose to pull the video. No artist wanted to be the next Dixie Chicks, who, on top of Chick Nathalie Maines’ statement that she was ‘ashamed President Bush is from Texas’, experienced falling album sales and having their music yanked out of radio playlists. 12 Instead, an edited version much weaker than the original was released; it only contains the footage of the peak-capped Madonna singing in front of 165 alternating flags of the world. 13 The surreally mascara-and-lipstick-made-up and combat-attired Kate of the 1980 ‘Army Dreamers’ video was exotic; Madonna as a field uniformed NCO in the ‘American Life’ video anno 2003 is not - a fact as likely as not owing something to the cinematic fiction of Private Vasquez in Aliens anno 1986 and Demi Moore in G.I. Jane anno 1997, as well as to women having served on the frontlines in the Gulf and Iraq. Both Kate’s and Madonna’s videos had fast-paced images of the stars acting out the part of soldiers in combat. But while the vague and arty Kate had met with critical approval by showing herself capable of writing songs with ‘issue status,’ without being labelled a ‘cause lyricist,’ the notoriously unsubtle Madonna had had to reassure folks in the States that ‘I feel lucky to be an American.’ 14 3. 2nd Aspect: Gendered Empowerment The second aspect of Kate’s and Madonna’s military style is that of newfeminism empowerment being expressed through macho imagery and phallicism, typified by Kate Bush’s ‘James and the Cold Gun’ and ‘Babooshka’, and by Madonna’s ‘Holiday.’ 15 In her 1979 ‘Tour of Life’ stage performance of ‘James and the Cold Gun,’ Kate was in a black, figure-hugging fringed cowboy suit with gold trim and elbow-length gold-coloured gloves packing a six-shooter in a lowslung holster that, with an Emperor Ming-styled gold collar, gave her the look of ‘a futuristic space cowgirl.’ 16 Towards the end of the song, Kate toted a shotgun with which she gunned down several cast members and the audience. Kate explained: ‘My imagination runs like a non-stop B-movie with me as the star ... It gives me excitement, a savour of heroism … I really like guns. Not what they do, but detach them from their purpose and they’re ... fantastic, beautiful ... I’ve never actually shot anyone, but in a song I can do it, and in some ways it’s much more exciting, more symbolic.’ 17 In the 1980 ‘Babooshka’-video, Kate shifts between a veiled lady dressed all in black, mourning her waning relationship and trying to regain his attention as a voraciously sexual, sword-wielding woman. The latter is adorned in what has been described as ‘an outfit that Warrior Princess Xena would envy - a tight-fitting chainmail bra, green bikini bottom, gold straps that wrap around the top of her thighs.’ 18 Kate’s body looks muscular and powerful; the usage of swords by

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__________________________________________________________________ women can be understood as a form of phallic empowerment, putting them on a man’s level. 19 During the 1993 ‘Girlie Show’ marching performance of ‘Holiday,’ Madonna acted out a military call and response routine, shouting orders with the backdrop of a huge American flag, at a point intoning ‘My jock is loose, my pants are tight, my balls are swinging from left to right!’ Both she and her dancers wear long, ceremonial, military greatcoats designed by Dolce & Gabbana, with epaulettes and big brassy buttons, that, when fanned out, reveal a red and white-striped lining that alludes to the backdrop. If Madonna’s close-cropped blonde garçonne hairdo is any indication, then we are back in the context of the interwar era. The martial, retro-Zeitgeist of ‘Holiday’ evokes the frank patriotism which carried Americans through WW2, prior to an age of problematic wars starting with the one in Korea. More than mere camp, it is a ‘calculated peek at American innocence,’ 20 a chins-up patriotic mirror held to Clinton-era America, where the ‘American Life’ video then would be the disillusioned reverse reflection in that mirror of the Bush-era and developments leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. 4. 3rd Aspect: Patriotic Persuasion This leads us over to the third and final aspect, that of the ‘Ewig-Weibliche’ power to draw on us, conjuring up admirable masculine qualities such as heroism and coaxing forth patriotism and civic virtue, typified by Kate Bush’s 1979 ‘Tour of Life’ stage performance of ‘Oh England My Lionheart’ and by Madonna’s 1990 TV-spot ‘Rock the Vote.’ 21 ‘Oh England, My Lionheart,’ sung from the perspective of a dying World War II British Spitfire pilot, has Kate wearing an old, oversized flying jacket and ‘Biggles’ air helmet, the stage strewn with dying airmen and parachute traces. ‘Oh England’ displays a fascination with loss, death and departure, without the same sense as in ‘Army Dreamers’ of this personal death as unnecessary. Rather the death embodies that of a pure, genteel, chivalrous and heroic England. Kate Bush had later all but disowned ‘Oh England My Lionheart’ as embarrassingly soppy: ‘It just makes me want to die. There’s just something about that time ... in 1979.’ 22 Yes, indeed, and that very ‘something’ transcending her individual subjective awareness arouses our curiosity. In disowning ‘Lionheart,’ Kate had either not realised or she had forgotten how the gently heroic tribute was challenging the overly assertive patriarchal nationalism prevalent in late 1970’s Britain in addition to providing an English vibe as a counter to American pop-hegemony. 23 Madonna’s presence in her ‘Rock the Vote’ TV spot was part of an advertising campaign featured on MTV during the 1990 election season. Rock the Vote’s message is that politics could be ‘cool,’ that entertainment employing the free services of rock stars and celebrities is a way of ‘making real’ the connection between young people’s lives and public policy. 24 Madonna appears in a red bra and panties, a large American flag draped cape-like over her shoulders; she also

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__________________________________________________________________ wears military-style combat boots. She is with two black male dancers, who stand behind and to the left and right of her, dressed in dark lace-up boots, navy blue shorts, and plain white T-shirts - a clear invocation of military costuming, and each waving a small flag. 25 Of the clip it was said that: ‘[It] was timely, coming after intense debates on the sacredness of the flag.’ 26 The performance and Madonna’s lyrics: ‘Dr King, Malcolm X, freedom of speech is as good as sex … Don’t just sit there, let’s go do it, speak your mind, there’s nothing to it. Vote,’ and her parting salute - ‘If you don’t vote, you’re gonna get a spankie’ - seem to ‘Mock the Vote.’ 27 Perhaps we are cynically misconstruing the video: Madonna’s association of freedom of speech with sexual expression is in itself a demonstration of what freedom of speech entails. 28 She may be ‘bugging the squares,’ but is at the same time getting the message across in a manner to which young generation X’ers easily could relate. It may be just a coincidence that her patriotic stars-and-stripes apparel has some resemblance to Wonder Woman, kombi sex object and superhero, and pop-cultural icon of empowered feminism in a 1976-79 weekly TVseries starring Lynda Carter that the X’ers had grown up with. 29 5. Concluding Remarks Kate Bush and Madonna shared vocal cross-gendering abilities that, along with their inherently manly being-in-control, had enabled them to straightforwardly partake of ‘rock military styled’ masculinity. Their purposes for doing so - anti-war protest and critique of the military, attraction to military eroticism and phallicism, or a feminine device to recall or coax forth attractively masculine qualities such as heroism and patriotic civic virtue - were also shared. The different motifs had interplayed with cultural and political developments which had either made possible or restricted their new feminist empowerment claims - the latter being notably the case with Madonna’s ‘American Life’ video. At all events, Kate Bush and Madonna made of the military style an especially potent, albeit risqué show of strength that was meant to liberate them from traditional female qualities and roles. The ironical attitude displayed by both women toward the military theme is tempered by a fundamental empathy, which probably springs from their shared attraction to ‘the male experience.’ Despite the marked dissimilarities in their backgrounds, personalities and artistic temperaments, the fact that they do have so many points of similarity in their use of military style makes it possible to consider them as being typical of the larger group of female ‘glamazons of rock.’ It also encourages me in my view of the military-style of female performers as being more out-and-out ideologically motivated than we find it to be the case with their male rock military-styled compatriots.

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Notes 1

M. A. Langkjær, ‘“Then How can You Explain Sgt. Pompous and the Fancy Pants Club Band?” Utilization of Military Uniforms and Other Paraphernalia by Pop Groups and the Youth Counterculture in the 1960s and Subsequent Periods’, Textile History, Vol. 41, Supplement: Textile History and the Military, May 2010, pp. 182-213. 2 S. Reynolds and J. Press, The Sex Revolts. Gender, Rebellion and Rock’n’Roll, Serpent’s Tail, London, 1995, p. 236. 3 P. Simper, ‘Dreamtime is Over’, Melody Maker, 16th October 1982, viewed on 5th June 2010, ; R. Smith, ‘Getting Down Under with Kate Bush’, 1982, viewed on 5th June 2010, . 4 S. McClary, Feminine Endings. Music, Gender, and Sexuality, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota and Oxford, 1991, p. 152. 5 A. Marvick, ‘The Women of Rock Interview’, Women of Rock, 1984, viewed on 5th June 2010, . 6 Kate Bush - Army Dreamers: Germany, RockPop live performance August 2010, version, viewed on 27th ; Kate Bush August 2010, Army Dreamers: video, viewed on 27th ; Madonna - ‘American Life’, uncensored version, viewed on 27th August 2010, sanitised ; August 2010, version, viewed on 27th ; Re-Invention stage version, August 2010, 2004, viewed on 27th . 7 K. Bush, ‘“Them Bats and Doves”, Kate’s KBC Article, Issue 7 (Sept. 1980)’, viewed on 24th June 2010, . 8 L. O’Brien, Madonna. Like an Icon, HarperEntertainment, New York, 2007, p. 269. 9 P. Rees ‘“I Used to be an Idiot”’, Interview 2003, from Q, May 2003, in Q Special Edition, ‘At Home and in Bed with Madonna: Madonna 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition’, P. Alexander (ed), Q/Mappin House, London, 2003, p. 142; O’Brien, p. 272. 10 T. Ziff (ed), Che Guevara: Revolutionary Icon, V&A Publications, London, 2006, p. 82. 11 Several endings were filmed; the Director’s Cut version ends with the live grenade simply landing on the catwalk: ‘YouTube: Madonna American Life

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__________________________________________________________________ Director’s Cut (Official First Video)’, viewed on 7th August 2010, . 12 O’Brien, pp. 270-271; ‘Protect Yourself’, Newsweek, 2nd April 2003, viewed on th 7 August 2010, ; M. St Michael, Madonna “Talking”. Madonna in Her Own Words, Omnibus Press, London, 2004, p. 68. 13 H. Keazor and T. Wübbena, Video Thrills the Radio Star. Musikvideos: Geschichte, Themen, Analysen, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2005, p. 146, and note 36. 14 J. Juby, Kate Bush. The Whole Story, Sidgewick & Jackson, London, 1988, pp. 103 and 141; J. Wiederhorn, ‘Madonna Defends Her Violent “American Life” Video’, MTV Networks, Artist Pages: Madonna, 14th February 2003, viewed on 8th August 2010, . 15 YouTube, ‘Kate Bush/10 of 12/James & the Cold Gun - Live at August 2010, Hammersmith Odeon 1979’, viewed on 27th ; YouTube, August 2010, ‘Babooshka Kate Bush’, viewed on 27th ; YouTube, ‘14. Holiday August 2010, The Girlie Show’, viewed on 27th . 16 P. Kerton, Kate Bush. An Illustrated Biography, Proteus, London and New York, 1980, p. 95. 17 P. Sutcliffe, ‘Labushka’, Sounds, 30th August 1980, viewed on 5th June 2010, ; C. Irwin, ‘Paranoia and Passion of the Kate Inside’, Melody Maker, 4th October 1980, viewed on 5th June 2010, . 18 D. Withers, Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory, HammerOn Press, Bristol, 2010, p. 73. 19 D. Mainon and J. Ursini, Modern Amazons. Warrior Women On-Screen, Limelight Editions, Pompton Plains, New Jersey, 2006, pp. 35-37, 51-52, and 63. 20 R. Corliss, ‘Madonna Goes to Camp’, Time magazine, 25th October 1993, in The Madonna Companion. Two Decades of Commentary, C. Benson and A. Metz (eds), Schirmer Books, New York, 1999, p. 22. 21 ‘1979, Tour of Life, Live at Hammersmith Odeon’, viewed on 27th August 2010, ; ‘1990 Rock August 2010, the Vote ad’, viewed on 27th . 22 K. Bush, ‘Little Miss Can’t be Wrong’, Q Magazine interview, December 1993, viewed on 7th August 2010, .

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Withers, p. 61; R. Moy, ‘A Daughter of Albion. Kate Bush and Mythologies of Englishness’, Popular Musicology Online, Issue 2: Identity & Performativity, 2006, viewed on 6th June 2010, . 24 ‘Generation X’ comprises those born 1965-1977. M. Hoover and S. Orr, ‘Youth Political Engagement: Why Rock the Vote Hits the Wrong Note’, in Fountain of Youth. Strategies and Tactics for Mobilizing America’s Young Voters, D. M. Shea and J. C. Green (eds), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK, 2007, pp. 142, 144, 147-149, 156, 158, and 160: note 5. 25 C. Andersen, Madonna Unauthorized, Island Books, New York, 1991, illustration between pp. 186 and 187. 26 M. Rettenmund, Encyclopedia Madonnica, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1995, p. 150: ‘Rock the Vote.’ 27 S. Albiez, ‘The Day the Music Died Laughing. Madonna and Country’, in Madonna’s Drowned Worlds. New Approaches to Her Cultural Transformations, 1983-2003, S. Fouz-Hernández and F. Jarman-Ivens (eds), Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, 2004, pp. 122 and 129; R. M. Mandziuk, ‘Feminist Politics & Postmodern Seductions: Madonna & the Struggle for Political Articulation’, in The Madonna Connection. Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory, C. Schwichtenberg (ed), Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford, 1993, p. 174. 28 Mandziuk, p. 180. 29 Mainon and Ursini, pp. 112-117.

Bibliography Albiez, S., ‘The Day the Music died Laughing. Madonna and Country’, in Madonna’s Drowned Worlds. New Approaches to her Cultural Transformations, 1983-2003. S. Fouz-Hernández and F. Jarman-Ivens (eds), Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, 2004. Andersen, C., Madonna Unauthorized. Island Books, New York, 1991. Benson, C. and A. Metz, A. (eds), The Madonna Companion. Two Decades of Commentary. Schirmer Books, New York, 1999. Bush, K., ‘“Them Bats and Doves”. Kate’s KBC Article, Issue 7 (Sept. 1980)’. Viewed on 24th June 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ —––, ‘Little Miss can’t be Wrong’. Q Magazine interview, December 1993, viewed on 7th August 2010, . Corliss, R., ‘Madonna Goes to Camp’, Time magazine, 25th October 1993, in The Madonna Companion. Two Decades of Commentary. C. Benson and A. Metz (eds), Schirmer Books, New York, 1999, pp. 21-22. Hoover, M. and Orr, S., ‘Youth Political Engagement: Why Rock the Vote Hits the Wrong Note’, in Fountain of Youth. Strategies and Tactics for Mobilizing America’s Young Voters. D. M. Shea and J. C. Green (eds), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK, 2007. Irwin, C., ‘Paranoia and Passion of the Kate Inside’. Melody Maker, 4th October 1980, viewed on 5th June 2010, . Juby, J. and Sullivan, K., Kate Bush. The Whole Story. Sidgewick & Jackson, London, 1988. Keazor, H. and Wübbena, T., Video Thrills the Radio Star. Musikvideos: Geschichte, Themen, Analysen. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2005. Kerton, P., Kate Bush. An Illustrated Biography. Proteus, London and New York, 1980. Langkjær, M. A., ‘“Then How can You Explain Sgt. Pompous and the Fancy Pants Club Band?” Utilization of Military Uniforms and Other Paraphernalia by Pop Groups and the Youth Counterculture in the 1960s and Subsequent Periods’. Textile History, Vol. 41, Supplement: Textile History and the Military, May 2010, pp. 182-213. Mainon, D. and Ursini, J., The Modern Amazons. Warrior Women On-Screen. Limelight Editions, Pompton Plains, New Jersey, 2006. Mandziuk, R. M., ‘Feminist Politics & Postmodern Seductions: Madonna & the Struggle for Political Articulation’, in The Madonna Connection. Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, and Cultural Theory. C. Schwichtenberg (ed), Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford, 1993.

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__________________________________________________________________ Marvick, A., ‘The Women of Rock Interview’. Women of Rock [A Single Issue Magazine edited by Andrew Marvick], 1984, viewed on 5th June 2010, . McClary, S., Feminine Endings. Music, Gender, and Sexuality. University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota and Oxford, 1991. Moy, R., ‘A Daughter of Albion. Kate Bush and Mythologies of Englishness’. Popular Musicology Online, Issue 2: Identity & Performativity, 2006, viewed on 6th June 2010, . O’Brien, L., Madonna. Like an Icon. HarperEntertainment, New York, 2007. ‘Protect Yourself’. Newsweek, 2nd April 2003, viewed on 7th August 2010, . Rees, P., ‘“I Used to be an Idiot”’. Interview 2003, from Q, May 2003, in Q Special Edition, ‘At Home and in Bed with Madonna: Madonna 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition’, P. Alexander (ed), Q/Mappin House, London, 2003, pp. 138143. Rettenmund, M., Encyclopedia Madonnica. St. Martins’s Press, New York, 1995. Reynolds, S. and Press, J., The Sex Revolts. Gender, Rebellion and Rock’n’Roll. Serpent’s Tail, London, 1995. Simper, P., ‘Dreamtime is Over’. Melody Maker, 16th October 1982, viewed on 5th June 2010, . Smith, R., ‘Getting Down Under with Kate Bush’. 1982, viewed on 5th June 2010, . St Michael, M., Madonna “Talking”. Madonna in Her Own Words. Omnibus Press, London, 2004. Sutcliffe, P., ‘Labushka’. Sounds, 30th August 1980, viewed on 5th June 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ Wiederhorn, J., ‘Madonna Defends Her Violent “American Life” Video’. MTV Networks, Artist Pages: Madonna, 14th February 2003, viewed on 8th August 2010, . Withers, D. M., Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory. HammerOn Press, Bristol, 2010. Ziff, T. (ed), Che Guevara: Revolutionary Icon. V&A Publications, London, 2006. Michael A. Langkjær, PhD, is an external lecturer at the Saxo Institute, Department of History, University of Copenhagen, with published work in Egyptology, counterfactual history, 18th century intellectual history and history of science, youth culture and pop fashion. Langkjær is devoting his current researches to gendered style in 20th to 21st century Anglo-American popular culture and in particular to the phenomenon of ‘rock military style.’ He is Reviews Editor of Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion, Beauty and Style.

It is the Attitude: Fashion Designs for Women with Disabilities Elizabeth Kaino Hopper Abstract Fashion designers are famous for inventing challenges for themselves to reach new heights in creativity. The solutions are seen in haute couture runway fashions, which often create restrictions to body movement or changes to the body form that are considered to be forms of art. Fashion designers have addressed the artistic and professional dress needs of actors, rock stars, and even high powered business women, with runway aesthetics that distort the normal human silhouette and often require altered ways of movement, especially through choices in shoes, corsets, and tight-fitting clothing. These fashionable human distortions are a form of acquiring disabilities by choice. Designing around these chosen disabilities is seen as creative and artistic. Yet fashion designers have avoided the dress needs of women living with disabilities that are not acquired by choice. With advances in equal employment and equal access supported by the Disabilities Rights Movement and the Americans with Disabilities Act, more women with disabilities need fashionable clothes, especially business attire. This chapter argues that the skills needed during the creative process to design fashions for women with disabilities are the same as for designing fashions that disable, for example: strong understanding of pattern shapes, graphic understanding of style lines and surface embellishments, social meanings of dress, and the properties of fibres. The chapter further argues that work of historic haute couture fashion designers, from Charles Frederick Worth to the late Alexander McQueen, can inform and inspire modern designers to use all forms of disability, artificial and real, as creative challenges that can lead to exciting fashion solutions for the runway as well as for businesswomen’s dress; all it will take is an attitude change. Key Words: Adaptive, couture, design, designers, disability, dress, fashion, inclusive, runway, women. ***** 1. Introduction: Fashion Design Excludes Disabled Women Designing for the haute couture runway is seen as the ultimate form of creativity in the world of fashion design; it sets the cycle of fashion production in motion - and it excludes millions of women with disabilities. 1 This chapter explores fashion’s historic fascination with disabilities, outdated attitudes toward disabilities, existing clothing options for disabled, and the author’s creative design research into new fashions that include disabled women. The qualitative studio-work is based on results from academic research and ethnographic interviews with eight disabled women and ten able-bodied women.

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__________________________________________________________________ Data that inspired the studio-work was collected during interviews in answer to the open-ended questions: ‘What do you wear and why?’ and ‘What, if anything, would you request fashion designers to change about your clothes?’ Research was initiated formally in 2005-2006 as an undergraduate at University of California, Davis, (UCD) U.S.A., and resumed as a graduate student in 2009-2010 at UCD. Research is ongoing. Definition of Disabled: The term ‘disability’ is used to include women who have reduced physical mobility that affects their activities of daily living, ADLs, including women who have not yet filed for legal status as disabled. 2 The phrase ‘disabled women’ is used throughout this chapter instead of ‘women with disabilities’ to ease reading, and is intended to mean reduction in ADLs for a wide range of physical limitations resulting from various reasons, including but not limited to: arthritis, multiple sclerosis, injury, stroke. The term ‘disabled women’ reflects the idea that environments, including dress environments, have disabled women - better designs can enable them/us. 3 Increased Numbers and Desire for Fashion: The number of women with disabilities is growing as the baby boomer generation ages and their children enter mid-life years and experience reduce mobility due to aging. The numbers are also increasing for younger individuals through advances in medicine that increase survival rates from accidents, injuries and illnesses. There is a growing movement within disabled communities that encourages fashionable, creative dress, seen in magazines such as Logans and Chloe, and events like the Abilities Expo (Los Angeles, May 2009). 4 Fashion Designs to Disable: The challenges designers set for themselves lead to new levels of creativity meant to shock, seduce, and stun the public. Achieving this stunning effect is most direct when the human silhouette and body form are altered, a form of disabling the able. Many designer-invented devices and garments inhibit physical movement, for example: panniers, bustles, corsets, hobble skirts, stilettos, and skinny jeans. 5 These fashions create physical restrictions, or temporary disabilities, donned by choice in the name of fashion. Clearly, fashion designers have been fascinated with concepts of disability for hundreds of years, proving that no new skills are needed in order to design for disabled. The artificially disabling fashions are adopted through the cycle of fashion, trickling-down from runway shows, to elite clients, to the masses of the ablebodied, especially women. For women with real physical disabilities that are not removable at the end of the day, the fashion trickle-down is more like a single droplet. The fashion world designs to disable: but it does not design for the disabled. 2. A New Attitude If designers have the skills to design for the disabled, and there is a growing market, why have fashion designers not embraced the challenge? Academic

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__________________________________________________________________ research indicates the reluctance is more about attitudes toward disabled bodies and roles in society than about profit or creativity. One new attitude of inclusiveness can be adopted to broaden the availability of fashions for women with real disabilities. A contextual look at history and changing societal trends reveals why exclusion-attitudes toward bodies, stigma, and marketing are outdated and why inclusion-attitudes are needed for the new millennium. Ideal Bodies: The ideal body has roots in ancient societies’ admiration of unattainable beauty. 6 In the twenty-first century, the prevailing belief is that the ideal body is attainable through diet, exercise, corrective undergarments, and plastic surgery. 7 The onus of owning the perfect body, and maintaining it, is put squarely on the individual. The myth that every woman is capable of shaping her body to mimic the ideal body empowers fashion designers to decide which bodies are ideal, demonstrated in their runway models. The danger is that the fashion designers (and their companies) create stigma and segregation by rejecting all other bodies, especially bodies with disabilities. 8 Some justify this eugenic behaviour with marketing statistics, yet potential markets for clothing that works for nonideal bodies and includes differently able bodies cannot be realised until fashion designers include, rather than exclude, the disabled in their processes. Stigma v. Visibility: A look at the history of disabilities reveals that exclusion thinking is not new, and has repeatedly resulted in removal of disabled people from societies through institutionalisation and even extermination. 9 In institutions (including care facilities, nursing homes, hospitals, rehabilitation and mental health centres), the garments for disabled and handicapped (when provided) were designed for efficiency of dressing, toileting, and laundering - not fashion - which created the stigmatised target market of adaptive wear. 10 This efficient attitude persists today and is the major determinant of fashion for the disabled. Visibility of disabled women has increased over the past twenty years with the help of well-established disability rights and independent living movements in the U.S.A. and Europe. Legislation, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act that ensures access to buildings and equal employment opportunities, increases publicinterface and earned income. As disabled women’s public access possibilities increase, so does the need to dress fashionably. 11 The desire to manage one’s identity through dress choices, and thus manage stigma, is equally important to disabled as well as able-bodied women, and their opinions about fashion styles are independent of their ability levels. 12 For fashion designers, this opens a new area of design that requires expanding functional features to ease the dressing process (not as extreme as adaptive wear) while maintaining current trends in fashionable details of colour, style, texture, and surface design. Marketing: The mass market for garments for disabled has historically been considered a specialty target market with a strong medical bias. However, studies show that disabled women want to shop where everyone else does which is only possible when mainstream fashion brands with easy-dressing features are offered

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__________________________________________________________________ in mainstream retail outlets. 13 Branding and prêt-à-porter sales are important financial cogs in the fashion marketing cycle, and changing the attitude to include customers with physical disabilities has potential to expand existing markets. 3. Existing Fashions for Women with Disabilities Women with disabilities have limited fashionable clothing options. Custom sewing is expensive, alterations are sub-standard, one-size-fits-most are ill-fitting and can interfere with assistive devices, the occasional normalised, brand-name garments that happen to work are rare, and adaptive wear is stigmatised. For the younger disabled woman ages 16-45 years, a few clothing businesses targeting disabled clients have dared to design highly fashionable garments. 14 However, while volunteering for Chloe Magazine’s afternoon runway show as a dresser at the Los Angeles Abilities Expo in May 2009, I observed that most of the fashions shown had no functions to ease dressing, creating discomfort backstage. All the models had physical disabilities, and no able-bodied models were included; behaviour that perpetuates the stigmatised disabled market. These garments are marketed via Internet and use the search phrase ‘adaptive wear,’ though one designer, Jordan Silver of Ag Design, reported in an interview in May 2009 that she would prefer to market without this stigma. 15 Sales of fashionable clothing for disabled women continue to be separated from mainstream fashion sales. Logans and Chloe magazines target young independent disabled women, offering articles about fashion spotlighting the few brand-name fashions that are disability-friendly. 16 My 2006 fashions were featured in Logans in Spring 2008; however, the fashions were available only by custom order via Internet. 17 For disabled women who need fashionable garments that ease the dressing process, without extreme function for activities such as toileting, fashions are difficult to find in mainstream fashion outlets. 4. Leaders Demonstrating New Attitudes Considered controversial among communities of disabled activists, the late Alexander McQueen spotlighted prosthesis wearing Aimee Mullins on the runway, and in the article ‘Fashion-able’ in Dazed and Confused, in 1998. 18 This is an example of a forward thinking designer and model joining ranks to embrace the fashion possibilities for disabled women. Chanel featured Plus-Sized models (implied reduced ADLs) in a 2010 runway show, demonstrating an awareness of different body ideals, albeit a separate runway show that continues to segregate bodies. 19 Betsey Johnson showed her fashions on models with disabilities for a charity event, though these were not designed to ease the dressing process. 20 These three high fashion designers exemplify fashion attitudes that accept differences in body and ability ideals.

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. New Attitude, New Designs The necessity of an inclusive view toward fashions for disabled women became apparent during my ethnographic interview process, when data showed that ablebodied women who used wheeled office chairs in their jobs requested the same functional and aesthetic elements in garments as did the disabled women, especially those using wheelchairs. Ergonomic needs during sitting for extended periods, coupled with the needs of stretching the upper body while remaining seated, were the same for both sets of women. The ergonomic overlap suggested the possibility for functional dress design changes with mainstream market appeal (non-stigmatised). The aesthetic overlap included the same preferences for modest blouse necklines for business wear. Both sets of women explained that scarves were not practical accessories, as they tend to slip off into the chair wheels, so I designed a new blouse-collar that buttoned over a scarf, which was successfully tested and approved by both sets of women. The following discoveries underscore the need by both sets of women to have fashion designers address functional aspects to ease the dressing process. Interviews showed that the disabled women had body measurements that fit some standard fashion-brand sizes, but many of these fashion-brands were unnecessarily difficult during the dressing process. The main functional changes requested by the disabled women were not for toileting, but for ease of dressing. Able-bodied women also reported difficulty with garments, especially business wear, during the dressing process, leading to an overlap in function needs. To ease dressing, I placed zippers underarms and lengthened zippers used in pants and skirts. These solutions were not ground breaking for disabled women; however, finding that both sets of women preferred them to ease dressing was new. The women universally preferred semi-fit and well-fit garment choices for public venues, with business attire being the hardest to find. Both sets of women reported a desire to avoid one-size-fits-most garments for public events. All of these women wanted the same functional elements in garments, and felt that if designers responded to their needs, they would buy the new designs. Thus the focus of my research became business wear. Using existing sketching, patterning and sewing skills, I began using bolder patterns. The caution in designing originals was to keep relatively close to socially accepted silhouettes so that the wearer would not be perceived as a freak in a sideshow. 21 Folk wear garments of the past, inspired a new neck accessory, and interesting adjustable fits through rectangular gussets, pleats, and partial-wrap garments. I worked with sustainable natural fibres for different drape including: organza and china silks; hemp-silk blends; Melton and twill wools. Textiles were coloured with non-toxic dyes to respect skin health (the largest organ of the body) during long hours of sitting. The historic visite, an outer wrap that accommodated the back-bustle and tight fitting bodices of the 1870’s also inspired my design work. 22 I experimented with alternative pattern shapes, construction processes and

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__________________________________________________________________ arrangement of openings/closures inside creative seam lines. My design progress can be viewed at http://www.ekaino.com. Anticipating possible alterations led to my ‘rip-fit’ theory that refers to pattern construction to minimise the ripping and fitting process of alterations. This includes placing seams at critical fit junctures, such as splitting a waistband to seam vertically with the skirt/pant. Widening seams and finishing edges to press open rather than serged together also eased future alterations. The disadvantage of ‘rip-fit’ theory is added time/costs during sample garment creation, possibly accompanied by small cost increases for production. The advantage of ‘rip-fit’ theory is reduced cost of alterations, better potential fit, and a happier customer. No new skills or equipment was/is needed, only a new attitude. Instead of being constricting and uninspiring, the design process proved to be challenging and expansive. During the fashion shows it was apparent that not every runway choreographer sees mixing a wheeling model with walking models as necessary or artistic. Including models with disabilities changed pacing and lineups; however, it did embrace new body ideals, de-stigmatised garments, broadened the potential market, and awakened the audience. 6. Historic Designer Inspirations and Future Fashions For designers who still view designing for disabilities as unthinkable and noncreative, a look to the past can inspire. Charles F. Worth’s back bustle appears to disable its wearers, yet in context, it actually increases ability to move because the sides were slimmed for walking and the bustle collapsed for sitting. 23 Worth’s shocking move away from huge crinoline hoop skirts shows his creativity in designing-to-enable. 24 Many fashion designers have stunned audiences with garments that inspire inclusiveness: Chanel’s comfortable high hip jackets in jersey fabric; Adrian’s dolman sleeves; Issey Miyake’s expanding pleats; and Alexander McQueen’s embrace of differently able fashion models. Historically, sportswear has enabled movement, and fashion designers can also adapt these functional aspects into other categories of fashion in fabrics for day and evening attire. Fashion designers break boundaries of their time by setting challenges for themselves to push beyond conventional thinking about bodies, movement, human and animal rights, earth-protection, all with fashionable responses. The time is right for adding disability awareness and inclusion to the list of worthy challenges. Designing-to-enable requires no new skills, only a new inclusive attitude.

Notes 1

M. Field and A. Jette (eds), and the Institute of Medicine (U.S.) with the Committee on Disability in America: A New Look, The Future of Disability in America, The National Academies Press, Washington D.C., 2007, p. 69.

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B. Bjorkland and H. Bee, The Journey of Adulthood, Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2008, p. 72. 3 J. Clarkson, Inclusive Design: Design for the Whole Population, Springer, New York, 2003. 4 L. Olson, Logan’s Magazine, viewed on 14th August 2010 ; Chloe Magazine, viewed on 14th August 2010, ; L. Shomer, Abilities Expo: Show Directory and Buyer’s Guide, LA Convention, May 2009. 5 P. Tortura and K. Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress, 4th edition, Fairchild, New York, 2005; W. Flower, Fashion in Deformity, as Illustrated in the Customs of Barbarous and Civilised Races, Macmillian Nature Series, London, 1881. 6 U. Eco (ed), A. McEwan (trans), The History of Beauty, 2nd edition, Rizzoli, New York, 2005, pp. 8-51. 7 U. Eco, op. cit.; S. Orbach, Bodies, Profile Books, London, 2009. 8 J. Cassim, ‘Image, Ability’, Adorn, Equip, created 2001, viewed on 12th September 2010, . 9 B. Breed, From Scorn to Dignity: A Brief History of Disability, European Publications Limited, London, 2008. 10 M. Conway, Occupational Therapy and Inclusive Design: Principles for Practice, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2008. 11 S. Kaiser, S. Wingate, C. Freeman, J. Chandler, ‘Acceptance of Physical Disability and Attitudes toward Personal Appearance’, Rehabilitation Psychology, Vol. 32, 1987, pp. 51-58. 12 S. Kaiser, C. Freeman, S. Wingate, ‘Stigmata and Negotiated Outcomes: Management of Apperance by Persons with Physical Disabilities’, Deviant Behavior, Vol. 6, 1985, pp. 205-224. 13 N. MacDonald, R. Majumder, P. Bua-Iam, ‘Apparel Acquisition for Consumers with Disabilities: Purchasing Practices and Barriers to Shopping’, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1994, pp. 38-45. 14 K. Barreda, ‘Designer Showcase Fashion in Anaheim’, Chloe Magazine, 7th June 2010, viewed 8th August 2010, . 15 J. Silver, personal interview, 2nd May 2009 at L.A. Abilities Expo, Ag Apparel. 16 Olson, Logan’s Magazine, op. cit.; Chloe Magazine, op. cit. 17 L. Olson, ‘Living Out Loud: Fashion Where?’, Logan’s Magazine, Spring 2008, pp. 24-25. 18 G. Pullin, Design Meets Disability, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009, pp. 29-35; Cassim, op. cit.

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__________________________________________________________________ 19

G. Bellafante, ‘Plus-Sized Wars’, New York Times, 28th July 2010, viewed on 2nd August 2010, . 20 M. Long, ‘An Evening with Betsy Johnson’, Choe Magazine, 12th March 2010, viewed on 8th August 2010, . 21 C. Freedman, S. Kaiser, S. Wingate, ‘Perceptions of Functional Clothing by Persons with Physical Disabilities: A Social-Cognitive Framework’, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1985, pp. 46-52; L. Fiedler, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978. 22 Visite, extant garment, accession no.1995.05.01, University of California, Davis, Design Museum, studied 2010. 23 D. de Marly, The History of Haute Couture, 1850-1950, Holmes and Meier, New York, 1980, pp. 11-40. 24 Ibid.

Bibliography Armstrong, H., Patternmaking for Fashion Design. 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2000. Barreda, K., ‘Designer Showcase Fashion in Anaheim’. Chloe Magazine, 7th June 2010, viewed on 8th August 2010, . Bellafante, G., ‘Plus-Sized Wars’, New York Times, 28th July 2010, viewed on 2nd August 2010, . Bjorkland, B. and Bee, H., The Journey of Adulthood. Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2008. Boucher, F. and Deslandres, Y., 20,000 Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal Adornment. H. N. Abrams, New York, 1987. Breed, B., From Scorn to Dignity: A Brief History of Disability. European Publications Limited, London, 2008.

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__________________________________________________________________ Cassim, J., ‘Image, Ability’. Viewed .

on

12th

September

2010,

Chase, R. W. and Quinn, M. D., Design without Limits: Designing and Sewing for Special Needs. Fairchild, Pennsylvania, 2003. Chloe Magazine. Online, 2010, . Clarkson, J., Inclusive Design: Design for the Whole Population. Springer, New York, 2003. Cogdell, C., Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930’s. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004. Conway, M., Occupational Therapy and Inclusive Design: Principles for Practice. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2008. Davenport, M., The Book of Costume. Crown Publishers, New York, 1979. Davis, L. (ed), The Disability Studies Reader. Routledge, New York, 1997. De Marly, D., The History of Haute Couture, 1850-1950. Holmes and Meier, New York, 1980. Eco, U. (ed), The History of Beauty. 2nd edition, A. McEwan (trans), Rizzoli, New York, 2005. Eicher, J., Evenson, S., Lutz, H., The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture, and Society. 2nd Edition, Fairchild, New York, 2000. Field, M., Jette, A. (eds), and the Institute of Medicine (U.S.) with the Committee on Disability in America: A New Look, The Future of Disability in America. The National Academies Press, Washington D.C., 2007. Fiedler, L., Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978. Fleischer, D. and Zames, F., The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2001.

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__________________________________________________________________ Flower, W., Fashion in Deformity, as Illustrated in the Customs of Barbarous and Civilised Races. Macmillian Nature Series, London, 1881. Freedman, C. M., Kaiser, S. B., Chandler, J. L., ‘Perceptions of Functional Clothing by Able-Bodied People: the Other Side’. Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics, Vol. 11, 1987, pp. 345-358. Freedman, C. M., Kaiser, S. B., Wingate, S. B., ‘Perceptions of Functional Clothing by Persons with Physical Disabilities: A Social-Cognitive Framework’. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1985, pp. 46-52. Goffman, E., Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. J. Aronson, New York, 1974. Gosling, J., Adorn, Equip. 2001, viewed .

on

12th

September

2010,

Hopper, E. K., Online. . Kaiser, S. B., Freeman, C. M., S. B. Wingate, ‘Stigmata and Negotiated Outcomes: Management of Apperance by Persons with Physical Disabilities’. Deviant Behavior, Vol. 6, 1985, pp. 205-224. Kaiser, S. B., Wingate, S. B., Freeman, C. M., Chandler, J. L., ‘Acceptance of Physical Disability and Attitudes toward Personal Appearance’. Rehabilitation Psychology, Vol. 32, 1987, pp. 51-58. Kaiser, S. B., The Social Psychology of Clothing. 2nd Edition, Fairchild Publications, New York, 1998 [1997]. Keates, S. and Clarkson, J., Countering Design Exclusion: An Introduction to Inclusive Design. Springer, New York, 2003. Kernaleguen, A., Clothing Designs for the Handicapped. The University of Alberta Press, Alberta, 1980. Koda, H., Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001.

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__________________________________________________________________ Levy, C. W., Independent Living. Viewed on .

15th

March

2010,

Long, M., ‘An Evening with Betsey Johnson’. Choe Magazine, viewed on 12th March 2010, . MacDonald, N. M., Majumder, R. K., Bua-Iam, P., ‘Apparel Acquisition for Consumers with Disabilities: Purchasing Practices and Barriers to Shopping’. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1994, pp. 38-45. Olson, L., ‘Living Out Loud: Fashion Where?’. Logan’s Magazine, Spring 2008, pp. 24-25. —––, Logan’s Magazine. Online, . Orbach, S., Bodies. Profile Books, London, 2009. Page, C., Foundations of Fashion: The Symington Collection: Corsetry from 1856 to Present Day. Leicestershire Museums Publication, Leicester, 1981. Pullin, G., Design Meets Disability. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2009. Rudofskey, B., The Unfashionable Human Body. Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1974. Schweik, S. M., The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. New York University Press, New York, 2009. Shedroff, N., ‘Design for Use’, chapter 4, Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable. Rosenfeld Media, Brooklyn, New York, 2009, pp. 105-115. Shomer, L., Abilities Expo: Show Directory and Buyer’s Guide. Los Angeles Convention, May 2009. Silver, J., Personal Interview, 2nd May 2009 at L.A. Abilities Expo. Ag Apparel, . Silvert’s. Viewed on 10th March 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ Stone, E., The Dynamics of Fashion. 3rd Edition, Fairchild Books, Inc., New York, 2008. Style. Alexander McQueen Runway Shows, viewed on 9th March 2010, . Tortura, P. and Eubank, K., Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress. 4th Edition, Fairchild, New York, 2005. Visite. Extant garment, accession no.1995.05.01, University of California, Davis, Design Museum. Elizabeth Kaino Hopper is a designer who attained her MFA in 2011 at the University of California, Davis, where she researched the application of Inclusive and Universal Design theories to the field of fashion. Her award winning work has been featured in Logan Magazine (Spring 2008), on the steps of the California State Capitol (2010), and in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Valerie Steele (ed), Berg Publishers, 2011. This research was supported in part by the University of California, Davis, Consortium for Women and Research, and by the George and Dorothy Zolk Fellowship. Hopper is currently expanding her research, while continuing to lecture part time at UCD. She can be reached at her permanent email: [email protected].

Developing ProAesthetics: Disability as Fashion Discourse Olga Vainshtein Abstract What is the relationship between fashion and the human body? How can we conceptualise the moveable margins and extended bodyscapes formed by body parts, dress, accessories and the characteristic gestures they define? What is the function of accessories in forming the personal corporeal zone and controlling the private space? The chapter is aimed at examining these questions in the historical context of modernity and postmodernity. The main case study is about the American actress, model and athlete Aimee Mullins, who had both legs amputated below the knee in childhood. 1 Key Words: Fashion, disability, prosthetics, Aimee Mullins, accessory, design, bodyscapes. ***** The works of Joanne Entwistle, 2 Elizabeth Fischer, 3 Anne Farren, Andrew Hutchinson, 4 and Caroline Evans 5 form the theoretical framework for this research. The ‘bodyscapes’ could be tentatively defined as the shifting zone of interaction between body and the adherent objects, including both ‘dressequipment’ and ‘body-equipment,’ implying that ‘all items that provide some functional or communicative extension while being in close association to the body.’ 6 These items could include make-up, prosthetics, cell phones, cameras, glasses, etc. 1. Prosthesis as Fashionable Accessory The traditional accessories, marking the body edges, symbolically regulate the ‘access:’ the right to enter or make use of. In traditional culture their function is not only to decorate, but also to protect magically the vulnerable body against evil forces, close the imaginary gaps, much as the ornament decorated or embroidered at edges of the dress. In the case of prosthetics the main function is obviously to substitute the absent body part, but the function of closing the physical gap and protecting the stem also remains. Being the physical extension of the body, accessories often emerge as metonymic representations of a person: favourite rings, bracelets or glasses seem to continue and complete the human body. Hence in case of loss many people tend to panic and feel as if the intimate and emotionally invested part of oneself is gone: it becomes the symbol of corporeal integrity. Prostheses are usually made to function as a part of the human body, without being conspicuous: but they can also function as fashionable accessories. This

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__________________________________________________________________ contemporary tendency - ‘prosthetics with aesthetics’ is currently becoming more and more popular. In 2003 the designer Damian O’Sullivan7 coined the term ‘proAesthetics,’ thus giving the name to a new trend. Experimenting with medical prosthetics, he made a porcelain cast for broken arms decorated with floral designs. In a similar way his Delft porcelain eyepatch and crutches provide the example of the new proAesthetic approach. The designers started producing the creative variants of prostheses. Hans Alexander Huseklepp, a Norwegian designer, has recently constructed the newest version of technological prosthetic arm. The conceptual prosthetic arm ‘Immaculate’ by Huseklepp is linked to the nervous system of the user - the approach known as targeted muscle reinnervation. The joints of this prosthetic device allow a wider range of movement than a normal healthy arm. The ‘Immaculate’ arm is visual - it does not imitate the look of a natural arm. It is styled as techno aesthetic - Huseklepp said he wanted to get away from traditional designs which hide their technological skeleton under silicon rubber. Francesca Lanzavecchia has done the plastic brace: ‘This back brace has been designed in the style of a corset to help wearers recover the pleasure of getting dressed,’ says Francesca Lanzavecchia. 7 Other designs of Lanzavecchia ironically mimic the health problem that might cause someone to need it, like a cane with a pitted appearance, reminding a bone with osteoporosis. Another cane in this series has a handle made in the shape of a ball and socket joint, like the hip. Tonya Douraghy designed the feather cuff, which gives the wearer a choice if they do not want to mask their missing limb completely with prosthesis; a similar feathered wing made by Carli Pierce, can either be fitted over a residual limb or used to decorate a conventional prosthetic device. Pierce describes it as ‘an accessory that encourages the amputee to wear something fanciful and delicate, rather than utilitarian and industrial.’ 8 All these prostheses mark the birth of a new type of accessories, serving as fashionable extension of the body, blurring the boundaries of bodyscapes. 2. Aimee Mullins: Challenging the Canons My main case study is about the American actress, model and athlete Aimee Mullins, who had both legs amputated below the knee in the childhood because of the rare illness Fibula Hemimelia. The magazine People had named her one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world. Aimee Mullins set Paralympic records in 1996 outfitted with woven carbon-fiber prostheses that were modelled after the hind legs of a cheetah. After the articles and pictures in Life magazine and Sports Illustrated for Women showcased her in the starting blocks, she became famous and started accepting numerous invitations to speak. Her pictures were published further on various magazine covers.

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__________________________________________________________________ Most original and provocative pictures of Aimee Mullins appeared in September 1998 issue of Dazed and Confused, guest edited by Alexander McQueen. The photographer Nick Knight presented Aimee in the style of a fragile Victorian doll in a crinoline, a lived automaton. One could recall the cult of women on the borderline of death and life in 19th century: the images of mechanical doll Olympia from the German romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann and Hadaly from the story of Tomorrow’s Eve by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. 9 This is a well-researched topic in cultural and literary studies, 10 but this interpretation needs to be put in the context of fashion history. First and foremost, the motif of dolls was an extremely popular artistic device in the 1990s fashion shows of Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, Viktor and Rolf, Husseyn Chalayan. Secondly, Caroline Evans had appropriately noticed that Mullins’ prosthetic legs remind us about the historical predecessor: shop-window dummy. 11 And most important is that in the same issue - actually on the cover of the magazine - was another photo by Nick Knight: Aimee Mullins seductively halfdressed, 12 in her running shorts, standing on her blades and looking sporty, active and vivacious. Marquard Smith had argued that such image of amputee trigger sexual fetishistic fantasies, replaying the techno fetishism and that such photos transform her into an ‘eroticized Cyborgian sex kitten.’ 13 He showed that public visibility of Mullins sometimes takes place at the expense of her identity as an amputee. At the same time it is obvious that the public presence of differently abled bodies challenges the contemporary visual culture. Thus her image displayed the rich potential for being interpreted in completely different paradigms of erotic pictures, sports, fashion, films and advertising. This contradictory discourse relating to appearance and body image pushed the boundaries and challenged the perceptions of what a beautiful body is supposed to look like. 14 In 1999, Aimee made her runway debut in London at the invitation of Alexander McQueen. Aimee Mullins opened the show walking on a pair of intricately carved wooden legs from solid ash that were designed by McQueen. The prosthetic limbs that she wore had been made by Dorset Orthopaedic, and hand-carved over five weeks. The spring-summer 1999 collection of Alexander McQueen was based on a counterpoint between nineteenth century Arts and Crafts movement and ‘the hard edge of the technology of textiles’ - that is why the prosthetic legs were decorated with an ornament with clusters of grapes motive, typical for William Morris designs and Arts and Crafts movement. The collection also contained moulded leather body corsets as juxtaposed with cream lace ruffled skirt, punched wooden fan skirt and Regency striped silk. The dark colour and heavy weight of the wooden prosthetic legs created a contrast with a white lace skirt; the moulded leather corset further developed the implied opposition of artificial/natural, hard/soft. The obvious cultural play with artificial body parts and accessories like

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__________________________________________________________________ corset (moulded leather equivalent to artificial skin) further referred to the themes of a fashion doll and dummy already elaborated in Nick Knight’s photos of Aimee. McQueen was criticised for turning his fashion show into a freak show and even accused of exploiting Mullins’s disability. His phrase about ‘Beauty that comes from within’ was not particularly lucky in that case, provoked much criticism, but for Mullins it was a new territory of publicity and fame. In 2002, Aimee Mullins starred in Matthew Barney’s avant-garde film Cremaster 3 where she played a number of roles. In the film she wears transparent polyurethane legs (the ‘glass legs’ - a version of Cinderella shoes), cheetah legs, and also non-functional jellyfish prostheses. In one of the scenes she appears as cheetah woman with hind legs that end in feline paws. The avant-garde style of this film gave her the freedom to move away from the need to replicate humanness as the aesthetic ideal. 3. Twelve Pairs of Legs Aimee Mullins owns 12 pairs of prosthetic legs. They include a pair of Cheetah legs used for sports, an everyday pair with springs and shock absorbers, and decorative pairs that are transparent or carved from wood for the catwalk and photo shoots. In the film Cremaster 3 by Matthew Barney Aimee wears legs that are cast in soil, complete with potatoes. She also has a pair of ‘natural-looking’ legs in her collection - she often appears wearing natural looking legs with hair follicles and freckles. At present her collection of prosthetic legs became the distinctive personal symbol of Aimee Mullins and she uses it as a set of fashionable accessories. ‘I have a suitcase just full of legs because I need options for different clothing,’ says Aimee Mullins in a recent interview to New Scientist. 15 Her collection of legs is designed by Bob Watts, a British prosthetist, and includes among others a shapely silicone pair. Her special pride is the pair of ‘pretty legs:’ ‘They are absolutely gorgeous. Very long, delicate, slim legs. Like Barbie’s.‘ 16 Even though Barbie’s dolls are anatomically impossible, Mullins thinks the ‘the doll’s ideal is liberating rather than limiting,’ the arch of these legs demands 2 inch heels. Bob Watts was also proud of his creation, because for him that was a chance to be twice creative, as he did not have to imitate the healthy leg. He was free to produce a pair of absolutely identical and ideal legs. Van Phillips designed Mullins ‘sprinting legs’ - she calls them ‘Cheetah legs’ carbon-graphite stems she wears for sprinting, biking or swimming. Mullins is also proud of her ‘Robocop’ legs, which have a shock absorber and a spring. The only limitation of Cheetah legs is that standing in them is quite hard - they are produced for motion. Thus what is gained on one side is lost on the other. ‘Each pair of fake legs is designed to be worn with a different heel height. I take the shoes to Bob and he makes me legs to go with them,’ - says Aimee Mullins. 17 Thus when Prada sends her new shoes with five-inch heel, she has to

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__________________________________________________________________ buy a new pair of legs before she can slip on that pair of shoes. That is why she needs four pairs of cosmetic legs made of silicone - they are made for different heel heights, as she explains: I don’t have any issue wearing legs that aren’t human-like, but I want the option to have human-looking legs. This is part of a shift in the way disability is viewed, the idea that individuality and personal choice are important. How many colours do iPods come in? Apple doesn’t presuppose everyone wants a white one, and any prosthetic is like that, just like glasses. Now they’re called eyewear because they’re a fashion item, but not long ago they were seen as a medical device. 18 Thus the prosthetic legs, substituting the absent body parts, are used by Aimee both as a functional device, but also as a fashion accessory and body equipment. This is a new way of understanding the concept of prostheses as accessories, introducing the idea of design and individual aesthetic taste. It is not by chance that she characterises herself as the architect of her own body. In fact, she is able to change her height between 5ft 8 in and 6ft 1 in by changing her prosthetic legs. This is one of the few examples where disability becomes super-ability. Laser eye surgery or the uses of hearing aids are other cases of augmenting body abilities. 4. Controversy around Disabled Models At the time when Aimee Mullins made her debut at the catwalk in 1999, the disabled models were rarely seen in the world of fashion, and after the show she suddenly found herself on the front pages, being hailed as the “new, disabled supermodel.” She loathed the label: ‘I hate the words “handicapped” and “disabled.” They imply that you are less than whole. I don’t see myself that way at all.’ 19 Recently the BBC3 programme Britain’s Missing Top Model (BMTM) has done a lot for the popularity of disabled models, stirring up the debate around the theme. The winner Kelly Knox had a photo shoot in the pages of a glossy magazine as a result. Still even now the appearance of a disabled model can create the sensation, as demonstrated by the recent case of Mario Galla. The 24 year old model Mario Galla participated in the show of Michael Michalsky during the Berlin Fashion week. Galla walked on a prosthetic leg, dressed in shorts, so that his prosthesis was clearly visible. Galla, possessing a classical face, started his modelling career for beauty companies. He had already worked for the big brands like Hugo Boss and the French designer Alexis Mabille. But before he always appeared at the catwalk wearing long trousers covering his prosthetic leg. The pictures of Mario Galla with

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__________________________________________________________________ a prosthesis previously appeared in a fashion editorial by Franck Glenisson ‘Beyond my eyes, my muscles’ll survive.’ The character of Mario Galla performs the symbolic ‘Coming Out’ demonstrating his prosthetic leg, but this is also the literal coming out of the sea. Franck Glenisson got the French Talent award 2009 for this work. The recent event in this series is Debenham’s window campaign featuring disabled model Shannon Murray. But this campaign caused a range of contradictory responses: ‘What took them so long?,’ ‘Is it progress or publicity stunt?’ The campaign with disabled models developed as part of the antiairbrushing movement and plus-size and elderly model shoots. Mullins often repeats that her achievements in the realm of fashion and the arts have done ‘as much if not more’ than her sporting successes to challenge the notion that wearing a prosthesis limits what a person can do. The assertive body image and public performances of Aimee Mullins as motivational speaker give a new dimension to the idea of ‘Bodyscapes:’ fashion and technology as access to the new body, not only expanding the human limits, but also signalling the expanding realm of fashion and challenging the stereotypes of thinking.

Notes 1

See a full version of this chapter: O. Vainshtein, ‘“I Have a Suitcase Just Full of Legs Because I Need Options for Different Clothing:” Accessorizing Bodyscapes’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2012, pp. 139-170. 2 J. Entwistle, The Fashioned Body. Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000. 3 E. Fischer, Body Equipment: On the Relationship of Ornament with Dress and the Body, Paper given at the Symposium Fashion and Materiality, University of Stockholm, 2nd October 2009. 4 A. Farren and A. Hutchinson, ‘Cyborgs, New Technology and the Body: The Changing Nature of Garment’, Fashion Theory, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2004, pp. 461-477. 5 C. Evans, Fashion at the Edge, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, and London, 2003. 6 Farren and Hutchinson, p. 464. 7 New Scientist, viewed on 22nd June 2010, . 8 Ibid. 9 E. Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992. 10 P. Kuppers, Addenda? Contemporary Cyborgs and the Mediation of Embodiment, viewed on 22nd July 2010,

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__________________________________________________________________ . 11 Evans, p. 188. 12 Marquard Smith analysed techno fetishism and the erotic fantasies that are being played out across medical, commercial, and later avant-garde images of the body of the female amputee in our Western visual culture. See M. Smith, ‘The Vulnerable Articulate: James Gillingham, Aimee Mullins, and Matthew Barney’, in The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Bicultural Future, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006, pp. 43-73. 13 Ibid., p. 47. 14 See V. Sobchack, ‘A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality’, in The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006, pp. 17-43. 15 A. Mullins, ‘Two Legs Good, 24 Legs Better, Jessica Griggs Talks to Aimee Mullins’, New Scientist, 5th October 2009, No. 2728. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 A. Mullins, ‘The Model with Metal Legs, Precious Williams Talks to Aimee Mullins’, The Evening Standard, 2nd May 2003.

Bibliography Bronfen, E., Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992. Entwistle, J., The Fashioned Body. Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Polity Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000. Evans, C., Fashion at the Edge. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, and London, 2003. Farren, A. and Hutchinson, A., ‘Cyborgs, New Technology and the Body: The Changing Nature of Garment’. Fashion Theory, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2004, pp. 461-477. Fischer, E., Body Equipment: On the Relationship of Ornament with Dress and the Body. Paper given at the Symposium Fashion and Materiality, University of Stockholm, 2nd October 2009. Haraway, D., ‘The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980’s’. Socialist Review, Vol. 80, 1985, pp. 65-108.

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__________________________________________________________________ Kuppers, P., Addenda? Contemporary Cyborgs and the Mediation of Embodiment, viewed on 22nd July 2010, . Mitchell, D. T. and Snyder, S. L., Introduction to The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. Michigan University Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1997. Mullins, A., ‘The Model with Metal Legs, Precious Williams talks to Aimee Mullins’. The Evening Standard, 2nd May 2003. —––, ‘Two Legs Good, 24 Legs Better. Jessica Griggs Talks to Aimee Mullins’. New Scientist, 5th October 2009, No. 2728. New Scientist. Viewed on 22nd June 2010, . Ott, K., Serlin, D., Mihm, S. (eds), Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthesis. New York University Press, New York, 2002. Smith, M., ‘The Vulnerable Articulate: James Gillingham, Aimee Mullins, and Matthew Barney’, in The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006, pp. 43-73. Smith, M. and Morra, J., Introduction to The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006, pp. 1-17. Sobchack, V., ‘A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality’, in The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006, pp. 17-43. Wills, D., Prosthesis. University of Stanford Press, Stanford, 1995. Olga Vainshtein is a Senior Researcher at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. She is the author of the book Dandies (2006) and the editor of the Smells and Perfumes in the History of Culture (2003, in 2 volumes). Her published works include 200 articles and book chapters in Russian and in English. She was a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan (1997) and at the Center for Fashion Studies at the University of Stockholm (2007). Olga

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__________________________________________________________________ Vainshtein is currently the member of the editorial board of the journal Fashion Theory and the editor of the book series ‘Library of Russian Fashion Theory.’ She is devoting her current research to Fashion and Body in cultural history.

Part 3 Style Statements: Good and Bad Taste (and ‘Girls’)

‘But what do I Wear?’: A Study of Women’s Climbing Attire Claire Evans Abstract Mrs Henry Warwick-Coleman advises the lady climber on her attire in her 1859 publication, A Lady’s Tour round Monte Rosa. She suggests: ‘A lady’s dress is inconvenient for mountaineering,’ continuing ‘even under the most careful management, and therefore every device which may render it less so should be adopted.’ Throughout history clothing can be seen to have been responsible for the development of many theory’s and concepts that have become embedded within the social structure of communities. They form a framework around which society has and still does establish rules, codes and beliefs, embedding a deep sense of social conformity through ‘uniforms’ that express moods and personalities. Emancipation opened up the opportunity for women, to take an active role in the sport of climbing, yet conflicts arose, when it came to the attire they were expected to wear. For women breaking dress codes would cause a scandal, whilst becoming the first to ascend a peak had its prizes. This chapter investigates historical documentation related to the development of women’s climbing and climbing clothing from 1806 to the 1910. This will provide an outline of the clothing developmental stages that have taken place and the struggle for inclusion and recognition that women have faced on the mountain. Key Words: Women climbers, Victorian women climbers, climbing clothing, Victorian leisure. ***** 1. The Call of the Mountains On 3rd September 1838 at 6am Henriette d’Angeville was in the foyer of her hotel ready to start her ascent of Mont Blanc. The publicity surrounding the event drew in crowds, excited to see the French aristocrat in her forty-fourth year setting off with her porters and guide. Henriette’s plans were seen as reckless. The expedition’s organisation had been thwarted with difficulty. Henriettte was apparently a strong and able climber, who was determined to do the climb herself unaided. She was clear that she wanted no support, beyond that offered by guides, to gentlemen climbers. This behaviour would be perceived as far from lady like. Guides and porters had been difficult to appoint, following an unsuccessful expedition up Mont Blanc in 1820 which resulted in three climber’s deaths. The fact that this attempt was been made, and, organised by a woman, raised even more opposition. Henriette considered herself to have only five supporters and quoted the reaction of most to be ‘But was an extraordinary idea’ followed by ‘She must

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__________________________________________________________________ be prevented from such madness.’ 1 Yet Henriette’s determination held her in good stead. She would not be the first woman to the peak. That record was held by Maria Paradis. In 1808 Maria had been carried most of the way by her guides, in what appears to have been a publicity stunt. Henriette would be the first to truly do the climb. A fortnight before setting off Henriette put together her provision requirements and clothing needs for the trip, the clothing list is lengthy, but this was a major climb. It included, a mans shirt to be worn on top of combinations of English flannel and a pair of trousers, cut full, corded at the top, with gaiters to tuck into boots. As she said herself: ‘One does not attend the court of the King of the Alps in a silk dress and a gauze bonnet; this venture requires a plainer garb.’2 She recorded the fact, that the costume she wore weighed twenty one pounds in total. She also had a portrait painted of herself in her climbing ensemble, as she explained ‘to satisfy general curiosity.’ 3 Henriette was probably the first woman to publicly record what she wore whilst climbing. It was a far cry from the ‘“submissive”” look of the 1840’s, which was just developing - sloping shoulders, childlike ringlets and poke bonnets.’ 4 It is interesting to note, that Henriette appeared at ease mentioning that she wore trousers in her list of clothing needs, and, acknowledged the fact that she wore knickerbockers under her skirt in herself portrait. Yet in her written records she seems conscious of the parties’ appearance when setting off and discusses how she was assured that they ‘looked very well.’ For the first part of the journey she wore a dress of brown merino and white trousers, with a little hat of light straw and a gauze veil. An outfit that would have appeared all the more respectable to onlookers watching her party depart from the valley. Anne Lister, (who ran Shibden Hall near Halifax, England) was also climbing in the 1830’s, making regular climbing trips to the less publicised Pyrenees. On 7th August 1838 she embarked on an ascent of Vignemale. From the cabane des Saoussats Dabats, Anne set off with three guides, and, successfully ascended the previously thought inaccessible French side off the mountain. Her story did not however end here: one of her guides, Cazaux, them took the Prince of Moscowa up the same mountain four days later, telling the Prince that Anna had not gone to the top. The Prince was then acknowledged as having completed the first amateur ascent of Vignemale, from the French side. Anna disputed this, and consulted a lawyer, refusing to pay Cazaux his fee, until he corrected the story. He duly agreed and signed his name to a document saying the same. Having accredited Anna with the ascent, Cazaux also remarked, that she had ‘got up very well too.’ 5 For the ascent of Vignemale, Anne was prepared. ‘I was dressed as I have been ever since my arrival here, for riding’ she recalled. She was wearing a multitude of layers to keep warm, including petticoats, a black merino dress, flannel waistcoat and shawls. She noted:

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__________________________________________________________________ I had had tape loops put around the bottom of my dress and strings at the top and just before setting off, had my dress tied up all round me just about or above the knee. I wore white cotton socks and black spun-silk legs with tape straps. 6 Whilst wearing all this cumbersome attire she felt herself to be, ‘lightly equipped and light of heart.’ 7 During the 1850’s three extended trips to the Alps were made by Mrs Henry Warwick-Coleman, she completely circled the 15,203 foot high Monte Rosa, as well as climbing several other minor peaks. Her publication in 1859 of A Lady’s Tour round Monte Rosa provides accounts of her adventures. In what is thought to be the first publication by a female alpinist in English. She wanted to encourage others to follow her example and wrote her accounts with this in mind. 8 In regard to what should be worn whilst out climbing, she suggests a broadbrimmed hat, to relieve ladies of their parasol and a dress of light woollen material that will ‘not look utterly forlorn when it has once been wetted and dried.’ She then discusses as Anne Lister did, the improvised use of rings and cord to draw the skirt up. Reasoning this by stating that, ‘if the dress is too long, it catches the stones, especially when coming down hill, and sends them rolling on those below. I have heard more than one gentleman complain of painful blows suffered from such accidents.’ 9 From 1880 to the early twentieth century Elizabeth (Lizzie) Le Blond, born into a wealth Victorian family made numerous climbs of the main alpine peaks. She found herself being sent to Switzerland to recuperate from exhaustion and consumption. Whilst there she eventual grew to love the mountains after initially denouncing the wickedness of those that risked their lives ‘for nothing.’ 10 She was also one of the first women to take up winter alpinism and the founding president of the Ladies’ Alpine Club in 1907. She was a passionate climber who was determined to reach her goals and was not going to be held back by Victorian etiquette. She describes an event that happened to her whilst climbing: I had an awkward experience connected with climbing dress having left my skirt on top of a rock with a heavy stone to keep it in place, a big avalanche gaily whisked it away before our eyes, as we descended that afternoon. Unwilling to venture across the couloir so late under the hot sun in search of it , I came down just as I was till close to the village where I remained concealed behind a clump of trees while Imboden fetched a skirt from my room at the hotel. I had carefully explained to him exactly where he would find a suitable one, but to my horror, he appeared after a long interval with my best evening dress over his arm! There was nothing for it but to slink in when he gave the word that all

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__________________________________________________________________ was clear, and dash up to my room hoping I should meet no one on the stairs. 11 2. Conspicuous Life back Home Away from the mountains; life was very different for the conventional Victorian lady. They were perceived as following genteel lifestyles, conformed and trapped by their clothing. The concept of women becoming involved in leisure activities was just starting to be established. This was, however, not due to the need to get fit, or the urge to be the first to climb a mountain. Instead it was embroiled in the Victorian class system. The bourgeois middle-class lady needed to promote the image of being a member of the leisured classes. She represented her families’ wealth through her attire and her social standing. ‘The idleness of the bourgeois “lady” became symbolic of her husband’s or father’s material success - her finery reflected his affluence, and the way in which she organized her leisure defined his social standing.’ 12 The perception of a life of leisure, inevitably, started to become a reality for middle class women. Social standing demanded that conspicuous leisure time needed to be organised, yet the activity had to remain restrained, respectable and ladylike. By the mid 18th century, lawn croquet had become a common pastime. Croquet was a tame game, which allowed women to fill their conspicuous recreation time whilst remaining dignified. 13 By the 1860’s walking was also become popular pastimes. These leisure activities were still a far cry from the physical endurance of mountain climbing, which was neither leisurely nor ladylike. The intolerance women climbers encountered, is evident in the following remarks, sent to the mother of Elizabeth Le Blond by her great aunt; Lady Bentinck. ‘Stop her climbing mountains! She is scandalizing all London and looks like a red Indian!’ 14 3. Codes and Contradictions Outside of the Alpine climbing fraternity, prejudicial contradictions still remained between the leisure activities being participated in by women and the restrictive clothing been worn when taking part. During the 1840’s the Victorian lady was still wearing her tight fitting corset and weighty petticoats. In the 1850’s the lighter cage crinoline or hoop skirt arrived, this allowed women to gain greater volume in their skirts with less fabric weight. The fitted corset remained and ironically tight-lacing regained some popularity. It was not until the late 1850’s that the walking or travelling dresses emerged. Theses dresses had skirts that could be looped-up, in a method closely resembling that used by the early climbers. Walking dresses still had a large hem circumference and corsets were still worn as under garments. Drawers were introduced into English women’s dress as underclothes around the 1800’s being wore until then only almost exclusively by men (The French

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__________________________________________________________________ however appeared to adopt them much earlier as far back as the middle of the sixteenth century). During the 1840s drawers were plain and reached below the knee. They became more ornamental in the next decade as the walking dress was introduced and the ankles started to be seen. During the winter months drawers were often replaced by colourful flannel knickerbockers. 15 The physical emancipation of women’s dress was progressing slowly, with moves towards freer, lighter dress being restricted by the circumference of hems and tight-lacing. There appears to have been ‘two widely differing dispositions opposed to each other; and the battle, swinging to and fro with the ultimate victory as yet uncertain.’ 16 4. Alpine Emancipation Climbing appears to have established a world at odds with the conformist view of Victorian women’s life style. Etiquette and dress were frequently compromised to make the act of climbing easier. Skirts were drawn up and sometimes removed, trousers worn, and, help rejected. Emancipation had started too arrive in the Alps, with very little opposition. Women were been respected for their climbing prowess and starting to ascend the peaks alongside men. Husbands, fathers and brothers often made the ascent with them, but not always. Women were still not climbing alone, but were gaining the respect of the Alpine climbing fraternity. They were leading major expeditions, going out unchaperoned onto mountains, often ending up having to stay in small huts, or tents over night, with male guides and porters. It appears as if a secret air of concealment surrounded much of the climbing and climbing attire worn by these pioneering women. This involved women climbers breaking traditional Victorian dress codes, with the understanding that their climbing partners kept this secret in order to avert a scandal. The true nature of their climbing dress and exploits remaining hidden. Inevitably fellow male climbers, guides and porters must have supported them in the charade. If no break in dress codes was seen, it could not then be questioned. The Ladies Alpine Club Exhibition of May 1910 provided an opportunity for the clothing being worn by serious women climbers of the time to be seen. It provided an opportunity for women’s climbing attire to be viewed as functional sports clothing. Establish an understanding amongst wider society of the needs of female climbers, to ensure their easily movement and safety whilst climbing. It was however still seen as conventional to wear your skirt when approaching the climb, removing it only before you start your accent. ‘I owe a supreme debt of gratitude to the mountains for knocking from me the shackles of conventionality, but I had to struggle hard for my freedom’ Elizabeth Le Blond recalled. 17

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Notes 1

H. D’Angeville, My Ascent of Mont Blanc, HaperCollins, London, 1992, p. xx. Ibid., p. xxi. 3 Ibid., p. 22. 4 E. Wilson and L. Taylor, Through the Looking Glass: A History of Dress from 1860 to the Present Day, BBC Books, London, 1989, p. 20. 5 V. Ingham, ‘Anne Lister in the Pyrenees’, in Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, Halifax Antiquarian Society, 1969, p. 69. 6 Ibid., p. 64. 7 Ibid. 8 D. Mazel, Mountaineering Women: Stories by Early Climber, A&M University Press, Texas, 1994, p. 6; K. Stansdin, ‘“An Easy Day for a Lady…”: The Dress of Early Women Mountaineers’, Costume, Vol. 38, 2004, p. 76. 9 Mrs Henry Warwick Coleman, A Lady’s Tour round Monte Rosa: With Visits to the Italian Valleys in the Years 1850-1856, Longman, London, 1859, pp. 6-7. 10 E. Le Blond, Day in Day Out, The Bodley Head LTD, London, 1928, p. 87. 11 E. Le Blond, Then and Now, Ladies Alpine Yearbook, 1932, p. 6. 12 N. Wymer, Sporting in England, Harrap, London, 1949, in Sporting Females. Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sport, J. Hargreaves (ed), Rouledge, London, 1996, p. 52. 13 Hargreaves, p. 53. 14 Le Blond, Day in Day Out, p. 90. 15 C. Willett and P. Cunnington, The History of Underclothes, Faber and Faber, London, 1981, pp. 100-106. 16 Ibid., p. 100. 17 Le Blond, Day in Day Out, p. 90. 2

Bibliography Coleman, Mrs Henry Warwick, A Lady’s Tour round Monte Rosa: With Visits to the Italian Valleys in the Years 1850-1856. Longman, London, 1859. Canter, Cremers-Van der does, E., The Agony of Fashion. Blandford Press, Dorset, 1980. D’Angeville, H., My Ascent of Mont Blanc. HaperCollins, London, 1992. Hargreaves, J., Sporting Females. Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sport. Routledge, London, 1996.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ingham,V., Anne Lister in the Pyrenees. Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, Halifax Antiquarian Society, 1969. Le Blond, A., Day in Day Out. The Bodley Head LTD, London, 1928. —––, Then and Now. Ladies Alpine Yearbook, 1932. Mazel, D., Mountaineering Women: Stories by Early Climber. A&M University Press, Texas, 1994. Parsons, M. and Rose, M., Invisible on Everest: Innovation and the Gear Makers. Northern Liberties Press, Philadelphia, 2003. Stansdin, K., ‘“An Easy Day for a Lady…”: The Dress of Early Women Mountaineers’. Costume, Vol. 38, 2004, pp. 72-85. Unworth, W., Holding the Heights: The Foundations of Mountaineering. Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1993. Wells, C., Who’s Who in British Climbing. The Climbing Company, Buxton, 2008. Willett, C. and Cunnington, P., The History of Underclothes. Faber and Faber, London, 1981. Williams, C., Women on the Rope: The Feminine Share in Mountain Adventure. Allen & Unwin, London, 1973. Wilson, E. and Taylor, L., Through the Looking Glass: A History of Dress from 1860 to the Present Day. BBC Books, London, 1989. Claire Evans is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader at University of Huddersfield. She lectures in Fashion Design. Her research interest is devoted to investigating the development and impact of extreme sport and sports wear on women. She also develops garment archives for teaching purposes.

Vintage Clothing Cultures: The Comforts of History Sarah Lloyd Abstract Conspicuous consumption has become so codified within the mass market that one of the few ways to express individual identity is through the pursuit of rarity and exclusivity. The culture of consuming vintage clothing embodies these pursuits particularly with its interest in notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘connoisseurship’ and has become characterised by tensions, which this chapter proposes can be read in accordance with class identity and status. Furthermore this chapter proposes that the ‘Vintage aesthetic’ has become shorthand for ‘good’ taste. Fashion retailers now recognise the desire for distinction amidst mass production, culminating in the use of a vintage retail aesthetic becoming increasingly visible on the British high street. 1 Key Words: Vintage, fashion, consumption, connoisseurship, authenticity, nostalgia, identity, distinction, retail environment. ***** 1. Vintage, Authenticity and the Mass Market How do we define Vintage and what is the appeal of vintage to the modern consumer? What differentiates vintage from simply old or second hand? Gone are the days where it might appear shameful to purchase clothing in a charity shop. Today the consuming of second hand and the ability to spot rare items is part of navigating complex consumer culture and is also key to becoming a fashion connoisseur. The distinction between second hand and vintage is tenuous and of course open to individual interpretation; however the key word in distinguishing the two might be ‘rarity.’ The authenticity of the garment and how the owner’s revalue clothing and imbue it with a sense of history, taste and memory are also important key markers in the definition of vintage. Gregson et al., in their research on the uses of vintage in London define it as, Clever dressing for knowing audiences; it is a performance of taste, knowingness and discernment acted out for an audience of those in the know [my italics]. 2 The word ‘Vintage’ seems to be everywhere and is instilled with an almost preternatural ability to automatically increase the prestige of the object to which it is attached. The term seems as ambiguous as the style it represents, incorporating clothing from throughout the 20th century, but favouring clothing pre 1960. This

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__________________________________________________________________ summer an entire festival was devoted to Vintage. ‘Vintage at Goodwood’ was thought culturally significant enough to warrant articles in The Times and The Independent. Both pieces focused on the mass appeal and popularity of dressing in fashions from another era. One festivalgoer explained, There is very little that appeals to me in modern culture. There is a sort of authenticity about the early part of the 20th Century that we don’t have anymore. The music was better, people were more polite and things were British made. 3 John Walsh writing in The Independent on the popularity of vintage states, The (vintage) style revolution that’s been sweeping the nation for a few years provides a counterbalance to the dominance of designer labels and high street convention. 4 The authenticity of vintage clothing crops up time and again; the ‘realness’ of the past is often directly juxtaposed with the ‘fake-ness’ of the present. The appeal of re-appropriating historical clothing in an era where there is no shortage of affordable ‘new’ clothing can be read as a dissatisfaction with the present but also as a need to establish a sense of individuality within mass consumerism. In their ethnographic research on second hand cultures, Gregson and Crewe 5 identify two modes of meaning revolving around the attraction of second hand clothing and the ways in which they create ideas of ‘authentic identity’ for the consumer. The first idea is of ‘meaning creation through historical reconstruction.’ This relies on the wearers ability to research and resource ‘true to life’ historical styles, which they have a profound association or attachment to. The second and most profound mode in relation to this chapter is ‘Imagined history making’ this is often based around an imagined, romanticised vision of history and ties into both familial history and nostalgia. 6 It is a fantasy of the life and times of ‘imagined others’ rather then a reconstruction of the past. Using my mother’s handbag from the 1960’s, for example, ties into a sense of knowing my familial history and also evokes a romantic idea of what it was like to experience the object in an authentic context. In this way we ‘Both shape fashion taste and imbue old clothes with meaning, value and memory.’ 7 These modes of meaning are what create a sense of authentic identity as well as perpetuating myths of the eras they are recreating. Subcultures often embody the look of one particular era or the idea of one particular era. Using a mixture of pastiche and irony to subvert clothing codes. As Gregson and Crewe rightly state, ‘through cycles of use, transformation and reuse …. Individuals act as counterforces to retail commodification and massification’ 8 which is key to the reinterpretation of clothing and individuality in subculture.

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__________________________________________________________________ However in recent years the use of vintage has shifted. In accordance with Hebdidges’ appropriation model 9 the use and meaning of vintage has been swept into mainstream culture and its effect has arguably been to produce a more conservative nostalgic version of history. Vintage fashion has long been embedded in British street style as a marker of subcultural style and individuality. Despite being thoroughly embedded in mainstream culture, vintage fashion continues to insinuate links with subcultures, which also adds to its sense of authenticity. Now the mixing of ‘True’ vintage and high street is broadly documented in magazines and it is seen as a way of creating an original aesthetic which often, whilst not a full vintage look, gently echoes the past. Sartorially referencing a French film icon such as Jean Seberg in her Breathless Breton stripes, a distinctive period in cultural history such as the 1940’s or wearing subtly ironic vintage sunglasses teamed with a high street dress are what enable the consumer to do two things a) Present a sense of authentic identity, and b) demonstrate ‘expert’ knowledge and to subtly suggest their ‘cultural capital’ 10 as well as their ‘subcultural capital.’ 11 2. Connoisseurship and Vintage Fashion The consuming of vintage clothing has become a field in which the expression of taste is paramount yet also complex. Authenticity, quality, exclusivity and rarity are all markers of ‘good taste’ for those rich in cultural capital. Featherstone’s reading of Bourdieu dictates that in a market flooded with accessible ‘luxury’ goods and fashions, the middle class postmodern consumers satisfaction depends upon ‘the possession or consumption of socially sanctioned and legitimate (and therefore scarce and restricted) cultural goods.’ 12 Vintage clothing can be regarded as the perfect medium through which to display knowledge of these rarefied cultural objects and therefore cultural capital. True vintage items are rare and becoming rarer. Consuming them takes time, money and expertise. They are also no longer cheap. Many vintage clothes are sourced from charity shops by dealers who then resell them at vintage fairs for appropriately ‘exclusive’ prices. EBay now has a ‘vintage’ section, but the line between vintage and second hand still requires an expert eye and many sellers simply attach the word to old clothing in the hope of commanding a higher price tag. Storing clothes to ‘age’ like a good wine, or collecting vintage clothing which will probably never be worn, is a akin to the display of ‘objectified capital’ 13 associated with distinction. It can be likened to the display and collection of antiques as a mark of social status, arguably it is no longer a tool through which to play with identity but a means through which to root identity and heritage. The familial handing down of designer gowns from mother to daughter acknowledges the family’s ability to afford ‘Quality’ clothing, which through time becomes

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__________________________________________________________________ vintage and links with McCracken’s ideas of ‘Patina.’ 14 To hand down wealth via objects that have accrued value over time, shows that a family has an almost ‘natural’ wealth. High street brands are aware that they can no longer compete with the ‘authenticity’ of vintage, and yet they are desperate to establish themselves a realistic choice for the fashion connoisseur so have begun to employ a vintage retail concept in order to cement their brand in the hearts and minds of the more affluent consumer. Shops such as Urban Outfitters and All Saints for example now provides a vintage retail environment to recreate an ‘authentic’ shopping experience and ‘fake vintage’ goods to assuage consumers who do not have the time, funds or expert knowledge to hunt down these items. This simultaneously lends their brand a sense of exclusivity. The vintage aesthetic describes the style of the clothing but everything from the building itself, the interior design and decorative objects within the store. In many stores there are small ‘real’ vintage sections juxtaposed with mass produced clothing. There are of course pitfalls within the consumption of vintage fashion, getting it ‘wrong’ is a substantial risk for those not possessing the ‘cultural capital’ 15 to recognise and create a vintage look. Without the appropriate ‘eye’ for vintage, random selections may just seem like tired versions of faded trends lacking the clever ‘kitsch’ association that the expert consumer is able to embody. The creation of a full vintage ensemble could unintentionally be mistaken for fancy dress if taken too far or simply look ‘out of date.’ Within vintage emporiums, the selection of appropriate garments is laden with difficult choices. Retailers have lessened the anxiety of ‘getting it wrong,’ by providing watered down ‘ready to wear’ vintage items, effectively doing the hard work for you. Items that are deliberately ‘aged’ or are made to look as though they were found in vintage emporium have flooded the high street. Retailers are highly aware that the ideal compliment when wearing such an item might be ‘It looks Vintage!’ Whilst the fashion connoisseur might mock these vintage copies the mass appeal cannot be questioned. Through the democratisation of fashion, exclusivity has been diminished. Vintage fashion is about the consumption of rarity and clothing that cannot be reproduced. Vintage copies and fake vintage items only heighten the desire for the elusive ‘real’ vintage item. The Vintage consumer seeks ‘differentiation’ 16 and to move away from mass production to exclusivity. 3. The Comforts of History The playfulness of vintage fashion and fluidity of a changeable A-historical identity for the purposes of fashion can also be read in a very positive way, freeing the individual from constant cycle of fast fashion and allowing a fluidity of Identity 17 the reflexive self is free to be constructed through consumerism 18 and it

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__________________________________________________________________ is important not to reject the idea of individual agency within the maze of consumer culture. Tapping into nostalgic ideas of history, however, to supply comfort in an everchanging fast paced world where traditional structures are arguably becoming more ephemeral is a powerful sales strategy. Virilio’s ideas of Dromology, the science or logic of speed, can be utilised here to provide a more in depth understanding of the current trend for nostalgia - Virilio suggests that within the shifting landscape of postmodernity ‘we are regressing because we have reached the limits of acceleration.’ 19 For Virilio, human beings cannot hope to consume the vast amount of cultural information we are exposed to on a daily basis. Our technological advances and the speed at which we receive new information have left us unable to process and react accordingly to this maelstrom of information. In order to keep up with the accelerated changes in fashion we must process and consume constantly. For many people this is impossible given not only the financial and time constraints, but also the reluctance to continually alter their identity. The volume of trends and micro trends currently exhibited in the fashion market place offers multiple identities, all with their own affiliations and associations. To negotiate these successfully one must be an expert in the reading the signs and signifiers, the subtle shifts and changes in styles and fully embrace a fluidity in outward appearance. David Harvey suggests reading these signs and signifiers have become increasingly complex and the search for a definable identity within postmodernity ever more mercurial. .

It is difficult to maintain any sense of historical continuity in the face of all the flux and ephemerality of accumulation … the search for roots ends up at worst being produced and marketed as an image as a simulacrum or pastiche … 20 If we apply these idea to the consumption of vintage and the appeal of the vintage aesthetic we begin to recognise the appeal of an identity rooted in a tangible, albeit ambiguous historical time frame or as Harvey would suggest a marketable ‘image’ of history. However when brands and shops begin to use the image of history as a saleable commodity at what point should we begin to read the darker side of this image play and its effectiveness in reproducing outmoded ideas of class and status, which actively ignore the reality of history in favour of a romanticised ideal.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. The Vintage Retail Aesthetic From discussing vintage clothing as worn by the individual I want to move on to a reading of the contemporary ‘vintage retail concept’ as employed by many British high street retailers. Despite the recession, British fashion label All Saints has recently opened a store in New York and has taken $1m in its first two weeks beating the takings at the also newly opened Topshop, almost twice its size. 21 All Saints originally opened in 1994 in East London’s Spitalfields Market on the edge of Brick Lane famous for its vintage boutiques. The shops aesthetic directly references its surroundings. The shop windows are filled with antique sewing machines and the interior mirrors an ‘authentic’ vintage market stall with its mixture of old printing presses and looms. By quietly placing itself in the midst of Brick Lanes vintage area (All Saints does not advertise) the brand is staking a claim for authenticity as well as avoiding the tricky accusation of homogenising previously ‘authentic’ shopping districts. The clothing is a mixture a raw distressed edginess and Dickensian chic. On the companies website there is even a category called ‘vintage,’ which sells new clothing and designs typical of the shops aesthetic. Whilst it alludes to the subcultural edge of East London with its subtle references to punk, the clothing itself is far from cheap. It does not pander to seasonal changes however and like vintage fashion can be rooted to a definable yet ambiguous time period. Lifestyle brand Jack Wills has been criticised for its elitist ‘grammar school’ aesthetic and tagline of ‘outfitters to the gentry.’ ‘Heritage brands’ like Jack Wills employ a vintage retail concept. The store is filled with vintage signifiers. Distressed leather furniture and antique objects are displayed to connote authenticity but also class via cultural capital. The new store in Islington (London) has taken over an entire antiques market yet retains many of the original antiques and fittings including distressed walls and old photographs. Strategically placed within established affluent middle class areas of London, and only these areas, the brand instantly eludes to its ‘quality’ status. The brand further extends the image of longevity by taking over historical buildings of architectural merit. The clothing is cosily nostalgic with indistinct retro sporting motifs that allude to affluent sporting pursuits such as yachting, but also more edgy sports associated with street style such as skateboarding and surfing. The references to elite education institutions are also plentiful. ‘University Outfitter’ is one tagline the store perpetuates. The website boasts of a campus tour of the Ivy league institutions complete with a film shot on grainy super 8, to elicit a nostalgic craving for a an educational experience that for many is unattainable. The juxtaposition of the exterior and interior, the cosy clothing and the idea of quality are powerfully alluring but also somewhat disturbing should you choose to scratch the surface.

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__________________________________________________________________ In seminar discussions with my students, Jack Wills is a popular topic. One student told me that in her hometown the divide between state educated and privately educated teenagers was sartorially indicated by the wearing of Jack Wills clothing. The grammar school students chose to wear the Jack Wills brand as an indication of their educational status whilst the state school students actively avoided the brand in favour of branded sportswear such as Reebok. Thus in the small town where she grew up, each could recognise and avoid one another. For Bourdieu ‘how we categorize the world, in turn, categorizes us.’ 22 The lifestyle and aesthetic presented by Jack Wills is unashamedly categorical and squarely aimed at a consumer who might want to wear a hooded sweatshirt, but detest any association with the much-fabled ‘hoodie.’ Is this the first time a brand has used historical pastiche to actively perpetuate elitism and reinstate outdated notions of class identity? To conclude, it would seem that the success of these brands lies in their disregard for the whimsy of fashion. The style many brands now exhibit presents a deliberately postmodern idea of fashion utilising ‘Vintage’ signifiers that allude to authenticity, quality and individuality within the mass market and yet delivering anything but.

Notes 1

This chapter was written with Andrew Conroy. Gregson et al. cited in M. DeLong, B. Heinemann, K. Reiley, ‘Hooked on Vintage!’ Fashion Theory, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2005, p. 24. 3 D. Bebber, ‘Out of Fashion but in Demand: Vintage Festival Comes of Age’, The Times, 14th August 2010, p. 31. 4 J. Walsh, ‘Why Do We Love All Things Vintage?’, The Independent Magazine, 28th August 2010, pp. 12-17. 5 N. Gregson and L. Crewe, Second Hand Cultures, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2003. 6 Ibid., pp. 146-147. 7 Ibid., p. 152. 8 Ibid., p. 172. 9 D. Hebdidge, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Methuen & Co Ltd., London and New York, 1987 [1979]. 10 P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge, London, 1984. 11 S. Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995. 12 M. Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Sage Publications, London, 1991, p. 89. 2

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Bourdieu, op. cit. G. McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988, p. 13. 15 Bourdieu, op. cit. 16 G. Simmel, Fashion International Quarterly, 10, 1904. 17 A. Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Polity, Cambridge, 1991. 18 F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, London, 1991. 19 P. Sterckx cited in A. Palmer, Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2005, p. 207. 20 D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origin of Cultural Change, Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1990, p. 303. 21 J. Finch ‘All Saints Go Marching In - UK Label Takes Gothic Success Story to NYC’, The Guardian, 12th June 2010, p. 13. 22 M. Grenfell, Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, Acumen Publishing Limited, Durham, 2008, p. 107. 14

Bibliography Bebber, D., ‘Out of Fashion but in Demand: Vintage Festival Comes of Age’. The Times, 14th August 2010, p. 31. Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, London, 1984. Corrigan, P., The Sociology of Consumption. Sage Publications, London, 1997. DeLong, M., Heinemann, B., Reiley, K., ‘Hooked on Vintage!’ Fashion Theory, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2005, pp. 23-42. Featherstone, M,. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. Sage Publications, London, 1991. Finch, J., ‘All Saints Go Marching In - UK Label Takes Gothic Success Story to NYC’. The Guardian, 12th June 2010, p. 13.

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__________________________________________________________________ Giddens, A., Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Polity, Cambridge, 1991. Gregson, N. and Crewe, L., Second-Hand Cultures. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2003. Grenfell, M., Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. Acumen Publishing Limited, Durham, 2008. Guffey, E. E., Retro: The Culture of Revival. Reaktion Books Ltd., London , 2006. Harvey, D., The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origin of Cultural Change. Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1990. Hebdidge, D., Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Methuen & Co Ltd., London and New York, 1987 [1979]. Jameson, F., Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Verso, London, 1991. McCracken, G., Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988. —––, Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning and Brand Management. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2005. Palmer, A. and Clark, H., Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2005. Simmel, G., Fashion International Quarterly, 10, 1904. Thornton, S., Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995. Walsh, J., ‘Why Do We Love All Things Vintage?’ The Independent Magazine, 28th August 2010, pp. 12-17. Sarah Lloyd is a Fashion Theory Lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Rochester UK.

Audrey Hepburn and the ‘Funny Face’ of Post-World War II Humanism Jayne Sheridan Abstract After Audrey Hepburn’s most significant films were released, Roland Barthes, the 20th Century French writer and philosopher, wrote of her face as an ‘event.’ Saying, in 1957, ‘the face of Audrey Hepburn, for instance, is individualised, not only because of its peculiar thematics, woman as child, woman as kitten, but also because of her person, ‘an almost unique specification of the face.’ He suggested it was: ‘constituted by an infinite complexity of morphological functions.’ 1 She had starred in four major films - Roman Holiday, Sabrina, War and Peace and Funny Face. He believed Hepburn could represent meaning to audiences beyond those who watched her movies. In the 1950s and 1960s, she became an influence on Fashion followers in Britain and America, encouraging women to use home dressmaking in the class struggle. 21st Century fans, watching Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, witness the face that launched a thousand web pages and her popularity persists through digital media. The project she began with European children’s charity, UNICEF, uses her image, protected by her sons, to further the cause. Named at the top of every ‘most stylish’ list, Audrey Hepburn appears in magazines, on posters, in videos and, occasionally, in the promotion of clothes or jewellery. Fans, and Fashion followers, realise how important Hepburn is to the Fashion industry because of her many Internet appearances. Young women commend her ‘imperfections’ and are interested in the opinions of their mid sixties grandmothers who talk of the styles Hepburn wore in her films. They believe the key to her longevity is tied in with notions of class and classiness. In this chapter clues to her enduring charisma, stirring countless imaginations, will be identified, and reviewed, in an attempt to find out why Barthes was so enchanted by the Hollywood star. Key Words: Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina, Roman Holiday, Funny Face, Givenchy, Gap, Hollywood, fashion, existentialism, Roland Barthes, modernism. ***** As a language, Garbo’s singularity was of the order of the concept, that of Audrey Hepburn is of the order of the substance. The Face of Garbo is an idea, that of Hepburn an event. 2 Audrey Hepburn had starred in only four major Hollywood films when she caused Roland Barthes such sensation. He was proposing she could represent meaning to audiences beyond those who watched her movies. After her most

134 Audrey Hepburn and the ‘Funny Face’ of Post-World War II Humanism __________________________________________________________________ significant films were released, in the 1950s and 1960s, she became an influence on Fashion followers in Britain and America, encouraging women to use home dressmaking in the class struggle. As 21st century fans view Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face and Breakfast at Tiffany’s they witness the face that launched a thousand web pages and her popularity persists through digital media. The project she began with European children’s charity, UNICEF, uses her image, protected by her sons, to further the cause. Named at the top of every ‘most stylish’ list, Audrey Hepburn appears in magazines, on posters, in videos and, occasionally, in the promotion of clothes or jewellery. Today Audrey Hepburn is seen as an inspiration to designers; someone who remains an influential figure because of her unconventional looks. Fans, and Fashion followers, realise how important Hepburn is to the Fashion industry because of her many Internet appearances. In this chapter I hope to identify the markers, Barthes recognised, in an attempt to discover why he was so enchanted by the Hollywood star. Her personality was carved from the miseries and hardship, suffered in the Second World War; yet empathy and optimism became her guiding principles. It may be that Barthes saw, in Hepburn’s face, the compassion she was to bring to her political work, and to roles she created, from significant moments in her early life. Born in Brussels on 4th May 1929 into a family of European aristocrats, she starved in Holland during World War II. Although she was seen as a Hollywood product, a Paramount Studio property, she only ever owned homes in Europe. Far from socialising with the movie glitterati she used her influence to fight for children’s rights. At 16 years of age she danced, in secret, to raise money for the Dutch resistance to the Nazis. Remembering the subterfuge and fear of the time, she said, ‘the best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performance.’ 3 Her preternatural slimness was put down to the shortage of food during her teenage years. After appearing in Roman Holiday (1953), Sabrina (1954), War and Peace (1956), and Funny Face (1957), Barthes was to write of her face as ‘substance’ or ‘event.’ She influenced women in the 1950s and 60s. Through her, they realised they would be judged on how they looked and that it was in their power to alter these perceptions. Barthes, was so convinced by her androgynous magnetism, he argued: ‘the face of Audrey Hepburn, for instance, is individualised, not only because of its peculiar thematics: woman as child, woman as kitten but also because of her person, an almost unique specification of the face, which has nothing of the essence left in it, but is constituted by an infinite complexity of morphological functions.’ 4 Barthes’ ideas hinted at the influence Hepburn was to exert through her compelling iconography. While his philosophical assertions suggest his, unconscious, enchantment it is her screen life that explains its power. She believed her survival and the possibilities, freedom brought, were her life’s greatest gift. By 1990 she was seriously concerned with her work for UNICEF, which she knew

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__________________________________________________________________ through the Red Cross when it had taken part in the liberation of Holland. Her success in Cinema meant she could devote time and money to this cause. Roman Holiday deals with notions of celebrity and public image. Through the eyes of the young Princess Ann we see the difficulties and restrictions of being a head of state; always in the public eye. ‘Youth must lead the way,’ the journalist Joe Bradley is told. In 1953, this was a topical theme in the context of access to a young princess. Her observations, on world conditions, would be worth a fee to the journalist, of $250, but her ‘views on clothes worth a lot more, perhaps a thousand.’ Audrey Hepburn was beginning to represent the dynamic interaction between Fashion and class structures. It was to be both her on and off-screen character; a role in which she would demonstrate how position in society dictates how Fashion is consumed. Audiences saw her as a political signifier whose style could be copied. Hepburn seems to be in control of her own on-screen makeover, choosing to visit an onstreet hairdresser. Her long dark curls are shortened. She is given her trademark fringe; copied by thousands of young women across America and Europe in the 1950s. The princess’s fresh image is reflected in a shop window at the Spanish Steps; now Rome’s focal Fashion district, home to Bulgari, Cartier and Louis Vuitton. Academics regard Hepburn’s new egalitarian image, at this moment, as not sexual; attracting a female rather than male gaze in a reverse Cinderella fantasy. The look, she seemed to invent, was created for her in the atelier of Rome’s oldest and most famous designers, the Italian Fashion house Fontana. 5 After Roman Holiday Audrey Hepburn was seen as the movie actress to be cast in parts dealing with transformation through Fashion. She was not perceived as a Hollywood starlet plugged into the general 50s dynamic. She carried her own romantic mystique a more elaborate, European, mythology with her. In the opening moments of the film, Sabrina (1953) it is clear we are dealing with a class drama. The family Sabrina and her chauffeur father, Thomas Fairchild, (John Williams) attend, is seriously rich. He is content with the social order. As a chauffeur he believes the limousine window barrier, between back and front seats, should not be breached. Disparaging 1950s growing egalitarianism, he observes, ‘Democracy can be a wickedly unfair thing. Nobody poor was ever called democratic for marrying someone rich. 6 Hepburn’s character Sabrina represents ‘good,’ in the fairy-tale tradition, with the magical potential for being able to change hearts and minds. She is innocent, unspoiled, beautiful and able to use love to fight against the evils of greed and materialism. For this fairy tale to become a modern-day myth, for cinema audiences, it is important they see Sabrina as an archetypal legendary virgin. Writer, Ernest Lehman, persuaded Wilder to avoid including a sex scene between Sabrina and Linus Larrabee. When she returns from Paris she has learned how to live, ‘how to be in the world and of the world.’ The disparities between the rich businessmen brothers and the chauffeur’s enigmatic daughter mean they had hardly

136 Audrey Hepburn and the ‘Funny Face’ of Post-World War II Humanism __________________________________________________________________ looked at her before she was dressed in haute couture. Pamela Church Gibson, Fashion’s World Cities, reminds us of the influence exerted by French Fashion designers: Although the film is set mainly on Long Island, it is her Parisian wardrobe that enables her to bewitch both brothers - and to make the women of Manhattan high society look frumpy. She showed American - and other - audiences that Paris had an undeniable right to its position. 7 Her father’s fears, about disturbing the social system, ‘I don’t like it,’ are confirmed, as imperious Mrs Larabee, hearing of Sabrina’s cordon bleu skills, condescends to her: ‘You must come over and cook something special for us.’ David, the brother she is in love with, is being set up to combine marriage with a plastics merger. When Linus sees Sabrina on a tennis umpire’s seat, in Givenchy, they agree the change in her is ‘as if a window has been thrown open.’ He learns she does not want money; she wants love. She observes, ‘Paris isn’t just for changing trains;’ setting the scene for Funny Face. Roman Holiday and Sabrina put Audrey Hepburn at the centre of women’s ‘make over’ fantasy projections. She had been changed from princess to chauffeur’s daughter to company director’s lover through the alchemy of Fashion. Hollywood decided Audrey Hepburn was ready to star in a film about the industry, and have the discrepancy, between it and Academia, aired. A look, which did take off was the basic black, skinny pants and long-sleeved top, of the Rive Gauche, intellectual or beatnik, worn by Hepburn in Sabrina. She also reminds us, again, that she can control her own shape-shifting, dressing down on screen, in bohemian black turtleneck and trousers, for a confrontation with the elder brother. In it, she cooked for Linus, in the Larabees’ trés Modern office apartments. Removing the towel from around her sleek, dark, form and asserting her, new found, bourgeois confidence she says, ‘Sorry I can’t stay to do the dishes.’ It became the symbol of youthful non-conformity when she danced a defiant, modern, jazz sequence in a moody, underground, Paris bar in Funny Face. Clothing company Gap were given permission to use this sequence to promote its skinny pants in 2006. Inhabiting the materialistic, driven, world of the glossy Fashion magazine, full of catwalk couture, Funny Face inspired no contemporary Fashion trends other than the black skinny basics introduced in Sabrina. There is no doubting the influence of Paris. Hubert de Givenchy is named in the opening credits. Cellar bar scenes are a parody of Art house cinema and yet, overall, the movie is neither slick Hollywood nor deeply important European. As a satire on the Fashion industry, pre-dating BBC TV’s Absolutely Fabulous and the 20th Century Fox hit, The Devil Wears Prada, it fails as a romantic or musical comedy. Unlike its descendants,

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__________________________________________________________________ Funny Face features the work of only one French couturier and he, Givenchy, is fictionalised in the character of Paul Duval, Robert Flemyng. Audrey Hepburn appears in eleven Givenchy ensembles in her role, as bookseller turned model. Fred Astaire’s Dick Avery was written in tribute to the highly acclaimed Fashion photographer, Richard Avedon, who supervised the photography for the film. Hepburn’s book shop assistant is characterised as an uptight black-stocking, talking in riddles about every kind of ‘-ism.’ Pushed outside while editors, and photographers, use the gloomy bookish interior, she is pictured looking into the bookshop window. This mise en scene forms part of the, continuing, Hepburn narrative which began during her stroll around the shops, in Rome, and culminating in Tiffany’s window in New York. A reluctant model, persuaded by photographer Dick Avery, Jo Stockton travels to Paris having had her makeover begun in New York. Hollywood allows America this style status before encouraging audiences to fall in love with Paris. Jo Stockton wants to hook up with the philosopher Emile Flostre, a charlatan, whose beliefs are a scriptwriter’s ridiculous version of Existentialism. He loses out because of his lechery, or possibly his lack of Gershwin musical numbers. Having Richard Avedon’s stills as articulation, the film places Audrey Hepburn at the centre of Fashion’s new philosophies. The importance of Funny Face to Hepburn’s involvement with Fashion comes from director Stanley Donen’s conscious referencing of Richard Avedon. The images are, however, carefully prepared and composed, as their use in Donen’s film makes clear. The photographs are integrated into the film as freeze-frames that punctuate sequences depicting fashion shoots involving Hepburn and Astaire. 8 Avedon, acted as visual consultant to the film and his technique of high shutter speed and shallow-focus images, to catch his subjects as if in flight, were used in the Paris couture scenes. Lecturer in French at University College Dublin, Douglas Smith, encapsulates the marvels of the film’s photography: One of the most strikingly composed images captures Hepburn in the Louvre, running across the bottom of the grand staircase that leads up to the winged victory of Samothrace, her draped arms outspread in imitation of the Greek statue. 9 It is the photographs of her face which progress the Hepburn myth for and beyond Fashion. Details become mere outline, eyes, nose and mouth in the red-lit darkroom, at the offices of fictional magazine Glamour, as Astaire, as Avery referencing Avedon, experiments with cutting and fixing the likeness. This is also the moment when he persuades Hepburn to take part in the Paris Fashion shoot, so

138 Audrey Hepburn and the ‘Funny Face’ of Post-World War II Humanism __________________________________________________________________ she can meet her cult philosopher. Commenting on Roland Barthes’ ability to take ideological meaning from photographs, in his paper on ‘Humanism in post-war French Photography and Philosophy,’ Smith writes: Hepburn’s image is one of change, of youth maturing, switching hairstyles, and clothes, from one image to the next. Hepburn is the existentialist ideal of beauty, open to endless selftransformation; she embodies the star as event. 10 Funny Face inspired Smith’s approach. He sees that Hepburn’s uncompromising character takes on a challenge. She is set up to reconcile the values of Education and Art with those of Photography and Fashion. The film stages a conflict between the competing claims of photography and philosophy, a contest that photography apparently wins, since it is the photographer and not the philosopher who ‘gets the girl.’ But the woman in question is a philosopher too, and it is ultimately the empathy between the photographer and his philosopher model that secures the happy ending. 11 Smith argues that the manipulation of the bookseller, away from her practice of librarianship and study, to become a much-photographed Fashion model is an example of the imposition by an outside agency on the freedom of an individual. Taking up Barthes’ suggestion that Hepburn’s face is capable of expressing an infinite variety of emotions, Smith identifies expressions of ‘freedom and autonomy.’ He is persuaded that in Avedon’s stills of Hepburn, in movement, ‘we catch a glimpse of the contradictory funny face of post-war humanism.’ After days of being Avery’s puppet Stockton knows how to stage the moment of double articulation, when a pose brings extra meaning to the clothes. She can predict what her mentor might demand. Avery tells his model, ‘You’ve outgrown me.’ Then Hepburn’s voice is heard at the top of the gallery’s imposing staircase. She is making her own artistic decisions: ‘Never mind what I’m going to do.’ Descending the steps, refusing to take any more instructions, ‘I can’t stop, take the picture, take the picture.’ Hepburn is empowered and empowering. Signified as victorious, her alter ego is enabled to occupy the intellectual high ground she had envisioned, for herself, before visiting Paris: Stanley Donen’s Paris-set musical Funny Face (1956) articulates these concerns in the dilemma faced by its librarian-turnedfashion-modelprotagonist, who is torn between the competing claims of photography and philosophy. 12

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__________________________________________________________________ Pamela Church Gibson speculating on the film star’s claims to Fashion influence, in the mapping of Fashion’s cities, where women consume and are consumed, sees Hepburn’s image as a ‘principal fashion referent:’ Hepburn’s androgynous image, so appealing to women, and her dual role as Fashion icon and anti-Fashion champion have retained their appeal precisely because of their subversive potential. 13 Whether seen as kitten, child or woman there is no doubting what Audrey Hepburn gave to her audiences. She had the supreme confidence of knowing, that no matter how desperate life might once have been, there was always the chance to transform the world through politics and peacekeeping. It was this, which enchanted us. Barthes spent most of his life hiding his homosexuality from Maman, and the world, yet the 22-year-old actress stirred his unconscious. He sees her as someone who could provoke an événement which, in French, carries the added meaning of sexual climax beyond the sense of an event in English. It could have been her youth which roused the 42-year-old French cultural critic to suggest that she had the power to instigate a coming, a happening, an issuing out; but I suggest it was Hepburn’s philosophical and political mythology which inspired his excitement.

Notes 1

R. Barthes, ‘The Face of Garbo’, in Mythologies, Vintage, London, 2000 (1972), p. 101. 2 Ibid. 3 D. Spoto, Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, Hutchinson, London, 2006, p.19. 4 Barthes, ‘The Face of Garbo’, p. 101. 5 Sorelle Fontana’s atelier overlooks Piazza di Spagna in Rome. The couturier’s designs are still worn by Hollywood stars and international royalty. The Fontana sisters did not just achieve their dream of opening an atelier; they came to own one of the most famous in the world, synonymous with glamour and elegance. 6 Quotation from the film Sabrina, dir. Billy Wilder, 1953. 7 P. Church Gibson, ‘New Stars, New Fashions and the Female Audience: Cinema, Consumption and Cities 1953-1966’, Fashion’s World Cities, Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 106. 8 D Smith, ‘Funny Face: Humanism in Post-War French Photography and Philosophy’. French Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2005, pp. 41-53.

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Ibid. Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Church Gibson, ‘New Stars, New Fashions and the Female Audience: Cinema, Consumption and Cities 1953-1966’, p. 106. 10

Bibliography Barthes, R., Mythologies. Vintage, London, 2000 [1972]. Church Gibson, P., Fashion’s World Cities. Berg, Oxford, 2006. Sheridan, J., Fashion Media Promotion: The New Black Magic. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2010. Smith, D., ‘Funny Face: Humanism in Post-War French Photography and Philosophy’. French Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2005, pp. 41-53. Spoto, D., Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn. Hutchinson, London, 2006. Jayne Sheridan teaches Fashion Communication at the University of Huddersfield in the UK. She studied with the film writer Antony Easthope at Manchester Metropolitan University and has taught Journalism at Liverpool John Moores. She is author of Fashion Media Promotion. The New Black Magic, Wiley Blackwell, Oxford, 2010.

The Slut at School: Sex, Dress and Authenticity Felicity Grace Perry Abstract This chapter considers the figure of the ‘skank,’ also known as the ‘slut.’ It examines the views presented by students at a non-uniformed urban high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand on the skank, a figure who is always gendered, raced, aged, and classed. This chapter positions the skank as a useful site for the exploration of the relationships between appearance and identity, fashion and sex, and self and others. It uses the skank to explore the notion of for whom subjects dress, and why they take up certain dress-practices. It asks: what do reactions to the scantily dressed figure illustrate about the workings of appearance-norms and identity? The catwalk frequently features women in barely-there outfits, and fashion editorials and advertisements consistently portray women in revealing clothes and sexual positions. What happens when this exalted representation is transferred to the high school? The students’ reactions to the skank illustrate the highly complex ways that appearance-norms work, with the majority of them assessing scantily-dressed young women negatively, making unfavourable assumptions about their sexual practices and intelligence. Yet the students take on many other appearance-norms unquestioningly. This chapter asks: what is it about the skank’s adoption of appearance-norms that makes her such a maligned figure? The slut’s appearance is frequently taken by the students to be inauthentic, a consequence of the will of others rather than the dresser herself. How do the students establish their own dress-practices as authentic in comparison? Key Words: Skank, slut, dress, identity, authenticity, appearance, power. ***** ‘Slut,’ ‘slag,’ ‘skank,’ ‘slapper,’ ‘whore,’ ‘nasty girl,’ or ‘ho:’ whatever moniker she is given, the slut is a prevalent figure in the contemporary western teen world. From television shows, to young adult fiction, to magazines, to music video and film, as well as the catwalk, the highly sexualised young woman is there, serving simultaneously as a warning to young women and an illicit goal to emulate. This chapter is based on ethnographic research I conducted at an urban high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Unlike the majority of high schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this school does not require its students to wear a uniform. This provides opportunities for students to be reflexive about the dress of themselves and others. During focus group sessions I facilitated, the young women in the research repeatedly referred to the skank, using her as figure to measure themselves against. Overwhelmingly the students condemned the skank, positioning themselves as ‘not like her.’ This chapter investigates this

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__________________________________________________________________ condemnation, asking, what is it about the skank’s adoption of appearance-norms that makes her such a maligned figure? It argues that the condemnation of the slut is based not only on the view that she is over-sexualised and over-feminine, but also on the notion that she is ‘inauthentic.’ Previous research on the skank has not addressed in detail the link between her appearance and others’ perception of her as inauthentic. 1 Who is the ‘skank?’ The skank is a young woman who wears clothes that accentuate her body, usually revealing cleavage and/or her upper thighs. She is seen to be sexually promiscuous, engaging in sex acts with multiple partners outside of a committed relationship. The skank is associated with the lower classes. The students use terms such as ‘cheap,’ ‘trashy,’ and ‘tacky’ to describe her. She is positioned as lacking the taste, restraint and etiquette associated with the middle classes. This categorisation of the skank is in line with ethnographer Emily White’s American-based study of women who were deemed sluts at high school. White found that the majority of women branded sluts were working class or a lower class than the peers who bestowed this label. 2 Similarly, Rebecca Raby, who studied young women in Canada, and Barbara Kitzinger, who interviewed young women in Scotland, also found that the skank was seen as lower class, with the term ‘tasteless’ often used to describe her. 3 The positioning of the skank as lacking the qualities of the middle classes reinforces these qualities as positive. The skank acts as an ‘other’ that the young women in my study define themselves against. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall asserts, identity categories ‘can function as points of identification and attachment only because of their capacity to exclude, to leave out, to render “outside”, abjected.’ 4 It is necessary, then, for an identity category to have an oppositional category, an ‘other,’ in order to exist. By establishing the skank as an ‘other’ against which they define themselves, the students position themselves as not ‘trashy,’ not ‘conformist,’ and not ‘fake.’ The figure of the skank usefully illustrates the students’ belief that dress displays the personality of the wearer. As one of the young women asserts, dress ‘definitely reflects on what you are like.’ The students believe that from the appearance of the scantily dressed woman they can deduce information about her sex-life, her background, socio-economic status, desires, and her psychological health. Interestingly, the skank or slut does not have to be sexually promiscuous, merely dressing in a revealing way warrants the students’ identification of her as a skank. Indeed, as White points out in her study of the slut, many of the women positioned as promiscuous are, in fact, not. 5 Because dress is taken to indicate behaviour, however, it is assumed that if the woman looks like a skank, she must be one. The students view the skank as dressing and acting in the manner she does because she wishes for the power that comes from men desiring her. The students refer to women who can ‘blind’ men with their beauty, who can turn men into ‘slaves’ and use men’s desire for their own gain. The students position the skank as attempting, but failing, to gain this power, stopping herself from procuring this

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__________________________________________________________________ power through the very means she uses to try to secure it. This failure, for the students, is tied up with the skank’s inability to withhold availability. In the manner of ‘hard to get,’ this withholding is seen to compel the man to work for the affection of the desirable woman, whereas the skank is seen as unrestrained and giving of herself physically and mentally too easily, without the man having to work for her affection. By giving herself so willingly, the skank has no leverage to receive benefits from her suitors. Thus the skank, in the eyes of the students, devalues herself and fails to attain the power she desires. Part of the denunciation of the skank is a condemnation of the exaltation of appearance that this power is based on. While some of the young women in the research admit to desiring the power that women possess when men desire them, they position this power and the desire for it negatively. They see this power as based on the privileging of beauty over brains, and believe that what they deem ‘personality’ should be valued over appearance. Thus they see the skank, in wanting this power, as wrongly privileging the cultivation of her appearance over the growth of her personality. Further, the young women in my research view this power as based on a gendered inequality whereby women are evaluated on their appearance to a greater extent than men are. The students, then, view the woman who desires this power as upholding the notion that women should be judged in relation to the way they look rather than in relation to their intelligence and ‘personality.’ The students believe that because of her wish for this power procured through male desire, the skank dresses in line with how men want her to dress rather than for her own comfort and enjoyment. The students link comfort and enjoyment with authenticity, asserting that if the subject is not comfortable then she is not being ‘true’ to herself. They believe that the skank could not be comfortable in the clothes she wears. One student states, for instance, that dressing in revealing clothes ‘is actually really only for an attraction to men, like I bet she doesn’t feel comfortable in that - who feels comfortable not being able to bend down?’ Further, the students assert that because the skank is dressing ‘only for men’ she is not using dress to display her personality, which is the key role they attribute to dress. The students, like the participants in sexuality theorist Ruth Holliday’s study of dress-choices in the English Midlands, view the comfortably dressed subject as presenting herself in a way that is synchronous with her personality and selfperception. 6 Thus the students deem the skank ‘uncomfortable’ because they believe her self-expression does not match her personality. This further positions the skank as inauthentic because, as another student states, if ‘you’re dressing for someone else, you’re not dressing for yourself.’ This view of the skank ignores that she may not connect her dress with the male gaze, that she may instead wear revealing clothes because she likes the way they look, because they make her feel older, stronger, more confident, or more like someone she admires, for instance, and is therefore dressing for herself rather than for others.

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__________________________________________________________________ The students’ positioning of the skank as inauthentic because she dresses for men is complicated by their own statements that they take into consideration others’ views when constructing their appearance. Thus none of the students can claim to dress only for themselves. Indeed, as dress theorist Kaja Silverman points out, the gaze of others is necessary for the subject to be at all. Silverman asserts that subject formation is based on the subject being seen. This means that the subject ‘comes to regard itself from a vantage point external to the self.’ 7 Because being seen is an inherent part of the construction of the subject, for Silverman, clothing is ‘a necessary condition of subjectivity’ as it allows the subject to engage with others. 8 Although the students admit that they do indeed dress for others, they position the skank as having the balance wrong, dressing more for others than for herself. In condemning the skank for this, the students situate themselves in comparison as dressing for themselves, as not catering to the desires of others and thus as dressing in a manner that is ‘true’ to who they are. The skank is further positioned as inauthentic by the students because her appearance is synchronous with the homogenous figure repeatedly shown as attractive to men in the mainstream media. This figure is primarily associated with the Playboy franchise but is seen throughout popular culture. Indeed, the Playboy brand itself has become increasingly present in popular culture, as illustrated by the highly successful television programme The Girls of the Playboy Mansion, screened on a national free-to-air channel in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The skank’s emulation of this figure featured in such programmes results in her looking similar to many other women. This homogeneity is taken by the students as ‘evidence’ that the skank is not dressing in a manner that is synchronous with her personality, for, as each subject is deemed to have an individual personality unique from others, if she were dressing to ‘reflect’ her ‘true’ self then she would look markedly different from other women, particularly from the figure promoted as sexually attractive in the media. The charge of inauthenticity is further emphasised by the students who view the skank as changing her appearance dramatically in order to embody the figure that Playboy and much of the mainstream media deems desirable. As the students believe that only ‘one in a million women’ naturally possess the characteristics promoted as the ideal by the mainstream media, they view the woman that emulates this norm as looking ‘fake.’ The students, then, position the skank as undertaking a great deal of work to emulate the Playboy figure, which typically involves fake tanning, growing hair long, manicures, the dyeing of hair (most often peroxide blonde), and breast implants for those that can afford them. There is a contradiction here however, as while the students condemn the skank for embodying a so-called ‘fake’ appearance-norm, in order to embody the norms of femininity, the students themselves must substantially alter their appearance to conform with what is taken to be ‘normal’ female appearance in the west. This involves the removal of body and facial hair, exercising and dieting to embody a

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__________________________________________________________________ weight ideal, the growing of head hair, and the adoption of gendered dress. Indeed, many of the students undertake the same appearance techniques as the skank, dyeing their hair, using fake tan, and wearing makeup. The students do not present their own changes as ‘fake’ though, deeming it unquestioningly desirable to remove facial and body hair for instance, and to ‘improve’ appearance with makeup. It seems that it is not the techniques themselves that are the problem, but the extent to which the techniques are taken-on by the skank. The students’ condemnations of the skank, then, are based on her going ‘too far’ in her pursuit of a feminine appearance, rather than the pursuit itself. Her breasts are too big, her hair is too groomed, her tan too dark, her makeup too thick. Thus the skank represents an exaggerated femininity, but rather than highlighting the constructed nature of feminine appearance itself, by overstepping the boundary into the excessively feminine she acts to reinforce the naturalness of so-called ‘normal’ appearance. The students further distance themselves from the skank’s dress practices with their assertions that they ignore the perceived desires of men and dress for other women. It should be noted here that the young women in my research presented a heterosexist viewpoint, and these assertions were not intended to suggest that they dress to sexually attract other young women. Other women are seen by the students as better judges of dress than men because men are deemed to have a narrow vision of the female subject centred on the desirability of her body, whereas women are viewed as judging the wearer’s ability to put together an outfit that showcases her personality. As one of the students asserts, young men think ‘she’s got really big boobies, she’s hot, and stuff like that’ when they look at a woman, whereas young women ‘look at style more.’ Asserting that they dress for other women and thus circumvent the male gaze emphasises that the students promote the privileging of personality over appearance as the woman that dresses for other women dresses to showcase her personality rather than her sexual desirability. To conclude, the students use the figure of the slut as a tool to distance themselves from being seen as conformist, inauthentic, and a slave to the desires of men and the media’s positioning of what is an attractive appearance. While the students condemn the slut’s sexual promiscuity, they focus on her inauthenticity, positioning themselves as authentic individuals in comparison. I wish to end by marking as points for further research and discussion the two major points of tension my examination of the students’ views of the slut has raised. First, the tension between the students’ positioning of the slut as dressing to please men and their recognition that they too dress for others; and, second, the inconsistency between the students’ condemnation of the skank as changing her appearance too dramatically and thus appearing ‘fake’ and the students’ location of the alterations they make to their own appearance as ‘authentic.’ What can these tensions further tell us about the relationship between dress, identity and authenticity?

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Notes 1

See J. Kitzinger, ‘“I’m Sexually Attractive but I’m Powerful”: Young Women Negotiating Sexual Reputation’, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1995, pp. 187-196; L. Tanenbaum, Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, Perennial, New York, 2000; E. White, Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut, Scribner, New York, 2002; K. Gleeson and H. Frith, ‘Pretty in Pink: Young Women Presenting Mature Sexual Identities’, in All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity, A. Harris (ed), Routledge, New York, 2004, pp. 103114; R. Raby, ‘“Tank Tops are Ok but I don’t Want to See Her Thong”: Girls’ Engagements with Secondary School Dress Codes’, Youth and Society, Vol. 14, No. 3, March 2010, pp. 333-356. 2 White, pp. 87-88. 3 Raby, op. cit. and Kitzinger, op. cit. 4 S. Hall, ‘Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?’, in Questions of Cultural Identity, S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Sage, London, 1996, p. 5. 5 White, p. 50. 6 R. Holliday, ‘The Comfort of Identity’, Sexualities, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1999, pp. 4878. 7 K. Silverman, ‘Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse’, in On Fashion, S. Benstock and S. Ferriss (eds), Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1994, p. 187. 8 Ibid., p. 191.

Bibliography Gleeson, K. and Frith, H., ‘Pretty in Pink: Young Women Presenting Mature Sexual Identities’, in All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity. A. Harris (ed), Routledge, New York, 2004, pp. 103-114. Hall, S., ‘Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?’, in Questions of Cultural Identity. S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Sage, London, 1996, pp. 1-17. Holliday, R., ‘The Comfort of Identity’. Sexualities, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1999, pp. 475491. Kitzinger, J., “‘I’m Sexually Attractive but I’m Powerful”: Young Women Negotiating Sexual Reputation’. Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1995, pp. 187-196.

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__________________________________________________________________ Raby, R., ‘“Tank Tops are Ok but I don’t Want to See Her Thong”: Girls’ Engagements with Secondary School Dress Codes”. Youth and Society, Vol. 14, No. 3, March 2010, pp. 333-356. Silverman, K., ‘Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse’, in On Fashion. S. Benstock and S. Ferriss (eds), Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1994, pp. 185-196. Tanenbaum, L., Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation. Perennial, New York, 2000. White, E., Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut. Scribner, New York, 2002. Felicity Grace Perry is a PhD student with the department of Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research focuses on the relationship between dress and the construction of identity.

Part 4 Fashion Performances, Representations and Style Communities

Humour as a Strategy in Contemporary Fashion Orna Ben-Meir Abstract Humour is a powerful cognitive tool for drawing enhanced and prolonged attention. Humour had been introduced to the history of modern art through Dada and Marcel Duchamp who smashed all aesthetic and artistic values. It was through their offspring, the Surrealists, that humour had been infiltrated to the work of Elsa Schiaparelli in the Forties, the first fashion designer who challenged the ideal of the beautiful. Her natural follower was Vivienne Westwood and Punk sub-culture in the Seventies, who violated most of the sartorial and aesthetic codes that had been developed in the history of fashion. Rei Kawakubo followed Punk footsteps in her work for Comme des Garçons in the Eighties, and then humour has become a common token in the language of contemporary fashion. This chapter explores the nature of humour in contemporary Fashion, by analysing it to its basic characteristics prescribed in the earlier theories of Sigmund Freud and Henry Bergson. It will show that humour in contemporary fashion has become more than a strategy for gaining commercial visibility, but is a reflexive tool for commentary on the topic of fashion. Key Words: Jean-Paul Gaultier, Sigmund Freud, Henry Bergson, Dada, Marcel Duchamp, Surrealism, Elsa Schiaparelli, Punk, Vivienne Westwood. ***** 1. Introduction ‘Humour must be a natural part of clothing’ declared Jean-Paul Gaultier in the late Eighties or early Nineties. 1 When it was declared, it sounded an unusual statement concerning garments; but at the same time compatible, coming from a fashion designer whose unconventional use of kilts has endowed him the nickname of the enfant terrible of French fashion. For mainstream fashion designers, Humour in clothes was then a denunciation of long lasting premise of fashion Beauty. Gaultier’s statement resonates in contemporary collections, whose values could be described as ugly, bizarre, repulsive, absurd, revolting and other related adjectives, whose common denominator could be classified in the vast term of Humour. 2 Furthermore, the frequent popular use of this term in the public discourse, 3 raises serious questions about the meaning of that term with respect to attire, as to which key elements make garment laughable? And why has this quality become so prevalent in contemporary fashion?

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__________________________________________________________________ 2. Humour Theories Humour has been known as a topic of interest since ancient Greek civilisation. Since then, many theories of humour have emerged. John Morreall has classified them into three main theoretical sections: 4 1. Theories of Superiority which take into consideration the social and environmental cues for laughter raise arguments of disparagement, aggression, and hostility as the origin of humour. 5 2. Theories of Incongruity, which rely on elements such as the unexpected, out of context, inappropriate, unreasonable, and so forth as necessary elements for the presence of humour in an event. 6 3. Relief theories, which explain humour in terms of the biological apparatus of arousal and release of tension. 7 As clothes are connected to humans analysis of humour in fashion should be based on social and psychological theories. 8 I found the appropriate tools in the theories of Sigmund Freud and Henry Bergson. 9 3. The Theories of Freud and Bergson in Relation to Fashion Freud argues that jokes resemble dreams, as they are the result of letting in forbidden thoughts and feelings which society suppresses into the conscious mind. These hidden meanings are condensed into signs, and in jokes they are cast into predetermined verbal formulas. 10 Freud mentions twenty techniques of verbal humour, from which four seem to be the most satisfactory for analysing fashion: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Double Meaning and Play on Words Ambiguity Displacements Representation through the Opposite

The first technique is best exemplified in Jeremy Scott’s ‘The Right to Bear Arms’ collection from Summer 2007. Its humour relies on the ability of a word to produce more than one meaning at the same time. 11 Scott plays with the double meaning of the word ‘bear,’ which as a noun signifies the animal soft toy, but as a verb produces a completely opposed meaning. The naïve textile print of the teddy bear is contrasted with the violent world of the gun ammunition. The leap from one circle of ideas to the completely opposite other produces humour. The fourth Freudian technique is expressed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s bride from Summer 2007. ‘Almost married’ is written on the fan that she holds. The spectator needs first to recognise the falseness of this statement, and then to

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__________________________________________________________________ understand the figurative meaning of the image as a whole. Researchers point out that the laughter that a joke elicits from us is a response not only to its semantic content, but also to its semiotic context. 12 While grasping the literal meaning of the text on the fan one realises that the bride does not adhere to the convention of this garment in fashion. This small, poor, trained mini-dress, made of assembled sheer Organza gloves, raises an ugly connotation of condoms. The visual symbol of safe sex is clashed with the heterosexual ideal of romantic love, which is embodied in the bridal dress. This pseudo-bride undermines the cultural norm of the white ostentatious bridal dress, as she presents a visual statement about the change of norms that has occurred in the twenty-first century, concerning issues of sexuality and marriage. A similar technique is applied in the ‘Black Hole’ collection by Viktor & Rolf for Fall 2001. All the models on the catwalk appeared in various shades of black from head to toe. The collection’s title alludes to the theory of physics about a region of space from which nothing can escape; it represents the designers’ visual commentary on the new global mood, in which this collection has been created, after 9/11. Thus, the black veiled bride at the end of the show seems to comment on the white bride convention, as she raises the technique of Ambiguity. Her design is not unequivocal: the sheer black veil gives a glimpse of her black face, while her strapless dress show shoulders, but its flared cut down to the floor does not show her body, and the black object that she holds can hardly be seen as a flowers bouquet. The incongruity of these signs raises puzzlement: is it a mourning bride or a new Burqa? Pollio and Edgerly conceive humour as a two-stage process: first, puzzlement at the incongruity and second, resolution of incongruity. 13 The laughter here is produced only insofar as the spectators share the same assumptions on which the image was based. 14 Henry Bergson extends Freudian theory by explaining laughter in functional social terms: ‘Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo.’ 15 Therefore laughter needs the Absence of feeling from the perspective of the onlooker. Empathy is not the exact reaction to Ann-Sofie Back’s model, from Fall 2004, whose cardigan burst on her skinny body and reveals her panties. Surprise is an old time principle of laughter, as it draws the spectator out of his/her automatic reaction. 16 Moreover, this image violates our basic norms of appropriateness and good taste. No decent woman walks out clad with tight garment that reveals her underwear. 17 The only way to resolve the incongruity of this annoying image is to suppress the feelings of pity for the depicted woman, while being aware that she is not a poor girl, but a well paid model. This visual joke criticises the arbitrary nature of fashion, whose rules about beauty, perfection and good taste are irrational and therefore, laughable. Bergson’s theory emphasises the physical aspects of humour. One of them is Pointing at the Physical Body. Fashion embodies the constant dialogue with the body, while in the past it was carefully encoded in the societal norms. The

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__________________________________________________________________ Modernist ideal of novelty gave way to the play with the boundaries of bodily concealment and exposure. Isabel Mastache Martínez’s suit from Fall 2010 demonstrates bold Pointing at the Physical Body. Female nude is a cliché in contemporary fashion, compared to male nude. Therefore, when Martínez applies a male sex organ tailored on a plain grey suit, she presents a blatant sartorial statement on male dress code. Yet, the other weird elements in this design, such as the red heart appliqué on the left pocket of the jacket, the funny headdress and the weird prosthetic hand, raise an enigma: does this design speak about the construction of a new manhood through fashion? Is it an embodiment of Freudian argument that jokes act as displacement activities permitting subterranean desires sometimes sexual, sometimes hostile, to emerge? Or, is she just making fun of our efforts to decipher her sartorial joke? Bergson’s laughter theory is rooted in the theatre and his principles are linked to the actor’s body, such as Rigidity, Mechanization and Transformation of the Human into a Plant, Animal or Object. ‘Tension and elasticity are natural characteristics of the ordinary human, while its opposite … is being suspect by society.’ 18 The Fall 2004 collection by Jean-Paul Gaultier perfectly illustrates these three principles. The show starts with a model clad with a little black dress, white gloves and sheer veil. After her enters a second veiled model with gloves, whose face and upper naked body are imprinted on her opaque veil and shirt. The third model’s face is completely covered with an opaque veil and her mechanical gestures remind us of a puppet on a string. We are not sure whether she is human and we are not provided with a clue. This moment provokes the stage of puzzlement. After the third model, the puzzlement is resolved when the fashion show goes on with dressed unveiled wooden mannequins attached with cords and electrically operated, which come down the catwalk. The last model which encloses the show is an exact sartorial replica of the first veiled model with the little black dress. This time she is not a live model, but a mere puppet on a string. This transformation of the animate model into the inanimate mannequin is confronted with our habitual expectation to see novelty expressed in the clothes presented, and not in the way they are presented on the catwalk. By this strategy of humour, Gaultier propels our cognition towards the final realisation of the visual joke, but at the same time he makes us understand the way our culture has literally transformed the model into an object. A model is no more than a hanger which carries the absurd vagaries of the designers, and like other objects he or she is replaceable. Gaultier’s show points out to another principle, which is fundamental to the comic spirit, that of Inversion. The comic manifestations such as Comedy, carnival, circus and masquerade are all based on the assumption of a normative world which turned upside down. Laugher thus goes always with the normative, whose rules it transgresses. Viktor & Rolf present it literally in their ‘Upside Down’ store design and Summer 2006 collection. Psychologists claim that humour

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__________________________________________________________________ is a powerful cognitive tool for drawing an ‘enhanced and prolonged attention during information encoding.’ 19 We saw that contemporary fashion designers learned well this lesson. In this stage of my discussion, a critical question is being raised: how did fashion embrace this new spirit of humour? Answering this question requires a return to the great crisis of modern art. 4. Dada Spirit and Marcel Duchamp Humour had been introduced to modern art through Dada and Marcel Duchamp, who smashed all aesthetic and artistic values. Duchamp’s departure from ‘retinal art’ actually led him to the conceptual use of the verbal in his art. After the rejection from the Parisian Salon des Indépendants of his Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 from 1912, and its scandalous reception in the American Armory Show, Duchamp discovered that humour is a powerful cognitive tool for introducing novelty, or shock, in his words. Duchamp’s oeuvre thus expresses most humour techniques mentioned above. Pointing at the Physical Body appears in LHOOQ from 1919; the four letters he added as a signature use Double meaning and play on words, as they are an abbreviation of the French sentence ‘she is hot in the ass.’ The title of the work Fresh Widow from 1920 is a double pun on ‘French Window’ on one hand, and ‘Fresh Widow’ on the other. This work was also the first signed by Duchamp’s female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, the fictional woman he introduced in the series of photographs by Man Ray from 1921. His crossed-dressed images reveal several humour principles such as Ambiguity, Pointing at the Physical Body and Inversion. This series was the first time Duchamp blatantly put on stage the issue of attire as a construct of gender and sexual identity, a topic that continues in his later works. Duchamp’s oeuvre with its comic spirit is the cultural link between modern art and fashion, mediated by his artistic offspring, the surrealists. 5. Surrealism and Elsa Schiaparelli The Surrealists found inspiration in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, whose theory served as a basis for their quest to the unconscious and the realm of dreams. The human body is represented in their art as a site of forbidden desires. The head, as the highest part of the body, thus represents logic, the super ego and the societal rules. Contrast to it, the foot, the lowest part of the body, represents the lower instincts of the subconscious. In Surrealist art, these two extreme body axes are represented by means of their sartorial metonyms: footwear and headwear. In his collage The Hat Makes the Man, Max Ernst questions the issue of male attire, whose rigid uniformity fails to define male identity in the beginning of the twentieth century. The three-piece suit in sober colours was the standard, and the sole distinguishing sartorial sign was the hat. Humour resides here in the Ambiguity of the title, which refers to the human, who is completely missing. Inverted humour technique is apparent in René Magritte’s picture Philosophy in the Boudoir. Here

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__________________________________________________________________ Magritte transforms the objects of clothing into human forms, while at the same time he Points at the Physical Body of the absent woman. Magritte uses a familiar object to evoke uncanny atmosphere, a quality which is central to Surrealist discourse, 20 and is created by the confusion between the animate woman and her inanimate clothing. The fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli was friend with Duchamp and some of the surrealists, and consciously influenced by them. Schiaparelli is famous for having first challenged the ideal of Beauty by transgressing previously prescribed hierarchies of materials and techniques. First and foremost is her use of visual strategies, previously belonging exclusively to art, such as tromp l’oeil, which provoke Ambiguity and Surprise. The knitted pattern on the sweater from 1927 is an optic illusion of a sailor collar. Similarly, the darts and the pleats of the dress are not real, but painted and the Tears Dress imitates pieces of torn fabric. Schiaparelli is mostly associated with her interest in the blurred boundary between body and garment, which is expressed in the humour technique of Pointing at the Physical Body. It appears in works such as the Skeleton Dress, the Profile Hat, Nails Gloves and in the famous Hat Shoe, which was a product of her creative exchanges with Salvador Dalí. 6. Punk and the Aesthetics of Anarchy The youth sub-culture of Punk is a direct descendant of Surrealism. It has emerged in the Seventies, in Britain under Thatcher’s regime, by angry working class youths, who sought for ways to direct their sexual and aggressive thoughts. Punk became visible as overt political dissent. Humour, then, became their creative way of rebelling against the demands of the social order. Punk was thus the ultimate sartorial rebellion, by its violating most of the sartorial and aesthetic codes that had been developed in the history of fashion. Punk characteristics are true representatives of the comic spirit, 21 as they reflect most of the techniques mentioned above. The most recognised visual symbol of Punk, the safety pin, has become the symbol of their humour as it embodies the Representation through the Opposite technique. The accessory which originally used to fasten babies’ cloth diapers is used now to fasten their violently torn T-shirts as well as to pierce their bodies. Its new painful aesthetics expresses the Bergsonian principle of Absence of Feeling and at the same time it Points at the Physical Body. Punk served as the ultimate catalyst in the process through which humour has infiltrated into fashion. After Punk, the fashion that was created in the Eighties and the Nineties started to appropriate its aesthetics and its humour characteristics. 7. Epilogue This chapter intended to show the seriousness of being funny in contemporary fashion. Fashion designers have discovered that humour is a powerful strategy, for

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__________________________________________________________________ marketing as well as for commentary, and even for critique. I consider this use of Humour in fashion as a signifier of cultural maturity. Now, after we have proved that fashion is a serious issue, we can start laughing at it!

Notes There is not an exact date for this quotation. C. McDowell, Jean Paul Gaultier, London: Russell & Co., 2000, p. 97. 2 Humour is a general term that refers to different notions such as Satire, Grotesque, Black Humour, Irony and so forth. Humour is also a contextual term, conditioned by factors such as geography, ethnic nationality, gender, cognition skills and cultural understanding. This chapter did not intend to cover all these aspects. 3 I refer to catwalk reviews in influential web sites such as, , , , and so forth, and also in the blogsphere. See for example: Smarter: Fashion and Beauty, blog by Ritika Puri, viewed on 18th October 2010, ; Focus on Style by Sharon Haver, viewed on 18th October 2010, ; Sing Eclectic blog, viewed on 18th October 2010, . 4 J. S. Mio and A. C. Graesser, ‘Humor, Language, and Metaphor’, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1991, p. 88. 5 This section encompasses ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Cicero as well as later thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbs, René Descartes, and Henry Bergson. 6 It is represented by thinkers such as Emmanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard and others. 7 It includes modern thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, George Santayana, of which the most famous is Sigmund Freud. 8 Henry Bergson argues: ‘The first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human.’ H. Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, C. Brereton and F. Rothwell (trans), Arc Manor, Rockville, Maryland, 2008, p. 10. 9 Bergson’s Le Rire: Essai sur la Signification du Comique (Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic) from 1900, and Freud’s Der Witz und Seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten (Wit and Their Relation to the Unconscious) from 1905. 10 The formulaic format is an essential part of the joke, as it provokes in the listener expectations that ought to be demolished in its end. 1

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__________________________________________________________________ 11

Freud calls it ‘manifold application’, in S. Freud, ‘Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious’, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, A. A. Brill (trans and ed), The Modern Library, New York, 1938, p. 649. 12 L. Lengbeyer, ‘Humour, Context, and Divided Cognition’, Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2005, p. 309. 13 H. R. Pollio and J. W. Edgerly, ‘Comedians and Comic Style’, in Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications, A. J. Chapman and H. C. Foot (eds), Wiley, London, 1976, pp. 215-242. 14 R. de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987, pp. 289-295. 15 Bergson, p. 11. 16 Surprise is often applied in design, as it manifests novelty (G. D. S. Ludden et al., ‘Surprise as a Design Strategy’, Design Issues, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2008, p. 30). 17 In an interview, Back says: ‘My interest in fashion was then a way to become a perfect lie …, I have slowly worked out a way of celebrating my mistakes and shortcomings instead of hiding them’ (F. Granata, ‘Subverting Assumptions of Female Beauty: An Interview with Ann-Sofie Back’, Fashion Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2007, p. 394). 18 Bergson, p. 16. 19 M. Strick et al., ‘Humor in the Eye Tracker: Attention Capture and Distraction from Context Cues’, The Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 137, No. 1, 2010, p. 38. 20 H. Foster, Compulsive Beauty, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993, p. xvii. 21 L. van Ham, ‘Reading Early Punk as Secularized Sacred Clowning’, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 42, Issue 2, 2009, pp. 318-338.

Bibliography Bergson, H., Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic. 1900, . Critchley, S., On Humour. Routledge, London and New York, 2002. De Sousa, R., The Rationality of Emotion. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987. Foster, H., Compulsive Beauty. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993.

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__________________________________________________________________ Freud, S., ‘Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious’, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. A. A. Brill (trans and ed), The Modern Library, New York, 1938, pp. 633-803. Gibson, G., ‘Schiaparelli, Surrealism and the Desk Suit’. Dress, Vol. 30, 2003, pp. 48-58. Granata, F., ‘Subverting Assumptions of Female Beauty: An Interview with AnnSofie Back’. Fashion Theory, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2007, pp. 391-402. Haynes, D., ‘The Persistence of Irony: Interfering with Surrealist Black Humour’. Textual Practice, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2006, pp. 25-47. Lengbeyer, L., ‘Humour, Context, and Divided Cognition’. Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2005, pp. 309-336. Ludden, G. D. S., Schifferstein, H. N. J., Hekkert, P., ‘Surprise as a Design Strategy’. Design Issues, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2008, pp. 28-38. Mio, J. S. and Graesser, A. C., ‘Humor, Language, and Metaphor’. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1991, pp. 87-102. Morreall, J., The Philosophy of Laughter and Humour. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1987. Pollio, H. R. and Edgerly, J. W., ‘Comedians and Comic Style’, in Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications. A. J. Chapman and H. C. Foot (eds), Wiley, London, 1976, pp. 215-242. Rapp, J., The Origins of Wit and Humour. E. P. Dutton, New York, 1951. Strick, M., Holland, R. W., Van Baaren, R. B., Van Knippenberg, A., ‘Humor in the Eye Tracker: Attention Capture and Distraction from Context Cues’. The Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 137, No. 1, 2010, pp. 37-48. Van Ham, L., ‘Reading Early Punk as Secularized Sacred Clowning’. The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009, pp. 318-338. Orna Ben-Meir is a fashion and costume designer. She holds a PhD with honours from Tel-Aviv University. She is a senior lecturer on History, Theory, and Practice

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__________________________________________________________________ of Fashion and Costume in the Theatre, at the Academic Centre of Wizo, Haifa, and she is a lecturer at Hakibutzim College for Technology, Arts and Education, Tel-Aviv, and at Shenkar College for Design and Engineering, Tel-Aviv. Her research and writing is currently devoted to Israeli stage design, Biblical costumes in the Hebrew Theatre, visual aspects of humour and various topics in Fashion.

Vintage Paperback Meets Vintage Couture: How Tom Ford Brought Christopher Isherwood out from behind the Lens Kathryn Franklin Abstract Upon the release of Tom Ford’s cinematic adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel A Single Man, critics hailed the film as a perfect marriage of style and substance. Of course, this was not the first time one of Isherwood’s texts had found its way to the silver screen. In 1972, Bob Fosse directed the musical Cabaret, based on Isherwood’s novella, ‘Sally Bowles.’ Renewed interest for the decadent Weimar era materialised in the form of garters and heavy dark eyelashes, which were synonymous with Liza Minnelli as the title character. In this same manner, after A Single Man came out, popular magazines featured fashion spreads inspired by the film. While fashion is often inextricably linked to cinema, the relationship between fashion and literature is not always so well defined. In using Isherwood’s text as the model for his directorial debut, Ford rightfully showcases an author whose narratives are motivated by fashion. Isherwood’s work is often concerned with themes of identity and sexuality, which manifest themselves in the mode of the characters and the city they inhabit. In the beginning of Goodbye to Berlin Isherwood’s eponymous narrator famously announces, ‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.’ 1 As a modern flâneur, Isherwood presents himself as author and voyeur - skillfully sketching the city and its fashionable inhabitants. This chapter argues that Ford’s cinematic interpretation of A Single Man not only renewed popularity for Isherwood’s text and the fashion of the early 1960s, but also highlighted Isherwood’s unique relationship with fashion as a narrative device within his work. Key Words: Christopher Isherwood, Tom Ford, fashion studies, twentieth century literature, queer culture. ***** In an interview in 1972, Christopher Isherwood agreed that A Single Man would make an excellent film and that all it needed was the right director. 2 In 2009, American fashion designer Tom Ford accepted the challenge and made his feature film debut with his own adaptation of Isherwood’s text. The result was a highly polished piece of sartorial cinema. Nevertheless, Ford’s effort was equally criticized for favouring fashion over the less savoury parts of the textual material. Ben Walters exclaimed ‘Ford’s work seems neurotically averse to ugliness or mess of any kind, however base the context: when, following Isherwood, Ford shows George on the toilet, he manages to give the impression that the character’s shirt is neatly tucked in, even with his pants around his ankles.’ 3 Colin Firth, who fills

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__________________________________________________________________ George’s designer shoes, plays Isherwood’s protagonist with a quiet stoicism. He opens the film by placing a note on top of an immaculately pressed suit instructing, ‘Tie in a Windsor knot’ - a gentle request left for whoever finds his body after his suicide. While the mise-en-scène underscores George’s fanatic devotion to detail and dress, the scene itself does not exist within Isherwood’s text. Ford’s meticulous devotion to minutiae extends even as far as to what George’s signature scent would be, ‘Creed’s Bois du Portugal, invented in 1957 - Frank Sinatra’s favorite.’ 4 Again, nowhere in the book suggests such diligence. Rather, George’s sense of fashion is meant to set him apart from the students that he teaches at his small California University: His neat dark clothes, his white dress shirt and tie (the only tie in the room) are uncompromisingly alien from the aggressively virile informality of the young male students. Most of these wear sneakers and garterless white wool socks, jeans in cold weather, and in warm weather shorts (the thigh-clinging Bermuda type the more becoming short ones aren’t considered quite decent). … They seem like mere clumsy kids in contrast with the girls, for these have all outgrown their teenage phase of Capri pants, sloppy shirts and giant heads of teased-up hair. 5 George’s austere clothes match his equally grave demeanour brought on by the recent death of his lover. His formality is challenged by the vibrancy of his students - which Ford emphasises by saturating parts of the screen with brightened hues whenever George feels ‘alive.’ Ford’s fidelity to Isherwood’s text is obviously not a point of contention, if anything his cinematic adaptation highlights Isherwood’s insight for fashion and fashionable subjects. In the same way that he transformed Gucci from a flagellating shoe company into an international fashion house, Ford has put the name Christopher Isherwood back in the public consciousness. One look at amazon.com shows not only a renewed interest in A Single Man - which Edmund White praised as being ‘One of the first and best novels of the modern gay liberation movement,’ 6 but also for many of Isherwood’s other works. Although Ford is, arguably, the better known of the two in the realm of twenty first century popular culture, Isherwood’s sense of fashion and for anticipating cultural trends is literally figured in Ford’s work. While Ford’s concentration on the more aesthetic aspects within Isherwood’s text has often been the primary critical focus of his film, Isherwood’s work itself is implicated in the broader discussion of the oftenoverlooked relationship between fashion and literature. Fashion, as a concept used in this context, may be best understood as defined by Elizabeth Wilson: ‘Fashion is commonly held to be a crucial medium for the construction of signs for changing desires and consumption patterns.’ 7 As a writer,

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__________________________________________________________________ Isherwood preoccupies himself with the tenor of the time by often positioning himself as the flâneur who carefully observes the city and its inhabitants. Isherwood’s narrative style has even been referred to as ‘documentary fiction’ 8 citing his famous passage: ‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking,’ 9 as evidence for his documentary style. As Andrew Monnickendam points out, ‘It would be no exaggeration at all to say that [this] sentence … has determined the reception of Isherwood’s entire literary output from its moment of publication in 1939.’ 10 As the figurative camera, Isherwood’s narratives explore current social fluxes from the conception and implementation of the Third Reich in Goodbye to Berlin to contemporary Los Angeles and American culture at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in A Single Man. The function of Isherwood’s spectator view is twofold; for readers in the 1930s and 1960s, his texts capture the mode and spirit of the time, whereas for current readers his works provide points of reference to how things were during a certain era. Nevertheless, as Katherine Bucknell astutely notes, ‘[Isherwood] puts himself at the edge of the picture in order to remind us that he is filtering reality, not just recording it,’ 11 which one may argue is what Ford did in his treatment of A Single Man by excising the less colourful aspects of Isherwood’s text. What critics such as Walters fail to grasp in their indictment of Ford’s more stylised liberties in his direction of A Single Man is that Isherwood was equally as preoccupied with fashion in his texts but on a more human and tangible level. Isherwood was not simply caught up in the sartorial aspects of fashion, but rather fashion for Isherwood was an instrument for character development. By infusing his characters with wit and flare, but also a deliberate sense of self-consciousness, Isherwood’s personalities are literally fashioned by their era. No doubt the most colourful of all of Isherwood’s characters is the indomitable Sally Bowles from Goodbye to Berlin. When asked about the popular endurance of Sally Bowles, Isherwood responded that the character was a conduit for the idea of ‘militant bohemia.’ 12 He goes on to further explain how in the theatrical version of his novella 13 the actress who plays Sally Bowles 14 fully captures the zeitgeist of the period: Sally, comes in this terribly frumpy, respectable middle-class coat, which [her] mother had given her. She takes it off and appears in the dress that she wore in the first act, a sort of bohemian uniform, a tight-fitting black silk dress with a flaming scarf. And the audience shrieked because what it meant was the squares are defeated, the establishment has gone down in ruins, and Greenwich Village is triumphant over all. 15 As far as literary muses go, Sally Bowles is a legend. As a hero of the antiestablishment, Isherwood fashions Sally’s youthful spirit and rebellion in emerald

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__________________________________________________________________ green nail polish and a pageboy cap. Moreover, her personality and joie de vivre has been refashioned in other fictional characters from Breakfast at Tiffany’s Holly Golightly 16 to Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. Although no one has done more for the character than Liza Minelli’s Oscar winning turn as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret. 17 Minelli’s ‘look’ consisted of big eyelashes, short black hair and garter belts, inspiring a trend in the 1970s and its influence still resonates today. In 2007, John Galiano revealed his 2008 collection for Dior as inspired by the cabaret of Sally Bowles. However, long before Galiano and other designers created fashions inspired by Sally’s Weimar look, Sally Bowles was a brand in her own right. Shortly after Cabaret came out in the theatres, The Berlin Stories were repackaged and marketed as The Berlin of Sally Bowles 18 with Liza Minelli as Sally on the cover draped over the Brandenburg Gate in her signature black bowler hat and jumpsuit, as if to reassure the reader that they had indeed picked up the right book. In this regard, Isherwood created an icon that not only encapsulated the sexuality of the last days of the Weimar Republic, but who also embodied the sexual revolution of the 1970s in her onscreen persona. The most fashionable figure in Isherwood’s work is, of course, Christopher Isherwood. His various incarnations: ‘Chris,’ ‘Herr Issyvoo’ and ‘William Bradshaw,’ 19 serve as the primary models for his camera. However, while the Christopher Isherwood character attempts to present as objective a narrative as possible, there is a degree of self-fashioning, especially in his earlier works, where he attempts to veil his homosexuality by only hinting at ‘boy bars’ in Berlin and ‘close’ friendships with other male characters, since it was still illegal to admit otherwise in the 1930s. According to Colin Wilson: Part of his hard-earned freedom was the right to be defiantly honest; so he steers as close as he possibly can to admitting [his homosexuality] in the Berlin novels, and seems to try to make up for the suppression by an additional honesty about himself and his motivations. 20 Moreover, by using himself (or a more stylized version of himself) and actual people that he knew as material for his texts, Isherwood was able to romanticise his crowd, namely Stephen Spender, W. H Auden, Edward Upward and John Lehmann. As Wilson points out what they had done was ‘deliberate legendbuilding to self-consciously set themselves up as the Next Generation (after Joyce, Huxley and Eliot).’ 21 Or described less formally, they were fashioning themselves as the new ‘it’ crowd. Despite his attempt to rival the Next Generation, Isherwood, however, was lesser known than many of his contemporaries such as W. H. Auden or Truman Capote, yet as James J. Berg and Chris Freeman point out:

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__________________________________________________________________ Isherwood’s influence is strong among his readers and extends to many of the writers who came after him. For what Isherwood actually did was document the twentieth century, contribute to the development of memoir and autobiographical fiction, and pioneer gay writing in America and abroad. 22 Much like the character of Sally Bowles, Christopher Isherwood, as an author and character, is a recognisable brand especially in the Queer community. Armistead Maupin, whose Tales of the City series reads like The Berlin Stories set in the Castro district of San Francisco, acknowledges his debt to Isherwood who he did not even know about until he had seen Cabaret (and as a result started familiarising himself with Isherwood’s work). 23 Maupin dedicates Babycakes, the fourth book in his series, to Isherwood and even has a scene where one of his characters, the cute twink Mouse, is reading, Christopher and His Kind. A similar episode exists in Patricia Highsmith’s The Boy Who Followed Ripley, the fourth book in her ‘Ripliad.’ In describing her protagonist’s leisure activities, Highsmith writes: ‘Tom was upstairs in his room, in pyjamas, reading Christopher Isherwood’s Christopher and His Kind, when he heard a car turning at Belle Ombre.’ 24 The appearance of Isherwood’s text in these works is not only a tribute to him as an author, but the appearance of his name and book also functions within a specific cultural code. Christopher and His Kind is a highly candid portrait of Isherwood and his crowd and explicitly his past lovers. For Maupin’s Mouse, reading Isherwood’s text is a reaffirmation of his homosexuality in the 1980s. Babycakes was also one of the first texts to publicly acknowledge AIDS in the same way that A Single Man was one of the first books that discussed homosexuality openly and without apology in the 1960s. For Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, however, the appearance of Christopher and His Kind represents another layer on top of his ambiguous sexuality and character. A later book in the series shows Tom reading a biography of Oscar Wilde. These books, therefore, behave as accessories by highlighting and revealing certain character traits. Isherwood was not unaware of his cultural capital in certain circles, warning Maupin, ‘Don’t let them call [Tales of the City] a gay book, … You’re writing for everyone and about everyone.’ 25 Ever the trendsetter, Isherwood did not want to be pigeonholed. Isherwood’s tendency toward documentation and deliberate mythmaking also predicted the current trend toward self-fashioning in the digital age. In 2005 Scott Schuman, a former showroom owner who used to work for Valentino, began a blog called The Sartorialist. Schuman carried around a camera and began ‘to share photos of people that I saw on the streets of New York that I thought looked great.’ 26 In five years his blog featuring photographs of fashionable people in the streets of New York City and around the globe has exploded into a web

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__________________________________________________________________ phenomenon and a rise of similar street style blogs are appearing daily. However, what has made his blog specifically endearing to the public is the way he has captured the narrative of the streets from his shots of old Italian men in carefully pressed suits to chic young hipsters in Stockholm. His descriptions of city life are not unlike those recorded by Isherwood’s camera that takes snapshots of ‘the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair.’ 27 Isherwood, like a proto Schuman, effectively captured the spirit and fashion of the cities and people around him by developing their narratives in his texts for all to witness. In his critique of Ford’s A Single Man, Ben Walters writes ‘Isherwood has a strong sense of immanent beauty; Ford wants everything to look nice.’ 28 While Ford’s sartorial touches might be regarded as distraction, what his film brought to the fore was Christopher Isherwood from behind the lens and effectively back in vogue.

Notes 1

C. Isherwood, ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, in The Berlin Stories, New Directions, New York, 1963 [1954], p. 1. 2 D. Geherin and C. Isherwood, ‘An Interview with Christopher Isherwood’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1972, p. 157. 3 B. Walters, ‘The Trouble with Perfume’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 4, 2010, p. 14. 4 Ibid. 5 C. Isherwood, A Single Man, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1992 [1964[, p. 57. 6 E. White, ‘Pool in Rocks by the Sea: Isherwood and Bachardy’, in The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood, J. Berg and C. Freeman (eds), University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2000, p. 347. 7 E. Wilson, ‘Fashion and Modernity’, in Fashion and Modernity, C. Breward and C. Evans (eds), Berg, Oxford, New York, 2005, p. 12. 8 J. Berg and C. Freeman, ‘Isherwood the Multiculturalist’, The Chronicle of Higher Education/Chronicle Review, Vol. LVI, No. 18, 2010, pp. B13-B15. 9 C. Isherwood, ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, p. 1. 10 A. Monnickendam, ‘Goodbye to Isherwood: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Reputation’, Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2008, p. 125. 11 K. Bucknell, ‘Who is Christopher Isherwood?’, in J. Berg and C. Freeman, The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2000, p. 14. 12 Geherin and Isherwood, p. 147.

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I am a Camera written by John Van Druten, 1951. Julie Harris. 15 Geherin and Isherwood, p. 147. 16 Capote has often acknowledged his debt to Isherwood. 17 Isherwood was not pleased with the film version of Cabaret: ‘My criticisms are the usual ones, the ones that many people have made. … You have this little girl saying “Oh, I’ll never make it. I haven’t really any talent.” Then she comes on the stage and you realize that she’s every inch Judy Garland’s daughter. And Joel Grey comes on the stage he’s simply fantastic. The truth is that this cabaret would have attracted half of Europe you wouldn’t have been able to get in for months on end’, Gerherin and Isherwood, p. 147. 18 Hogarth Press, 1975. 19 These are two of Isherwood’s middle names. 20 C. Wilson, ‘Notes on Christopher Isherwood’, Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 22, No, 3, 1976, p. 319. 21 Ibid., p. 313. 22 J. Berg and C. Freeman, ‘Introduction: The Isherwood Century’, pp. 3-4. 23 P. Parker, Isherwood: A Life, Picador,London, 2004, p. 770. 24 P. Highsmith, The Boy who Followed Ripley, Vintage, London, 1993 [1980], p. 73. 25 A. Maupin, ‘Foreward’. The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, p. 1. 26 . 27 Isherwood, ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, p. 1. 28 Walters, p. 16. 14

Bibliography Berg, J. and Freeman, C., ‘Isherwood the Multiculturalist’. The Chronicle of Higher Education/Chronicle Review, Vol. LVI, No. 18, 2010, pp. B13-B15. Berg, J. and Freeman, C. (eds), The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2000. —––, ‘Introduction: The Isherwood Century’, in J. Berg and C. Freeman (eds), The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2000, pp. 3-11. Geherin, D. and C. Isherwood, ‘An Interview with Christopher Isherwood’. The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1972, pp. 143-158.

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__________________________________________________________________ Highsmith, P., The Boy who Followed Ripley. Vintage, London, 1993 [1980]. Isherwood, C., The Berlin Stories. New Directions, New York, 1963 [1954]. —––, A Single Man. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1992 [1964]. Maupin, A., ‘Foreward’, in The Isherwood Century: Essays on the Life and Work of Christopher Isherwood. University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 2000. Monnickendam, A., ‘Goodbye to Isherwood: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Reputation’. Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2008, pp. 125-137. Parker, P., Isherwood: A Life. Picador, London, 2004. Walters, B., ‘The Trouble with Perfume’. Film Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 4, 2010, pp. 14-17. Wilson, C., ‘Notes on Christopher Isherwood’. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1976, pp. 312-331. Wilson, E., ‘Fashion and Modernity’, in Fashion and Modernity. C. Breward and C. Evans (eds), Berg, Oxford and New York, 2005, pp. 9-14. Kathryn Franklin is a PhD Student in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her areas of interest include archival studies, writers in exile, youth culture and photography. Her current research focuses on the Weimar Republic, Fashion and Glam Rock. She is a co-editor of Descant Magazine and features as guest editor in Descant 150, Writers in Prison for Fall 2010.

Fego DNA Schemas: The Projection of Schematic Constructed Non-Fictional Anxiety within the Styling Design of Fictional Character Dress Michael Ivy (Michiel Germishuys) Abstract An effective personality theory is developed synthetically through naturalscientific research, to create fictional screen characters in a dynamic goal-directed attempt to affect the viewing audience. The styling design of character dress is implicatively projecting innate, non-fictional anxiety to an organic shame-based audience. Michael Ivy’s diagram of schematic Fego DNA, connote specific emotions to a relevant audience through the fashioning of dress. Three distinct schemas with overlapping anxieties amalgamate into a hybrid organization of anxiety named the Fego (fictional ego). The Fego is compound by a formulation of biological, social and spiritual nonfictional representation (DNA) that may be encoded and decoded, conscious and subconsciously as fictional character identity. Fictional character DNA represents the spiritual demands of biological needs and social acknowledgment, relevant to a target audience. Characters are constructed through different types of socialisation. They seem to be defending their anxiety by controlling impression towards other narrative characters through an antithetical reaction formation in a specific hierarchy of schematic representation. Different positioning of DNA-hierarchy would indicate distinct groupings of shame-based anxiety. Dress Cognology is proposed as terminology that connotes the study of various DNA groupings through the persuasive communicative styling design of character dress. Key Words: Cognitive socio-psychology, impression management, fashion theory, semiotics, motion picture. ***** 1. Introduction Teaching students to effectively design fictional film characters to affect a target audience through the styling design of dress seem daunting at times. An objective assessment seemed unattainable. The construct and development of the CMS (Costume, Make-up & Styling) faculty had its genesis in the need for the creation a new discipline as outcome to the Bachelor of Arts, Honours and Master of Fine Arts degrees offered at AFDA. 1 South African film producers currently attempt to manage all communication aspects of character design because of insufficient CMS teaching and associated assessment of non-verbal character design in current film curriculums. People impression is randomly communicated and compounded by untrained and

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__________________________________________________________________ unskilled direction. Visual impressions on the audience are seldom communicated in a goal-directed and persuasive manner and methodology. This chapter investigates a new personality theory that amalgamate visual character design to be accessed by film, media and fashion fields through persuasive nonverbal communication, in the search for more objective assessment and effective teaching schemata. CMS propose a new field of study that assists responsible connotative design and direction of implicative visual people impressions that include character history, reveal status quo and suggest goal-orientated fulfilment through the effective acknowledgment of character needs and anxieties. 2. Genesis In constructing and developing a CMS degree outcome, a coherent and relevant existing methodology or criteria to direct teaching and assessment of character styling designs were not to be found. Contextualisation and motivation were lacking in a field where a multitude of possible reflections and portrayals of character are realised within high creativity and subjectivity. In the absence of specifically relevant benchmarking and assessment guidelines, one critical multilayered research issue became important: can an effective personality theory be developed synthetically through qualitative research (grounded theory) that assists in the teaching and assessments of visual character design? This research does not aim in providing all answers or solutions to beforementioned research question. In this limited time and space, research only relates to visual character design for motion pictures through the fashioning of dress. The study cannot focus on when or what exactly happened to us in our childhood but there are references to this aspect through the telling of each character’s visual narrative. What is theoretically explored is how humans do or do not make sense of it? By means of a literature review, psychological reasons why people profile characters were investigated for a point of departure. This research set out to analyse and evaluate, through implicative styling design of fictional character dress, the hidden potential in affectively communicating nonfictional anxiety to a film viewing audience. It has been found that schemata should be designed for the processing and measuring of conceptual relevance to a specific target market. This study endeavours to create a cognitive socio-psychological diagrammatic map for the affective programming of a nonfictional audience, through the styling design of fictional character dress. The first benchmarking step investigated basic psychoanalytic theory (diagram 1). Interviewing and observing CMS students and their work, it was found that current related psychological terminology such as the id, ego and superego became unclear and confusing when relating to both fictional and nonfictional characters simultaneously. A cognitive socio-psychological analysis of fictional motion

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__________________________________________________________________ picture characters’ styling design of dress reveals a unique constructed narrative that is very similar to that of nonfictional characters, but not the same.

Diagram 1: Overlapping id and superego anxieties amalgamate into NeuroticSocial ego anxiety. Nonfictional characters’ id, superego, ego, Self and Psyche is organically innate in its established development towards a dynamic goal-directed fulfilment. The need to overcome innate anxiety motivates humans towards often habitually unclear ideals. Fictional characters ‘id,’ ‘superego,’, ‘ego,’ ‘Self’ and ‘Psyche’ are by contrast inorganic and directed towards a specific target audience that is static in its clear goal-orientation. Anxiety therefore must be awakened in the audience through implication. The fictional character searches for an eventual clear solution. Through these findings it became evident that terminology for CMS must be adjusted to be helpful, correct and relevant (diagram 2). New differentiating terminology is proposed between human socio-psychology and that of the scripted, constructed, directed and projected fictional character. The Constructed Self is established, developed and fulfilled through direction towards an audience through the ‘birth’ of the Projected Psyche. This study proposes renaming the fictional character’s ‘ego’ to the Fego (fictional ego). Table 1: Differentiating nonfictional and fictional psychological terminology Nonfictional character

superego Self Psyche

Fictional character scripted id Fego scripted superego Constructed Self Projected Psyche

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__________________________________________________________________ Lynch and Strauss 2 note: Our entire visual presentation of self can be viewed as intrinsically erotic, with dress considered our ‘social skin’, or the public patina that exposes our sexuality and our inner self to the outside world. 3 The integral relationship of the psychology of self to fashion change begins with understanding the role of psychology of dress and appearance in the development of selfconsciousness along with the need for external recognition from others. The self is more than what appears on the surface. It is a slowly developed sense of who and what we are both externally and internally, with the process beginning in early childhood and continuing to develop throughout the life span. It is of interest to us in the fashion field because the clothes we wear are believed to be fundamentally integrated with our sense of self. As Bliss suggested 4 , one of the primary motives for wearing clothes is to address a “fundamental feeling of incompleteness ... [and] dissatisfaction with the self as it is”. Looking at nonfictional anxiety, diagram 1 illustrates a reductionist view of Freud’s basic structure of the self. The id represents basic biological needs and experiences neurotic anxiety. 5 The superego represents internalised standards of conditioned behaviour 6 and is experiencing realistic, 7 social 8 anxiety. The area where both id and superego overlap (ego) is seen as the moderator between the id’s needs and superego’s wishes of social acknowledgement. The ego experiences a fused-hybrid anxiety by both the id and superego in dealing with Neurotic-social anxiety. Research into Melanie Klein’s object-relationships confirmed the need for controlling anxiety through symbolic activity. 9 The ‘feeling of incompleteness’ is minimised through the management of self-impression 10 towards society. Fashion theory research focus on dress and its inherent constructed visual signifiers that humans habitually use to communicate within society through the styling design of dress. Signifiers in the form of objects are used to alter physical appearances. Research on persuasive nonverbal communication with particular interests to impression management highlighted dress ability to manage conflicting anxiety in a social setting through the creation of a persona, enabling them to control a desired impression of themselves to others within a specific social setting, focusing research on the ability of styled dress to effectively affect an audience through connoted and denoted impressions encoded within visual perception.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Perceiving Effective Affect The cognitive retrieval of stored impressions 11 as person memory 12 is one alternative by which meaning is ascribed to film characters perceived. In today’s technology and information driven society an increasing amount of diverse perceptive character stimuli is communicated. The human brain is overloaded by stimuli to identify, analyse, evaluate and categorise all these stimuli and images. 13 Information-overload in a time pressured era effects the process of ascribing meaning and associations to new visual stimuli. Rather than going through the appropriate process of cognition and discovery, the overloaded brain and memory system circumvent and bypass the traditional and usual processing of foreign people’s impression and exploration. Complicating the process of perception is asking an audience to ascribe meaning and establish a relationship with a new character concept without cognitive person memory recall, established or attached. The theory behind this chapter is that a certain amount and kind of anxiety needs to be projected towards the audience to retrieve affected, cognitiveconsolidated judgment 14 before a character relationship can be established. Through social sense exploration, 15 each character is decoded from sensed audience impressions. The world is infinity of possible sense impressions and we are able to perceive only a very small part of it. That part we can perceive is further filtered by our unique experiences, culture, language, beliefs, values, interests and assumptions. ... The world is so vast and rich that we have to simplify to give it meaning. 16 Verbal and nonverbal information gained from conscious and subconscious perceived behavior transforms information into categories of representational identities. 17 Socially perceived people impressions are sensed through a reduced process of fast-tracked translation and categorisation of semantic and episodic representations of identity and mapped with similar impressions. 18 Anxieties synonymous with socially perceived people impressions trigger the human brain to speed up the tempo at which it needs to assign meaning. Information is omitted and added effectively to affectively denote and connote meaning. This affected process becomes effective in CMS teaching and assessment in assigning specific relevant emotions to characters. 4. Styling Dress Anxiety People impressions suggest that the styling of fictional character dress should be motivated from a perceived ‘internal’ motivated source, similar to nonfictional characters. Uncovering the hidden communicative ability of perceived styling design of character dress to cognitively recall the signalling of suggestive anxiety, the author investigates the origin of nonfictional shame-based 19 anxiety through

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__________________________________________________________________ synthetic theoretical qualitative socio-psychological investigation. Birth is seen as the catalyst to existential anxiety and important towards knowing about how people are motivated through anxiety. Over time, the effective affect of birth and the socialisation of the developing child lead to the establishment and growth of feelings of shame 20 for the loss of the mother through separation and resulting yearning for the ideal associative consonant psychological state experienced during pregnancy. Humans develop by adapting to shame uniquely through biological, social and spiritual conditioning by culture and subculture. Through negative association and repetition of compulsion, our sensed impressions have consolidated as hopeless shame-based anxiety due to the judgment people pass of their True Self identity as bad, incompetent and not worthy of love. 21 The child attempts to solve problems and defend against the internal shamebased anxiety through the creation and control of a false impression (persona) that is inconsistent to the True Self in protecting and defending the organism through reaction formation, 22 by controlling an opposite impression towards society. 23 Taking the opposite believe to what is unconsciously wished for or worried about would effectively reduce anxiety affectively. Where reaction formation occurs, it is usually assumed that the rejected impulse does not vanish but persists in its infantile form and is continually managed through impression management. In a quest for fictional styling to become more relevant, it has been found that dress should mimic the nonfictional audience in behaviour and motivation. 5. Fego DNA Schema This study proposes a diagram of Schematic Fego DNA (diagram 3). Each overlapping circle represents specific nonfictional shame-based anxiety to an audience and is referred to as a Schema. The red circle is called the Human Schema (abbreviated with an N) and represents biological needs with resulting neurotic anxiety. The yellow circle is called the Real Schema (abbreviated with an A) and represents the social wishes of acknowledgment with resulting social anxiety. 24 The blue circle is called the Ideal Schema (abbreviated with a D) that represents the spiritual drive with resulting existential anxiety. 25

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Diagram 2: Michael Ivy’s Diagram of Schematic Fego DNA. When Schemas overlap, three fused anxieties (Neurotic-Social, Social-Existential and Existential-Neurotic Anxiety) amalgamate into a Fego formation that represent nonfictional ego anxiety through an array of visual signifiers indicating nonfictional person memory. Each fictional character adapts visually into manifestations of a coherent hierarchal (diagram 4) personal shame-based narrative of emotional and intellectual integration. Dress Cognology is proposed as new terminology that connotes the study of various DNA groupings through the styling design of character dress. Through the Fego DNA Schemas, projected audience anxiety is encoded within the protagonist ensuring that the narrative becomes their own personal narrative, when perceived becomes a powerful act in the discovering and healing of each audience member’s anxieties. Through this act the designer of character fashions an effective programme to equip the cumulative audience brain to perform several tasks at once, including the merging of feelings, behaviour, conscious awareness and sensation. The styling design of protagonist dress indicates establishment, reveals progression and/or regression and signals a desired state of fulfilment evident within the Fego (refer to the white space evident in diagram 4).

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Diagram 3: Hierarchy of Schematic Fego DNA. 6. Conclusion Fego DNA Schemas has been tested on CMS students at AFDA during teaching and resulting evaluation of subject assignments and products. 26 Fego DNA Schemas assist designers in the effective fashioning of affective dress through the exploration of specific audience relevant socio-psychological issues. It was found that the model can effectively be applied to constructively guide students in an objective linear manner to design more three dimensional characters that affect the audience. Watching encoded screen characters becomes a healing process as they effectively guide audiences in reframing their life events, behaviours and emotions to a more insightful and healthier consonant affected psychological state. The biggest contribution comes from the fact that it supplies the teacher and study leader with an objective means to evaluate subjective and emotional content. The Fego DNA Schemas have empowered students as designers and as potential filmmakers.

Notes 1

Also known as: The South African School of Motion Picture, Media and Live Performance. 2 A. Lynch and M. D. Strauss, Changing Fashion: A Critical Introduction to Trend Analysis and Meaning, Berg, Oxford 2007, p. 13. 3 T. S. Turner, ‘The Social Skin’, in Not Work Alone: A Cross Cultural View of Activities Superfluous to Survival, J. Cherfas and R. Lewin (eds), Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, 1980, pp. 112-140.

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S. Bliss, ‘The Significance of Clothes’, American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1968, p. 221. 5 Neurotic anxieties refer to the fear of the human organism being overwhelmed by the urgent impulses of basic biological need from the id. 6 The internalised societal standards of conditioned, repetitive and consolidated behaviour. 7 Refers to anxiety caused by exposure to the real external social world. For further reading refer to: H. Leitenburg, Handbook of Social and Evaluation Anxiety, Plenum Publishing, New York, 1990 and M. Leary, ‘Social Anxiety as an Early Warning System: A Refinement and Extension of the Self-Presentation Theory of Social Anxiety’, in From Social Anxiety to Social Phobic: Multiple Perspectives, S. G. Hofmann and P. M. Di Bartolo (eds), Allyn & Bacon, Boston, 2001. 8 Social anxieties refer to the irrational fear of being socially rejected for your shame and focuses on being. For further reading on Existential Anxiety: P. Tillich, The Courage to Be, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1952. 9 Melanie Klein refers to the ‘feeling of incompleteness’ as the internal voids. For further reading, refer to: R. Hinshelwood, S. Robinson, O. Zarate, Introducing Melanie Klein, Icon Books Ltd., Cambridge, UK, 2006, pp. 72-74. 10 B. R. Schlenker, Impression Management: The Self-Concept, Social Identity, and Interpersonal Relations, Brooks/Cole Publishing, Monterey, CA, 1980. 11 Cognition is defined as all the processes by which perceived sensory information is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, retrieved and used, as discussed in the book of U. Neisser, Cognitive Psychology, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1965. 12 R. Hastie, T. M. Ostrom, E. B. Ebbesen, R. S. Wyer, D. L. Hamilton, D. E. Carlston (eds), Person Memory: The Cognitive Basis of Social Perception, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1980. 13 The human eye can only focus on one impression at the same time, putting the brain under pressure to remember all perceived people impressions (D. Hall, The Human Body, Grange Books, Rochester, UK, 2005, p. 60). 14 F. Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, John Wiley, New York, 1958. 15 R. S. Wyer and T. K. Srull, ‘Category Accessibility: Some Theoretical and Empirical Issues Concerning the Processing of Social Stimulus Information’, in Social Cognition: The Ontario Symposium, Vol. 1, E. T. Higgins, C. P. Herman, M. P. Zanna (eds), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1981. 16 J. O’Connor and J. Seymour, Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People, Harper Collins, New York, 2002, p. 4. 17 Schlenker, op. cit. 18 Wyer and Srull, op. cit.

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C. L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 2006, pp. 43-47. 20 Shame is experienced by the young child for being wrong, incomplete, defective or bad. Refer to: Ibid., p. 44. 21 D. Stone, B. Patton, S. Heen, Difficult Conversations, Penguin Books, New York, Toronto, London, 2000, p. 8. 22 A. Freud, Ego and Mechanisms of Defense, Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, London, 1936. 23 Referring to Jung’s principle of opposites driving the psyche. R. Snowden, Teach Yourself Jung, Hodder Education, Oxon, UK, 2006, pp. 59-60 and p. 65. 24 Social anxiety in context to the Fego DNA Schemas represent real and moral social anxieties that stem from social origins. 25 Tillich, op. cit. 26 The Fego DNA Schemas have been tested from January 2005 to 2010 on CMS students in Cape Town. It has not been taught at AFDA campus in Johannesburg. A direct comparison has been made and subsequently found it contributed to more effective affecting Cape Town film products.

Bibliography Baker, S M., Gleicher, F., Petty, R E. (eds), Emotion & Social Judgments. Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991. Bliss, S., ‘The Significance of Clothes’. American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 10. no. 2, 1968, pp. 217-226. Burgoon, J. K., Buller, D. B., Woodall, W. G., Nonverbal Communication: The Unspoken Dialogue, 2nd Edition. The Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1996. Creswell, J., Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1988. De Charms, R., Personal Causation. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1983. Eicher, J. B. and Roach Higgens, S. E., ‘Definitions and Classifications of Dress’, in Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning. R. Barnes and J. B. Eicher (eds), Berg, Oxford, 1992. Forgas, J. P. (ed), Emotion & Social Judgments. Pergamon Press, Oxfrod, 1991.

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__________________________________________________________________ Freud, A., Ego and Mechanisms of Defense. Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho Analysis, London, 1936. Freud, S., The Ego and the Id, XIX, 2nd Edition. Hogarth Press, London, 1955. Glaser, B. and Strauss, A., The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine, Chicago, 1967. Hall, D., The Human Body. Grange Books, Rochester, UK, 2005. Heider, F., The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. John Wiley, New York, 1958. Higgins, E. T., Herman, C. P., Zanna, M. P. (eds), Social Cognition: The Ontario Symposium, Vol. 1, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1981. Hinshelwood, R., Robinson, S., Zarate, O., Introducing Melanie Klein. Icon Books Ltd., Cambridge, UK, 2006. Leary, M., ‘Social Anxiety as an Early Warning System: A Refinement and Extension of the Self-Presentation Theory of Social Anxiety’, in From Social Anxiety to Social Phobic: Multiple Perspectives. S. G. Hofmann and P. M. Di Bartolo (eds), Allyn & Bacon, Boston, 2001. Leitenburg, H., Handbook of Social and Evaluation Anxiety. Plenum Publishing, New York, 1990. Lynch, A. and Strauss, M. D., Changing Fashion: A Critical Introduction to Trend Analysis and Meaning. Berg, Oxford, 2007. Neisser, U., Cognitive Psychology. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1965. O’Connor, J. and Seymour, J., Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People. Harper Collins, New York, 2002. Schlenker, B. R., Impression Management: The Self-Concept, Social Identity, and Interpersonal Relations. Brooks/Cole Publishing, Monterey, CA, 1980. Snowden, R., Teach Yourself Jung. Hodder Education, Oxon, UK, 2006.

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__________________________________________________________________ Strauss, A. L., and Corbin, J., Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1990. Stone, D., Patton, B., Heen, S., Difficult Conversations. Penguin Books, New York, Toronto, London, 2000. Swarz, N. and Clore, G. L., ‘How do I Feel about It? The Informative Function of Affective States’, in Affect, Cognition, and Social Behavior. K. Fiedler and J. P. Forgas (eds), Hogrefe, Toronto, 1988. Tedeschi, J. T. and Melburg, V., ‘Impression Management and Influence in the Organization’, in Research in the Sociology of Organizations: A Research Annual. Volume 3: The Social Psychological Processes. S. B. Bacharach and E. J. Lawler (eds), JAL, Greenwich, CT, 1984, pp. 31-58. Tillich, P., The Courage to Be. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1952. Turner, T. S., ‘The Social Skin’, in Not Work Alone: A Cross Cultural View of Activities Superfluous to Survival. J. Cherfas and R. Lewin (eds), Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, 1980, pp. 112-140. Whitfield, C. L., Healing the Child Within. Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 2006. Michael Ivy (Michiel Germishuys) is a Lecturer at the South African School of Motion Picture, Media and Live Performance in Cape Town. He is currently teaching and developing a CMS curriculum for BA, BA Honours and MFA students.

Street-Style: Fashion Photography, Weblogs and the Urban Image Jess Berry Abstract From Norman Parkinson’s photographs of formal high fashion on the footpaths of London to David Bailey’s snap-shots of casual chic contrasted with the chaotic Manhattan sidewalk, the street has been the predominant backdrop for fashion photography in magazines and advertising. Increasingly fashion photography of the street can be said to offer an immediacy and realism that is contrasted with the fantasies and dreams of studio based fashion images. Photographs of street-style are increasingly prevalent in contemporary culture, where weblogs such as the Sartorialist and Facehunter offer fashion enthusiasts a chance to comment on what people are wearing from Sao-Paolo to Shanghai. Street style blogs not only act as a form of social documentary, they encourage a dialogue that reinforces fashion of the street as a democratic arena, where the general public, rather than models, celebrities or designers, can be at the forefront of fashion-making. This chapter will argue that street-style blogs have absorbed the visual language of straight-up photography. This format is borrowed from the pages of magazines such as i-D and in effect provides a homogenous urban background to contemporary fashion. The city that is represented is largely conflatable across geographic regions, where the images of one blog appear to differ little from another in terms of how the location is treated. While the individual style that is represented in these blogs might suggest a rebellion against global conformity, the similarities across cultures are also worth noting. As such, this chapter will argue that the model of an elite centre for fashion, in Paris, London, New York or Milan is tempered by the homogenous all-encompassing city of the Internet. The street becomes a site of uniformity constructed by the particular mode of photography that has emerged in these blogs and to some degree this may represent a further democratisation of fashion within contemporary culture. Key Words: Fashion cities, photography, street-style, blogs. ***** Fashion and the city are inextricably linked where fashion is an intrinsic part of the performance of urban life and the city itself has played an important part in the mythologising of fashion. Key fashion capitals, Paris, London, New York, Milan and Tokyo have been constituted as style centres through visual representation in magazines, advertising and film and as such hold a powerful position in the collective imagination as to the geographical locations of fashion. While traditional forms of fashion media have been central to this construction it can be extrapolated

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__________________________________________________________________ that the representation of particular cities in street-style fashion blogs contributes to this discourse. This chapter will argue that where street-style blogs differ in their representation of fashion is in their conflation of fashion cities. Where locations not immediately associated with fashionability are visually rendered in the same way as the traditional fashion centres of style. The street has become a site of uniformity constructed by the particular mode of straight-up photography that has emerged in these blogs. It will be argued that this may represent a further democratisation of fashion within contemporary culture where the fashion capital has been decentralised within global fashion networks. 1. Web 2.0 and the Decentralisation of Fashion Cities The concept of a fashion city suggests an international metropolis at the forefront of style. Parisian couture and its stylistic influence have long established the French capital as the world’s fashion capital and London, New York, Milan and Tokyo have been similarly positioned. Christopher Breward, David Gilbert and others have established how global fashion capitals have been both materially and symbolically constructed through a complex dynamic of economic factors, production systems and local specialist networks. Gilbert draws on John Friedmann’s ‘world city hypothesis’ to discuss why some cities are ‘identified as central cites of global significance in fashion culture’ 1 and highlights how the major fashion cities have been historically established, by the economic and symbolic systems of European imperialism, by the development of rivalries between European fashion cities, by the growing influence of an American engagement with European fashion, and finally by the emergence of a distinctively modern fashion media system. 2 Here Gilbert is referring to the traditional fashion press, however the impact of new technologies on these forms of fashion media is worth noting and appear to be altering the landscape of the fashion city as we generally conceive it. While the traditional fashion cities have remained dominant locations within global fashion discourse emergent fashion cities such as Shanghai, Moscow and Jaipur threaten to destabilise the status of the elite fashion capitals. This trend indicates a decentralisation and democratisation of fashion across global networks that can also be witnessed in the production and consumption of fashion through global Internet networks. According to sociologist Manuel Castells, the Internet has fundamentally changed the spatial form of the city to include the network society of cyberspace. 3 As Mike Featherstone explains, the data city is ‘as an architectural and human interactional frame in its own right’ 4 he goes on to state that ‘with the electronic

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__________________________________________________________________ media of a networked world, instantaneous connections are possible which render physical spatial differences irrelevant.’ 5 Michael Ogden has a similarly optimistic view of the data city as ‘multidimensional, limitless, everywhere and nowhere’ available to everyone. 6 Featherstone and Ogden’s sentiments highlight the democratic possibilities of the Internet as a result of the geographical expansion of the global city to include this network society. These technological and sociological developments have resulted in significant consequences for the fashion system and while their impact is yet to be quantified, it is clear that the increased interactivity, file sharing and social networking characteristics of Web 2.0 7 have contributed to the globalisation of fashion production and consumption in the twenty-first century. As fashion theorist Jennifer Craik contends, new media technology has made fashion increasingly available to a wide spectrum of people around the globe where the Internet’s interactive opportunities have allowed users to engage with the fashion system through on-line shopping, digital fashion gaming, the streaming of runway shows and discussion on social networking sites. 8 It would seem that weblogs or blogs are of particular significance in the decentralisation and democratisation of fashion in the twenty-first century. Blogs are frequently updated personal journals made available on the Internet. Fashion blogs cover a diverse range of topics including runway trends, celebrity lifestyles and shopping advice. They offer access to fashion around the world and have become a major influence on the fashion industry. 9 Street-style fashion blogs such as the Sartorialist and Facehunter offer fashion mavens a chance to comment on what people are wearing from San Francisco to Stockholm. As Yvan Rodic suggests of his blog, Facehunter, ‘the internet has ended the monopoly on information by the elite’ where ‘a teenager in a small town in Serbia can be well informed’ and street style fashion blogs offer a system where ‘there is no-more top-tier and bottom rung, no more high-fashion vs. high street.’ 10 Street-style blogs encourage a global dialogue that reinforces fashion of the street as a democratic arena, where the general public, rather than models, celebrities or designers, can be at the forefront of fashion making. In their photographic coverage of emerging fashion cities, street-style blogs have also contributed to an extension of the democratisation of fashion through the decentralisation of elite capitals of style. 2. Fashion Photography and the Urban Image Fashion cities have been sanctified through their representation in films and the fashion media. The conceptualisation of dominant fashion centres extends beyond the economic consumption of clothes where clichés such as ‘Parisienne chic’ or ‘swinging London’ hold cultural cache. The recent representation of New York as a fashion capital in the television show and movie Sex and the City is an example of the discourse of style that has grown around particular fashion capitals. Gilbert,

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__________________________________________________________________ argues that photography can be seen to play a central role in the characterisation of fashion cities, stating that, The imagined cities of fashion press rhetoric become visualised as the city is presented as a fashion object by photography. Fashion photography has had a close relationship with the representations of cities on postcards and tourist guides. In both cases there is value in those symbols that are unambiguous identifiers of a particular city. 11 This observation is particularly true of fashion photography from the 1940s onwards when the street began to provide a predominant backdrop for the dynamic action of the model. Norman Parkinson’s photographs for Vogue during the 1940s 12 and 1950s are a good example of Gilbert’s characterisation of the city where iconic skylines and monuments are glamorous backdrops to fashion narratives. By the 1960s the idealistic postcard images of fashion in the city had given way to a more urban aesthetic where the gritty streetscapes captured by photographers, such as David Bailey, demonstrated the increasing influence of youth subcultures and high-street styles on fashion at this time. Fashion photography of the street appropriates the dynamism of the city to suggest an immediacy and realism that is contrasted with the fantasies and dreams of many studio-based images. That is not to say that fashion photography of the street does not present a desirable image of glamour, only that this image is a more readily available experience of fashion in everyday contexts. While Olivier Zahm argues that fashion photography is considered ‘instinctively suspect of superficiality, inauthenticity and gratuitousness’ 13 it would seem that fashion photography that engages with the realism of the street is less likely to be characterised in this way. In engaging with this realist style, Elliott Smedley argues that, fashion photography has ‘stripped bare the fantasies and the superficial ideals that the fashion industry had formerly felt compelled to portray and disseminate.’ 14 In this way the realist image of street-style photography might be understood to express the democracy of fashion, where everyday people in the urban environment challenge the rarefied vision of the designer or stylist. The influence of street-style photography on this discourse of democratisation is worthy of consideration. Street-style fashion blogs such as The Sartorialist and Facehunter have absorbed the visual language of straight-up photography, characterised by a full-length immediate portrait in street situ. Precursors to the images of street style fashion blogs can be found in the Strictly 15 series of photographs styled by Simon Foxton and photographed by Jason Evans in 1991 for i-D magazine and Shoichi Aoki’s documentation of sub-culture fashion in the Harajuku district of Tokyo for FRUiTS magazine begun in 1997. 16 It is clear that where images of street-style fashion differ from other photographic representations

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__________________________________________________________________ of fashion and the city is the absence of iconic symbols of location. In both Evan’s and Aoki’s photographs there is little to indicate a specific urban environment. Whether it is redbrick architecture of suburban London in the case of Evan’s images or the concrete high-rises that are the backdrop to Aoki’s photographs in Tokyo, in both instances the interpretation of particular location is reliant on the clothing worn by the subject. The English country gentry’s attire depicted in Strictly or the distinctive sub-culture style of Harajuku illustrated in FRUiTS are the only signs available as to the fashion city context and even these are unreliable indicators of specific location given the global nature of style. I argue that this is in direct contrast to the markers of place that Gilbert identifies as accessorising the city in fashion photography, such as, ‘red buses, pillar boxes and black cabs or water hydrants, steam vents and yellow taxis.’ 17 Instead, the city as backdrop in Evans and Aoki’s straight-up street style photography suggests a generalised metropolis rather than a distinctive geographic location. Furthermore, in the case of the street-style photography represented on fashion blogs the absence of iconic indicators of particular fashion cities suggests a homogenous urban background to contemporary fashion whether the centre of style represented is Milan or Moscow. The conflated fashion city represented in street-style blogs may in fact be an effect of the Internet’s role in the expansion of the geography of fashionability. 3. Street Style Fashion Blogs In surveying the images from a range of fashion blogs, including the Sartorialist, Facehunter, Stylites, hel-looks, lookatme and Streetaholic Shanghai a number of similarities can be found. Perhaps the most significant connection between these blogs, that cover both traditional fashion capitals and emerging fashion cities, is that a diverse array of people are represented, spanning different socio-economic groups, ages and nationalities. One of the shared underlying strategies of these blogs is to demonstrate how fashion is expressed in the city street rather than the catwalk and as such they portray fashion as increasingly democratic and accessible to people around the world. Though of course there is still an element of exclusion when not all countries, cities and people have access to the Internet so are not able to engage with this global fashion community. Street-style fashion blogs illustrate the complicated and contradictory nature of fashion trends within globalised networks. Mass produced fashion appears ubiquitous across cultures however there are also considerable differences in styles worn by people within the same city. As Craik argues, there is a ‘tension between global zeitgeist and its propulsion of local cultures to differentiate themselves through distinctive fashion statements and local variants.’ 18 As Peter Jackson, Nicola Thomas and Claire Dwyer suggest that the process of globalisation is subject to distinct local variations. They argue that instead of homogeneity, globalisation has created fashion hybridity and challenges,

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__________________________________________________________________ the essentialist view that sees cultural authenticity as the innate property of a particular group or product…instead that the meaning of goods is contingent on how those goods are appropriated within specific contexts of use. 19 This view appears particularly useful in interpreting the styles represented in fashion blogs. For the creator of the Facehunter blog, Yvan Rodic, ‘globalisation is a myth’ and instead what is represented on his blog is what he calls the ‘New Creole Culture’ where his subjects ‘share a lust for the customisation of their identities with fragments of culture from different parts of the world.’ 20 An example of this style can be seen in Rodic’s May 2010 post New York - james, Crosby street, 5/10/10. 21 Here the young man combines different aspects of religious dress, current urban trends and sub-cultural style by wearing a military jacket, pedal pushers, Doc Martin boots and a Sikh patka turban. It is an ensemble that demonstrates that individual style can be established through customisation and local uses of fashion. Globalised fashion appears in this context to be a complex mix of global and local influences, along with traditional and modern elements. While the individual style that is represented in these blogs might suggest a rebellion against global conformity, similarities across cultures are also worth noting, and are emphasised by the city acting as a unifying and uniform backdrop to these hybrid styles. I propose that the Internet erodes the potency of fashion capitals as geographic centres of style by offering a city that is everywhere and nowhere. The de-centralisation of the traditional fashion city is further compounded by the visual consistency of location constructed through street-style blog photography that similarly renders the city as homogenous and without distinction. Overwhelmingly these images are notable for their lack of distinguishing landmarks. There are few visual cues represented to suggest a particular geographical location, instead they share a visual language of urban space that provides limited cultural context for the fashions portrayed. Furthermore, these disparate urban spaces are not only treated in the same way in any one blog, which would suggest the stylistic agenda of an individual photographer, but rather share a similar aesthetic across blogs. For example, the Sartorialist Scott Schuman’s images in Paris 22 are comparable to those of Nels Frye for Stylites’ photographs in Beijing. 23 The recurring vistas of brick walls, concrete pavements and urban streetscapes that we see on so many of these sites provide a background closer to the imagery of social documentary photography than to traditional fashion formats or tourist postcards. Straight-up photography provides a neutral background to observe and demarcate the diversity of street-style fashion trends however, in doing so it relies on a homogenous image of the city constructed through the uniformity of the photographic format. It seems contradictory for street-style blogs with their claims

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__________________________________________________________________ to immediacy, individuality and limitlessness to depict the city in such a consistent way as to engender a cultural sameness. While the agenda of these blogs appears to be the celebration of the multifarious and unique nature of global style this is in contradistinction to the manufacturing of fashionability achieved through the way that photography is used to render fashion capitals and non-fashion cities identical. 4. Conclusions This chapter has argued that Street-style blogs demonstrate how the global influences of fashion have been localised and individualised within particular geographic locations. While particular styles of fashion might be represented as unique by street-style blogs the converse is true of their representation of fashion cities, where traditional fashion capitals are visually represented in the same way as emergent fashion cities. The mythology of elite fashion capitals associated with their photographic representation has been tempered by the uniform representation of the city in street-style blogs. The realism that street-style blogs engage with can be seen to ‘re-socialise’ fashion outside the fantasy narratives provided by consumer capitalism and this decentralisation of fashion might be seen as an extension of fashion’s democracy in contemporary culture. Street-style blogs have established a photographic convention that renders the city as the everywhere and nowhere backdrop to fashion resulting in a manufacturing of style that is devoid of the narrative and individuality symbolic of the traditional fashion city.

Notes 1

D. Gilbert, ‘From Paris to Shanghai: the Changing Geographies of Fashion’s World Cities’, in Fashion’s World Cities, C. Breward and D. Gilbert (eds), Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 6. 2 Ibid., p.19. 3 M. Castells, ‘Local and Global: Cities in the Network Society’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol. 93, No. 5, 2000, p. 548. 4 M. Featherstone, ‘The Flâneur, the City and Virtual Public Life’, Urban Studies, Vol. 35, Nos. 5-6, 1998, p. 910. 5 Ibid., p. 921. 6 M. Ogden, cited in Making the Digital City: the Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space, A. Aurigi, Ashgate, London, 2005, p. 19. 7 S. Lindgren, ‘From Flâneur to Web Surfer: Videoblogging, Photosharing and Walter Benjamin @ the Web 2.0’, Transformations, No. 15, November 2007, viewed on 25th May 2010, . 8 J. Craik, Fashion: The Key Concepts, Berg, Oxford, 2009, p. 270.

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E. Wilson, ‘Bloggers Crash Fashion’s Front Row’, The New York December 2009, viewed on 18th May 2010, Times, 24th . 10 Y. Rodic, Facehunter, Thames & Hudson, London, 2010, p. 7. 11 D. Gilbert, ‘Urban Outfitting: The City and the Spaces of Fashion Culture’, in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, S. Bruzzi and O. Gibson (eds), Routlegde, London, 2000, p. 21. 12 N. Parkinson, ‘Wenda Rogerson and B. Goalen, Vogue’, Norman October 2010, Parkinson Archive, 1949, viewed on 4th . 13 O. Zham, ‘On the Marked Change in Fashion Photography’, in Chic Clicks, U. Lehmann (ed), Hatje Cantz and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2000, p. 29. 14 E. Smedley, ‘Escaping to Reality: Fashion Photography in the 1990s’ in S. Bruzzi and O. Gibson (eds), Routlegde, London, 2000, p. 148. 15 J. Evans and S. Foxton, ‘Strictly’, Tate Online, 1991, viewed on 4th October 2010, . 16 S. Aoki, ‘Fruits’, FRUiTS: Tokyo Street Style - Photographs by October 2010, Shoichi Aoki, 1997-2002, viewed on 4th . 17 Gilbert, ‘Urban Outfitting’, p. 21. 18 Craik, p. 301. 19 P. Jackson, N. Thomas, C. Dwyer, ‘Consuming Transnational Fashion in London and Mumbai’, Geoform, Vol. 38, 2007, p. 918. 20 Rodic, Facehunter, p. 7. 21 Y. Rodic ‘New York - james, Crosby street, 5/10/10’, May, 2010, viewed on 29th May 2010, . 22 S. Schuman, ‘On the Street... The Hat That Makes the Suit, Paris’, 30th June 2010, viewed on 5th July 2010, . 23 N. Frye, ‘Smokers at Versace’, 3rd April 2010, viewed on 5th July 2010, .

Bibliography Aoki, S., ‘Fruits’, FRUiTS: Tokyo Street style - Photographs by Shoichi Aoki, 1997-2002. Viewed on 4th October 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ Aurigi, A., Making the Digital City: The Early Shaping of Urban Internet Space. Ashgate, London, 2005. Berry, S., ‘Fashion and Personalisation on the Web’, in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. S. Bruzzi and O. Gibson (eds), Routledge, London, 2000. Breward, C. and Gilbert, D. (eds), Fashion’s World Cities. Berg, Oxford, 2006. Borrelli, L., Net Mode: Web Fashion Now. Thames and Hudson, New York, 2002. Castells, M., ‘Local and Global: Cities in the Network Society’. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol. 93, No. 5, 2000, pp. 548-558. Craik, J., Fashion: The Key Concepts. Berg, Oxford, 2009, p. 270. Evans, J. and Foxton, S., ‘Strictly’. Tate Online, 1991, viewed on 4th October 2010, . Featherstone, M., ‘The Flâneur, the City and Virtual Public Life’. Urban Studies, Vol. 35, Nos. 5-6, 1998, pp. 909-925. Gilbert, D., ‘Urban Outfitting: The City and the Spaces of Fashion Culture’, in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. S. Bruzzi and O. Gibson (eds), Routledge, London, 2000. —––, ‘From Paris to Shanghai: The Changing Geographies of Fashion’s World Cities’, in Fashion’s World Cities. C. Breward and D. Gibert (eds), Berg, Oxford, 2006. Frye, N., ‘Smokers at Versace’. 3rd April 2010, viewed on 5th .

July 2010,

Jackson, P., Thomas, N., Dwyer, C., ‘Consuming Transnational Fashion in London and Mumbai’. Geoform, Vol. 38, 2007, p. 908-924. Kothari, U. and Laurie, N., ‘Different Bodies, Same Clothes: An Agenda for Local Consumption and Global Identities’. Area, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2005, pp. 223-227.

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__________________________________________________________________ Lindgren, S., ‘From Flâneur to Web Surfer: Videoblogging, Photosharing and Walter Benjamin @ the Web 2.0’, Transformations, No. 15, November 2007, viewed on 25th May 2010, . Parkinson, N., ‘Wenda Rogerson and B. Goalen, Vogue’. Norman Parkinson Archive, 1949, viewed on 4th October 2010, . Rodic, Y., Facehunter. Thames & Hudson, London, 2010. —––, ‘New York - james, Crosby street, 5/10/10’. May, 2010, viewed on 29th May 2010, . Schuman, S., ‘On the Street....The Hat That Makes the Suit, Paris’. 30th June 2010, viewed on 5th July 2010, . Smedley, E., ‘Escaping to Reality: Fashion Photography in the 1990s’, in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. S. Bruzzi and O. Gibson (eds), Routledge, London, 2000, p. 148. Wilson, E., ‘Bloggers Crash Fashion’s Front Row’. The New York Times, 24th December 2009, viewed on 18th May 2010,

Zham, O., ‘On the Marked Change in Fashion Photography’, in Chic Clicks. U. Lehmann (ed), Hatje Cantz and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2000. Jess Berry is Lecturer in Art and Design History and Theory, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia.

On the Style Site: Face Hunter as Node and Prism Charlotte Bik Bandlien Abstract The chapter 1 has its point of departure in the cand.polit. thesis Producing Scarcity - An Investigation of the Retro Market (2004), an analysis of one of the dominant trends during the past twenty years. More specifically, the study concerned the construction of transnational symbolic value attached to material culture by aesthetically influential social groups - applying a theoretical approach based on anthropological consumption theory. The thesis invites further investigation of social production of scarcity via ‘style communities,’ where exclusive style (in the sense ‘for the few’) functions as identification - however constantly in flux related to its ability of reflecting social groups due to fashion mechanisms run riot. One possibility to pursue this is by looking at street fashion blogs like Face Hunter (http://facehunter.blogspot.com/) with a slightly ‘alternative’ image. Such blogs contribute to the construction of transnational (imagined?) communities via mediated photographic representations of social groups with symbolic power and their ‘personal style.’ In particular, they show photographs of people and how they are dressed; mainly outside in the street, often in connection to openings and events. The blogs are continuously updated, and linked together around the world. The study of (mediated) style further incorporates an active role of appropriating and interpreting culture (parallel to Bourriaud’s (1998/2002) term ‘semionauts’), and touches upon distinctive strategies as well as relations between counter culture (as imagined) and the commercial sphere. The paper modestly pursues the ambition of Douglas (1996) in claiming the anthropologists’ right to study style without accusations of reductionism. Key Words: Style, symbolic power, fashion mechanisms, blogs, material culture. ***** An early draft of this chapter was presented at a conference held in May 2008 by the Norwegian Anthropological Association called ‘Perceptions of Communities,’ in the group session ‘Reflexive field practices and imagined communities - Examples from visual anthropology, art and material culture,’ then reworked and presented again at the conference ‘Images in Time: Flashing forward, backward, in front and behind photography in fashion, advertising and the press’ in Reykjavik in November 2009, as part of the activities within the ‘Wardrobe network’ 2 organised by Copenhagen Business School. This version thus represents a third take or angle on the same empirical material. With anthropological consumption theory as the foundation, a renewed interest in phenomenology (as most researchers interested in visual and material culture

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__________________________________________________________________ these days), and modest enthusiasm regarding mere semiotic directions, I gradually gained interest in theory on contemporary art - and certain challenging aspects started to come together when I discovered art historian Ina Blom’s book On the Style Site published three years ago: While the terminology of style has all but disappeared from recent art critical and art historical discourse, artistic practice in the last decades has increasingly focused on the stylistics of the social environment … Blom argues that this development calls for a new reading of the relationship between art and the “question of style”, one that approaches style not just as an art historical tool or method of explanation but as a social site in which the relations between appearance and social identity are negotiated ... the negotiations of the contemporary style site are related to the significance of style in an information economy increasingly set on capturing the forces of life itself. 3 I was initially theoretically inspired by the seminar ‘Art/Anthropology practices of difference and translation’ held at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo in November 2007 - an attempt to identify links between contemporary art and anthropology. I would like to take the opportunity to present one of my favourite quotations, by Mary Douglas in the book Thought Styles, on why approaching the field of aesthetics as an anthropologist is not necessarily an altogether comfortable task: ‘They (art historians) find us embarrassing, we, the anthropologists. They suspect that our crude imputations of motive do violence to the aesthetic issues.’ 4 Well, yes and no. The analytical separation of aesthetic and symbolic value challenges both, as the integration of the two is what makes taste effective as social distinction. This chapter has its point of departure in the cand.polit. thesis Producing Scarcity - An Investigation of the Retro Market (2004), an analysis of one of the dominant trends during the past twenty years - retro. More specifically, the study concerns the social construction of transnational symbolic value attached to material culture by aesthetically influential social groups - applying a theoretical approach based on anthropological consumption theory (in particular Miller, Appadurai, Bourdieu and Douglas and Isherwood). What interested me within this rather vast phenomenon (the term has come to be associated with quite opposite and conflicting things), was the search for authenticity - a social constructed value, and my study was done within the market in 20th century original designer furniture - and involved customers, dealers and stylists from magazines such as Wallpaper* - all active parties in constructing a symbolic value - separate from the so-called objective valuation inherent in design history - the verbalised cause of interest.

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__________________________________________________________________ Analytically I applied Appadurai’s term ‘tournaments of value’ 5 to shed light upon the exchange and relationship between images of material objects, the objects themselves, and people - however, it was indeed a challenge to operationalise the huge amount of contexts affecting the symbolic value - and, held together, they form a more complete or informed platform for understanding how these material objects were perceived, interpreted and eventually devaluated as symbols of social groups. Another challenge was operationalising the transnational aspects, and last but not least, capturing a field in flux (‘cool is a shark’ - if it stands still, it dies). The thesis invites further investigation of social production of scarcity via ‘style communities,’ where exclusive style (in the sense ‘for the few’) functions as identification - however constantly in flux related to its ability of reflecting social groups due to fashion mechanisms run riot - and the fashion blog Face Hunter 6 may prove to serve as both a node and a prism into this ephemeral sphere. The term ‘style site’ is defined by Blom as follows: The key issue here is how style is associated with the notion of appearance and how appearance in turn relates to processes of recognition and identification. The question of style then has to be thought in relation to the forms of social identity that arise from processes of recognition. It is this relation - the interaction between appearance, recognition, and social identity - that should be understood as a site. 7 I suggest treating Face Hunter as such a style site, or to put it in other words; treating a style site as an anthropological field. Street fashion blogs like Face Hunter contribute to the construction of transnational (imagined?) communities through mediated photographic representations of social groups with symbolic power and their so-called ‘personal style.’ In particular, they show photographs of people and how they are dressed; mainly outside in the street, often in connection to openings and events. The blogs are continuously updated, and linked together around the world. It is indeed a challenge to abstract a proper term for this group of aesthetically influential people portrayed. On an emic level, or what people tend to say themselves, the term ‘alternative’ is frequently used, opposed to a perceived ‘mainstream.’ Empirically it could be described as people in so-called creative or intellectual occupations, and on an etic or analytical level, Bourdieu’s terms ‘cultural capital’ and ‘symbolic power’ is obviously useful. Culture historian Frank Mort’sterm ‘taste communities’ from his Cultures of Consumption from 1996 8 is a mere descriptive solution I find somewhat lazy; however, swopping taste with style, I have come to find the term ‘style communities’ quite practical. In the section ‘retro in a broader style context’ in Producing Scarcity, the customers’ style is treated in terms of how it was subject to critical judgement

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__________________________________________________________________ related to whether or not they were perceived ‘appropriate’ customers or not, that is, style was seen as an indication of their perspective, of their motivation, their knowledge, their references - all relevant factors as the retro pieces were sought kept or protected from ‘outsiders.’ This seemingly superficial judgement of style may be seen as somewhat more substantial, referring to a stylised presentation of self as a causal consequence of cultural capital - and thus not so freely chosen as it is often presented. After several years in ‘the symbolic power department,’ where ‘there is no such thing as innocent taste,’ I have been searching for an approach that synthesises the sociological perspective with a more phenomenological approach. What I seek to grasp is the feeling of wearing your references, the feeling of transnational signs of sameness, of being exposed to ideas at the same pace, of being able to interpret style at the same time with the same references. Clothing is an interesting surface as this domain of material culture is in fact one that no one can avoid. Style, as in how people construct their appearance, also represents an intriguing dualism in that it is both directly attached to people and the body, and simultaneously; the level of identification and the distribution of style does not rely on direct social contact, of social interaction - these blogs distribute style world wide with a click. Blom points out that our (Western world) everyday life is characterised by being formed, designed and stylised: This focus on style, which has become more pointed since the early 1990s, (…) intervenes, more precisely, in a specific historical and cultural situation in which design and style issues have taken on an unprecedented significance - both in relation to economic “production”, in the traditional sense, and in relation to ideas about changes in the concept of production itself - changes brought on by the so-called information economy or attention economy. 9 This made me think of Daniel Miller’s critique of Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979/1984), presented in Material Culture and Mass Consumption: However welcome Bourdieu’s analysis of consumers may be when contrasted to the more common attempt to explain the same material as simple expression of business interests, the book’s impact is not enhanced by its entirely ignoring the sphere of production. Bourdieu’s habitus does not spontaneously generate a world of goods, only a set of dispositions. To understand how the congruity between the two is achieved demands an investigation of marketing, designers (as by Forty

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__________________________________________________________________ 1986) and other distributive agencies. It is not sufficient merely to talk of the articulation of two independent spheres. 10 These blogs represent a substantial stylistic distribution, and they affect the sphere of production due to the symbolic power of the people portrayed (and I should add, of the photographers 11 ). The blogs certainly contribute to a movement in power, often stereotypically described as from trickle down towards trickle up (continuing the pioneering actions of the British magazine I.D. showing people in the street - a radical shift at that time) - although I am not so sure about the validity of postulations of democratization. 12 This shift is also reflected in the world of high fashion/conceptual magazines, where the stylists putting together the looks are now much more powerful than they used to be, and according to a stylist who has contributed to Another, I.D. and others, jobs and assignments are now often given directly to them rather than to the celebrity photographer like they did just a few years back. The notion of style also opens up to a somewhat different approach than found in classic fashion theory; often more concerned with the designer sphere or merely the ideals produced as creative output from magazines, websites, shows etc., or the cooperation between magazines and buyers in distribution as such. The style term understood as such a site contributes with a starting point in real social life, or in the wardrobe if you like - and these blogs invite this perspective within the ‘fashion-ology’ of Kawamura, 13 that is, the joint social construction of fashion separate from the materiality of it. Treating Face Hunter as a style site is also an entry to everyday practices, without the usual link to what most people do - as when focusing on such a broad stylistic level, the creative expression and interpretation seem to disappear in the stylistic diffusion process, causing a dilution of the symbols, a movement from content to empty surfaces of being ‘in fashion;’ symbolic inflation and consequently symbolic devaluation. Blom also conveys a strong Bourdieusian grounding in saying: Take the example of fashion: its never-ending changes in style camouflage the fact that a particular social order remains unchanged. But precisely because style is the locus of repression, it is also the place for the undoing of this repression. 14 Bourdieu, as we all know, saw taste as a hidden power, and key to social equality. A more modest ambition in claiming the importance of studying style is its relevance in understanding fashion mechanisms. Just as the interest in retro was a strategy for creating an ‘alternative’ to the ‘mainstream’ as imagined, fashion blogs like Face Hunter has a reputation of representing an approach to clothing and style in opposition to dominant habits. Key-words would be: anti-fashion, subversive, used, quirky, individual,

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__________________________________________________________________ customised, etc. However, these blogs may just as well be said to function as an ‘az in individual dressing this week.’ The style portrayed may be perceived as protest against fashion, trends and consumption, but, due to the symbolic power held by these groupings, they affect the sphere of production, the commercial structures setting precedence for mainstream style after some time (these days seemingly even after days) - mass produced versions of the stylistic expressions available in high-street stores. This is a paradoxical consequence of ‘counter-culture’ in our time. As noted by Blom on rock as style site: The question is, then, how to understand or account for the collective formations produced in and through rock since it constitutes a social/aesthetic practice that permeates common culture at the same time as it continually produces new social surfaces. 15 Now, nearly ten years after the early formation of my research interest, it is much easier to point out what has characterised the past twenty years of ‘protest’ against ‘mainstream’ style; retro, re-use, second-hand, third-hand, vintage, fusion, glocal, environmental, ethic, etc. However, the blogs certainly represent a selective embracement of both brands and designers: though mainly ‘intellectual’ or ‘educated’ designers such as the Belgian avantgarde known as the Antwerp Six, representing fashion as art, as comment, as subversive, as critique (other favourites would be Rei Kawakubo and Martin Margiela, etc.) There are also more direct links between art and fashion exemplified with a brand such as aNYthing (A New York Thing), a brand with its outspring on the contemporary art scene at the Lower East Side - a Scandinavian counterpart is found in Håkki, a T-shirt/art project. It is no coincidence that these blogs often report from vernissages or art school parties. Eclecticism (or sampling culture; the quintessential post-modern term used in the fields of cultural production) is the obvious sociological solution to the problem of diffusion of our time due to the speed of production and information flow, as well as being the obvious ideological reflection of it. What we are dealing with, then, is style communities based on a common ability to interpret and compose complex stylistic expressions in the same way, at the same time. Communities based on coinciding dynamic valuations - related to how Bourdieu presented prerequisitions for (proper) understanding a piece of art. 16 Alan Warde, who has been working on developing ‘dimensions of a social theory of taste’ for the past few years, says: ‘Arguably, however, an omnivorous or eclectic orientation is in itself now the most prestigious of orientations to culture delivering distinction effectively in the way that Bourdieu imagined.’ 17 All though it is now quite some time since art historian Bourriaud moved on from his famous term ‘relational aesthetics’ as a relevant term for describing the contemporary art scene, this ‘aesthetic theory consisting of judging the works of art

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__________________________________________________________________ based on the social interactional relations they portray and produce’ 18 is a theoretical perspective of relevance with regards to grasping fashion mechanisms via style - judging style based on the social interactional relations it portrays and produces. The study of fashion blogs such as Face Hunter as style sites then, answers to Miller’s (1987) critique of Bourdieu (1979/1984) and incorporates an active role of appropriating and interpreting culture parallel to Bourriaud’s (1998/2002) other famous term ‘semionauts;’ meaning ‘one that discovers the path between signs.’ In terms of grasping an ephemeral phenomenon like style, blogs such as Face Hunter may prove to function as both nodes and prisms.

Notes 1

The main title refers to art historian Ina Blom’s publication On the Style Site. Art, Sociality and Media Culture, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2007. 2

3 Blom, op. cit., back cover blurb. 4 M. Douglas, Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste, SAGE Publications, London, 1996, pp. 71-72. 5 A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, A. Appadurai (ed), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986. 6

7 Blom, p. 16. 8 F. Mort, Cultures of Consumption. Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth Century Britain, Routledge, London, 1996. 9 Blom, p. 12. 10 D. Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption, Basil Blackwell, Oxford and New York, 1986, p. 155. 11 Yvan Rodic, the man behind the blog has become quite a character in the fashion world since he started blogging in 2006; front row seating for the most influential, a tv-show, a weekly column in The Observer and a book published with a collection of his photographs, etc. 12 Democratisation is often said to be related to a general public being portrayed, however, this is not exactly the case even on anonymous blogs such as Face Hunter (as opposed to other influential blogs where people in the fashion business are openly sought out and named) - a quick flick-through of his photos from Oslo 2007 reveals a strong link to influential people in the Norwegian field of fashion. 13 Y. Kawamura, Fashion-ology. An Introduction to Fashion Studies, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2005. 14 Blom, loc. cit. 15 Ibid., p. 32.

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__________________________________________________________________ 16

P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge and Keegan Paul, London, 1986. 17 A. Warde, ‘Dimensions of a Social Theory of Taste’, Journal of Cultural Economy, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2008, pp. 321-336. 18 N. Bourriaud, Relasjonell Estetikk, Pax, Oslo, 1998/2007, p. 165.

Bibliography Appadurai, A., ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai (ed), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 3-63. Bandlien, C. B., Producing Scarcity - An Investigation of the Retro Market. cand.polit. thesis submitted to the University of Oslo, 2004. Blom, I., On the Style Site Art, Sociality and Media Culture. Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2007. Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge and Keegan Paul, London, 1986. Bourriaud, N., Relasjonell Estetikk. Pax, Oslo, 2007 [1998]. Douglas, M., Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste. SAGE Publications, London, 1996. Douglas, M. and B. Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards and Anthropology of Consumption. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1996 [1979]. Kawamura, Y., Fashion-ology. An Introduction to Fashion Studies. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2005. Miller, D., Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Basil Blackwell, Oxford and New York, 1987. Mort, F., Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth Century Britain. Routledge, London, 1996. Rodic, Y., Face Hunter. Thames & Hudson, London 2010.

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__________________________________________________________________ Warde, A., ‘Dimensions of a Social Theory of Taste’. Journal of Cultural Economy, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2008, pp. 321-336. Charlotte Bik Bandlien is an anthropologist recently returned to the academic sphere after several years in visual communication. She currently works as a researcher at the National Institute for Consumer Research in Norway with projects related to new tendencies and new theoretical approaches to material culture. She is contributing editor to the fashion journal PERSONAE (http://www.personae.no).

Part 5 The Politics of Fashion: Identity, Exclusion and Belonging

La Biaiseuse Susie Ralph Abstract La Biaiseuse, a French popular song of 1912, centres on the life of a young girl who works in the couture trade. It appears to exploit a long-standing prejudice for equating the term ‘seamstress’ with that of ‘prostitute.’ La Biaiseuse provides detailed information about the working and home life of a young woman employed in the French fashion industry of the early 20th century. My aim is to establish the accuracy of the statements made. I will investigate the various leads afforded by the song’s lyric, concerning the specialised nature of work in the Parisian couture trade, the division of labour and hours of the working day, and the social circumstances and perceived morality of the young women employed in the trade. The couture was a major source of female employment in pre-First World War Paris and I will consider how the working practices of the trade affected the lives of those employed within it. Seamstresses were a visible feature of the streets of Paris, featuring prominently in paintings, cartoons and literature of the Belle Époque. I will examine the role that the seamstress played in the formation of that idealised figure of popular imagination, the ‘Parisienne.’ Key Words: Seamstress, couture, Belle Époque, Paris, prostitution, fashion, song, Parisienne. ***** 1. Fashion and Prostitution It is said of the Parisienne that she possesses a diabolical beauty. How is it that no-one has discovered in her those characteristics of the damned, tortured heroine, a martyr to the egotistical habits and fleeting desires of our male arrogance? 1 By the end of the 19th century, Paris was internationally renowned for its preeminence in the field of fashion and for its abundance of alluring and supposedly available women. Whilst celebrating the sexualised image of the Parisian fashion worker, it placed upon her an expectation that her charms be made available to the men who admired them. The song La Biaiseuse seems to typify attitudes prevalent at the time, which trivialised the circumstances of the poorly paid young seamstress, suggesting that she engaged in prostitution, not out of financial necessity, but because she derived enjoyment from it. I came across La Biaiseuse by chance whilst researching Parisian couture workers’ strikes. One of their rallying songs included the words

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__________________________________________________________________ Paquin and trottin (errand girl) which La Biaiseuse also happened to include. The strikers sang: What does she ask for, the little trottin, Who works at Worth, or at Paquin? She demands a little more pay, And a shorter working day! 2 These were serious requests from a workforce discontented with long, irregular hours and low pay. 3 When the workrooms were at their busiest, in April and December, seamstresses were required to work late night after night, as the right of the client to order complicated garments at short notice had long been considered the norm. 4 La Biaiseuse makes light of the serious issues of low pay, long working hours, including night work, and for the majority, lack of job security - issues which resulted in strikes for better pay and a five day working week, ‘la semaine Anglaise’ (the English working week). In Paris, Dorothy Menpes stated that despite their meagre wages ‘in pretence of following the fashions, dressmakers and needlewomen of all kinds are attired with a certain elegance.’ In their workrooms they were ‘very gay, laughing and singing, and telling stories, sometimes not in the best taste. There are certain little songs called chansons d’atelier (workroom songs) which are in great vogue.’ 5 Paris reinforced the old stereotype of the attractive seamstress with a natural flair for fashion, hinting discreetly at her somewhat lax morals. Émile Zola had painted a more acerbic portrait in his novel L’Assommoir. 6 His account of the workroom where the young Nana was apprenticed as an artificial flower maker, depicted an atmosphere of unalloyed lewdness, with a constant emphasis on the sexual activities of the young female workers. She was consequently influenced to go out and try this lifestyle for herself, becoming in Zola’s famous work Nana, 7 the most fêted courtesan in Paris. By contrast, photographs taken in 1907, of the workrooms at Worth, 8 create a very different impression: of tidy, soberly dressed women working in an atmosphere of calm and order. Doubtless these scenes were posed for the camera and this was precisely the impression intended, but such polarised views illustrate the problems inherent in the search for historical accuracy. 2. The Song Possibly La Biaiseuse originated as a chanson d’atelier, but Édith Thomas, 9 a present day interpreter of the song, suggested that it had its roots in the older tradition of chansons paillardes [songs of extreme crudeness], often centring on the activities of prostitution. La Biaiseuse, as Thomas pointed out, 10 being a song which relies on the double-entendre, may have adapted a chanson paillarde, substituting the words biaiseuse [f. bias-worker] and plisseur [m. pleater] for the

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__________________________________________________________________ explicit baiseuse [the verb baiser can be interpreted as: to kiss, but also, vulgarly, to engage in sexual intercourse] and pisseur [vulg. pisser]. Biaiseuse has never been a word in normal French usage, although being formed from the verb biaiser (to slant) it is understandable in the sense of ‘she who works on the slant or bias.’ 11 To make a garment cut on the bias is a technique requiring a high degree of skill. La Biaiseuse tells us that when it comes to ‘biasing’ - you will not find another like her! The song combines accurate information about the workings of a large couture house with fanciful and salacious statements about the protagonist’s love of her particular métier - ‘biasing.’ This, as noted, is the specialised work of sewing a dress cut on the bias grain of the fabric - or is it? The intended impression is that rather than working as a seamstress, she engages in frequent sexual activity, ‘avec ardeur, avec entrain,’ [with passion and gusto] possibly as a prostitute, although there was of course a blurred line between prostitution and taking a lover who could provide financial support. La Biaiseuse works at the maison Paquin - a by-word for haute couture during the early years of the 20th century. It is reasonably safe to assume that the name of Paquin would have been familiar to the song’s audience, as would the couture terms used in the song. The Belle Epoque saw an explosion of popular entertainment particularly in the café-concerts, where such risqué songs as La Biaiseuse went down well with audiences that comprised a broad sector of society, from workmen to nobility. 12 The couture and its allied trade of confection [ready to wear] employed such a large proportion of Paris’s female workforce, 13 that a large percentage of men would probably have known someone - wife, sister, mistress, prostitute - who worked in this field. The song’s enumeration of the different specialisms of the workforce is accurate: mannequins, saleswomen, bodice-makers and seam-finishers - are some of the types of job performed by the female couture house workers. The strict hierarchy of production with its range of specialisms, from highly skilled firsthands and fitters at the top, to the lowly trottin at the bottom, meant that there was a large variation in wages, working conditions and job security. 14 We are told firstly that in the great couture houses, there are trottins. These were young errand girls, easily identified by their large trademark dress or hat-boxes. The song Amours de Trottin 15 employs a similar theme to La Biaiseuse, who tells us that her parents do not worry if she does not come home as they know she is engaged in her work of ‘biasing.’ Likewise, the young trottin, returning home after midnight from an assignation, tells her parents she has been working late. She later declares that perhaps next time she will have to tell Mama and Papa that it was necessary for her to work all night. The refrain of Amours de Trottin (sung by a man) casually recommends enjoying a few hours in the company of a little trottin - because after all she will not cost you much. The trottin must have been easy prey for the attentions of predatory males on the streets of Paris. 16

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__________________________________________________________________ The perception that young women working in the fashion industries were an acceptable form of casual cheap enjoyment for men appears to have been quite acceptable. Seamstresses probably formed a large number of the class of unregistered prostitutes, due to their casual engagement in the profession when scarcity of work in the sewing trades drove them to earn money in the only other way they could. 3. ‘Queens of the Needle’: The Parisian Fashion Workers Alexandre 17 gave a highly evocative picture in Les Reines de L’Aiguille [The Queens of the Needle] of the flood of ‘no less than one hundred thousand’ girls and women who poured out of the workrooms onto the streets of Paris at mid-day to eat and chat in the parks when weather permitted. Alexandre described how noisy and visible the young apprentices were, standing out from the crowd of older women who dressed mainly in black, with their exaggerated outfits and ébourrifantes [tousled, bouffant] coiffures. The Scottish artist J. D. Fergusson sketched the outfits of dressmakers’ and milliners’ apprentices in the Café d’Harcourt, who ‘wore things they were working at, mostly too extreme from a practical point of view, but with that touch of daring…’ 18 and Paquin herself ‘insisted that fashion designers did not dictate change but rather followed the subtle changes in style initiated by “the woman in the street.”’ 19 Jean Béraud depicted these apprentices in his painting Les Midinettes. 20 Their striking appearance must have attracted plenty of male attention and possibly provided the men who propositioned them with the oft cited excuse that women who dressed in a ‘provocative’ fashion were inviting sexual advances. The difference between ‘inviting sexual advances’ and ‘engaging in prostitution’ is great, but in the popular imagination this line could easily have been blurred. 4. The Working Conditions The Rapport du Jury International 21 displays French pride in Paris as the undisputed capital of fashion, whilst providing statistics detailing the wages and working conditions of the female workforce. It details nine different specialised occupations required to produce a couture gown and documents the fact that only the most skilled workers were permanently employed, on salaries that could reach 25,000 francs per year, more than 50 times that of the least skilled petites-mains [literally, little-hands] who earned from as little as 1fr.50 per day and were subject to chômage [being laid off in the quiet periods]. Women formed the vast majority of the fashion workforce, men being employed to produce only tailored garments, which accounted for a small percentage of feminine fashions. In March 1901 the cover of an illustrated supplement to Le Petit Parisien 22 featured an artist’s impression of a strike meeting of seamstresses and tailors at the Bourse du Commerce: women make up the vast majority of strikers and a woman commands

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__________________________________________________________________ the speakers’ box. A photograph 23 of striking workers in 1890 depicts a very similar scene. 5. The Stereotype of the Promiscuous Midinette La Biaiseuse follows in a long line of stereotypes stretching back at least as far as the 18th century when moralists inveighed against the morals of the ‘Belles Marchandes des Modes’ whom they claimed enticed men into their boutiques with smiles and coquetry as they gazed out through their shop windows. They were accused of flirting with the men who accompanied female customers, and selling themselves, quite as much as they sold the merchandise in their shops. 24 Painted one hundred years later, Tissot’s La Demoiselle de Magasin 25 appears to play upon a similar theme. The association of female vanity with vice and love of luxury is age old and was personified in antiquity by the figure of Vanity: a beautiful, naked woman, mirror in hand, combing her flowing locks. Many famous, and publicly fêted, couture clients were stars of the stage or music-hall, professional beauties often kept by wealthy lovers. Such women were highly influential in the world of fashion, their patronage was extremely important to the couture houses they favoured and they were often supplied with garments free of charge, their endorsement being worth more to the house than the cost of their gowns. 26 The fact that young women employed in the couture trade worked daily with luxurious fabrics and garments, and were obviously highly aware of the ‘glamorous’ world that the wearers of these gowns moved in, was viewed as a corrupting influence, at a time when the French state was much concerned about the morals of the population: At the end of the nineteenth century, hopes that alarming trends toward “degeneracy” and “depopulation” might be reversed were pinned on efforts to raise the quantity and quality of the rising generation. This was also a time when intellectuals and politicians in Europe from left to right began more intensively to conceptualize youth as a potential force through which the regeneration of European societies might be effected. 27 These views seem to be embodied in the doctor’s advice to La Biaiseuse: he tells her she has been wearing herself out with too much ‘biasing.’ Prescribing her a tonic, he advises her to get married and settle down, presumably with the end of producing children. Subsequently, she marries a pleater and continues to work, but from home. This was a recognised pattern, with many women leaving their daily employment at the couture house to do piece-work at home, once they were married.

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__________________________________________________________________ In the second half of the nineteenth century, England witnessed growing social concern for the appalling working conditions of most seamstresses. This led to a proliferation of cartoons, poems, and even a play on the subject, aimed at rousing the consciences of wealthy women who consumed the goods produced by these exploited workers. 28 There is a startling contrast between these English works with their depictions of exhausted young women, worn out before their time, and the French depictions of attractive and available young seamstresses, celebrated in numerous different forms, from Gavarni’s Grisette 29 through Jean Béraud’s glamorised young fashion workers, to the most famous of all fictional seamstresses, Mimi, created by Henri Murger 30 but immortalised as the consumptive embroideress and tragic heroine of Puccini’s La Boheme. 31 The opera epitomises the romanticised portrayal of the grinding poverty which was a daily reality for thousands of seamstresses, often driving them to engage in prostitution, or at the very least take a lover for financial support. 6. Conclusion Paris had a reputation for its abundance of attractive and fashionable young women, and the idea that many young Parisiennes advertised their occupation of midinettes by dressing as stylishly as their means and skill with the needle could afford, thus attracting male attention, has a definite foundation. The media fostered the image of the sexually promiscuous fashion trade worker. From novels, prints and cartoons to popular song and opera, she appeared in many guises. The mores of the time which forbade sexual activity to unmarried girls from the bourgeoisie upward, together with an influx of single men to Paris from the regions, ensured prostitutes with a ready supply of clients. The lowest paid, and least skilled midinettes [so-called because they appeared on the streets at midday, for their lunch-break] would have been the most likely to fall back on prostitution as a means of earning their keep during times of chômage, and the temptation to augment a meagre salary through prostitution, even during periods of employment, cannot be ruled out. The concept that midinettes engaged in prostitution because they were naturally promiscuous and did it out of sheer enjoyment, like the protagonist of La Biaiseuse, rather than financial need, can be viewed as a fundamentally pernicious one that permitted the men who used them to feel no guilt. The fact that songs such as La Biaiseuse were performed by women, mainly for the entertainment of men, suggests that at least a proportion of women were complicit in the perpetuation of this stereotype. Whilst feminists have emphasised the negative aspects and outcomes of objectifying women as sex objects, there is also a strand of opinion which explores the liberating aspects of female sexual power. 32 Edith Thomas evidently took a Gallic pride in the historical perception of Paris as a city of attractive and sexually available women. She patently enjoyed performing the song

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__________________________________________________________________ and despite no longer being youthful herself, gave a spirited impression of a young girl boasting of her sexual prowess. Without making light of the miserable conditions of life that prevailed for the lowest paid amongst the female workforce, it must be acknowledged that the accepted freedom from the restraints that governed bourgeois society, allowed working class young women to acknowledge their own sexuality and, prostitution aside, permitted them to enjoy the sort of sexual relationships which we take for granted today. Considering the circumstances which prevailed, attempting to define the difference between prostitution and the financial support of a lover is problematic. The very low wages of the petites-mains may have encouraged them to accept payment for what might otherwise have been considered a sexual relationship based solely on mutual attraction.

Notes 1

O. Uzanne, Études de Sociologie Féminine, Parisiennes de ce Temps, Paris, Mercure de France, 1910, [Online text], viewed on 10th August 2010, . The lyrics of the song can be found at P. Marinier and L. Lelièvre, ‘La Biaiseuse’, Chansons Érotiques, 1912, viewed on 24th May 2010, . 2 B. McManus, The American Woman Abroad, New York, Dodd, Mead, 1911, p. 245, viewed on 10th August 2010, . 3 Ministère du Commerce, de l’Industrie des Postes et des Télégraphes, Rapports du Jury International. Exposition Universelle International de 1900 à Paris. Groupe XIII - Fils, Tissus, Vêtements, Deuxième Partie - Classes 85 et 86, Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1902. 4 For example, in 1766, Prince Gustav of Sweden ordered the highly elaborate embroidery of his wedding suit to be worked by the Versailles court embroiderers, who laboured virtually non-stop for 40 days to finish it on time (P. ArizzoliClémentel et al., Fastes de Cour et Cérémonies Royales, Le Costume de Cour en Europe (1650-1800), RMN, Paris, 2009, p. 232). 5 M. Menpes and D. Menpes, Paris, A. and C. Black, London, 1907, p. 62, viewed on 25th May 2010, . 6 É. Zola, L’assommoir, viewed on 10th August 2010, . 7 É. Zola, Nana, viewed on 10th August 2010, .

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Worth Workrooms, 1907, [Online photograph], viewed on 10th August 2010, . 9 Édith Thomas, comédienne-chanteuse, . 10 Cited by Édith Thomas, personal interview 30th June 2010. 11 Vionnet is sometimes erroneously credited with having ‘invented’ the bias cut, in the late 1920s but bias-cutting was being regularly used for skirts in the early 1900s and for dresses by 1908. 12 M. La Cotera and H. Tran, Les Cafés-Concerts, Des Lieux de Plaisir. French 102. Pomona College, Claremont, CA, 1995, viewed on 26th May 2010, . 13 Figures from Rapports du Jury International, op. cit. 14 Wages information from Ibid. 15 ‘Du Temps de Cerises aux Fueilles Mortes’, Amour(s) de Trottin(s) (1903), viewed on 28th June 2010, . 16 Rapports du Jury International, p. 60, states that many families preferred to apprentice their daughters to local dressmaking establishments close to home, rather than to important couturiers in the centre of Paris, where their potential earnings might be higher, but where they would be ‘exposed to all the dangers of the journey home, late in the evening.’ 17 A. Alexandre, Les Reines de L’aiguille, Modistes et Couturières, Étude Parisienne, T. Belin, Paris, 1902. 18 Portland Gallery, ‘Scottish Colourists, J. D. Fergusson - Biography’, Portland Gallery, viewed on 10th August 2010, . 19 V. Steele, Women of Fashion, Twentieth Century Designers, Rizzoli, New York, 1991, pp. 29 and 31. 20 P. Offenstadt, Jean Beraud, The Belle Epoque, A Dream of Times Gone By, Benedikt Taschen, Cologne, 1999, pl. 402, Les Midinettes, 1910. 21 Rapports du Jury International, op.cit. 22 ‘Meeting des tailleurs et couturières en grève, à la Bourse du travail, à Paris. Gravure de Méaulle d’après un dessin de Carrey’, Le Petit Parisien, 3 mars 1901, August 2010, [Online photograph], viewed on 9th .

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La Grève de la Couture à la Bourse du Travail. Paris, vers 1890, [Online photograph], viewed on 9th August 2010, . 24 J. M. Jones, ‘Coquettes and Grisettes’, in The Sex of Things, Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, V. de Grazia and E. Furlough (eds), University of California Press Ltd., London, 1996, p. 42. 25 R. Ash, James Tissot, Pavilion, London, 1992, pl. 40. 26 C. Collier, Harlequinade: The Story of My Life, John Lane, London, 1929, p. 61. 27 D. M. Pomfret, ‘“A Muse for the Masses”. Gender, Age and Nation in France, Fin de Siecle’, The American Historical Review [Online journal], Vol. 109, No. 5, November 2009, 2004, pp. 1439-1474, viewed on 30th . 28 Three examples of this genre are: a) Punch cartoon, The Haunted Lady, Or ‘The Ghost’ In the Looking-Glass’ (1863), b) Thomas Hood, The Song of the Shirt (1843), poem, c) Mrs. Lyttleton, Warp and Woof (1904), play. 29 P. Gavarni, La Grisette, 1840, [online image], viewed on 11th September 2012, . 30 H. Murger, Scenes de la Vie de Bohème, The Folio Society, London, 1960. 31 G. Puccini, G. Giacosa, L. Illica, H. Murger, La Bohème, J. Calder, Richmond, Surrey, 1982. 32 M. Majer, ‘Demimonde’, in The Berg Companion to Fashion, V. Steele (ed), Oxford, Berg, 2010, pp. 210-212, provides an example of this strand of opinion.

Bibliography Alexandre, A., Les Reines de L’aiguille, Modistes et Couturières, Étude Parisienne. T. Belin, Paris, 1902. Arizzoli-Clémentel, P., et al., Fastes de Cour et Cérémonies Royales, Le Costume de Cour en Europe (1650-1800). RMN, Paris, 2009. Ash, R., James Tissot. Pavilion, London, 1992. Collier, C., Harlequinade: The Story of My Life. John Lane, London, 1929. Puccini, G., Giacosa, G. Illica, L., Murger, H., La Bohème. J. Calder, Richmond, Surrey, 1982.

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__________________________________________________________________ Jones, J. M., ‘Coquettes and Grisettes’, in The Sex of Things, Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. V. de Grazia, and E. Furlough (eds), University of California Press Ltd., London, 1996, pp. 25-53. Majer, M., ‘Demimonde’, in The Berg Companion to Fashion. V. Steele (ed.), Berg, Oxford, 2010, pp. 210-212. McManus, B., The American Woman Abroad. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1911, viewed on 10th August 2010, . Menpes, M., and Menpes, D., Paris. London, A. and C. Black, 1907, viewed on 25th May 2010, . Ministère du Commerce, de l’Industrie des Postes et des Télégraphes, Rapports du Jury International. Exposition Universelle International de 1900 à Paris. Groupe XIII - Fils, Tissus, Vêtements, Deuxième Partie - Classes 85 et 86. Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1902. Murger, H., Scenes de la Vie de Bohème. The Folio Society, London, 1960. Offenstadt, P., Jean Beraud, The Belle Epoque, A Dream of Times Gone By. Benedikt Taschen, Cologne, 1999. Pomfret, D. M., ‘“A Muse for the Masses.” Gender, Age and Nation in France, Fin de Siecle’. The American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 5, 2004, pp. 1439-1474, viewed on 30th November 2009, . Portland Gallery, ‘Scottish Colourists, J. D. Fergusson - Biography’. Portland Gallery, viewed on 10th August 2010, . Steele, V., Women of Fashion, Twentieth Century Designers. Rizzoli, New York, 1991. Uzanne, O., Études de Sociologie Féminine, Parisiennes de ce Temps. Paris, August 2010, Mercure de France, 1910, viewed on 10th .

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__________________________________________________________________ Zola, É., L’assommoir. Viewed on 10th August 2010, . —––, Nana. Viewed on 10th August 2010, . Susie Ralph is a lecturer in textiles/fashion theory at Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, and at Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University. Her research interests centre on the history of Parisian fashion, its design, production and consumption.

Couture: Tool of Belonging Julie Thomas Abstract In contemporary France, the practice of ‘couture’ is being socially constructed as an agent of transformation: a method of integration into French society and access to community for marginalised women. Frequently, this utilisation of couture as a tool of social inclusion is based on the recycling of second-hand fabrics and garments. Through an analysis of three different recent examples of this phenomenon, this paper investigates the issues involved in conceptualising couture as socio-economic and cultural capital, as a tool of belonging. Key Words: Couture, culture, community, marginal, solidarity, environment, recycling, identity, integration, ethics. ***** 1. Couture and Culture in France It has become such a commonplace as to need no reiteration that in France, the skills and presentation of refined couture, particularly haute couture, contribute to define French culture, the French economy, and thus French identity. The oftencited sentiment attributed to Colbert (1665) that ‘Fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain’ 1 gives French ‘appropriation’ of fashion the credibility of historical precedent, just as the regulations of the Chambre Syndicale (1868) and the Fédération Française de la Couture have provided powerful codes and credibility for the discipline of couture. The qualities of excellence and creativity associated with French fashion have, over time, influenced popular impressions that an appreciation of couture is a ‘sign’ of a certain cultural capital, and in this way provides access to a distinctively ‘French’ ‘culture.’ This assumption is one of the informing principles of the first example to be considered, the workshop of the designer Sakina M’Sa, and the 2007 exhibition at the Petit Palais, L’Etoffe des Héroines (The Stuff, or Material of Heroines), celebrating that workshop. 2. Couture Workshop as Cultural Project From 29th June - 19th August, 2007, the Petit Palais (Museum of Fine Arts of the City of Paris) mounted an exhibition entitled L’Etoffe des héroines (The ‘Stuff’, or ‘Material’ of Heroines - which, for the French audience, also evokes the associations of the 1983 American film The Right Stuff, whose French title was L’Etoffe des Héros), which presented the successful completion of the cultural ‘integration’ project of the designer Sakina M’sa, undertaken in cooperation with the Petit Palais. This project was described in the text displayed at the entrance to

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__________________________________________________________________ the exhibition as a ‘workshop of “insertion” through fashion and the creation of clothing.’ 2 The thirteen women who volunteered to participate in this project and who had frequented social centres in their local neighbourhoods or been involved in other social associations, such as the charitable foundation Emmaus, were identified as members of various disenfranchised and marginal publics. The women were trained in couture practice and encouraged to design and ‘customise’ garments by recycling and using old second-hand clothing donated by the charitable association Emmaus. This ‘customisation’ was defined in the Communiqué de Presse as ‘the action of personalising and transforming a garment with the goal of making it unique. It does not mean “inventing” garments, but ‘reinventing’ them so they may be reborn to a new life.’ 3 According to the introductory text posted at the exhibition, the project was defined as a ‘project of cultural development with a social aim,’ ‘conforming to the political “mission” of the city (of Paris).’ Indeed, the Communiqué de Presse issued by the Petit Palais in June, 2007, echoes the official policy of the Ministry of Culture by confirming that the Petit Palais has, for the last fifteen years, been concerned to organise ‘access’ to a public distanced from cultural offerings. The project involved attendance once a week from November, 2006, for six months. The creative and artistic standards of the participants were formed by lectures on works of art from the collection of the museum. The participants, described in the press release as ‘for the most part, immigrants,’ were encouraged to consider four aesthetic themes which would aid them in the customisation of their own garments: ‘Materials and Contrasts,’ ‘Motifs and Colours,’ ‘Silhouettes and Representations of the Body,’ and ‘The Displayed and the Hidden.’ The press release remarks that through these lectures, the women were ‘led’ to develop their faculties of perception and analysis and their mastery of language and selfexpression. It should be made clear at this point that it is very difficult to separate the project itself from the manner in which it was mediated by the exhibition at the Petit Palais, but although a full analysis of the exhibition cannot be undertaken here, 4 it must be remarked that the purpose as well as the success of the project as defined depended on the project taking place in the central cultural space of the museum, as is evident from the text of the press release. The designer Sakina M’sa, the creator of the project, is herself a member of a diasporic community, having come to Marseilles as a child with her family from the Comoros Islands. She emphasises the need for garments to express the individual identity of the wearer, to communicate history and a sense of place, sews a label with the ‘birth date’ of the garment on each one of her creations - and expresses dislike of conventional ‘designer labels.’ 5 The garments themselves thus acquire agency and identity, and this concept is in fact crucial to the project as narrated by the exhibition. Previously she has worked with the transformative powers of couture in several senses - the transformation of garments in terms of

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__________________________________________________________________ function and design (the use of recycled materials, for example, or remaking dresses into trousers), and also the ability of couture to transform human lives, as in the project she began more than 10 years ago in which she runs workshops with the marginalised and disenfranchised as a method of offering self-esteem and possibly the opportunity of a new profession. 6 This association Daika, founded to promote couture as a tool of integration, is based on the principle that clothing and fashion today is an active ‘terrain’ of culture, a vehicle of reinvention and transformation. The official press release emphasises that Sakina M’sa believes that it is necessary to act today to encourage diversity in society. These ‘platforms’ prove problematic when considering the project as mediated by the exhibition - the ‘diversity’ of the participants remains for the most part hardly identified and certainly unexplored. Rather than avoiding any stereotyping of the individuals, which was perhaps what was intended, this has the effect of ‘reducing’ them to an amorphous whole representing ‘immigrants’ or ‘marginalised women’ or ‘even, ‘diversity’ - diversity as otherness, an otherness foreign to the French culture into which they are being initiated. However, couture is definitely presented as an agent of transformation and an active ‘terrain’ of culture - certainly an affirmation of French culture. The familiarity with ‘culture’ and ‘art’ which has been acquired throughout the project is embodied in the reinvented garments which the participants have constructed during this time in the public space of the museum. Diana Crane, commenting on women’s performance of dress at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, has identified the fact that working women were often allowed to wear male-gendered (and thus inappropriate) clothing when in the workplace (factories, etc.) because they were considered ‘invisible.’ 7 The factory was not ‘public space,’ but liminal space. Immigrant and marginalised women today are often equally ‘invisible’ because they work in positions such as domestic help or child care providers, or engage in home work - in private space. Sweatshop work is perhaps one of the most notorious and extreme examples of this ‘invisibility.’ An interesting feature of the ‘Stuff of Heroines’ project is that the participants not only attended lectures at the Petit Palais, but also had their workshop in the Petit Palais, thus bringing their previously ‘invisible’ practice into performance in public space, and confirming their newly-acquired status as partakers of the ‘culture’ which grants visibility. However, it was not for them to dignify their creations through the actual performance of wearing or introducing the clothing which they had created in the public sphere - this task was reserved for young people, the youth who are the most visible in contemporary consumer society and whose imprimatur is necessary to validate any transformation, and required the participation of another social project in which Sakina M’sa is actively involved - the ‘Appel des 93.’ This is a campaign led by 93 ‘personalities’ successful in professional life and the public sphere who mobilized to change the public image of the Seine Saint-Denis area

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__________________________________________________________________ (department/postal code 93) - a suburb with the reputation of being an immigrant area of marginalisation, poverty, violence and civil unrest. This project was motivated by the statement of young students that being from ‘93’ was a cultural label which, no matter how hard they tried, could not be removed: this gave rise to the ‘Remove the Label’ campaign. 8 Young members of this campaign, inhabitants of Seine Saint Denis, were invited to pose in their chosen ‘special’ places of their neighbourhood, wearing some of the garments created as part of the project or some of the garments from Sakina M’sa’s own Autumn/Winter 2007 collection. The resulting photographs taken by Benoit Peverelli, with the accompanying commentaries of the young models, were displayed in one of the rooms of the exhibition. These youth embody the physical movement from the periphery, or margin, to the centre - their photographs wearing the garments place them and the garments firmly in the marginalised area of Seine Saint-Denis, but the photographs were displayed in the central cultural sphere of the museum, dignifying both their role in the project and the garments created by the female participants. As youth, the young models may validate the transformative nature of the garments, but the garments equally validate the presence of the marginalised community of the youth of 93. It is not only in production, but in the consumption of couture that the right of those on the margins to claim and access centrality is proven. A final wall text in the exhibition informs the visitor how the participants have benefited from the project. Three of the participants have been permanently hired by the association Daika, but more than that: The discovery of paintings, the acquisition of knowledge about couture, the discovery of their creative capacities have given confidence to the participants. They have looked for work, enlarged their network, signed up for further training, taken their children to museums…. 9 It is clear that in this use of couture as a cultural tool in service to assimilation and belonging, the participants themselves provide the material for re-invention, just as the fabric they recycle provides the substance for their new couture fashions. 3. Couture Creating Community ‘The Stuff of Heroines’ project may be compared with another project also undertaken for an exhibition, the ‘Fil de Trois’ (‘Thread of Three’), which was held in 2007 (29/9 - 2/12 2007), at the Centre de Création Contemporaine 2angles in Flers, Normandy. This gallery and arts centre sponsors residences for artists particularly having to do with the themes of urbanism and cultural diversity. 10 In July 2007 the artist Danielle Lebreton, one of the three female artists whose project

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__________________________________________________________________ was documented and exhibited in the ‘Fil de Trois’ exhibition, conceived and carried out a project entitled ‘2angles fillette’ (Little Girl) in which women from the many diverse cultural and ethnic communities of Flers (traditionally, an industrial town once specialising in the production of textiles, now suffering from economic deprivation: 2007 was the ‘year of textile’ in Flers) were asked to participate in creating dresses for all the schoolgirls of Flers aged 5-6, who would then each wear and take away a dress at the end of the exhibition. In this project, ‘couture’ was evoked as a tool for creating and making evident a sense of community. This demonstrates an alternative use of ‘couture’ as a cooperative effort of aesthetic expression and community, as opposed to a ‘haute couture’ which reinforces hegemonic definitions of culture. Lebreton, in the statement of purpose which defines the vision behind her artistic practice of the last fifteen years, emphasises that It has to do with shaping the space of lived experience into a logic which is neither economic nor aesthetic, but which puts the artistic action in a very close relation with daily or practical life, so that it may be confused with life itself and may reveal another, eccentric point of view which has now been integrated and granted its own role and function. 11 The project ‘2angles fillette’ thus ‘reveals’ and makes visible as active in the public sphere the multicultural community of the women of Flers. 4. Couture as Social Project The third and most recent manifestation of couture as a tool of social inclusion could in fact be described as ‘shaping the space of lived experience’ into a logic which is both economic and aesthetic. On 6th May 2010, the network ‘Tissons la Solidarité’ (‘Let’s Weave Solidarity’) held a public fashion show of the couture garments created by 30 participants in the project at the new (official opening set for September, 2010) Docks en Seine - Cité de la Mode et du Design in Paris. Christian Lacroix, as the patron of this network, adds the cultural capital of haute couture to this cause, which was founded in 2004 by the organisation Secours Catholique (Catholic Aid) to support marginalised and excluded women. This project of couture (there are 20 couture workshops active at the moment) has evolved from the original work of sorting, washing, ironing, and selling the second-hand clothes and household fabrics collected by Secours Catholique, which employs over 1700 women from all over France. The couture ‘defilé’ aimed to publicise the project in the hope that ‘Tissons la Solidarité’ will develop into a label to market the clothing created in the couture workshops from the recycled material collected by the organisation. According to the network website, ‘Tissons’ transforms these ‘scraps’ into prêt-à-porter garments, accessories, and household

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__________________________________________________________________ linen, and the purpose of the workshops is threefold: to offer a training in style and couture to marginalised, excluded women, to market their creations, and to respond to the environmental need for recycling. 12 This training aims not only to provide skills for the participants, but also to give them much-needed self-confidence. As one of the participants of the show remarked, ‘I would never have imagined that our work would end up at such an event that gives us the motivation to continue the daily struggle’ (Aziza, 36). 13 One of the remarkable aspects of the actual show is that the creators of the garments modelled the clothing themselves (with the help of two professional stylists), demonstrating to the audience that the women exhibiting their work were proud not only of their creativity, but also of their individual identities - including differences of age, physical appearance, ethnic and racial origin. Thus both label and fashion show make ‘visible’ to the public the previously ‘invisible’ workshops of these marginalized women, who move from the margins to the centre and acquire the cultural, social, and hopefully the economic capital to succeed. The social and economic ‘recycling’ of these participants is associated with the ‘ecological’ recycling of the materials 14 in such a way as to imply that social and environmental sustainability are inextricably linked. As Lacroix makes clear in an interview: We create waste every day, we throw things away, we also leave workers behind at the side of the road. Here, we consolidate good will, generosity, but also the stock of recovered clothing, the hands that must not stop giving their best and do not want to remain a burden to others. … This kind of undertaking is one of the possible responses to the crisis … Before the economic crisis and at its source there is a cultural crisis. 15 5. Conclusion In Culture, Class, Distinction (2010), Bennett et al. identify certain properties of cultural capital as it operates in contemporary society: First, some particular cultural practices generate cultural resources, or skills, which is to say that they allow individuals to accumulate potentials and capacities … skills and expertise convertible to economic measures through market transactions … Second, emotional cultural capital accumulates in relation to acts of sympathy and solidarity… Third, national cultural capital operates on the assumption of the existence of traditions, in both high and popular culture, which generate and justify a sense of belonging and an occupancy of a governing national position. 16

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__________________________________________________________________ In France today, the use of couture as a tool of belonging for marginalised women provides cultural capital not only for the participants of the projects, but also national cultural capital for France, and in this way addresses cultural, economic, and environmental issues simultaneously.

Notes 1

This phrase has been quoted by Steele and Breward, among others. Steele cites A. Madsen, Living for Design: The Yves Saint Laurent Story, Delacourt, New York, 1979, p. 7, as her source for her citation in V. Steele, Paris Fashion, Berg and Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1998, p. 21. 2 All texts displayed at the exhibition and cited here and subsequently throughout the paper were in French, were transcribed by the author at a visit to the exhibition in August 2007, and have been translated by the author. 3 Communiqué de Presse, 4th June 2007: Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (translation by the author): ‘Depuis une quinzaine d’années, par le biais de son Service éducatif et cultural, le Petit Palais a eu à cœur d’organiser l’accès et l’accompagnement des publics eloignés de l’offre culturelle … La customisation est l’action de personnaliser et transformer un vetement dans le but de le rendre unique. Elle permet non pas d’inventer des vetements, mais de les réinventeret de les faire renaitre pour une nouvelle vie.’ 4 For a full discussion of the exhibition, see J. Thomas, Chapter 7, in Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures, R. Hegde (ed), NYU Press, New York, 2011. 5 S. Maublanc, ‘Sakina M’sa, Créatrice Capitale’, Latences, No. 2, Summer 2007, translation by the author. 6 Ibid. 7 D. Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2000, pp. 118-121. 8 L’Appel des 93, viewed on 8th July 2008, . Also see B. S., ‘Expo cet été au Petit Palais’, Le Parisien, 24th May 2007, and J. D., ‘La Seine-Saint Denis ou l’éloge de la Diversité’, Metro, 15th November 2006. 9 Exhibition wall text, translated by the author. 10 Fil de Trois, viewed on 8th July 2008, . 11 D. Lebreton, ‘2anglesfillette’, in Fil de Trois, Editions 2angles, Flers, 2007. Translation by the author. 12 Tissons la Solidarité, viewed on 25th July 2010, translation by the author . 13 Ibid.

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As part of this initiative to link social and environmental sustainability, the ‘Inter Reseau de la Fibre Solidaire’ - I.R.F.S. - has been created as a cooperative effort by three large organisations of economic solidarity (Emmaus France, Le Relais France, Tissons la Solidarité, the latter founded by Secours Catholique) with the twofold social and environmental aims of creating employment and collecting and sorting more textiles so as to reduce waste (Tissons la Solidarité, viewed on 25th July 2010, . 15 ‘Christian Lacroix parraine L’association “Tissons la Solidarité”’, 3rd May 2010, viewed on 25th July 2010, . Translation by the author. 16 T. Bennett, M. Savage, E. Silva, A. Warde, M. Gayo-Cal, D. Wright, Culture, Class, Distinction, Routledge, London and New York, 2010, p. 258.

Bibliography Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M., Wright, D., Culture, Class, Distinction. Routledge, London and New York, 2010. ‘Christian Lacroix parraine L’association “Tissons la Solidarité”’. 3rd May 2010, viewed on 25th July 2010, . Communiqué de Presse. 4th June 2007. Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris. Crane, D., Fashion and Its Social Agendas. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2000. Dossier de Presse, L’Etoffe des Héroines. Service éducatif et culturel du Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2007. Fil de Trois. Viewed on 8th July 2008, . L’Appel des 93. Viewed on 8th July 2008, . B. S., ‘Expo cet été au Petit Palais’. Le Parisien, 24th May 2007, Lebreton, D., ‘2anglesfillette’, in Fil de Trois. Editions 2angles, Flers, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Maublanc, S., ‘Sakina M’Sa, Créatrice Capitale’. Latences, No. 2, Summer 2007. J. D., ‘La Seine-Saint Denis ou l’éloge de la Diversité’. Metro, 15th November 2006. Steele, V., Paris Fashion. Berg and Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1998. Thomas, J., Chapter 7, in Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures. R. Hegde (ed), NYU Press, New York, 2011. Tissons la Solidarité, viewed on 25th July 2010, and . Julie Thomas, PhD (University of London), is an Associate Professor Emerita of Global Communications at The American University of Paris, where the courses she taught included Communicating Fashion, Material Culture and The Museum as Medium. She writes on museum exhibitions, the museum and cultural identity, and ethical fashion (among other topics). In 2004 she organised the international conference Mediating Fashion, Mediating Paris (keynote speaker Valerie Steele) at The American University of Paris, where she also founded and directed the new Fashion Communications specialisation for the Master of Arts in Global Communications.

‘Fashion in Auschwitz’: Concentration Camp Clothing during World War II: Heretofore Unknown Aspects of Personal Experiences Sofia Pantouvaki Abstract Clothing in the concentration camps during World War II served to cover the human body, but above all to identify individuals as prisoners. Research has shown that prisoners in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps did not always wear striped uniforms; a wide range of other garments, including civilian clothing marked in specific ways, was used to identify inmates as well. Their prisoner status was underlined by numbers, tattooed on their arms, as well as by various markings worn, sewn or painted on their clothing. This chapter draws valuable information both from archival testimony given by prisoners and from unpublished evidence documented in personal interviews with former camp inmates who survived and are still alive today. Selected material from these survivors’ recollections is presented in order to elucidate certain personal aspects of the clothing they wore and the way they dressed in the concentration camps. Such aspects relate to the desire for personal expression, the need to look as good as possible and to facilitate their daily lives, to the possibility of improving their chances of survival, as well as to the very remote possibility of escape. Key Words: Concentration camps, uniforms, clothing, fashion, World War II, Auschwitz, prisoner, experiences. ***** 1. Introduction The present study is part of an ongoing research project on prisoners’ clothing in World War II concentration camps, focusing on three major aspects: garment typology, prisoner identification methods and policies, and former prisoners’ personal experiences. Although the research extends to the clothing worn in various concentration and labour camps during World War II, this chapter focuses mainly on personal experiences of prisoners who survived one of the three camps of the Auschwitz complex. 1 Earlier research on the subject of concentration camp clothing has shown that prisoners in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps did not always wear striped uniforms 2 - the most well-known type of camp dress. A wide range of other garments, including civilian clothing marked in specific ways, was used to identify inmates as well. Their prisoner status was underlined by the numbers, which took the place of their name and were tattooed on their arms. This also applies to various markings worn on their clothing, such as symbols or insignia made of

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__________________________________________________________________ letters, colours and shapes, indicating the category the prisoner belonged to. Furthermore, there were also identifying markings such as additional pieces of cloth sewn onto civilian clothing, or red stripes, crosses or circles painted onto these garments with acetone paint, so as to be seen from afar. 3 In order to go deeper into personal experiences, a number of personal interviews and archival testimony were selected as references for the current chapter, giving evidence of specific events. 2. The Beginnings of Dressing in the Camps: Arrival and Humiliation The Nazi official policy in 1940 indicated that newcomers in a camp should be undressed, cleaned, disinfected, registered, tattooed on the forearm and dressed in striped camp uniforms. Every transport which arrived in the Auschwitz camps had to go through a disinfection process, known amongst the survivors as the ‘sauna.’ Getting undressed and, particularly, being totally shaved with rusty razor blades over the entire body, including the pubic hair, was the first step of humiliation for the women. The shaving of body hair and the exposure of their bodies in the presence of men, typical of arrivals at concentration camps, was experienced by women as a sexual violation. Furthermore, although shaving was primarily carried out for sanitary reasons, it was also useful in that it allowed prisoners to be identified at quite a distance. 4 The prisoners were ordered to hand over all their belongings and were told that these would be given back to them some time in the future. Having no personal belongings was one of the worst things about being imprisoned in the Auschwitz camps. This is why, as evidenced following, it was so important for prisoners to invent ways to carry such rare and precious objects as might happen to come into their possession. The garments issued to prisoners upon arrival were often the only clothing provided to them until the end of the war. 5 A former prisoner recalls: ‘From the day I came to the camp till the moment of evacuation nobody ever gave us another ration of clothing.’ 6 In another archival testimony, a Polish inmate notes: ‘We just wore our trousers and shirts till they were torn.’ 7 3. Dressing for Survival The camp prisoners’ primary daily concern was to stay alive. Survival was based on very basic aspects of life, such as finding extra portions of food, managing to work less or avoiding hard labour outside the camp, and even possibly avoiding outdoor work as indoor work was less detrimental to the prisoners’ health. And finally, dressing ‘well;’ ‘good’ clothing in the camps was crucial to inmates’ survival, given that any type of illness weakened their bodies and increased mortality. Therefore, one of the most important aspects was to dress well

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__________________________________________________________________ in order to be protected from the cold. Usually, the clothing issued to the prisoners was totally inadequate during winter. There are specific aspects of attire that were vital in terms of increasing chances of survival, which were: wearing clothing which was appropriate to the climate of each season; wearing underwear or a substitute for underwear; wearing socks; wearing footwear; or, wearing shoes instead of the usual camp clogs. With respect to shoes, an Auschwitz survivor emphasises: ‘If you had shoes, you had life.’ 8 4. Clothing in Daily Life It was very important that clothing facilitated prisoners’ daily lives. Clothing often provided prisoners with materials and solutions to face simple but crucial everyday needs, for example personal hygiene, covering intimate body parts or creating useful items such as bags. A former prisoner recounts that ‘every rug was extremely important …, because it could be used for warming purposes or as a makeshift bandage, for example.’ 9 Although the order prohibited prisoners from carrying anything on them, this order was often disobeyed, since ‘almost every woman prisoner tried to obtain belongings which would make life easier in the camp. Usually one started by getting the so-called bojtel (Beutel) [a pouch]. 10 Such a pouch was usually handmade by the prisoners, using a piece of fabric or canvas. Having such an opportunity was considered good luck. 11 Another aspect regarding the importance of clothing in providing material relates to basic human needs, such as using the toilet or menstruating. A rare example is the use of clothing as a replacement for toilet paper. 12 Of course this was a great luxury and a waste of clothing, but prisoners were not aware of this when they first arrived in Auschwitz. Also, clothing provided women with valuable material to use as napkins during menstruation. However, after experiencing shocking stress, either due to the harsh conditions, i.e., malnutrition and great strain, or because something was put in their food, most women ceased to menstruate. 13 Given that no proper underwear was issued to the concentration camp prisoners, one of the most popular garments made by female prisoners was the bra. Not having a bra was particularly annoying to women with large breasts, especially as they were often assigned to hard outdoor labour. Testimony from prisoners underscores this point: One girl in our group managed to get a needle - you know that was a treasure. So everybody who tore off a bit of the dress managed to make a bra from it. 14

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__________________________________________________________________ 5. ‘Fashion’ in the Camps: The Importance of Decent Clothing In concentration camp life, ‘fashionable’ was a synonym of ‘decent.’ There are two main aspects defining ‘decent clothing’ in the Auschwitz camps: firstly, clean clothing and secondly, clothing that actually fit the person wearing it. Clean clothing was one of the most important aspects of dressing; cleanliness was highly desired and appreciated in the camps, as it seemed a great luxury. 15 Iwaszko remarks that ‘the only prisoners with any chance of keeping their “stripes” clean were those whose work brought them into direct contact with the SS, for the SS had a frenzied fear of the lice that carried typhoid.’ 16 According to the surviving evidence, mainly from former prisoners who were employed in the clothing storehouse section of the Auschwitz main camp, 17 prisoners’ clothing would initially be sent to a laundry in the nearby town of Bielsko Biała. 18 However, after the first years of the war, and especially in the overcrowded section of Auschwitz II - Birkenau, washing was no longer possible. Prisoners recall primitive ways of washing their bodies and their clothing, such as using snow or standing in the rain: ‘When snow was lying around, we took the snow and washed; and then, we just waved our arms and everything [the clothing] and dried ourselves.’ 19 Auschwitz camp survivors’ testimony clearly shows that there was no provision for providing prisoners with garments that fit them properly. 20 On the contrary, clothing was randomly selected or even thrown to the prisoners as they passed by in rows after the process of registration and disinfection. An Auschwitz survivor vividly narrates: They dropped shirts, long johns, clogs, etc., to each of us; of course, nobody cared about the size, so almost none of us had neither the underwear nor pasiak 21 or clogs of the right size. I myself had to stand on tiptoe in my clogs. 22 Another former prisoner recalls: ‘when you were large, a large woman that is, you might get a small dress; when you were a small woman you got a big dress...’ 23 In search of clothing that fit, right after having received random garments, in order to feel more comfortable and protected, prisoners would often exchange garments among themselves. 24 A ‘long-term prisoner of Nazi concentration camps’ refers to the term ‘camp fashion.’ 25 He remarks that only some prisoner-functionaries could afford the luxury of ‘fashionable’ clothing. According to his definition, ‘fashionably’ dressed prisoners were those who had striped uniforms, elegantly tailored to fit, with ironed creases. He recalls, the squad of prisoners working in the Bekleidungskammer was neatly and uniformly dressed in pasiaks. This was possible

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__________________________________________________________________ thanks to a personal intervention of our superior SS-man, who paid attention to such details. No wonder that when our severaldozen group was marching, we were immediately conspicuous: we were wearing clean, fitted, uniform pasiaks. One could call us “model Nazi camp prisoners out of a fashion magazine.” 26 Nevertheless, ‘tens of thousands of male and female prisoners in the same camp were dressed in dirty, patched, stinking pasiaks or civilian clothing left behind by other prisoners who had been gassed.’ 27 6. The Desire for Personal Expression and Beautification In Auschwitz there was, of course, scarcely any access to any type of beautifying elements, despite the - most commonly - female or young persons’ need to look as beautiful as possible. Narrations give a rather dark image of the way prisoners looked, as in the following description of Greek Jewish women: ‘Deprived of hair, in extremely dirty and worn out uniforms they were a truly miserable sight. Their figures were distorted by the very clothes, of too large a size, hanging on them like on skeletons.’ 28 Under this prism, beauty, in the simplest possible way, could only be permitted to prisoners because of the work they were doing. One of the most privileged groups of female prisoners was the prostitutes in Auschwitz Camp I, a brothel that only the SS and Polish prisoners were allowed to visit. These women not only avoided hard work in mud, hunger and cold, but also received better food from the kitchen, and of course better clothing, while could also enjoy the rare luxury of having a bathroom at their disposal: Seeing prostitutes walking through the camp was extremely shocking: they wore high-quality, different style dresses, underwear and accessories - which, by contrast to the concentration camp scenery, could obviously shock anyone. 29 Furthermore, the prisoners were not allowed personal expression; thus, they were also not allowed to dress in a personal way. One way in which the female prisoners could feel more presentable was to save some of their hair and cover their shaved heads with scarves. A female prisoner recounts: ‘I was left with just a bit of hair here in the front; other than that, we were completely shaved. Because we were wearing scarves, it would show a bit of hair. That was a kind of privilege.’ 30 The camp discipline also determined the exact manner of wearing head scarves; first and foremost, the head scarf had to be tied backwards. Another survivor gives details on this:

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__________________________________________________________________ Of course, sometimes you would tie your scarf in a different way; that is, under your chin, or in Ukrainian style, that is, crossing the corners of the scarf under your chin and tying them at the back. But these other ways of tying the head scarf could get you into trouble, if you happened to meet an officious SSman on your way. 31 A detailed study of the numerous female prisoners’ testimonies can give evidence of other improvised styles of wearing the few available camp clothing ‘accessories,’ as well as of something that could be called ‘camp fashion,’ in spite of the horrible conditions of camp life. For example, a female former prisoner reports that there was a trend towards wearing aprons on the jaka - the prisoner striped jackets. She tells us: You made such an apron on your own, of course. It was a piece of fabric with a strap at the waist, to which shoulder straps were sewn. Two side pockets were a very important addition to an apron. It should be made clear that there weren’t any pockets on jaka, so having your own apron with pockets enabled you to carry certain belongings. 32 7. Clothing and the Remote Possibility of Escape One last aspect examined in this chapter is the relation between clothing and the very remote possibility of escaping a camp. SS authorities were aware that civilian clothes could be used by prisoners intending to arrange an escape from the camp. For that reason, civilian belongings given out from the camp storehouses were to have special markings. Therefore, striped uniforms were strictly issued to ‘external commandos visible in public, as well as to prisoners working in locations where civilian clothing might potentially facilitate their escape.’ 33 For the same reason, striped uniforms were also issued to the prisoners transferred from KL Auschwitz to other concentration camps. A prisoner working in the Sonderkommando squad on the premises of extermination sites in Auschwitz Birkenau, reports that they occasionally managed to get unmarked civilian clothing off the gassed prisoners. These garments were then provided to their fellow-prisoners who planned an escape from the camp. 34 He adds, ‘I myself had such clothes on, under the prisoner uniform, when escaping the evacuation transport in 1945.’ 35 Another astounding story is that of a former Czech prisoner, who managed to escape during the last three months of the war, hiding among Germans in a Jugendhalle (Hitler Youth Hall). As with the previous example, other camp workers had given her and her fellow-prisoner friend - with whom she escaped unmarked civilian clothes, which they wore over their marked camp clothes, ‘and

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__________________________________________________________________ so we could go on, we could run away.’ 36 During their escape, and in order to explain their slight Czech accent when speaking German, they pretended to be Polish girls of German origin fleeing from the Russians; the following events in this story show the remarkable ‘contribution’ of the boots they were wearing. As they had been working in a firm where they had been in contact with German workers, they had been given rubber boots. The firm was called Gebrüder Heineke/Haneke and the G and H from that name were painted on the boots; therefore, the two girls had to find a way to explain the G and H on the boots: So it occurred to us that the second name must begin with H. [As] Haneke was too obvious, [we chose] Heinze - it sounds German, sounds good. And I was Gertrude with a G, and for Ruth we couldn’t find another name with G, so she was Annie. Nobody ever questioned us about it, but this was a spur of the moment idea. Well, life consists of little things … but it worked wonderfully ... People were calling us by this name. 37 In this original story and in such an unexpected way, the boots provided the two young girls with some self-confidence and a sense of protection; in the survivor’s own words, ‘With them I managed to escape.’ 38 In closing, I would like to emphasize that the in-depth study of personal experiences can give us a view of this dynamic perspective of living one day at a time. As one of the former prisoners put it: ‘You do all sorts of things to save your life.’ 39

Notes 1

I.e., Auschwitz I - the main camp -, Auschwitz II - in Birkenau and Auschwitz III - in Monowitz. Auschwitz was formally divided into three camps on 22nd November 1943, due to the difficulty of administering such a huge camp complex. Piper writes that ‘the three camps maintained considerable autonomy, performing different functions, even though the formal functional division was not clearly demarcated in each and every aspect.’ See F. Piper, ‘Auschwitz Concentration Camp: An Historical Outline - Objectives, Tasks, and Extermination Methods’, in The Auschwitz Album. The Story of A Transport, I. Gutman and B. Gutterman (eds), Yad Vashem/Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland, 2008, p. 25. 2 See S. Pantouvaki, ‘Typology and Symbolism in Prisoners’ Concentration Camp Clothing during World War II’, in Endyesthai (To Dress): Historical, Sociological and Methodological Approaches, Conference Proceedings, Athens, Greece, 9th 11th April 2010, Endymatologika, Vol. 4, pp. 80-87.

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For more information, see T. Iwaszko, ‘The Housing, Clothing and Feeding of the Prisoners’, in Volume II of Auschwitz, 1940-1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp, W. Długoborski and F. Piper (eds), Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oświęcim, 2000, pp. 51-64. Also, Pantouvaki, op. cit. 4 ‘They were shaved so that they would immediately be seen,’ see archival interview of Susan Rohan, born Reiser in Prague in 1923, survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, British Library - National Sound Archive, NSA C410/085/01-06, transcribed by S. Pantouvaki. 5 This is evident in the survivors’ testimonies; e.g. such was the case of Zdenka Fantlová: ‘I wore that dress until the end of the war’, interview of Zdenka Ehrlich, born Fantlová in 1922, survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, with S. Pantouvaki, 1 May 2006; also, in the archival testimony of Zófia Serafinski, born Jurova in Vienna in 1919 by Polish parents, survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, British Library - National Sound Archive, NSA C830/103/01-02, transcribed by S. Pantouvaki - as well as in numerous relevant testimonies. 6 See archival interview of Maria Oyrzyńska, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archive (APMAB) 40275, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 7 Archival interview of Zbigniew Domasiewicz, APMAB 175132/ 3204, in Collection of Testimonies Vol. 135, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 8 Interview of Eva Gross, born Weiss in Brno in 1923, to S Pantouvaki, 6 June 2006, Part B. 9 Archival interview of Józef Pilecki, APMAB 166581/ 2301 in Collection of Testimonies vol. 44, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 10 Archival interview of Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska, APMAB 166471/ 2280, in Collection of Testimonies Vol. 44, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 11 Archival interview of Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska, op. cit. 12 Archival interview of Susan Rohan, op. cit. 13 See also A. M. Morrissette, The Experiences of Women during the Holocaust, personal account, Brandon, Manitoba, April 2004. Available at: . 14 Interview of Eva Gross to S. Pantouvaki, op. cit., Part B. 15 Auschwitz researcher Tadeusz Iwaszko notes that, ‘deprived of baths and washrooms, prisoners went unwashed and dirty for months. ... With water unavailable even to drink, no thought of washing one’s own clothing could be entertained’. See Iwaszko, p. 55. 16 See Iwaszko, p. 56.

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__________________________________________________________________ 17

See archival interview of Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, APMAB 159291/1700, in Collection of Testimonies Vol. 76, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 18 Brandhuber remarks that ‘once a week a truck delivered the underwear to a private laundry in Bielsko’, APMAB 159291/1700, op. cit. However, this mainly applies to the early years of the war and to the clothing worn by prisoners who worked close to the SS. 19 Archival interview of Zófia Serafinski, op. cit. 20 This is stated in numerous archival interviews at the Auschwitz Museum collections of testimonies, i.e. by Maria Oyrzyńska, APMAB 40275, Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, APMAB 159291/1700, Elżbieta Gremblicka-Sobczyńska, APMAB 159097/ 1687, also by Hungarian former prisoner Imre Kertész in his autobiographical book Fateless - to mention a few. 21 Pasiak means ‘uniform made of striped fabric’ in Polish; it belongs to the concentration camp terminology and is not a common word in modern Polish. 22 Archival interview of Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, APMAB 159291/1700, op. cit. 23 Archival interview of Zófia Serafinski, op. cit. 24 See interview of Hanka Wertheimer, born Weingarten, to S. Pantouvaki, 19 September 2009. 25 Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, who collected a series of observations over the war years, describes himself as such. See archival interview of Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, APMAB 166257/2264 in Collection of Testimonies Vol. 95, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 26 Archival interview of Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, op. cit. 27 Ibid. 28 See archival interview of Zofia Brodzka-Pohorecka in Collection of Testimonies Vol. 44, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 29 Archival interview of Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, APMAB 159291/1700, op. cit. 30 Archival interview of Flory Raychbart, born Strumsa in Salonica in 1920 by Greek parents, survivor of Auschwitz, British Library - National Sound Archive, NSA C830/020/01-03, transcribed by S. Pantouvaki. 31 Archival interview of Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska, APMAB 166471/ 2280, op. cit. 32 Archival interview of Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska, op. cit. 33 Ibid. 34 See archival interview of Henryk Mandelbaum, APMAB 175983/3280, in Collection of Testimonies Vol. 140, translated from Polish by M. Wnukowitz for S. Pantouvaki. 35 Ibid. 36 Interview of Eva Gross to S. Pantouvaki, op. cit., Part B. 37 Ibid.

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__________________________________________________________________ 38 39

Ibid. Ibid.

Bibliography Gutman, I. and Gutterman, B. (eds), The Auschwitz Album. The Story of A Transport. Yad Vashem/Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland, 2008. Iwaszko, T., ‘The Housing, Clothing and Feeding of the Prisoners’, in Auschwitz, 1940-1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp, Volume II. W. Długoborski and F. Piper (eds), Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oświęcim, 2000, pp. 5164. Pantouvaki, S., ‘Typology and Symbolism in Prisoners’ Concentration Camp Clothing during World War II’, in Endyesthai (To Dress): Historical, Sociological and Methodological Approaches. Conference Proceedings, Athens, Greece, 9th 11th April 2010, Endymatologika, Vol. 4, pp. 80-87. Świebocki, H., Iwaszko, T., Długoborski, W., Piper, F., Lasik, A., Brand, W., Auschwitz, 1940-1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp, Vol. I-V. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oświęcim, 2000. Sofia Pantouvaki, PhD, is a freelance scenographer and researcher, currently teaching as Professor of Costume Design at the Department of Film, TV and Scenography, Aalto University, in Finland. Her recent research includes theatrical costume making and clothing in the concentration camps of World War Two.

Schwarz Rot Gold is the New Black Karolina M. Burbach Abstract This chapter is a theoretically guided empirical discussion of fashion and its role within the production of national identity in Germany. In the beginning of the 2000s, a new patriotism in contemporary German popular culture could be observed, starting with the fashion designer Eva Gronbach in 2001. Gronbach designed pieces in the German national colours and adorned them with the imperial eagle, which caused a big controversy in the German media. This new patriotism was the first patriotic tendency in German mainstream culture since the debates of 1968. I approach the term patriotism with the aid of one of Michel Foucault’s key terms, the notion of the episteme. Fashion images from collections by Gronbach are examined with regard to their role in the discourse of German patriotism. But I am not only interested in the ‘how’ of this discourse. Building up upon Antonio Gramsci’s notion of ‘cultural hegemony,’ I also explain the recent rise of this fashion patriotism. Thus, my discourse analysis of fashion becomes embedded in social struggles and transformations in Germany. Arguing that fashion is a discursive practice that can show up as well as promote changes in discursive formations, I assume a dialectical structure-agency conception: On the one hand the case of Gronbach hints at the deeper structural problematic of patriotism and social cohesion which allowed Gronbach to become popular. On the other hand, this structure is also produced via discursive practices such as Gronbach’s. What I term ‘inclusionary patriotism’ comprises cultural normalisation: everybody can take part in the new German fashion patriotism, as long as s/he is able to adapt him-/herself to cultural norms within Germany. Thus, the case of Gronbach demonstrates a ‘constrained heterogeneity’ with regard to the discourse of patriotism in Germany, in which diversity is only acceptable within certain discursively constructed limits. Key Words: Contemporary fashion, Germany, national identity, visual culture, discourse analysis, episteme, cultural hegemony, patriotism, constrained heterogeneity, Eva Gronbach. ***** Since the beginning of the 2000s, a wave of attributes considered as German has become visible in German fashion collections. Looking at for instance British fashion, a thematisation of national identity in fashion collections is nothing new. 1 But in Germany things are different: after the Holocaust and Hitler’s conception of a ‘racially pure’ ethnic community, German national identity is a highly sensitive topic. The most important actor in this fashion patriotism is certainly the designer

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__________________________________________________________________ Eva Gronbach: Gronbach prints national symbols on shirts, skirts and dresses and lets her models stroll down the catwalks in the German national colours. With her diploma collection Déclaration D’amour à l’Allemagne from 2001 she was the first designer who dared to focus on German national identity. 2 Thereby, she was able to make ‘Germanness’ her own trademark. This is already embodied in her logo, which consists of a stamp displaying her name and the German Imperial Eagle.

Image 1: Tracksuit in the German national colours by Eva Gronbach. Courtesy of Eva Gronbach. 1. Conceptualising Fashion as a Discursive Practice Fashion is here seen in relation to the general discourse of German patriotism. My argument is that fashion is a discursive practice that can mark transitions within broader social and political discourses, but at the same time can also promote them. In the last years I observed a patriotic turn that now takes part also within the overall media and everyday discourse on national identity within Germany. For instance in 2009 we faced a strong media discourse focusing on the 60 years jubilee of the German Bundesrepublik in a rather soft, patriotic way. This has not been the case in 1999 when Germany became 50 years old, which would have been a ‘rounder anniversary.’ The patriotism displayed at the Men’s Soccer World Championships in 2006 and in 2010 can serve as another example of this

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__________________________________________________________________ transformation. During previous World Championships, patriotic sentiments had been expressed in a much more cautious way and have been critically eyed by the German press. By contrast, today, German patriotism has become acceptable again.

Image 2: Patriotic fans in Berlin during the Men’s Soccer World Championship 2010. Courtesy of Christoph Karg. This discursive transformation in fact started with Gronbach’s collection from 2001. Hence, the German patriotic turn took part first of all in clothing fashion (since 2001), then in popculture (since 2003), and last but not least also in the contemporary media as well as in everyday discourse. Thus, I argue that the discursive turn to German patriotism in fashion has been like a ‘dry run’ for the broader public discourse on that topic. 3 In fact, Gronbach’s fashion has been the first patriotic tendency in German mainstream culture since the debates of 1968. Fashion is no political void. But the fact that it is held for one bears, from an analytical perspective, the advantage that fashion to some degree becomes free of discourse-regulation, and then it excels in marking transitions of broader political discourses. These discourses, expressed in fashion or in other parts of social life, always also have to be seen in the context of social power relations, which they can naturalise or contest. I here assume a dialectical relationship between structure and agency with regard to fashion: the broader patriotic revival here forms the deeper structure that produces and enables the fashion patriotism, which in return reacts on the patriotic structure and reproduces it (via singular acts of agency). Only ten years later, after the fashion discourse, the patriotism also involved the media and

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__________________________________________________________________ political discourse. Thus, fashion is both: a seismograph with regard to social and political discourse transformations and a discursive practice that actively plays its own part within these broader discourses. 2. Theorising Patriotism with the Aid of Foucault and Gramsci I approach the term patriotism with the aid of one of Michel Foucault’s key terms, the notion of the episteme. According to Foucault, discourses are governed by epistemes, which are epistemological paradigms: By episteme, we mean, in fact, the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems; the way in which, in each of these discursive formations, the transitions to epistomologization, scientificity, and formalization are situated and operate; the distribution of these thresholds, which may coincide, be subordinated to one another, or be separated by shifts in time; the lateral relations that may exist between epistemological figures or sciences in so far as they belong to neighbouring, but distinct, discursive practices. 4 Only via these discursive formations can we produce knowledge of the world (which is, of course, historically specific). Epistemes thus structure our experiences. Foucault assumes an iterative process of different modes of thought. 5 According to him, knowledge and the way knowledge is produced, is governed by certain rules. These rules sometimes form an organic and structured whole, which is when we speak of epistemes. I consider patriotism as an episteme. Patriotism can be interpreted as a certain mental and epistemological framework for making sense of the world, a ‘mental map.’ It structures discourses and plays an important role in subjectivation-processes, since it divides the world into those, which belong to an imagined community, and those who do not. Thus, patriotism as an episteme works towards the constitution of subjectivity. During the heyday of nationalism in the early twentieth century, patriotism pervaded all aspects of culture and science. Before the catastrophes of 1914-1945 (and partially also during this period), it was predominantly connected with concepts of progress, development and unity. In Germany, a certain romantic and heroic patriotism was to be found in all displays of popular culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. I assume that since 1968 this episteme of patriotism has entered into a crisis. The catastrophes of 1914 - 1945 cast a damp over nationalism, a term that is since then inextricably linked with war and cruelty. 6 But in Germany due to its historical role also patriotism as the counterpart of nationalism is since then problematic. Thus, patriotism as a mode of thought cannot function anymore as a coherent tool to make sense of the

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__________________________________________________________________ world. Therefore roughly from 1968 until 1989 all debates in the German political and public sphere (except from the debates on the far-right) have been subject to strict anti-nationalist discourse-politics that also contain an anti-patriotic dimension. 7 Thus, since 1968 the episteme of patriotism in Germany has entered a crisis. The formerly nationalistic episteme of patriotism was altered by a rather anti-nationalist discursive formation that has been active roughly from 1968 until 1989. The new German patriotism that started with Gronbach demonstrates the transition into a new episteme. In this work, fashion is being understood as a discursive practice. In this way, it can be seen as playing a role in the formation of subjectivity. The fashion-discourse analysed here is governed by the (contemporary) episteme of patriotism. This is not a matter of simple subsumption. Rather, fashion can critically relate to the (old) nationalistic episteme. In almost all of Gronbach’s collections the models visibly have different skin colours and ethnical backgrounds. Thus, in Gronbach’s fashion patriotism a ‘racial’ exclusive conception of German national identity is refused in favour of an inclusive one. Unfortunately, Foucault does not deliver a theory of epistemic transformations. Discourses are not explicitly rooted in historic processes. For instance, in The Order of Things Foucault describes iterative epistemes, which take on a life on their own and are not rooted in material structures and processes. Foucault for example does not show how the invention of the printing press might have influenced the formation of discourses. In short, Foucault tends towards a disembedding of discourses. Thus in his archeological method, Foucault examines how epistemes alternate, but he does not offer an explanation for this alternation. In order to explain the new German patriotic episteme, the analysis must be embedded within the wider context of social realities. This becomes possible through the recourse to the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci’s historic bloc is a concept similar to Marx’s concept of ‘social formation,’ although more historically specific. A historic bloc is a stable mode of social development. 8 Gramsci draws a distinction between the direct domination through the institutions of political society (for instance law, police, military) and the indirect consensual integration by civil society (family, school, trade unions, media et al.). Coercion is the institutionalised form of power that originates in the ‘political society.’ Hegemony, on the other hand, for Gramsci takes part within the cultural institutions of ‘civil society.’ A historic bloc is thus reproduced by hegemony and coercion. Gramsci developed the Leninist model of political hegemony into ‘cultural hegemony.’ Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony can be applied to all cultural institutions and products. Hegemony refers to a mode of societalisation through the naturalisation and universalisation of particularist ideologies: It is ‘a conception of the world that is implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individual and collective life.’ 9 It is thus a certain world-view in people’s heads that is produced and reproduced through all forms of social practices including fashion. 10

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Image 3: Lookbook image from Eva Gronbach’s diploma collection Déclaration d’amour à l’Allemagne (2001). Courtesy of Eva Gronbach. 3. How German Patriotism Becomes Acceptable Again Patriotism from the start has been a great tool to unify people, especially in times of crisis and insecurity. Since the turnaround in 1989 in Germany, crisis tendencies occurred that led to processes of social disintegration: a high unemployment rate, poverty among large stratums of society and a health insurance system that was said not to be working anymore. Thus, there was a need for a new patriotic discourse to work against these symptoms of social disintegration on the ideological level. The fashion image above (image 3) demonstrates how Gronbach’s fashion puts German patriotism back into the context of unity and progress, and thus makes it acceptable again: a female model poses in front of the background of a wooden wall on which the German national flag hangs. She only wears a black teddy and a straw coronal in which a red flower is woven into on her head. On the bikini area there is some soft white wool sewed in on the teddy. Sewed on at this place it reminds of pubic hair, in German ‘Schamhaar,’ literally translated ‘shame hair,’ a reference to ‘German shame.’ But it is no ‘real’ shame but a shame that is put on. Further, contrasting the black teddy, it is white, a colour that is most often associated with innocence, purity and virginity. Thus, Germany becomes salvaged from its historical guilt by shame. The

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__________________________________________________________________ model’s skin is white as ivory, her hair black as ebony, her lips are red. This reminds of Snow White, a fairytale in which an innocent princess is wrongfully cast out by her jealous stepmother. This implies that a harmless German patriotism is wrongfully cast out due to Germany’s historical guilt. The model holds fast onto the German national flag, which is a signifier for the German nation and its political power. Thus, a fatherly image of Germany is drawn: the nation state gives security and stability to the individual. The picture is taken in front of a brown, conservative looking wood wall, probably oak, a tree that is often associated with Germany and represents fortitude and steadiness. It is also often used in traditional and rather conservative German flats and thus also represents a ‘background of traditions.’ But in the picture most of the oak wall is covered by the German flag. Thus, the new patriotism builds up on old traditions but also covers and changes them. The aesthetics of this fashion image with the German flag in the background reminds of paintings of the French revolution. 11 During the French revolution, patriotism was connected to unity and progress. In a similar progressive way is German patriotism represented here. Already the fact that it is represented in fashion means that patriotism now is supposed to be ‘en vogue,’ and thus, progressive and young rather than old and traditional. Thus, patriotism is here naturalised as something revolutionary and desirable. 4. Constrained Heterogeneity At the same time, the images imply a certain romantisation of political power. For instance one of the images from Liebeserklärung an Deutschland (2001) is taken in a room in the old German Chancellor’s office in Bonn. The models pose in front of a big window. On the right side of the horizon is a skyscraper, the socalled ‘Langer Eugen,’ a building in which the offices of the members of the government have been situated before the governmental move from Bonn to Berlin in the late 1990s. Thus, the building is a symbol for political power. Next to the two models it looks like a third backbone; it thus gives security and structure to the individual. Power is thus visually represented as a structure into which the individual has to place itself. However, fashion is not merely an ideological tool that can stabilise a social order. At the same time it can be also self-reflective and critical: With her collections Gronbach challenges the discourse about German national identity. Although she calls for a patriotic sentiment, she also clarifies that this patriotism should not be an exclusive one. In this respect, it was very important for Gronbach to present her creations on non-white models. She states that her fashion expresses her longing for a Germany that is a peaceful community integrating all cultures. 12 Thus, as exemplified on the fashion image below (image 4), Gronbach’s patriotism is decidedly integrative in character. On the other hand, the inclusion of different ethnical stereotypes also is connected with an acquired adoption of German cultural norms. Gronbach’s collections are pure Western clothing. Thus, non-Western influences are marginalised in the fashion patriotism.

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__________________________________________________________________ For instance, the huge German debate over the Muslim headscarf (‘Kopftuchdebatte’) is not being taken up by Gronbach although the thematisation would most certainly fit very well into the general concept of ‘inclusionary patriotism.’ People with different ethnical backgrounds are allowed to participate in German patriotism but have to adapt themselves. Hence, hegemony here has an explicitly integrative dimension. In spite of that it is also apparent that here ethnical heterogeneity is subordinated to cultural homogeneity. A critical theory perspective has to take into account the wider consequences of this new patriotism. The work of Gronbach seems to be based largely on the idea of a German ‘Leitkultur’ (leading culture), a word, which has been very popular in the German media and political discourse during, intriguingly, the same time span examined here. Thus, the diversity postulated in Gronbach’s work is merely a superficial one. Gronbach’s diversity is subsumed under a normalising ‘leading’ culture, which tolerates only certain amounts of deviance.

Image 4: Lookbook Image from Gronbach’s collection My new Police Dress Uniform (2004). Courtesy of Eva Gronbach. In general, Gronbach’s images display a controlled heterogeneity: on the one hand, the inclusive patriotism is open for anybody, regardless of ethnical origin or gender. On the other hand, this opening is tied to the subordination to the existing power relations. To conclude, Gronbach’s patriotism is definitely more refined and more democratised than earlier forms of patriotism. But, obviously, it takes place within the traditional in-group out-group distinction so well-known in the history

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__________________________________________________________________ of nationalism and patriotism; it merely draws the border between these two groups on a different level. What seems like cultural openness and a preference of diversity at first unfolds as a mechanism of cultural normalisation at second glance.

Notes 1

Already since the 1970s, British fashion designers are pre-occupied with national identity. The Union Jack printed ‘Anarchy in the UK’ shirt from the Seditionaries Collection from 1977/1987 by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren can serve as an example for this. The preoccupation with British national identity took on an intensified form in the 1990s, as for instance many collections of Vivienne Westwood and Alexander Mc Queen demonstrate (e.g. McQueen’s Highland Rape (Spring/Summer 1995) is preoccupied with the ‘rape’ of Scotland by the British, whereas Vivienne Westwood in her collection On Liberty (Autumn/Winter 1994/1995) focuses on British riding and hunting traditions). 2 Earlier, there have been only singular tendencies, e.g. in the field of the fashion press: already since the end of the 1990s, and in an intensified form since 2003, a range of new German fashion magazines emerged. German-titled magazines such as ‘Achtung’ (Attention), ‘Deutsch’ (German), ‘Blond,’ or ‘Liebling’ (Darling) can serve as examples for the back-turn to a local wording and picture language. 3 This is not meant in an intentional way. Rather, through a turn in the fashion discourse, German patriotism becomes naturalised and thus, also more acceptable within related broader discourses. 4 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language, A. M. Sheridon Smith (trans), Pantheon Books, New York, 1972, p. 191. 5 The US-American Science Historian Thomas Kuhn and his theory of ‘the structure of scientific revolutions’ helped me with understanding Foucault as Kuhn’s notion of paradigm is quite similar to Foucault’s episteme: both assume an iterative process of different modes of thought. But whereas Foucault focuses on diverse processes of subjectivisation, Kuhn concentrates on scientific paradigms. 6 Until the present day, in German media discourse and everyday linguistic use, the term nationalism has a strong negative connotation and is mostly rejected in favour of its more positive connoted counterpart, patriotism. Even nationalist groups on the far right often prefer to speak of patriotism instead nationalism with the purpose of making their racist beliefs appear more acceptable. 7 But this strict anti-nationalist phase only started with the 1968-debates and the big coalition since 1969, in which the Social Democratic Party commissioned the new Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt in Germany. For instance, Brandt’s genuflection of Warsaw in 1970 in front of the memorial of the ghetto riot is an important symbolical gesture. However, between 1945 and 1968, things have been somewhat different: after World War II, Germany became quickly politically

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__________________________________________________________________ rehabilitated within Europe, and the issue of nationalism and its unsavoury consequences have been mostly concealed by the German elites. 8 The post-Gramscian Robert Cox interprets the temporal dimension of Gramsci’s historic blocs in the following way: 1. liberal world order (roughly 1648 - 1866), 2. rival empires (roughly 1880 - 1945), 3. pax americana, US-American world hegemony (since 1945). R. Cox, Production, Power and World Order. Social Forces in the Making of History, Columbia University Press, Columbia, 1987. 9 A. Gramsci and H. Quintin, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, G. Nowell Smith (ed), International Publishers, New York, 1971, p. 328. 10 The British Visual Culture theorist Malcolm Barnard also refers to the concept of hegemony when he argues that fashion is a form of nonverbal communication that on the ideological level maintains and legitimates social power relations (M. Barnard, Fashion as Communication, Routledge, London, 2008, p. 42). Barnard does not forget to underline that fashion and dress, at the same time, can also challenge and resist existing power relations. According to Barnard, a specific dress or fashion can even simultaneously maintain and contest existing power relations. Barnard gives the example of high heels that at the same time can be a shackle and a liberation, because, put very simply, meaning is never fixed but always contextdependent. Ibid. 11 For instance, the work The French Revolution by the French painter LouisLéopold Boilly (1761-1845) looks very similar to Gronbach’s fashion image discussed here: the pose is similar and the flag on the left side. 12 This information stems from my interview with Gronbach on 12.05.2009.

Bibliography Barnard, M., Fashion as Communication. Routledge, London, 2008. Cox, R., Production, Power and World Order. Social Forces in the Making of History. Columbia University Press, Columbia, 1987. Foucault, M., The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language. A. M. Sheridon Smith (trans), Pantheon Books, New York, 1972. —––, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. Routledge, London, 2001 [1970]. Gramsci, A. and Hoare, Q., Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Geoffrey Nowell Smith (ed), International Publishers, New York, 1971.

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__________________________________________________________________ Kuhn, T., Die Struktur Wissenschaftlicher Revolutionen. Hermann Vetter (trans), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1976. Telephone interview with Eva Gronbach. May 12th 2009, transcript in possession of the author. Karolina M. Burbach is freelance fashion journalist, researcher and lecturer. She holds a MA in Fashion Studies from Stockholm University and a diploma in Fashion Journalism & Media Communication from AMD Düsseldorf. Her research interests are contemporary avant-garde fashion and critical theory in relation to national (especially German) identity, urban identity and cosmopolitanism.

Nigerian Clothing Tradition: Preservation and Restoration of Used Alaari Fabrics among the Ondo People of South Western Nigeria Sunday Roberts Ogunduyile and Evelyn Omotunde Adepeko Abstract Nigeria is a country made up of about 150 million people with immense cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. The Yoruba consist of many cultures located in the South Western part of the country. The Ondo people form one of these cultures. The woven fabric, aso oke, was originally produced from the local wild silk and cotton fibres. The woven fabrics are classified into four with different types of yarns, dyestuff, and the movement of the stripes. However, the quality of the fibres, dyes and the values attached to them presently differ from that of the old times. The Ondo people have penchant for alaari and give higher value to its acquisition irrespective of the cost and age. Since the Ondos have a long experience in handling the fabrics, they have developed a technology for its renovation, restoration and preservation which has opened up avenues for sustainability. The chapter examines the historical development of alaari, its aesthetic and social values, factors informing its acquisition and the various production and preservation techniques used. Key Words: Ondo-Yoruba, alaari, acquisition, restoration, sustainability, reservation. ***** 1. Introduction Clothing is one of the basic needs of man and has been considered as very important in human history. Also important are the materials, production tools, as well as their functions in cultural and social settings. Aso-oke is a term used for all indigenous fabrics woven on the traditional narrow band loom and is an important dress-item in many traditional ceremonies and social events among the Yoruba people. Alaari, a brand of aso-oke which is made up of dominant red with thin stripes of beige, green or yellow is the favourite of the Ondo people. These fabrics were considered prestigious and were highly sought after in the past by the aristocratic class and the elite throughout Yoruba land because they were important in the commemoration of important events. However, the acquisition of second hand alaari fabrics has been a peculiar phenomenon among the Ondos. For quite some time the Ondos have continued to buy greater number of used alaari fabrics from other Yoruba communities because of their penchant for them. They not only acquired the fabric, they also devised an

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__________________________________________________________________ indigenous technology for its conservation, and restoration. Besides, the Ondos places high premium on the age and fabric structure vis-à-vis its social, economic worth. They have a long historical record for weaving and preservation of aso-oke brands. Earlier researches mentioned Ondo town variously as centre-spot for asooke production in the 1960s and 1970s. 1 Specifically the Okedasa and Odojomu streets weavers in Ondo town were versed in weaving brands of petuje and alaari fabrics which also have local nick names such as lita, (design of pepper) Fopelo lalubosa (design of onions) Lapola (of sticks) Layinyan (of cockroaches) Lomolangidi (of wood images). 2 Many of the indigenous woven fabrics became valuable with time. It became apparent that old woven pieces could not be reproduced due to lack of original materials. This led to a venture of selling used aso-oke fabric which is called dilali (dilali is the name given to old and used asooke types sold as second hand cloth). This age long fabrics has a mechanism to be reused. The mechanism creates room for woven fabrics to be painted with dyes when fading effects are suspected. Fabrics are then beaten with special mallet and then sized for reuse. 2. Historical Development of Alaari Fabrics of the Ondo People Ondo is a town situated 155km southeast of Ibadan Nigeria and forty-five kilometers from Ile-Ife the cradle of Yoruba race with an inhabitant of about three hundred thousand inhabitants according to 2006 Census. 3 Yoruba history and oral tradition traced the origin of the Ondos from Oduduwa, the acclaimed founder of Ile-Ife. The Ondos migrated from Ile-Ife with the prestigious fabric, alaari, petuje and sanyan which were associated with royalty. 4 Oral tradition shows that there are two stories relating to alaari production and use in Ondo town. The first reveals that there was a wealthy barren woman who died and was buried in a place specially preserved. A cotton plant of special specie grew on her grave and was nurtured because it was a strange phenomenon. When the cotton was ripe, it produced unusual red cotton, which was harvested and made into yarns. These yarns were later woven into beautiful cloths which attracted the rich and nobility. Ogunye relays the second story that there was a centenarian, who started the cultivation of cotton plant from which alaari fabrics was produced more than three centuries ago. 5 When the cotton was planted, a slave was placed in charge of the farm to tend and nurture it until the time for harvest. As the plant blossomed and matured, it came out with red fluffy buds instead of white during picking. It was however noted that as soon as the breaking of the buds began, the skin of the slave also began to show some cracking effects similar to that experienced during the harmattan period. This was considered strange and hence special attention was given to the cultivation of specie of the cotton yarns that were used in the production of alaari.

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__________________________________________________________________ 3. Alaari and Other Types of Hand-Woven Fabrics in Nigeria Lamb and Holmes noted that alaari, was originally made from a mixture of red camwood-dyed sanyan and alharini thereby suggesting that the fabric must have originated in Arabia. 6 It was also noted that in 1472, the first Oba of Benin introduced scarlet clothes to the court. Lamb and Holmes, observed that the Yoruba, Hausas and the Nupes have many common artistic and clothing traditions in the use of scarlet robes. 7 This might have been as a result of the early trade in art products and slavery that cut across the three regions. 8 Traditionally, all tribes in Nigeria share the dignity and honour associated with alaari. 4. Use and Re-Use of Alaari Akinwumi wrote on the phenomenon of commemorative use of textiles among the Yoruba people. 9 He traced the development of uniform use of clothes (i.e., asoebi) as dress for event commemoration, strip-cloth such as alaari, which has always been in the forefront of the prestigious clothes used. Ademuleya in a study of the basis for the continuing appreciation of the old aso-oke (alaari included) among the Ondos suggested that it was traditionally appreciated by the people because of their special attachment to this fabric. 10 He evaluates the people’s extraordinary attachment and preference for the aso-oke types even when their kindred all over Yorubaland have since embraced the modified types. Ademuleya concluded that the people’s preference for the old cloth types goes beyond its commemorative or ceremonial usage but the nobility popularised its extravagant use and often gave it as gifts items during important occasions. 11 The patronage of the traditional narrow strip woven fabrics has been enhanced by the culture of the Ondos. The use of alaari in life and after death is seen as important. They are used as gift items by the individuals to demonstrate love and respect. The Ondo elders still bequeath alaari fabrics to their children till today, while the ideas of burying some of the fabrics with the dead ones are not abandoned. 5. Maintenance and Preservation of Alaari The maintenance and preservation of alaari has not received much attention in the literature as in other aspects of its production, marketing and utilisation. According to Marjory, finishes helps in changing, improving or developing the appearance of a fabric. 12 It is the finishes that frequently determine the degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that consumers have with a specific fabric. Marjory classified the finish of most fabrics into mechanical or chemical, permanent or non-permanent groups (more properly called durable and renewable). 13 Finishes are used generally in or to preserve the surface texture and colours of woven fabrics. Renewable finishes are those that run off or are removed easily by washing or dry cleaning. He also highlighted that to preserve both the surface texture and the colours better, the application of finish to woven fabric is essential.

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__________________________________________________________________ Harold itemised the various considerations for the care of textile and costumes. 14 He discussed the negative effects of climate, lighting and mildew on textiles and the damages that insects and rodents caused to them. It is stressed further that fabric maintenance is imperative to guard against textile destruction. This involves regular inspection, airing, rotation and the cleaning of the storage facilities. Egunjobi examined the indigenous method used in the care of aso-oke, in particular, the process of washing, drying, pressing, folding, handling and keeping. 15 He also assessed the traditional facilities and instrument employed in the care, the strength and weakness of these traditional approaches and the relevance of indigenous care of aso-oke in contemporary times. The preservation and maintenance of alaari in Ondo town is enhanced by the use of traditional materials and methods. Although this method has not changed over the years, but mostly carried out by the elderly ones. Pa Ayodele Adeduye (popularly called baba lalupa), who is 100 years and has been in the business for decades discouraged the use of industrial soap or detergent of any kind for washing the fabrics. 16 He advised drycleaners to take advantage of the qualities inherent in Nigerian black soap (ose dudu or ose Oyo) for washing. 17 Adepeko revealed that generally, ejinrin weere also called maadan and akoko leaves also called adama are used instead of industrial soap for washing alaari. 18 The leaves are picked into a plastic pail, with some quantity of water and little alcohol added and squeezed. The alcoholic content would help in the process of extraction of liquids from the leaves. The solution would be sieved and the fabric to be washed would be soaked in a plastic pail and the solution added to it before washing. The washing usually last for five minutes and would be removed and squeezed. The fabric would then be dipped into already prepared starch solution (this is optional) before squeezing and spreading to dry. The use of starch solution, is to prevent colour bleeding or smearing with other colours and to strengthen the yarns of the fabrics. 19 The ejinrin weere solution gives the alaari fabrics the desired sheen after washing. An experienced Oloolu (traditional dry cleaner), Madam Akinsulire added that the use of lime, common household salt and little quantity of kerosene would bring about lasting preservation of the alaari fabrics when beating with mallet on wood. 20 Although, contemporary weavers and some consumers claimed that the process and of beating of the fabric could be time consuming and could damage its fibre content. However the use of contemporary ironing devices has not been popular among alaari drycleaners in Ondo. Traditional drycleaners popularly called the Oloolu offer laundry services to preserve the alaari fabrics using locally developed techniques and tools. Other individuals involved in the renovation and preservation of alaari are the tailors and fabric painters who are mostly women. The renovators did the repainting of alaari fabrics with red dyestuff known as aro alaari. While The tailors convert robes and

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__________________________________________________________________ other big dresses made from alaari fabrics into wrapper, (iro), shawl (iborun), head scarf (gele) for their daughters. 6. The Relationship between Age and Price of Alaari Fabric Based on research by Adepeko, it was observed that very old alaari fabrics (50 years and above) were either inherited or given as gift. They were also less expensive when bought. 21 Such fabrics were bought as ‘second hand’ (called dilali in Ondo) especially those bought twenty years ago. However, the situation is no longer the same today in Ondo. The old types or the ‘second hand’ are very expensive. The Ondos treasure the fabric because of the value put on the age. On the relationship between the worth of the fabric in terms of aesthetics, economic values and their ages, it was noted that the fastness property of the fabric was one of the important variables used in assessing the worth of the fabric. Another variable considered important was the types of structured design embedded in the woven piece. Figured motifs and stripes from the combinations of sanyan or petuje types are highly valued. The figured motifs bear such images as omolangidi (i.e., children carved wooden toy) and omolangidi motifs on alaari featured prominently in the 1940s and 1950s. The incorporated complex stripe patterns also belong to the old time. They were special in those olden days. Although it is difficult to say that one variety was better aesthetically than the other, but the Ondo people tend to prefer alaari with a combination of stripes and check patterns. It was noted that the concept of the age of alaari is often associated with the structured motifs and designs. In assessing the worth of the fabric, the Ondos also evaluate the worth of the yarns used. Adepeko noted that out of the sixty alaari fabrics examined; only twenty three were woven and sewn together with hand spun yarns. 22 The fabrics were characterised by thickness and rough surface textures. These qualities had perhaps made it possible to use and re-use the materials for such a long period. Based on interviews of professionals in the field, the age of such fabrics could not be less than fifty years and above. Those classified as recent were woven with industrial spun yarns which were not as strong and smoother in appearance. The worth of an alaari fabric is also determined by the quality of the dye used. From the analysis of the rating of the sixty selected alaari fabrics used for the dry and wet tests only few of the fabrics did not run at all when wet. The rating was very low in the wet test. The implication of this is that the colour will run when the fabric is wet or washed. The users often preserve the colour of alaari fabrics by painting the faded ones with imported crimson colour called aro alaari through the help of the renovators. It was noted that a large number of alaari used in Ondo were not colour fast. However the use of aniline basic and direct dyes (Petrochemical dyes) had positive effects on dyed the samples.

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__________________________________________________________________ 7. The Role of Traders and Middle Men in the Business of Alaari Fabrics From time immemorial, only two groups of women were involved in the trading of alaari fabrics: the full-time traders and the middle-men (alarobo). The alarobo are part-time traders who engage in the sales and buying of alaari fabrics on request. The traders got their supplies from Ilorin, Ijebu, Iseyin, Ede, Ibadan, Lagos, Oyo. They also engaged in the sales of other types of fabrics. The full-time traders were not under-employed, because alaari fabrics enjoyed regular patronage throughout the year. Hence, they foresaw a bright future for the business. As a way of encouraging the traders and promoting Ondo cultural heritage, the Late Osemawe of Ondo Kingdom, (Traditional King) Oba Adedinsewo Adesanoye, Osungbedelola II formed an unusual cultural policy by organising an exhibition of all traditional costumes. Alaari fabrics were extravagantly displayed at these exhibitions. The exhibition showed that the dye stuff used had always been basic dye stuff well known for its unpredictable colour quality. The colourfastness account for why alaari fabrics were not washed regularly. If washed regularly there is the tendency that much of the crimson colour will disappear. In sum, those alaari fabrics that had already lost their brightness had to be repainted form time to time in order to keep their brightness. Despite this fact, amongst the Ondo-Yoruba, age of the fabric is treasured and it determines the premium placed on it. 8. Conclusion As earlier mentioned, age (of an alaari fabric) is treasured and it determined the premium placed on it. This belief is reflected in their axiom: ‘aso e gbo, da ma ma wekun’ meaning ‘the ruggedness of a cloth does not hide its quality.’ According to some opinions, the possession of a large number of alaari fabrics counted so much in rating a family’s wealth. It was the ‘first dress asset’ to own. The study also ascertained that it is the prime of cloth to wear for the celebration of both native and joyous ceremonies, both within and outside OdeOndo.

Notes 1

A. V. Lamb and J. Holmes, Nigerian Weaving, Shell, Lagos, 1980; B. J. Eicher, Nigeria Handcrafted Textiles, University of Ife-press, Ile-Ife, 1976. 2 E. Ojo, Adaptation of Contemporary Motifs on Lightweight Handwoven Fabrics (Aso-oke) in South West Nigeria, unpublished PhD Thesis, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria, 2004. 3 P. Ogunsakun, Ondo: The People, Their Origin, Custom and Tradition, Inway Publishers, Lagos, 1976.

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O. Iluyemi, Ondo Traditions and Culture - The Female Angle, Corner Stone Publishers, Ondo, 2003. 5 Interview with Pa Ogunye at Road 1, House 7 Oye Akinnawonu Street, Ondo on 10th August 2006. 6 Lamb and Holmes, op. cit. 7 Ibid. 8 J. Perani and N. Wolff, Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa, Berg, Oxford and New York, 1999. 9 T. Akinwumi, The Commemorative Phenomenon of Textile Use among the Yoruba: A Survey of Significance and Form, PhD Thesis, University of Ibadan, 1990. 10 B. Ademuleya, Continuing Appreciation of the Old Aso-Oke Types among the Yoruba of Ondo, PhD Thesis, University of Ibadan, 2002. 11 Ibid. 12 L. Marjory, Essentials of Textiles, Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1980. 13 Ibid. 14 F. M. Harold, Consideration for the Care of Textiles and Costumes, Marcia K. Hadley, Indianapolis, 1980. 15 L. Egunjobi, ‘The Care of Yoruba Traditional Hand Woven Aso-oke Clothing’, in CONTEXT. Centre for Indigenous Knowledge for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Iowa, 1999, pp. 25-28. 16 Interview with Pa Ayodele Adeduye on the Age of Fabrics, Oke Aluko Street, Ondo 19th April 2006. 17 Ibid. 18 E. Adepeko, An Assessment of Historical Development in the Worth, Acquisition and Reuse of Alaari Fabric among Ondo Yoruba, unpublished M.Sc. Dissertation, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, 2009. 19 Ibid. 20 Interview with Madam Akinsulire at No. 2, Sokoti Street, Moferere Market, Ondo on 30th July 2006. 21 Adepeko, op. cit. 22 Ibid.

Bibliography Ademuleya, B., Continuing Appreciation of the Old Aso-Oke Types among the Yoruba of Ondo. PhD Thesis, University of Ibadan, 2002.

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__________________________________________________________________ Adepeko, E., An Assessment of Historical Development in the Worth, Acquisition and Reuse of Alaari Fabric among Ondo Yoruba. Unpublished M.Sc. Dissertation, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, 2009. Akinwumi T., The Commemorative Phenomenon of Textile Use among the Yoruba: A Survey of Significance and Form. PhD Thesis, University of Ibadan, 1990. Aladenika V., ‘Colours and Motifs in the Choice of Aso-Ebi’, in Traditional Woven Fabrics in Ondo. MA Thesis, Obafemi Awolowo University, 2007, pp. 5-6. Aremu, P. S. O., ‘Yoruba Traditional Weaving: Kijipa Motifs Colours and Symbols’. Nigerian Magazine, No. 140, 1982, pp. 3-6. Bollard, R., ‘Clothing from Burial Caves in Mali, 11th - 18th Century’, in History, Design, and Craft in West African Strip-Woven Cloth. Smithsonian Institution (ed), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1992, pp. 53-77. C.B.N., ‘Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin’. Vol. 15, December 2004. Chinwike, E., ‘Indigenous Silk-Weaving in Nigeria’. Nigerian Magazine, No. 81, 1984, pp. 127-135. De Negri, E., Nigeria Body Adornment. Academy Press Ltd., Lagos, 1976. Dodwell, C. B., ‘Iseyin: The Town of Weavers’. Nigerian Magazine, No. 46, 1955, pp. 118-124. Edwards, P. J., ‘The Sociological Significance and Use of Mende Country Cloth’, in History, Design, and Craft in West African Strip-Woven Cloth. Smithsonian Institution (ed), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1992, pp. 133-158. Egunjobi, L., ‘The Care of Yoruba Traditional Hand Woven Aso-oke Clothing’, in CONTEXT. Centre for Indigenous Knowledge for Agricultural and Rural Development. Iowa State University, Iowa, 1999, pp. 25-28. Eicher, J., Nigeria Handcrafted Textiles. University of Ife-press, Ile-Ife, 1976. Ekimogun Day. Brochure ROYALTY. 15th Edition. 2002.

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__________________________________________________________________ Gittinger, J. P., Economic Analysis of Agricultural Project, 2nd Edition. John Hopkins University Press, London, 1982. Harold, F. M., Consideration for the Care of Textiles and Costumes. Marcia K. Hadley, Indianapolis, 1980. Iluyemi, O., Ondo Traditions and Culture - The Female Angle. Corner Stone Publishers, Ondo, 2003. Johnson, S., The History of the Yorubas. C.S.S. Bookshop, Lagos, 1969. Lamb, V., West African Weaving. London, 1975. Lamb, V. and Holmes, J., Nigerian Weaving. Shell, Lagos, 1980. Marjory, L. J., Essentials of Textiles. Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1980. Momoh, I. A., ‘A Survey of Traditional Nigerian Textile Industry’. HND Seminar Write-Up, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, 2004. Murray, K. C., ‘Women’s Weaving among the Yorubas at Omu-aran in Ilorin Province’. Nigerian Field, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1936, p. 182. Ogunsakun, P., Ondo: The People, Their Origin, Custom and Tradition. Inway Publishers, Lagos, 1976. Ojo, E., Adaptation of Contemporary Motifs on Lightweight Handwoven Fabrics (Aso-oke) in South West Nigeria. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria, 2004. Perani, J., ‘The Cloth Connection, Patron and Producers of Hausa and Nupe Prestige Strip-Weave’, in History, Design and Craft in West African Strip-Woven Cloth. Smithsonian Institution (ed), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1992. Perani, J. and Wolff, N. H., Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa. Berg, Oxford and New York, 1999.

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__________________________________________________________________ Picton, J., ‘Tradition, Technology, and Lurex’, in History, Design, and Craft in West African Strip-Woven Cloth. Smithsonian Institution (ed), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1992. Sassone, P. G. and Schaeffer, W. A., Cost-Benefit Analysis. Academic Press, New York, 1978. Shea, P., ‘Economics of Scale and the Indigo Dyeing Industry of Pre-Colonial Kano’. Kano Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1974-77, pp. 55-61. Sunday Roberts Ogunduyile is a Professor of Industrial Design (Textile Design and Production) at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria. Evelyn Omotunde Adepeko is a Lecturer in Textile Design at Adeyemi College of Educaion Ondo, Nigeria.

Appendix

Figure 1: A typical Alaari fabric.

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Figure 2: A worn-out Alaari fabric.

Figure 3: Restoring a worn-out Alaari fabric.

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Figure 4: Alaari fabrics as used in a social gathering.

Figure 5: Alaari fabrics worn by a couple. Sources: Authors (2009).

African Fashion from Dual Directions: Representing Self and Other Victoria L. Rovine Abstract Fashion, changing styles of dress fuelled by innovation, plays an important role in discourses about personal and cultural identity. It is the subject of popular and academic debates about modernity and tradition, and it is a key site for the absorption of new cultural influences in people’s daily lives. This chapter will explore two sides of Africa’s presence in modern and contemporary fashion markets, using the work of African fashion designers, and the representation of the continent and its cultures through Africa-inflected garments by Western designers. Bringing these two ‘fashioned Africas’ together highlights their differences as well as their implications for understanding contemporary global cultures. Key Words: Africa, fashion, FIMA, Yves Saint Laurent, Alphadi, Festival International de la Mode Africaine. ***** Fashion is an under-examined medium that yields rich insights into the construction of personal as well as cultural identities at the intersection of cultures, as vividly demonstrated by the fashion produced at the nexus of African and Western cultural influences. I have divided this exploration into two parts: first, I will analyse a famous instance of African style in Western fashion design, and then I will examine the work of several members of Africa’s latest generation of fashion designers. Although Africa’s profile in international fashion circles has been largely defined by its appearance as a source of inspiration for Western designers, the many African designers who are themselves engaged in innovative transformations of African style receive little attention in the international fashion press. These designers emerge out of a long history of fashion in Africa, a continent whose styles of dress provide insights into both ancient cultures and the latest global fashion trends. The fashion world’s most visible representations of African style still emerge primarily from the ateliers of Western designers. These fashioned Africas, to coin a term, carry more of Africa’s cultural weight in global fashion markets than the clothing created by African designers themselves. Though they are not African, these garments are about Africa. Thus, they are an important - if often problematic - element of the story of African fashion. Fashion design thrives on innovation, seeking out constantly changing styles, an endeavour that fuels the search for new places, historical periods, and subcultures from which to draw inspiration. Such sartorial exploration occurs in

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__________________________________________________________________ multiple directions; African dress innovations have long incorporated Western forms and media. Western styles of dress have long been ‘naturalised’ in many parts of the world. These forms - from top hats to blue jeans and halter tops - are, to use Eicher and Sumberg’s term, ‘global fashion,’ no longer Western dress. 1 They have been decoupled from the specific cultural and historical references they once conveyed. Africa’s long presence in Western fashion design has taken many forms, not all of them direct transpositions of styles or images borrowed from African precedents. Along with the borrowing of formal elements - garment styles, textiles, motifs - designers may refer to Africa through the narrative or textual settings that surround these garments. Names of designs, descriptions of garments by fashion journalists, and the setting of fashion photographs - all of these strategies may be employed to link garments to the idea of Africa, though they may have no stylistic markers of African influence. These strategies echo Barthes’ 1967 analysis of fashion, which identified two separate realms of meaning production that surround garments: image-clothing and written-clothing. 2 Anthropologist Ted Polhemus recently proposed a similar model, identifying two systems by which clothing expresses ideas and identities. He labels these systems the semiotics of style and the semiotics of brand. 3 Style refers to the visible elements of fashion, while brand, like written clothing, refers to the information that surrounds garments as part of their marketing and circulation. Polhemus notes that ‘Any effective, successful brand projects its own mythical sense of place/geography… .’ 4 Africa figures prominently among these brands, in part because the continent has long been a cipher in Western imagination designers have been largely unbounded by the specificities of histories or cultures. In the vocabulary of Western fashion, Africa’s brand has remained remarkably stable over the course of a century. Beads and bangles, earth tones, bold geometric patterns, and images of animals and animal prints have all long signified Africa. And yet, the garments that incorporate these and other elements of Africa’s brand often themselves have little to do with Africa, as exemplified by a particularly famous French designer’s use of African style. 5 The 1960s saw the rise of French designer Yves Saint Laurent, who was associated with the peripatetic exploration of different cultures and themes each season, including references to Africa. Saint Laurent had a special relationship with Africa, for he was born and raised in Algeria’s French community. Among the most dramatic and distinctive of Saint Laurent’s many mythical geographies was his spring/summer 1968 line of dresses called ‘Africaines.’ The Africaines dresses incorporate numerous stylistic markers of the continent that inspired them, without directly citing any specific sources of inspiration. The series consists of nineteen designs that combining a set of fabrics, beads, and raffia fibers to create distinctively ‘exotic’ dresses. 6 The stylistic elements that most clearly distinguish the Africaines series are their beadwork, earth tones, and use of raffia.

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__________________________________________________________________ While beads, raffia, and bright colours could be linked to numerous cultural influences, the attachment of specifically African associations is accomplished through the narratives that surround the garments - the ‘written’ clothing. The most obvious element of this branding is, of course, the name ‘Africaines.’ A quotation from Women’s Wear Daily extends the brand’s associations, to disturbing effect: ST. LAURENT STALKS THE JUNGLE … HUNTS DOWN THE PRIMITIVE AND CAPTURES A LOOK FOR THE WORLD. Yves’ Primitive … the reed-like body nude beneath bands of transparency … the African choker coiled high … the tribal bangles clamped to the arms. Even the hair pulled into captivity … pulled tight into a chignon ornamented with jungle trinkets … THE BEAST OF THE JUNGLE BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN ST. LAURENT. 7 In language that would appear to be better suited to the height of the colonial era than to the decade following African independence, the text evokes savagery, jungles, and mystery. The dresses received much attention in the fashion press. The January and March 1967 issues of the French fashion magazine L’Officiel featured the Africaines dresses under the headlines ‘Inspired by African Art’ (l’Art Nègre) and ‘Black Magic,’ 8 along with text that vividly reinforces preconceptions about Africa: ‘Africa, this old continent where ancestral myths take refuge in the shadow of baobab trees, on the banks of large, swampy rivers, has inspired almost all of our major designers… .’ 9 A two-page spread accompanied the March 1967 L’Officiel article, featuring two models wearing distinctive hairstyles, their hair stretched over curvilinear frames, one with pendants hanging from the frame. The coiffures were clearly inspired by the body adornment of the Mangbetu people of Central Africa, an iconic image in the history of Western fascination with Africa. 10 From as early as the late 19th century, Western observers have been enthralled by the hairstyles of high status Mangbetu women. Again, the text reinforces the dresses’ African brand, using images as well as text: ‘These strangely shaped coiffures are beautiful because of their inspiration in African folklore … A very serious search of documents on African art, along with bewitching spells, must have been at the core of these creations … .’ 11 The Africaines dresses invent Africa, likely communicating the idea of African attire more effectively than most actual African clothing. One observer described Saint Laurent’s approach to non-Western inspiration in terms of a preference for myth over facts: ‘Knowing that myth is often more real than a document, Saint Laurent doesn’t act like an ethnologist. He doesn’t go in search of facts, but of visions.’ 12 This search for visions rather than material realities continues to fuel the work of Western designers.

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__________________________________________________________________ Although African style has been prominently represented through the work of non-African designers, Africa has a long history of fashion production, much of which has not intersected with the global fashion markets in which Saint Laurent and other haute couture designers circulate. While several scholars, including myself, have discussed the work of the handful of African fashion designers who have gained international profiles - Chris Seydou, Alphadi, and Lamine Kouyaté of Xuly Bet, among others - my focus here is on the several young designers whose work provides insights into the changing manifestations of Africa’s fashion brand. I recently had the opportunity to attend one of Africa’s most prominent fashion events, the Festival International de la Mode Africaine (FIMA), in Niamey, Niger. The tenth installment of this event took place from October 28th to November 1st, on a sand-covered runway before thousands of cheering audience members. Since 1998, FIMA has represented the vision of Alphadi, one of Africa’s best-known fashion designers and arguably one of Niger’s leading cultural figures. Along with Chris Seydou, Kofi Ansah, Pathé O., Katoucha Niane, Mickaël Kra, and others, Alphadi was a founding member of the Fédération Africaine des Créateurs, a professional organisation created in 1993 to support African fashion industries. These clothing and jewellery designers, all of whom studied or worked in Europe, were the first generation of self-consciously African, globally oriented fashion designers. Coming of age during the era of African independence, these designers created garments and accessories that reflected both local and international dress styles. Within the framework of Western design techniques and fashion promotion, Alphadi and other designers have produced garments with a distinctively African flair. Many worked with textiles that were deeply rooted in local cultures, such as bogolanfini, kente, and elaborate resist-dyed fabrics. They also experimented with local garment styles, including most notably the large, flowing boubous worn by men and women throughout West Africa. Their networks of collaboration and inspiration reach across national, ethnic, and regional identities. FIMA is one manifestation of this trans-national conception of African fashion design. FIMA’s competition for young African designers, L’Afrique Est a la Mode (Africa is in Style), is a prominent element of the weeklong festival; a large fashion show on the penultimate evening of the festivities was devoted to the ten finalists. The work and the experiences of the finalists provide insights into the current state of fashion design in Africa. The ten finalists represented nine different countries, spanning the continent from Tunisia to South Africa, Cameroon to Kenya. Whatever their nations of origin, the young designers who were selected as finalists in the competition shared a common struggle to find clientele in markets that are dominated by Western brands, used clothing from Europe or the United States, and inexpensive Chinese imports. I will use the work of the prize-winning designers as a means of elucidating the themes and approaches that broadly characterised the event. The first or Golden

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__________________________________________________________________ Thread prize was awarded to a South African designer, Thokozani Mbatha, who works under the brand name Black Pepper. The twenty-nine year old designer studied fashion at the Durban Institute of Technology (like all of the finalists, he trained in Africa rather than in Europe). Mbatha described his sources of inspiration for the collection as a seemingly incongruous pairing: Nguni culture and Safari style. For him, the indigenous Nguni culture - his own heritage - and the colonial associations that are often attached to safari-style dress are not contradictory. He spoke of creating clothing for ‘a new, modern safari’ that represents Africa as part of global trends. Mbatha’s accessories, rather than the garments themselves, created the association with Nguni culture. The ensembles were broadly urban and international in style, including shorts and T-shirts. The beads that adorned the models - necklaces, headbands, and belts - evoked Nguni cultures like the Zulu and Xhosa. In a still more direct reference to this heritage, several models wore the large, disk-shaped earplugs (in the clip-on style). Earplugs, usually adorned with bold patterns in bright colours, are closely associated with Zulu identity. In a nod to the safari style, Mbatha presented a matched set of pants and short-sleeved shirt in the utilitarian style of the safari suit - epaulets on shoulders, flapped pockets on pants and shirt, and a thick leather belt around the waist. The soft drape and rich sheen of the fabric distinguished the ensemble as from its sources of inspiration. The garments themselves are contemporary, youthful, and stylish without signalling an association with any specific ethnic or regional identity. The Silver Thread Prize was awarded to Salah Barka of Tunisia, a self-taught designer whose garments incorporate unusual shapes, textures, and patterns. Barka cited Tunisian traditions as a source of inspiration, yet unlike Mbatha’s direct citations of Nguni dress practices, Barka incorporated approaches to garments shapes and details - from Tunisian precedents. One style that appeared throughout his collection makes reference to a type of pants characteristic of historical men’s and women’s dress in Tunisia. The style resembles the pants associated with equestrianism in many parts of West Africa: ample fabric around the waist, with folds hanging between the legs from waist to knees. The Tunisian style pants are distinguished by tight-fitting calves; the transition from billowy waist to formfitting legs creates a dramatic effect. Barka adapted this form to a variety of men’s and women’s garments, using plaids, denim, and fabric with lurex sheen. He also incorporated hooded cloaks, broadly reminiscent of North African attire. These might be viewed as Tunisian- or North African-flavoured garments, hinting at sources of inspiration without incorporating direct references. The winner of the third or Copper Thread prize was twenty-five year old Cameroonian designer Charlotte Mbatsogo, who trained at the Ecole Supérieure de Mode in Yaoundé. Her collection was inspired by nature and by environmental concerns - themes of great currency in local as well as global markets. She made reference to recycling through the construction of garments out of pieces of other

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__________________________________________________________________ garments. A collar becomes a belt, a belt becomes a yoke, pockets appear as adornment around the bottoms of dresses, and buttons neatly emerge from buttonholes along apparently random edges and seams. Mbatsogo’s final ensemble was a dress with a gold lame halter-top and a full skirt made entirely of pieced together garment elements - pockets, sleeves, collars, belts, lapels. While these garments make reference to recycling, in fact they are not recycled. Each element was made expressly for the garment into which it is incorporated, transforming recycling into a stylistic rather than a literal practice. The sole finalist from Niger, twenty-four year old Hamidou Seydou Harira, received an honourable mention. Harira learned tailoring and design skills from the many members of her family who are engaged in clothing-related trades. Harira used shiny blue or brown cloth, made specifically for the Tuareg market, to create women’s formalwear. Though it is machine-made, the cloth resembles the fine, strip-woven cloth used to create Tuareg turbans. This cloth is characteristically dyed with indigo, which is pounded into its surface to create a deep blue that glistens when it catches the light. Harira tailored and draped the cloth in layers, shaped it into halter-tops, skirts, and dresses. The garments were accessorized with engraved silver plaques and pendants in typical Tuareg style. Harira designed and commissioned these ornaments from jewellers at Niamey’s artisan market. These designers and the six other finalists as well, used a range of approaches to create collections that incorporated their own multilayered identities, steeped in local as well as global sources of influence. Thokozani Mbatha adapted forms directly from indigenous South African dress practices, using earplugs and beadwork to complement his menswear. Hamidou Seydou Harira used distinctively local cloth and ornaments, cut into garments that are international in style, while Salah Barka adapted a garment in Tunisian style to textiles that have no local associations. Finally, Charlotte Mbatsogo’s collection was inspired by an environmental theme, an issue that has local (as well as global) implications. All of these designers had been selected for a contest that foregrounds African identity all competitors must be African and be committed to remaining in Africa, in order to encourage the development of the fashion industry there. Yet, even in a competition that implicitly encourages a focus on Africanity, few young designers make use of the tropes of Africa’s fashion brand. Instead of the generic image of Africa, this work is fully engaged with global youth culture, drawing from aspects of the designers’ personal identities in order to lend their garments style rather than participating in the creation of an African brand.

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Notes 1

J. B. Eicher and B. Sumberg, ‘World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress’, in Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and Time, J. B. Eicher (ed), Berg, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 296. 2 R. Barthes, The Fashion System, Hill and Wang, New York, 1983 [1967], p. 3. 3 T. Polhemus, ‘What to Wear in the Global Village?’, in Global Fashion Local Tradition: On the Globalisation of Fashion, J. Brand and J. Teunissen (eds), Uitgeverij Terra Lannoo BV, Arnhem, The Netherlands, 2005, p. 87. 4 Ibid. 5 I have written elsewhere of the early twentieth-century invention of fashioned Africas by French fashion and textile designers (see V. L. Rovine, ‘Colonialism’s Clothing: Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion’, Design Issues, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2009, pp. 44-61). 6 Interview, P. Léautey, Yves Saint Laurent Documentation Center, Paris, 1/20/05. 7 Paris Bureau, Women’s Wear Daily, 1/23/67 [emphasis and ellipses in original]. 8 ‘Magie Noir’, L’Officiel, No. 1, 1967, pp. 122-123; ‘Inspirées de l’Art Nègre’, L’Officiel, No. 3, 1967, pp. 118-121. 9 ‘Magie Noir’, op. cit. 10 See E. Schildkrout, ‘Gender and Sexuality in Mangbetu Art’, in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, R. B. Phillips and C. B. Steiner (eds), Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999, p. 198. 11 ‘Inspirées de l’Art Nègre’, p. 121. 12 C. Orman, ‘Yves Saint Laurent: Exotismes’, in Yves Saint Laurent: Exotismes, Musées de Marseille, Marseille, 1993, p. 34.

Bibliography Eicher, J. B. and Sumberg, B., ‘World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress’, in Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and Time. J. B. Eicher (ed), Berg, Washington, DC, 1995. Barthes, R., The Fashion System. Hill and Wang, New York, 1983 [1967]. ‘Inspirées de l’Art Nègre’. L’Officiel, No. 3, 1967, pp. 118-121. ‘Magie Noir’. L’Officiel, No. 1, 1967, pp. 122-123. Orman, C., ‘Yves Saint Laurent: Exotismes’, in Yves Saint Laurent: Exotismes. Musées de Marseille, Marseille, 1993.

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__________________________________________________________________ Polhemus, T., ‘What to Wear in the Global Village?’, in Global Fashion Local Tradition: On the Globalisation of Fashion. J. Brand and J. Teunissen (eds), Uitgeverij Terra Lannoo BV, Arnhem, The Netherlands, 2005, p. 87. Rovine, V. L., ‘Colonialism’s Clothing: Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion’. Design Issues, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2009, pp. 44-61. Schildkrout, E., ‘Gender and Sexuality in Mangbetu Art’, in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. R. B. Phillips and C. B. Steiner, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999, pp. 197-213. Victoria L. Rovine is an Associate Professor of Art History and African Studies at the University of Florida. Her book, Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali, was published by Smithsonian Institution Press (2001) and republished by Indiana University Press in 2008. Her current research concerns African fashion designers in global markets and the influence of African forms on Western fashion designers. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on African designers and on Africa’s presence in Western fashion design, and has recently completed a book on this subject.

The ‘It’ Factor: In Pursuit of the Commoditisation of Fashion Nathaniel Dafydd Beard Abstract Fashion is no longer only a series of products produced by brands; fashion has itself become a commodity to be packaged and sold as an entity itself. Previously considered merely an indulgent pleasure, fashion is increasingly used as a strategic tool of influence. Like art and architecture before it, in the form of Art Biennales and ‘landmark’ buildings like Sydney’s Opera House, fashion in its turn has now become ‘commoditised;’ demonstrating both commercial nous and political acumen to the outside world. In some instances, fashion is used to quite literally ‘wave’ the national flag (Vaccari 2005). As historical examples demonstrate; fashion may be used as a political weapon. Sumptuary laws regulated the use of colour and fabric, while aristocrats at Royal Courts sought to gain favour through the visual demonstration of their fashion sense. Quotas and tariffs have also been used across national boundaries, forbidding imports, or encouraging exports. This chapter aims to demonstrate how this commoditisation of fashion has occurred in the pursuit of asserting regional or international prestige. Examples include exhibitions and fashion museums, like MUDE in Lisbon (Spokojny 2009), commercial events, such as Dutch Touch in Milan (Press Release, Dutch Fashion Foundation 2009), and the perceived competition between the consorts of political leaders, such as between Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Princess Letizia of Spain (Alexander and Govan 27th April 2009). Noting this shift away from fashion as ‘product’ to fashion as ‘ambience’ high-fashion brands, too, have had to re-assess how they package fashion to sell in the newly democratised world of fashion bloggers and ‘fast-fashion.’ How is fashion then to identify itself in this changing world? Does it represent only the pursuit of pleasure, the commerce of culture, or is it really an assertion of political influence? In conclusion, this chapter seeks to address possible future strategies in the pursuit of capturing fashion’s ‘It’ factor (Roach 2007). Key Words: ambience, ‘It’ Factor, fashion culture, commoditisation, ‘food fashion,’ haptic, national identity. ***** 1. Introduction Fashion, rather than being viewed as a single entity, is instead interpreted through a series of ‘lenses’ or ‘filters.’ Approaches to our understanding of fashion and the ways in which it manifests itself in society are complex under the spotlight of these differing, and sometimes opposing, filters. Fashion has, and continues to be viewed, or rather filtered, through the diverse perspectives of history, culture,

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__________________________________________________________________ gender, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics and even philosophy. Yet perhaps what they all hold in common is their stance on fashion. Rather than being considered an entity in itself, fashion is instead relegated to the level of a physical commodity, such as a dress, a suit, a jacket, a shoe or a bag. From this perspective, fashion is rarely considered to be more than the sum of these constituent ‘artefacts.’ In part, this is perhaps because fashion is more easily understandable in this manner, since we are all familiar with these fashion artefacts, or commodities. After all, these are the very items that are promoted by fashion brands in their advertising campaigns and catwalk shows, and increasingly, are also celebrated in the growing number of fashion exhibitions in museums and galleries. Yet fashion is much more than just a series of inanimate objects on which the current issues and fascinations of society are projected onto, rather fashion itself is an entity that can be experienced in a myriad of forms. As Jennifer Craik asserts: fashion is not just confined to the catwalks, collections, and curators but exists everywhere, in multiple forms and experiences. 1 Yet, strangely, this aspect of fashion has actually been little explored. Fashion does not exist in a vacuum, instead it needs a context in which to be ‘performed’ or ‘experienced’ and, indeed, to thrive. Everyone, today, is familiar with, and indeed perhaps feels they are an expert in, the experience of engagement with the commodities of fashion, that is clothes, accessories or shoes. These are to be found in the environment of boutiques, department stores and E-tailers, as well as through fashion imagery in the form of magazines, blogs, advertising campaigns on bill-boards and exhibitions in museums and galleries. Yet, over recent years, fashion brands and those that engage in the production or development of both fashion objects and fashion imagery are increasingly looking at ways in which fashion, as a ‘commodity’ in itself, can be positioned as an ‘experience.’ Products associated with fashion, in particular cosmetics and perfume, have always sought to make use of fashion as a way to enhance their appeal and to project an aura of desirability. Most often this has been achieved through an injection of ‘glamour’ that fashion affords, and is so integral to the very idea of fashion, which in turn has the ability to garner a wide appeal to a broad-based audience. The primary appeal of objects, and indeed of people, has traditionally been in their ability to project a kind of allure, usually in some kind of erotic guise, or ‘sex appeal,’ often referred to by commentators as the ‘It Factor.’ 2 Fashion journalists, for instance, pique our interest in specific, ‘sexy’ items, referring to the ‘It’ bag, shoe or dress of the season. As Joseph Roach reveals, in his book It, it was the author and screen-writer Elinor Glyn, sister of the fashion designer Lucile, who perhaps developed the most significant usage of the word ‘It’ in 1927, asserting that those who had this ‘It’ were in possession of a

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__________________________________________________________________ ...strange magnetism which attracts both sexes. He or she must be entirely unselfconscious and full of self-confidence, indifferent to the effect he or she is producing, and uninfluenced by others. There must be physical attraction, but beauty is unnecessary. Conceit or self-consciousness destroys “It” immediately. 3 Through today’s filter of celebrity-culture in the form of ‘It Girls,’ such as actresses, models, TV presenters or WAGS, this expression of the ‘It Factor’ has been taken to a popularly familiar extreme, perhaps becoming ever more diluted. Yet while promoters of commodities, not only fashion commodities, have often sought to demonstrate their ‘sex appeal’ through advertising and PR activities, this assertion of eroticism is not always appropriate, or indeed desirable. Rather than sex per se, instead advertisers of products as diverse as car insurance, food, furniture, and even whole cities, have taken fashion, as a commodity in itself, as the new ‘It Factor.’ Reconfiguring fashion from an ‘object,’ or ‘artefact,’ to become an ‘experience,’ has enabled car insurers, bakers, product designers, tourist-board officials and even politicians to attach fashion to their own ‘product,’ in the expectation that by doing so they can enhance and further its appeal. In turn, fashion brands themselves are also re-investigating how to maximise the potential their own ‘It Factor’ can provide. 2. Fashion as a Politicised Commodity If the individual objects or artefacts of fashion are taken as emblems of the commoditisation of fashion itself, they have often proved to be powerful tools of ‘weaponry’ in historical and political contexts. During the Mediaeval period in Europe sumptuary laws were introduced to regulate the wearing of specific materials like silk or fur, and even colours, 4 in part as a method of asserting and confirming the hierarchical structure of society. As well as a way of asserting power over the local populace, fashion has also been used to signify and perpetuate cultural, and thereby political, influence abroad. This has been achieved not only through economic restrictions, such as quotas and tariffs on the export or import of fashion, but also through the ‘power play’ of dress at royal courts and by ruling families at the top of society. In some instances this can be interpreted as an extreme demonstration of Thorstein Veblen’s theory of ‘conspicuous consumption,’ 5 where monarchs, courtiers or the wives of political consorts vie with each other to assert their influence or to gain favour at court through the wearing of the latest fashionable dress. While the idea of utilising fashion as an indicator of political prestige may seem archaic, it has been taken up with increasing prominence in the 21st century political arena. Perhaps the ultimate political ‘fashion power couple’ are Barack and Michelle Obama, who epitomise an idealised version of the ‘American Dream’ come to life. The media in particular

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__________________________________________________________________ have taken to using the couple, and especially Michelle Obama, as ‘cover stars’ for their magazines, including most famously Michelle’s appearance on the cover of American Vogue, the fashion industry’s Bible. 6 In recognition of her role as a representative of her country’s own fashion culture, Michelle Obama has taken to wearing the designs of up-coming American avant-garde designers at prominent events where she is often filmed and photographed by the international media. Many of these designers, such as Thakoon, Jason Wu and Philip Lim, are Americans of foreign extraction, 7 and in wearing them Michelle Obama perhaps hints at her own roots as an ‘outsider.’ At the same time she is perhaps also recognising and celebrating the struggle these designers have had in developing from relatively obscure origins to become established names in their field, not dissimilar to her own and her husband’s trajectory that led them to the White House. In Britain the commoditisation of fashion as a way to enhance political stature is more problematic. In a recent interview Alexandra Shulman, Editor of British Vogue, bemoaned her many failed attempts at enticing either Sarah Brown or Samantha Cameron to appear on the cover of her magazine. 8 Yet within the constraints of the British ‘class system’ both these consorts of political leaders have declined this opportunity, in part because Vogue is considered ‘too elitist,’ and perhaps more importantly, ‘too fashion.’ During the most recent general election in 2010, however, both Sarah Brown, as wife of the incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Samantha Cameron, as wife of the Conservative Party prime ministerial candidate David Cameron, were both to be seen making use of the commoditisation of fashion to assert both their own role and to enhance the potential electability of their spouse. Since the actual election campaign time is much shorter than in the USA, through the British media a pre-emption of the battle to come was played out between Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron based on their sartorial choices, a position that perhaps neither would have particularly chosen for themselves. While Cameron was seen initially thought to have the advantage, especially in her role as Creative Director of bespoke stationers Smythson (famous for its own ‘It bag’ the Nancy named after Cameron’s daughter 9 ), and having a sister who is also Deputy Editor of British Vogue, 10 Sarah Brown sought to assert her fashion credentials through her support of London Fashion Week, including the hosting of receptions at 10 Downing Street. Newspapers as diverse in their political outlook as the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times took great delight in following the developments of the sartorial ‘successes’ and ‘gaffes’ that both Brown and Cameron made during this time. In particular both women were photographed at events wearing dresses by up-coming London Fashion Week designer Erdem. As well as being seen to support avant-garde fashion, both Brown and Cameron advocated their position as ‘ordinary working mothers,’ dressing in British highstreet and mid-range brands such as M&S, Top Shop, Jigsaw or L.K. Bennett. 11

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__________________________________________________________________ This kind of sartorial power-play is not limited to the confines of Anglo-Saxon politics, but can also be observed elsewhere. The figure of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of the French President, has, if anything, raised further the interest in the commoditisation of fashion in a political context amongst the world’s media. As an ex-fashion model Bruni-Sarkozy is already well-informed about the powerful placement that a well-cut outfit can have, not least in the form of her own carefully chosen Christian Dior shift-dresses and suits that she wears on public occasions. 12 Her influence in ‘raising the stakes’ in fashion, and hence French cultural, superiority, came to a head during the French state visit to Spain in April 2009. It was here that the British media in particular took great interest in the apparently frosty encounter between Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Crown Princess Letizia of Spain, declaring that Bruni-Sarkozy had finally met her match, in sartorial terms at least. 13 This concept of utilising the commoditisation of fashion within the political framework can also be observed in the cultural sector, where grand institutions such as museums are also brought into the fray. As Alessandra Vaccari states, fashion ‘participates in the construction of the image of entire nations, strengthening the ties between style and national identity.’ 14 Perhaps the most successful exponent of this comes in the form of MoMu, Antwerp’s fashion museum, which not only exists as an integral part of the fashion culture of Antwerp, many of its exhibitions perpetuate the international reputation and status of Belgian fashion as being at the leading edge of innovation and experimentation. In seeking to assert their own identity as centres in which to participate and stimulate fashion culture other cities have taken to seek out ways of commoditising fashion to enhance their own appeal. The ultimate cultural bastion remains the museum, a worthier and less transitory organisation than merely hosting a Fashion Week. MUDE in Lisbon is the latest of these ventures. 15 This institution’s very title ‘Museum of Design and Fashion’ distinguishes how far the popularity of fashion has overcome its ‘frivolous’ reputation to become recognised as a cultural entity worthy of celebration in the same way that art and architecture have been celebrated and used to enhance cultural prestige abroad in the past. 3. The Commoditisation of Fashion As demonstrated in the arena of royal and political courts, fashion is often used as a tool in the process of exerting influence by individuals. Today, this process of commoditising fashion is also used increasingly by other sectors to inject some semblance of the ‘It Factor’ into their own product or service. Yet, as many advertisers have now come to realise, making use of very obvious erotic or sexual overtones is often not appropriate, especially if the product or service is targeted specifically at women or teenagers. As Tim Dant asserts:

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__________________________________________________________________ There is something anachronistic about car girls, about using femininity to sell an object to men because at least as many women buy cars as men ... The “scantily clad” model, sprawled on top of the phallic engine compartment of a sports car, is a thing of the past. Today it would embarrass many male customers and irritate enough women buyers to make it a sales blunder. Now the double message must be that the car can either give you the same subtle glamour and sexual appeal of the car girl or that it will make you able to attract such a girl. 16 At the same time, many products and services, even those which perhaps already have an intrinsic ‘sex appeal,’ such as sports cars, retain a need to be promoted within a context that pertains to a certain kind of ‘sexiness’ in order for them to remain appealing and desirable. Rather than ‘sex appeal,’ the new ‘It Factor’ is in effect ‘fashion appeal,’ whereby the aura of fashion, through its own glamorous and opulent appeal, is attached to enhance the attractiveness of these products or services. It is ‘fashion,’ as a commoditised entity, that is used in place of ‘sex’ or rather ‘sexiness,’ to fulfil this function. Perhaps one of the best exemplars of this is exhibited in the work of the Dutch fine-art photographer Jacqueline Hassink in her project ‘Car Girls.’ Best known for work photographing the empty board-rooms of governmental and corporate institutions, Hassink has adopted similar techniques to observe the role of the ‘Car Girl’ at ‘A’ tier car trade shows held in major car manufacturing countries. These trade shows are an integral part of the car industry, where car manufacturers unveil their latest innovations in car design, not dissimilar to the unveiling of collections at international Fashion Weeks. An important element in the promotion of the new cars comes in the form of the ‘Car Girl,’ as Hassink calls them, who are glamorous, stylishly-dressed young women whose role is to pose alongside the cars. Yet for the average, usually male, car show visitor these women are just as much objects of desire as the cars themselves, and often equally un-obtainable, since the ‘Car Girls’ are forbidden to speak. As with clothes, cars too, have a distinct haptic quality, especially in the thrill of driving a car at full speed along an empty road. Yet, the cars in a car show remain static on their stands, and so the ‘Car Girl’ provides both a sense of the possible thrill of the moving car through her movements, as well as enhancing the appeal of the car through her own physical touching of the car. As Hassink explains in conversation with Leslie A. Martin: One thing I found very interesting is the body language of the car girls: they always touch the car. There is always this moment that they touch the surface of the car. The male viewer might think: “If I possess the car, I can possess the girl.” This act of touching

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__________________________________________________________________ is very sensual and seductive. The car symbolizes the male and the hand of the girl, the female. 17 Through both the act of touching the car, and in the wearing of a highly stylized outfit, the ‘Car Girl’ enhances the appeal of the car through her role as a signifier of ‘fashion,’ which in turn is an indicator of both desirability and power. Yet, as Tim Dant further explains: It is important that the fashion-car-girls signify “fashion” rather than compete with the car for fashionability. If the car began to dominate the interest and the image, then her role as a supporting signifier for the car would be spoiled. The more subtle, luxurious and opulent the style of the car, the more subtle, luxurious and opulent the style of the girl can be. 18 While fashion in its commoditised form may be used to enhance the appeal of a product or service, this should not be to its own detriment. In this instance, the ‘Car Girl’ should never outshine the car; rather she is an important adjunct to its own appeal. To take another example from the motor industry, the British car insurance brand Sheila’s Wheels, a product only available to women, is also an instance where a commoditised form of fashion is used to enhance the attractiveness of a product that is traditionally considered dull, if necessary. The ‘tongue-in-cheek’ name of the brand refers to the Australian slang for ‘woman,’ that is ‘Sheila.’ The television advertising campaign features three different archetypical, yet glamorously pink-attired women, or ‘The Sheilas,’ imitating a 1960’s all-girl popgroup, such as the Supremes, who sing an advertising slogan set to music, while driving along in a bright pink Cadillac. The effect of this is a cross between an evocation of the popular ‘feminist road movie’ Thelma and Louise and the outrageously camp Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, set in Australia. The colour pink is an important factor, since it indicates both a short-hand reference to fashion, as in Elsa Schiaparelli’s ‘Shocking Pink,’ and hence Sheila’s Wheels is a fashion product in the same way a bag or a shoe is, as well as indicating this is a ‘female’ product, aimed at and for the sole use of women. The Sheila’s Wheels campaign has proved so popular that the brand even operates its own fan club through the website www.ilovesheilas.com. 19 As mobility has become increasingly desirable, and indeed has become a new kind of status symbol amongst ‘city-hopping’ business executives and creative or academic professionals, the tools that enable this mobility have become commoditised as fashionable products. In marketing mobile telephones to women, one of the original benefits was their ability to be used as a way of contacting, or being contactable by, family members or friends, particularly if you found yourself in vulnerable or potentially dangerous situations, such as walking home late at

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__________________________________________________________________ night. Today, mobile telephones and other devices such as the Blackberry, are promoted less on their practical or technical benefits, and much more on their aesthetic benefit. Firms like Samsung Mobile have even gone as far as bringing out mobile telephones specifically designed with women in mind, such as the Lady Diva model, which is sold in the Netherlands complete with its own ‘phone charm’ or ‘bag hanger’ by The Hague-based accessories designer Omar Munie. The launch of the new ‘collection’ of Lady Diva telephones was presented as part of Amsterdam International Fashion Week, and included an appearance by the top Dutch model Yfke Sturm, the ‘spokes-model’ for the Lady Diva line. 20 In addition, magazine advertisements for this particular model, such as one featured in Blend in March/April 2010, also makes use of the slogan ‘Samsung Lady Phone: The Art of Mobile Fashion.’ Rather than a technology product the Lady Diva phone is a commoditised fashion product, a status further enhanced by its launch within the context of a Fashion Week. Taking the idea of ‘phone fashion’ further, the Finnishowned, British-based brand Vertu sells mobile telephones in the same way as jewellers such as Graff or Harry Winston sell diamond necklaces, or Philippe Patek sells watches. With flagship stores in key ‘Fashion Cities’ like Paris or Milan, or concessions in luxury department stores like Selfridges, Vertu brings out a series of seasonal and limited-edition ‘collections’ of telephones for a wealthy, status conscious and highly mobile clientele. 21 4. Commoditisation of Fashion as Ambience The prime purpose of fashion brands has been, and for the most part continues to be, the production of desirable objects, from luxurious silk-lined cashmere coats, through to simple, plain cotton T-shirts. Yet, increasingly, providing ‘only’ such objects is not enough, as customers seek to be thrilled, seduced or entertained by fashion as an experience in itself. As brands and organisations in non-fashion sectors have sought to utilise commoditised fashion as a means to enhance their appeal, fashion brands are now also looking again at how they re-configure fashion as ‘It Factor’ to enhance their own image. Yet, ironically, it appears as if it is those in the non-fashion sectors who are demonstrating how best to go about this transformation, or at the very least, act as an indicator of how this might be achieved. In particular, ‘food as fashion’ has come to the fore; moving from the 1980s renditions of ‘haute cuisine,’ to the early 21st century ‘food fashion icon:’ the cupcake. The highly sugary, brightly coloured and often elaborately adorned cupcake has become a new symbol of fashionability. Those that work within the fashion industry are generally thought of as extremely reluctant to do anything that might make them appear ‘fat,’ so it is both curious and ironic that the cupcake has now become so emblematic of fashionable living. A glitzier and more glamorous version of that old children’s favourite, the ‘fairy-cake,’ Britain, and in particular London, is now almost overloaded with cafés and bakeries offering up their own version of the cupcake. The appeal of the cupcake lies in its very visuality as a kind

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__________________________________________________________________ of ‘edible’ fashion product, which also has the advantage of being a tactile and sensual experience. One of the latest ventures is ‘Cox Cookies and Cake,’ established by the London-based, Canadian-born shoe designer Patrick Cox. In collaboration with the famed Master Pâtissier Eric Lanlard, Cox has established his new ‘food fashion’ emporium in the heart of Soho, London’s central pleasure district. 22 Very much fusing the visual with the sensual, with cupcakes featuring red lips served by staff wearing studded leather aprons, Cox and Lanlard reveal the evocative potency and highly eroticised appeal of the cupcake in its guise as a fashion commodity. Taking the commoditisation of fashion even further, to broaden the appeal of their core brand, comes from Ladurée, a French firm specialising in delicately flavoured macaroons. Although ostensibly a food company, Ladurée is firmly ensconced in ensuring the experience of consuming its macaroons is as much a ‘fashion experience’ as a gourmet one. The interior design of their cafés in particular is evidence of this. Ladurée’s small café in London’s Burlington Arcade, decorated in what looks like molten gold, is akin to walking inside a ‘life-sized’ chocolate box. The large plate-glass windows add to the effect of ‘seeing-andbeing-seen,’ where clients of the café taking tea with their macaroons can participate in a public performance of fashion. Realising the haptic and sensuous appeal of their product Ladurée have even developed a range of cosmetic and bath products, enabling their clients to experience Ladurée in the confines of their own bathroom or boudoir. 23 While many fashion brands have sought to extend their appeal with home furnishing lines or make-up ranges and perfume, it appears as if Ladurée is playing, and perhaps succeeding, fashion at its own game. While not everyone can squeeze into a tight-fitting high-fashion outfit we can all perhaps afford, not just aspire, to indulge in the experience of the commoditisation of fashion through food. 5. Conclusion All too often, fashion is merely reduced to the sum of its parts, or rather those commodities that fashion makes up. The over-riding sense of fashion though, and significantly, the impact fashion has on society, comes from the potency of its prowess for creating images, or perhaps illusions. Dirk Lauwaert even goes as a far as to assert that: Fashion is inconceivable except as image. Fashion plays out in images, not on the streets. The fashion industry is intimately entwined with the logic of the illustration, the presentation. What stimulates our imagination are the illustrations, far too rarely the clothed individual himself. Less and less do we see the clothed person as an image, but more and more as a two-dimensional

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__________________________________________________________________ interpretation of that image. There is no fashion without the resonance in the logic of the illustration. 24 Yet relegating fashion’s status to that of only an image or illustration neglects another equally powerful and alluring aspect of fashion; that of the ‘haptic’ or ‘touch.’ It is fashion’s very approachability through its ability to be quite literally ‘touched’ that has perhaps secured its own popularity, enabling it to transcend itself, and in turn to be adopted and incorporated into the appeal of other cultural, technological and even political forms. As Herbert Blumer states: the facts are clear that fashion is an outstanding mark of modern civilization and that its domain is expanding rather than diminishing. As areas of life come to be caught in the vortex of movement and as proposed innovations multiply in them, a process of collective choice in the nature of fashion is naturally and inevitably brought into play. 25 Fashion itself, however, and those who work within the various arms of the fashion industry, still seem to need confirmation of its place as a valid exponent of cultural, and indeed national, prestige, as art, music or architecture are held to be. In June 2010 the consumer-orientated event Clothes Show London was seen to be using sex, rather than fashion, to assert its ‘It Factor.’ Although this event advertised itself as ‘The Ultimate Girls Day Out,’ 26 the imagery it decided to use to advertise the event, and supposedly to appeal to its core female audience, was decidedly ‘chauvinistic.’ On the event’s website and in its poster campaign a model with blonde hair, wearing a pink one-piece bathing suit with high-heeled shoes and dark sunglasses, appeared to reference the typical glamour of a 1940s or 1950s ‘starlet’ or ‘pin-up girl,’ in the vein of Betty Grable or Diana Dors. The message indicated by this image contradictorily asserts this event’s status as ‘sexy,’ in the use of the model posed as a ‘pin-up,’ and the indication that it is indeed a ‘fashion event,’ through the model’s wearing of a pink-bathing suit, with the colour pink acting as a short-hand cipher for ‘fashion.’ Yet, as the success of commoditising fashion has proved in sectors such as cars, food and politics, perhaps it is now time for fashion itself to reclaim and re-configure the power of its own ‘It Factor’ in the pursuit of realising its own aims.

Notes 1

J. Craik, Fashion: The Key Concepts, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2009, pp. 1. J. Roach, It, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2007. 3 E. Glyn, It, Macaulay, New York, 1927, pp. 5-6, in Ibid., p. 4. 2

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J. Laver, Costume and Fashion: A Concise History, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1992 [1969, 1982], pp. 86. 5 T. Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption, Penguin Books, London, 2005 [1899]. 6 L. Blas, ‘Michelle Obama Graces “Vogue”’. USA Today, 11th February 2009, viewed on 25th August 2010, ; BBC News, ‘Michelle Obama Makes Vogue Cover’, 11th February 2009, viewed on 2nd September 2010, . 7 W. Donahue, ‘Who Made Michelle Obama’s Dresses?’, Chicago Tribune, 2nd April 2009, viewed on 25th August 2010, . 8 H. Rose, ‘Why Samantha Cameron Keeps Saying No to the Cover of Vogue’, The Times, 11th September 2010, pp. 32-33. 9 E. Mills, ‘A Wife Less Ordinary’, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Times, 26th September 2010, pp. 30-37. 10 D. Whitworth, ‘Team SamCam Helps Its Boss to Follow Life of a Major Role Model’, The Times, 25th September 2010, pp. 32-33. 11 A. Platell, ‘Samantha Cameron vs Sarah Brown: In This Election Battle, Every Frock, Heel and Cardi Count. So Who Gets Your Vote?’, The Daily February 2010, viewed on 25th August 2010, Mail, 24th . 12 H. Alexander, ‘Carla Bruni is Diplomatic with Stamp of Dior’, The Telegraph, March 2008, viewed on 22nd March 2010, 27th . 13 H. Alexander and F. Govan, ‘Carla Bruni Meets Her Fashion Match in Spain’s April, 2009, Princess Letizia’, The Daily Telegraph, 27th . 14 A. Vaccari, Wig Wag: The Flags of Fashion, Fondazione Pitti Discovery, Florence and Marsilio Editori S.P.A., Venice, 2005, p. 45. 15 J. Spokojny, ‘Museum Pieces: In the MUDE’, Frame, Issue 72, January/February 2010, pp. 110-113. 16 T. Dant, Car Culture/Car Girls, in Car Girls, J. Hassink (ed), Aperture Foundation Inc., New York, 2009, un-paginated. 17 J, Hassink in Interview with L. A. Martin, Car Girls, Aperture Foundation Inc., New York, 2009, un-paginated. 18 Dant, op. cit.

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Shelia’s Wheels Fan Site: . Press Release, Samsung LadyPhone Diva Collection 2010 gepresenteerd tijdens Amsterdam International Fashion Week, 1st February 2010, viewed on 1st February 2010, . 21 Press Release, The Vertu Collections, March 2008, viewed on 1st March 2008, . 22 A. Clark, ‘The Baker Boys: Hot Cakes and Leather Pinnies’, Weekend, The Times, 28th August 2010, pp. 10-11. 23 H. Brown, ‘Vanity Case: Ladurée Beauty Collection’, Style, The Sunday Times, February 2008, viewed on 2nd September 2010, 10th . 24 D. Lauwaert, ‘I. Clothing and the Inner being II Clothing is a Thing III Clothing and Imagination IV Democratic Snobbery’, in The Power of Fashion: About Design and Meaning, J. Brand and J. Teunissen (eds), ArtEZ Press and Terra Lannoo, Arnhem, 2006, p. 183. 25 H. Blumer, ‘Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection’, in Dress and Identity, M. E. Roach-Higgins, J. B. Eicher, K. K. P. Johnson (eds), Fairchild Publications, New York, 1995, p. 390. 26 Show Overview, . 20

Bibliography Alexander, H., ‘Carla Bruni is Diplomatic with Stamp of Dior’. The Telegraph, March 2008, viewed on 22nd March 2010, 27th . Alexander, H. and Govan, F., ‘Carla Bruni Meets her Fashion Match in Spain's Princess Letizia’. The Daily Telegraph, 27th April 2009, viewed on 22nd March 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ BBC News, ‘Michelle Obama Makes Vogue Cover’. 11th February 2009, viewed on 2nd September 2010, . Blas, L., ‘Michelle Obama Graces “Vogue”’. USA Today, 11th February 2009, viewed on 25th August 2010, . Brand, J. and J. Teunissen, (eds), The Power of Fashion: About Design and Meaning. ArtEZ Press and Terra Lannoo, Arnhem, 2006. Brown, H., ‘Vanity Case: Ladurée Beauty Collection’. Style, The Sunday Times, February 2008, viewed on 2nd September 2010, 10th . Clark, A., ‘The Baker Boys: Hot Cakes and Leather Pinnies’. Weekend, The Times, 28th August 2010, pp. 10-11. Craik, J., Fashion: The Key Concepts. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2009. Dant, T., Car Culture/Car Girls, in Car Girls. J. Hassink (ed), Aperture Foundation Inc., New York, 2009, un-paginated. Donahue, W., ‘Who Made Michelle Obama’s Dresses?’. Chicago Tribune, 2nd April 2009, viewed on 25th August 2010, . Hassink, J., Car Girls. Aperture Foundation, Inc., New York, 2009. Laver, J., Costume and Fashion: A Concise History. Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1992 [1969, 1982]. Mills, E., ‘A Wife Less Ordinary’. The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Times, 26th September 2010, pp. 30-37. Platell, A., ‘Samantha Cameron vs Sarah Brown: In This Election Battle, Does Every Frock, Heel and Cardi Count. So Who Gets Your Vote?’. The Daily Mail,

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__________________________________________________________________ 24th February 2010, viewed on 25th August 2010, . Press Release, Dutch Fashion Foundation, DUTCH TOUCH Milan September 2009 Womenswear, 2009, viewed on 22 March 2010, . Press Release, Samsung LadyPhone Diva Collection 2010 gepresenteerd tijdens Amsterdam International Fashion Week. 1st February 2010, viewed on 1st February 2010, . Press Release, The Vertu Collections. March 2008, viewed on 1st March 2008, . Roach, J., It. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2007. Roach-Higgins, M. E., Either, J. B., Johnson, K. K. P. (eds), Dress and Identity. Fairchild Publications, New York, 1995. Rose, H., ‘Why Samantha Cameron Keeps Saying No to the Cover of Vogue’. The Times, 11th September 2010, pp. 32-33. Spokojny, J., ‘Museum Pieces: In the MUDE’. Frame, Issue 72, January/February 2010, pp. 110-113. Vaccari, A., Wig Wag: The Flags of Fashion. Fondazione Pitti Discovery, Florence and Marsilio Editori S.P.A., Venice, 2005. Veblen, T., Conspicuous Consumption. Penguin Books, London, 2005 [1899]. Whitworth, D., ‘Team SamCam Helps Its Boss to Follow Life of a Major Role Model’. The Times, 25th September, 2010, pp. 32-33. Nathaniel Dafydd Beard, a graduate of the London College of Fashion and ArtEZ Hogeschool voor beeldende kunsten Arnhem, is a writer, curator and conceptualist. Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Fashion and Textiles, School of

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__________________________________________________________________ Material at the Royal College of Art, his current practice focuses on ethics in fashion, cultural identity, fashion tourism and the development and role of the Fashion City. E-mail: [email protected].

Part 6 Marketing: From Fashion Cities and Forecasting to Eco-Fashion, Facsimiles and Fakes

‘Fashionalisation’: Urban Development and the New-Rise Fashion Weeks Wessie Ling Abstract A Fashion Week is traditionally an industry event, exclusive to trade professionals and usually named after the host city. It is an avenue for fashion designers and couture houses to showcase their seasonal collections giving precedence to agents and buyers to determine appropriate purchase. The biannual schedule also allows time for retailers to arrange their order and incorporate the designers into their retail marketing. The most prominent biannual Fashion Weeks are held in Paris, Milan, New York and London. Since the past decade, a handful of smaller Fashion Weeks have filled the international calendar. The Moscow Fashion Week is now the largest fashion event in Eastern Europe and the Imam Khomenini Mosque in Tehran staged Iran’s first Islamic Fashion Week in July 2006. Today, there are more than a hundred fashion weeks held from around the world. The questions that arise are why have so many cities decided to hold a Fashion Week? What is promoted in these new-rise Fashion Weeks and what is the relation to the local and traditional industries? This chapter will focus on the objectives of the new-rise Fashion Weeks and their rationale behind hosting the event. It discusses how cities exploit fashion to achieve varied objectives beyond serving the fashion industry and considers the many conflicting roles that fashion plays in a city - from endeavouring to brand a city as a fashion capital to merely using the event to generate tourism. Key Words: Fashion week, fashion city, creative and cultural industries, urban development, global competition, city branding. ***** 1. Global Competitions The new models for countries’ developments have focused their attention on the economic system, which are based on the post-industrial economy. The source of economic value and wealth is no longer the production of material goods but the creation and manipulation of dematerialized content. Today, culture is recognised as an essential part to generate economic value. Public authorities have started to adopt new models of planning based on the recognition and valorisation of tangible and intangible cultural assets. A relation between economy, society and territory has emerged from the analyses operated in the different research fields: this relation configures itself as a complex system able to generate growth and development. 1 It is obvious that the dimension of competitiveness increasingly shifts from the micro-level of single economic operators to the macro-level of

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__________________________________________________________________ territorial systems. Within these systems, the organisation of resources and cooperative networks fed by high levels of social capital has become a necessary requirement for productivity and territorial growth. This has resulted in not only increasing capacity of external resources 2 but also competition between cities. 3 One aspect of such competition is to foster a positive image on the global stage through investment in cultural industries. 4 This has resulted in competition between urban localities to build museums, sponsor cultural centres, stage international festivals and hosting fashion events. This is evident in the hosting of fashion weeks in many cities that have not previously been associated with fashion. Since the past decade, a handful of smaller Fashion Weeks have been mushrooming and today there are no less than 85 cities from around the world that hold at least one fashion week. 5 Associating a city with fashion raises its competitiveness. The idea of the fashion city, as Gilbert 6 notes, has become part of a broader strategy of metropolitan ‘boosterism’ featured by global competition between cities. The production of cultural representations and city images from it fostered an engine whose function is rather to brand a city 7 rather than to maintain its heritage and indigenous culture, 8 or evolving its cultural assets in a new form of cultural productions. Such disintegration of marketed and actual city image is seen, for example, in the hosting of fashion weeks in many cities, such as Bangkok, Amsterdam, and Sydney, that have not previously been associated with fashion. 2. A Background of Fashion Week Fashion shows and seasonal collections were believed to be organised in Paris since the establishment of La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in 1910. Changing consumption pattern and rising demand of clothes after the war saw other fashion cities joining force with the seasonal Paris Fashion Week. Florence organised its first Fashion Week in 1951, London Fashion Week has began since 1958. The Council of Fashion Designers of America was found in New York in 1963 to protect and promote local designs. 9 Hong Kong has its first fashion week in Asia since 1967. Over decades, these cities have become dominant fashion capitals with the association of the most prominent Fashion Weeks in Paris, Milan, New York, and London. Despite the fact that fashion week traditionally serves buyers and press a chance to preview fashion designs in a seasonal basis, many new-rise fashion weeks are annual events. Tunis Fashion Week is a biannual event and Edinburgh Fashion Week held in April to avoid clashes with the international fashion-week calendar. For many cities, hosting fashion week in fixed seasons does not seem to be a prime concern as long as it is on the calendar. Instead, hosting fashion week becomes a gesture in partnership with global players. As the aim of British Columbia Fashion Week in 2005 10 read, ‘to establish Vancouver as an emerging

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__________________________________________________________________ fashion centre and a true partner in the global fashion world along with Milan, Paris, London, New York, Toronto, Hong Kong and Sydney.’ 3. City Branding Organising fashion week is one way to promote a fashion centre. However, many new-rise fashion weeks are more interested to promote their host cities than to foster them a fashion centre. In 2002, Beijing first fashion week was staged in Tian’anmen Square, the political heart of Beijing and cultural symbol of China to ‘give more flavour to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games,’ writes China People Daily (09/11/2002). Jakarta uses its fashion week to ‘bring the rich of Indonesian colours and styles to influence, seduce, and colour the global market.’ 11 While global recognition is central to these cities’ image-making programme, the organisers announced the desire for Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week in 2005 12 to be ‘listed on the international events calendar.’ Nonetheless, it appears that fashion designers and fashion presentation are not central to the agenda of fashion week. In some cases, they are totally missing. Fashion week, as seen with some new players, is a promotional engine for the event itself. And the event is promoted as an entertainment. While many of the new-rise fashion weeks are open to public, the event has become a show-business aiming for publicity rather than promotion of fashion designs. On the website of Singapore Fashion Week in 2005, no show schedule, designers’ information or catwalk photos were included, only a list of VIPs essential to generate press coverage: Famous faces coming to town include: British supermodel Lily Cole is the face of the Festival, Ms Angelica Visconti (granddaughter of the late Salvatore Ferragamo) and Mr Salvatore Ferragamo from the famous Ferragamo family, New York shoe designer Beverly Feldman, Korean celebrities, Ms Kim So Yeon and Mr Kim Sung Min. Regional supermodels from China, Ms Lu Yan and Ms Chun Xiao. 13 When designer labels were showcase, seldom were there homegrown designs. Instead of promoting local talents, Shanghai Fashion Week Expo in 2005 14 widely featured on their website the participated European designers, like Karl Lagefeld, Basso & Brooke, Malene Birger so as to generate publicity for the event. Although the 2004 Kenya Fashion Week in Nairobi aimed to develop Kenya’s fashion sector by promoting works of local designers, a leading Indian fashion label, Satya Paul, was the focus in the event. Many local designers could not help questioning how the presence of an Indian label could help to promote local fashion. Kenya Fashion Week in 2004 15 failed to attract buyers and the event was criticised with audiences ‘who come not to buy but just for entertainment.’ Some fashion weeks even made

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__________________________________________________________________ the idea of entertainment prominent in their event. Jakarta Fashion Week in 2005 16 described itself as ‘part of global fashion series’ and denoted the inclusion of ‘party scene’ in their event. 4. Economic Drive and Tourism Given that fashion week generates publicity, most cities proclaim its essence as ‘re-branding’ the city. Part of this re-branding exercise is to generate tourism. Organising fashion week has proven to attract tourists. This is particularly evident with New Zealand Fashion Week in Auckland. The 2004 event ‘generated 33 million New Zealand dollars, or US $21.6 million, for the New Zealand economy in terms of total output, an estimated 30 million dollars for Auckland, and millions more in incremental foreign exchange earnings for designers.’ 17 The fact that Tourism Ministry’s support Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week 18 reveals the importance of fashion week to the country’s tourism. In particular, it already was the secondlargest contributor to the country’s revenue after manufacturing. It is for this huge revenue from tourism, Iceland famously sets its fashion week in unusual open-air locations at 1 a.m. in its endless summer sunlight in July as prime tourists’ attraction. 19 Economically, fashion week can be a huge revenue generator. It creates wealth, generates employment and earnings for different service providers. In some countries like Thailand, it preserves traditional crafts that benefit directly the local economy. The objective of Port-of-Spain Fashion Week in 2005 focused internally which aimed to promote young and upcoming designers to buyers from the local community. This was in gear with the Trinidad’s and Tobago’s Government effort to widen the economy which is primarily energy-based. On the other hand, the development of the country’s fashion supply chain hoped to provide new opportunities for Pakistan’s fashion industry and employment for a large number of youth. Pakistan annual Fashion Week in 2005 thus partly satisfied this idea. 5. The New Fashion City Another novel claim of fashion week is to provide a sense of national identity and pride from the achievements of the creative sectors. Investment for the construction of identity is more than top-down or bottom-up policy interventions. Promoting the key features of local community and adapting them to local characteristics enables the community to take advantage of the benefits that the fashion week is intended to achieve. This is evident with Dunedin, the most Scottish New Zealand town. By holding fashion week, the local community grasps a sense of belongingness. In Sao Paulo, the importance of its fashion industry has made it the creative support for not only various forms of aesthetic expression but also the diverse ethnic communities. For a decade, the official Brazilian fashion calendar has embodied this mission fostering proposals in a range of artistic productions. Through organising fashion week, it has mobilised local community

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__________________________________________________________________ and strengthened local identities. It has encouraged collaboration among a diverse mix of communities generating social harmony. Such benefits go well beyond monetary benefits from the fashion industry. The model of fashion week in many new post-industrial cities explains why in many cases it has taken place so enthusiastically. Like many cultural policies, it promotes directly or indirectly the cultural and creative industries encouraging the development of local milieux 20 and the creative class. 21 The policy of investment in the cultural and creative sectors is often considered a practice to encourage the development of the local environment and to increase international competition. Yet, without a deepen knowledge of the actual industry, instrumentalising the sector with high intangible value would only result in the development of the city from the viewpoint of cultural and creative consumption rather than that of the production. Holding fashion week no longer seems necessary to be consoled with the fashion industry. Material production is not a key drive for a fashion city but the symbolic production. What a fashion city need is essentially the production of symbolic fashion. New understanding is required to comprehend these new fashion cities. Agins 22 observes that the fashion industry has increasingly looked like an advanced producer service under advanced capitalism. Accordingly, the new fashion cities are less significant as a centre of design tradition or a cluster of highly skilled manufacturing. Yet what kind of fashion city are we discussing here when the agenda of many new-rise fashion weeks has little to do with the mechanics of the fashion industry itself? In many cases, new-rise fashion weeks increase both tangible and intangible assets given the material and immaterial properties of fashion. They are tools for the post-industrial cities to ‘fashionalise’ in order to achieve institutional objectives which often address local welfare, lifestyle, economy, society and environment. A process of ‘fashionalisation’ is simultaneously at play here. Fashion week is instrumental to the growth and development of a city constituting an identity for which these post-industrial cities are so in need. The real value of the fashion week is then connected to the perception of the event from which emerges an image linked intrinsically to the new city’s façade in the world stage. In sum, the tangible and intangible assets of the fashion week together with its generated image constitute and distinguish the city in the context of global competition. Competition between cities, observed Massey’s 23 and Sassen’s 24 encourages a hierarchical reordering of cities across the planet. Agins 25 further coined the term ‘the end of fashion’ acutely points to the upsetting hierarchy of fashion cities across the globe challenging the dominant players in trend endorsement. As such, is there a reordering of fashion cities across the globe and to what extent? In the event of the new-rise fashion week, none of them (as of today) appears to override key fashion players. The dominant fashion week such as Paris, Milan and New York continue to legitimate designers, endorsing new creations. Their unchanging

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__________________________________________________________________ power saw continual venture of young Japanese designers to Paris fashion week for legitimacy albeit Tokyo’s crowned fashion capital status. 26 The proliferation of fashion weeks across the globe only further enforces the legitimacy of the dominant players. One can showcase in the local fashion week at ease. Showcasing in one of the dominant fashion capitals would require substantial effort, external endorsement and increase investment. Seldom are new-rise fashion weeks dominated key fashion magazines in their changing season issues as major fashion weeks do. Designers under the phenomenon of global fashion week are rather the victims of the system as many new-rise fashion weeks have no roots in fashion production, let alone promotion for them. The rise of new fashion cities may well have promoted alternative routes to practice and succeed in the fashion industry. Their vibrancy evidently promotes diversity in fashion styles and trends, however to a certain extent. The fact that the objectives of many new-rise fashion weeks are intrinsically linked to city brand building and the economy changes the role of fashion week in the fashion industry. While some new-rise fashion weeks act as a solvent to the host cities’ internal affairs, the fashion week contest would be a long march for many new hosts to succeed locally and globally.

Notes 1

P. Hubbard, City (Key Ideas in Geography), Routledge, London, 2006. K. Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies, Harpers Collins, New York, 1996. 3 L. Gibson and D. Stevenson, ‘Urban Space and the Uses of Culture’, International Journal of Cultural Policy Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2004, pp. 1-4; D. Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994. 4 A. Scott, The Social Economy of the Metropolis, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008; G. Evans, ‘Hard Branding the Culture City - From Prado to Prada’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2003, pp. 417-440. 5 W. Ling, ‘The Fashion Week Contest and Its Dialectics’, The 6th International Conference on Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS) Conference Proceedings, The Osaka University, 2008, pp. 282-285. 6 D. Gilbert, ‘From Paris to Shanghai: The Changing Geographies of Fashion’s World Cities’, in Fashion’s World Cities, C. Breward and D. Gilbert (eds), Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 4. 7 J. Entwistle and A. Rocamora, ‘The Field of Fashion Realized: A Case Study of London Fashion Week’, Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 4, 2006. 8 S. Donald, ‘Stripes and My Country: City Brands for 2006’, Paper presented at Branding Cities and Urban Borders: Cosmopolitanisms and Parochialisms in Europe and Asia Pacific, Australia Centre, London, 12-14th January 2006, London. 2

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D. Gilbert, ‘From Paris to Shanghai: The Changing Geographies of Fashion’s World Cities’, pp. 3-32. 10 Vancouver Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . 11 Jakarta Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . 12 Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . 13 Singapore Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . 14 Shanghai Fashion Week Expo, viewed on 15th October 2006, . 15 Kenya Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . 16 Jakarta Fashion Week, op. cit. 17 S. Emling, ‘Big 4 Fashion Weeks Get New Company’, International Herald October 2006, Tribune, 3 October 2006, viewed on 17th . 18 Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week, op. cit. 19 Emiling, op. cit. 20 C. Landry, The Art of City-Making, Earthscan Publications, London, 2006. 21 R. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Perseus Book Group, New York, 2002. 22 T. Agins, The End of Fashion, Harper Collins, New York, 1999. 23 Massey, op. cit. 24 S. Sassen, Cities in the World Economy, New Pine Press, London, 1994. 25 Agins, op. cit. 26 Y. Kawamura, The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion, Berg, Oxford, 2004.

Bibliography Agins, T., The End of Fashion. Harper Collins, New York, 1999. Biancini, F., ‘Re-imaging the City’, in Enterprise and Heritage: Crosscurrents of National Culture. J. Corner and S. Hartley (eds), Routledge, London, 1991. Donald, S., ‘Stripes and My Country: City Brands for 2006’. Paper presented at Branding Cities and Urban Borders: Cosmopolitanisms and Parochialisms in Europe and Asia Pacific, Australia Centre, London, 12th-14th January 2006.

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__________________________________________________________________ Emling, S., ‘Big 4 Fashion Weeks Get New Company’. International Herald October 2006, Tribune, 2006, 3 October, viewed on 17th . Entwistle, J. and Rocamora, A., ‘The Field of Fashion Realized: A Case Study of London Fashion Week’. Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 4, 2006, pp. 735-750. Evans, G., Cultural Planning: An Urban Renaissance? Routledge, London, 2001. —––, ‘Hard Branding the Culture City - From Prado to Prada’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2003, pp. 417-440. Florida, R., The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. Perseus Book Group, New York, 2002. Gibson, L. and Stevenson, D., ‘Urban Space and the Uses of Culture’. International Journal of Cultural Policy Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2004, pp. 1-4. Gilbert, D., ‘From Paris to Shanghai: The Changing Geographies of Fashion’s World Cities’, in Fashion’s World Cities. C. Breward and D. Gilbert (eds), Berg, Oxford, 2006, pp. 3-32. Hubbard, P., City (Key Ideas in Geography). Routledge, London, 2006. October Jakarta Fashion Week, viewed on 15th .

2006,

Jewson, N. and MacGregor, S., Transforming Cities: New Spatial Divisions and Social Transformation. Routledge, London, 1997. Kawamura, Y., The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion. Berg, Oxford, 2004. Kenya Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week, viewed on 15th October 2006, . Landry, C., The Art of City-Making. Earthscan Publications, London, 2006.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ling, W., ‘The Fashion Week Contest and Its Dialectics’. The 6th International Conference on Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS) Conference Proceedings, The Osaka University, 2008, pp. 282-285. Massey, D., Space, Place and Gender. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994. Mommaas, H., ‘City Branding: The Necessity of Socio-Cultural Goals’, in City Branding: Image Building and Building Images. M. Vermeulen (ed), NAi publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. Mulgan, G., ‘The Changing Shape of the City’, in New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s. S. Hall and M. Jacques (eds), Lawrence & Wisthart, London, 1990. Ohmae, K., The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. Harpers Collins, New York, 1996. Sassen, S., Cities in the World Economy. New Pine Press, London, 1994. Scott, A., The Social Economy of the Metropolis. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. Shanghai Fashion Week Expo, viewed on 15th October .

2006,

Singapore Fashion Week, viewed on .

15th

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2006,

Vancouver Fashion Week, viewed .

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on

Wessie Ling, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. Her research deals with Chinese fashion, identities, transnationalism and modernities. Author of Fusionable Cheongsam (2007), she has published numerous articles on Chineseness and identities of the Chinese dress and fashion. She is interested in the immateriality of fashion and has produced artwork in the context of visual arts including a project on the globalisation of the world’s fashion week and its cultural economy. Further projects can be seen in .

From Fashion Forecasting to Coolhunting: Previsional Models in Fashion and in Cultural Production Marco Pedroni Abstract The transition from haute couture to prêt-à-porter in the 60’s has created in the fashion industry a great revolution both on the sides of production and consumption. One of the most relevant aspects in this process is the emergent demand of predicting future trends, in order to acquire a higher level of competitiveness compared to rivals. It is the birth of a structured activity known as fashion forecasting, managed by bureaux de style and embodied in trendbooks. Nowadays, this activity is often referred to as coolhunting, a striking term that implies an idea of research as intuitive ‘hunt’ of incipient signals in fashion and in consumers’ lifestyles. The chapter discusses coolhunting, a developing professional activity, as an emblematic place of symbolic mechanisms that are crucial in order to explain not only the fashion system but also many cultural processes of production and consumption of material goods rich in immaterial contents. The aim suggests that coolhunting is historically rooted in fashion forecasting, but it is also characterised by a relevant set of novelties, above all the shifting of research from a monolithic interest in fashion fads to socio-cultural trends that involve the whole symbolic imagination of the customer. A second important point is the extension of the fashion forecasting model to many branches of cultural production, more and more involved in a trend-oriented logic. Coolhunters emerge also as ‘messengers of distinction,’ the matching point between the consumers’ need of distinction and the producers’ attempt of creating distinctive goods. Key Words: Fashion forecasting, coolhunting, cultural intermediaries, trends, cultural production, trickle-down theory. ***** 1. The Emerging of Coolhunting The term ‘coolhunting’ indicates a research approach that has had its run during the 90’s breaking the traditional marketing schemes and attempting to understand better the world of consumption through an immersion of daily occurrences with particular frequency in certain parts of the population (mostly young) with techniques in line with anthropology and qualitative sociology, in which the quantitative approach of the market studies leaves in place an ethnographic observation driven by the intuition of the researchers. The professional activity of the coolhunter, consisting of research into the emerging trends through observation out and about, was interpreted as the signal of the inversion of the rules that spread

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__________________________________________________________________ style and fashion, 1 that from the trickle-down model (from the social élite to the consumer masses) it passes to the other end to trickle-up: 2 it would be the young, the subcultures, the effervescent areas to produce, from the basics, style innovation that spread through the highest social classes. Coolhunting has attracted the interest of journalists, essayists, and scholars, 3 even inspiring novels and fiction 4 often spoiled by a celebratory tone depicting the coolhunter as a young man travelling the world with his digital camera in hand, searching for cool images to send to customers and research agencies. On the opposite side of the spectrum, other authors have described coolhunting as a frivolous activity even mystifying which lays a trap for the authenticity of subcultures in order to sell to companies suggestive information with disputable commercial value. 5 For fashion scholars, coolhunting signals the assertion of new players in the area of trend research that ceases to be an exclusive practice of the fashion system in order to become strategic activity area for all the companies involved in the production of consumer goods. In order to investigate the empty space included between the two diametrically opposed stereotypes of the coolhunter, I conducted an empirical investigation based on 43 in-depth interviews of the professionals engaged in trend prediction. 6 This investigation brought to light among several aspects how the ‘trend hunt’ contributed to extend the logic of fashion to the numerous production sectors which were in the past lacking a fashion-oriented sensitivity. 2. Fashion Forecasting and Bureaux de Style For the entire period that Lipovetsky calls the ‘hundred years’ fashion,’ 7 from the opening of the first atélier by Charles-Frédérick Worth in 1857 to the first Salon du prêt-à-porter in Paris in 1957, the system of fashion functions according to a highly-centralised logic in which the French capital is the undisputable jet engine of style; it deals with a context characterised by a high-level of consensus on what is fashion, whose advance follows the law of trickling-down 8 in a classstructured society rather rigid and defined. 9 In this description, the trends have a well-known geographic origin: the Parisian haute couture, through the work of a tightly-knit group of couturiers, ‘said law’ and it is emulated the world over. The forecast of trends is a necessity that emerges in the 60’s of the 20th Century 10 with the birth of prêt-à-porter in conjunction with some phenomena that have radically changed the face of the fashion system. The industrial production of clothing begins with the development of its own lines of products, thereby abandoning the imitation of high-end fashion, and offering the public clothing in mass à la page with accessible pricing. 11 In the meanwhile, Paris loses its own leadership and sees other cities encroaching on its name to fame such as Milan, London, New York and Tokyo in the role of trend capital, and young people are seen as the protagonists and the new innovators of style. The fashion designers start to copy ideas from urban subcultures in the need to produce clothes in line

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__________________________________________________________________ with the trends that emerge from the media and pop culture. At a productive level, the growing competition strengthens the sensation of being late with respect to the market movements giving rise to frenetic forecasting activity of trends. 12 Between the end of the 60’s and the beginning of the following decade, the activity of fashion forecasting took hold within the world of fashion oriented to two poles of interest: the first, inside the fashion system, has the objective to identify lines and colours for the following collections by way of a constant dialogue with the production factory and the observation of the competitors; the second, outside, looks at what is happening ‘on the street,’ in the fashion zones, attempting to understand the changes in the styles of the consumers. Strictly connected to the fashion forecasting is the editing of the trendbooks, edited publications that identify material, colours, lines and emerging forms, work instruments very useful to designers as a source of inspiration and updating on what is new. The conditions of possibility (and necessity) of coolhunting hide inside the system of prêt-à-porter, at the same pace with the acceleration of the fashion cycles, which impose a frenetic run-up to the latest trend. However, if the fashion forecasting is an endogenous activity for the fashion system, aiming to identify colour, line and fabric trends, the coolhunting tries to understand the social trends linked to lifestyles. The fashion trend shows a character prevailingly auto-referential, in which the specific logic of the field of fashion is made. The process that carries it to the selection of the seasonal fashion trends is very articulated, but may be pieced together according to the timeline in which three things happen: 13 (1) the bureaux de style that produce trendbooks subdivided by product category; (2) the producers of fibre that, based on the trendbooks or independent research activity, supply their own clients a wide view on the trends; (3) textile shows with semi-worked products, another phase of selection and interpretation of trends, that since there is a place to meet for the workers of the fashion sector, they become moments of synthesis, comparison, and circulation ‘by osmosis’ of the trends. Without forgetting, of course, the determining role of fashion journalism, whose power at influencing is exercised not on the creative designers themselves but on the final consumer. The distinction between a fashion forecasting, oriented towards endogenous trends of the fashion system, and coolhunting aimed at the social trends, valid in theoretical terms, is in practice less clean. The job of coolhunting on the internal workings of the fashion world goes from the net refusal to acceptance in the form of external consultation or work directly from the fashion company. High fashion, first lines, and brand labels trend maker, generally speaking, express a distance from coolhunting, seen as competitive with respect to the creative activity of the designer and useless with respect to the company objective to ‘create style;’ the research that runs after more so the ‘inspirations’ and not the trends is carried out directly by the creative minds of the company. Such a refusal

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__________________________________________________________________ favours, in part, the representation of the designers of the brand labels as artists and heirs of the Parisian couturiers 14 and their self-representation as creators of original models; in the other part, it is consistent with the image of the brand which the market sees as a reference point. This behaviour is rooted in the designers who perceive coolhunting as an activity of observation and imitation. The other levels are more open-minded to the use of coolhunting: there are few companies that have a coolhunting department internally (as for example, the fast fashion companies). There are more that utilise external consultants. Specifically, smaller companies trust more easily the external coolhunter consultant because of the economic impossibility of using resources intentionally dedicated to research that requires elevated costs above all for travelling. The two possible behaviours of the fashion companies - creating style or following trends - should not be considered to be understood as rigid alternatives, but rather as two poles of a continuum that, at its central or middle part, includes those companies that work in order to set the company style without ignoring the actual trends (endogenous and external) out there, in a continual balance renegotiated between brand identity and renovation, style and research, observation and re-elaboration. Even in the absence of a dedicated coolhunting department, and notwithstanding the inescapable role of the fashion designer, coolhunting is not a strange activity regarding the overall competencies of the designers, whose activity includes the consultation of both paper and digital inspirational sources (e.g., the traditional trendbooks and online databases such as WGSN and fashion photoblog like The Sartorialist). 15 Such instruments resulting in trendwatching carried out by the agencies and special players connect coolhunting to the work of the designers who tend, however, to clarify their dependence on the creative phase. 3. Beyond the Confines of Style The speed of the fashion cycles poses a problem of content providing in the field: in the impossibility of proposing radical novelties at a rhythm of every six months (or multi-month in the case of fast fashion), the system has to chase after a continual recycling of styles, even if already seen, updated, reinterpreted and contaminated, cyclically return to the scene. Through this mechanism inevitably linked to the necessity of studying and anticipating the trends, fashion has given roots to a model of production and consumption that is today expanding into the ever-widening sectors of the cultural industry. The logic of rapid circulation and obsolescence of trends typical of fashion is progressively extending itself into the world of consumption; at the same time, paradoxically, fashion is the sector that refuses to associate itself with coolhunting, or it exercises its auto-referentially (the trend endogenous research to fashion system), thereby remaining more faithful to the traditional fashion forecasting rather than opening itself to a wider study of lifestyles and social trends.

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__________________________________________________________________ The market research agencies that use coolhunting are working today on the hypothesis of interdependence between fashion and lifestyle considering clothing as a part only in a picture more complex, in which the consumer chooses objects and experience of consumption always less as a status symbol and more like a lifestyle symbol. This explains why, notwithstanding the trend research born within the fashion world, the more complete forms of coolhunting, understood as research and analysis of social trends, are those begun by who observes at 360 degrees consumer behaviour, reading the larger single signs as socio-cultural trend manifestations. It is with the activity of market research agencies that coolhunting acquires a new face, making itself autonomous from the fashion sector. If in fact the endogenous trend research of the fashion system has to do with in great part to the activity of fashion designer, the analysis of socio-cultural trends needs to be wider and less sector-based. The market research agencies come into play and investigate the expressive trends and emerging consumption through desk qualitative technique (media and web monitoring) and field (observation), reporting ad hoc for a buyer or multiclient (accessible through membership to businesses that pay a periodic fee). Research institutes, such as the Dutch one, Science of the Time, or the Milanese one, Future Concept Lab, 16 work on the continual gathering of information in the most vivacious contexts from the point of view of elaboration of trends, in order to make an analysis based on the requests of the buyers. Such institutes present agile structures, articulated on two principal levels: the first is that of coolhunters, called even alternatively observers, correspondents, or trendwatchers, from which comes an informative flow of images, written words, and the first interpretations of phenomena subject to observation. The second level is constituted of research agency team; from the one side, it keeps in contact with the buying agencies, transforming their requests into research projects, and from the other side, coordinates the correspondents, specifying their observation objectives through a brief, receiving, as a result of the work in the field, reports composed of text and images. This form of coolhunting, far from the simple activity of researcher of stylistic details, represents a research approach (still scarcely codified) of qualitative nature, having as subject the evolution of experience of consumption and socio-cultural images, and for (commercial) objective the return of creative input to the client or buyer, and for output descriptive reports, conceptual maps and classifications of trend phenomena. The attention of researchers with coolhunting moves towards the external trends to the field of fashion; socio-cultural trends not easy to read which the coolhunters try to codify through the gathering of «signals from the street», meaning information not structured on the consumption behaviour that have a place in the popular social context by the trend setter. Coolhunting offers together

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__________________________________________________________________ research techniques - still little structured and methodologically perfectible - with the ambition to have a rapid transformation of the consumption world ever more subject to the cyclical laws of fashion. 4. Conclusion Coolhunting is today a complex field (in the sense of Bourdieu, 17 that understands the field as a social arena in which there are clashes or alliances formed in order to insure the ‘stakes,’ with rules totally clear only to the participants of the competition) populated by three categories of players that contend for a stake of the market with a high economic value, that is to say the knowledge of the socio-cultural trends. We have seen that the first category, historically, is that of the operators of the fashion system, together with today the market research agencies that utilize coolhunting; but there is a third nucleus, made up of free-lances, that includes a series of professionals whose job consist in ‘using the eyes’ (journalists, sociologists, anthropologists, photographers, architects, etc.), who are able to work in fashion as well as in the market research. All of these players occupy a position in the middle between production and consumption, an element that makes them ‘cultural intermediaries.’ 18 Coolhunting, in fact, offers as a strategy to identify the differences in the field of consumption, and has as its objective to transpose them into the production fields, making them into consumption products in which the consumers can more easily recognise and choose the material plugs and symbols with which to form one’s very own lifestyle. The social role of the coolhunter is that which hinges between productions and consumption, a meeting point between two distinct wants: that of the production that sells the consumer goods as instruments for the construction of differences, and that of the consumption that feeds it in partial awareness and unawareness. The coolhunter adds a third level of distinction, working on research (in consumption) of that which is different, in order to transfer this information to the production; his work is that to intercept the distinction, studying the consumption experiences and the collective fantasies in which innovative practices manifest themselves, uses of assets as expressive instruments, trends that represent changes in taste. This ‘work,’ invented by the fashion system about a half century ago, is today a key function in order to connect the cultural post-Ford industries and their always more competent consumers.

Notes 1

M. Gladwell, ‘The Coolhunt’, The New Yorker, 17th March 1997, p. 78. G. A. Field, ‘The Status Float Phenomenon: The Upward Diffusion of Innovation’, Business Horizons, Vol. 13, 1970, pp. 45-52; T. Polhemus, Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk, Thames and Hudson, London, 1994.

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See, among others: M. Albom, ‘How Corporate America Hijacked “Cool”’, The Holland Sentinel, 8th July 1998, viewed on 15th September 2010, ; B. Goodman and R. Dretzin, ‘The Merchants of Cool. A Report on the Creators and Marketers of Popular Culture for Teenagers’, Frontline, Pbs, Wgbh, Boston, MA, 2001; R. La Ferla, ‘Once Hot, Now Not, Cool Hunters are in a Deep Freeze’, The New York July 2002, viewed on 15th September 2010, Times.com, 7th ; L. Grossman, ‘The Quest for Cool’, Time Magazine: What’s Next?, Vol. 162, No. 10, 31st August 2003, pp. 48-54; N. Southgate, ‘Coolhunting with Aristote’, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 21, No. 7, 2003, pp. 453-461; I. A. Fontenele, ‘Os Caçadores do Cool’, Lua Nova, Vol. 63, 2004, pp. 163-177; J. Caplan, ‘Messengers of Cool’, The Time, 17th October 2005, viewed on 15th September 2010, ; M. Riekert, ‘Coolhunting on the Web’, The Age, 21st September 2006, viewed on 15th September 2010, ; N. Kerner and G. Pressman, Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today’s Cluttered Marketplace, Atria Books, New York, 2007; P. A. Gloor and S. M. Cooper, Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing, Amacom, New York, 2007. 4 C. Willis, Bellwether, Bantam Books, London, 1996; W. Gibson, Pattern Recognition, Berkeley Publishing Group, New York, 2003. 5 N. Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Flamingo, London, 2000; G. McCracken, ‘Hunting the Cool Hunt’, CultureBy, 28th December September 2010, 2002, viewed on 15th G. ; McCracken, ‘Who Killed the Cool Hunter?’, CultureBy, 2nd June September 2010, 2006, viewed on 15th . 6 M. Pedroni, Coolhunting. Genesi di una Pratica Professionale Eretica [Coolhunting. Genesis of a Heretical Professional Practice], FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2010. 7 G. Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1994. 8 G. Simmel, ‘Fashion’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62, May 1957 [1904], pp. 541-558; L. A. Fallers, ‘A Note on the “Trickle Effect”’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 18, 1954, pp. 314-321. 9 D. Crane, ‘Diffusion Models and Fashion: A Reassessment’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 566, 1999, p. 15. 10 K. McKelvey and J. Munslow, Fashion Forecasting, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2008.

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Lipovetsky, op. cit.; P. Volonté (ed), La Creatività Diffusa. Culture e Mestieri della Moda Oggi [Spread out Creativity. Culture and the Work of Fashion Today], FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2003, pp. 52-53. 12 D. Crane, ‘Diffusion Models and Fashion: A Reassessment’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 566, 1999, pp. 17-18. 13 S. Saviolo and S. Testa, Le Imprese del Sistema Moda. Il Management al Servizio della Creatività [Fashion Firms. Management at the Service of Creativity], Etas, Milano, 2005, pp. 176-177. 14 Volonté, p. 11. 15 See websites and . 16 See websites

and . 17 The notion of ‘field’ crosses the whole work of Pierre Bourdieu. For a short but comprehensive overview, see P. Bourdieu and L. J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. 18 P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1984, pp. 318-371.

Bibliography Albom, M., ‘How Corporate America Hijacked “Cool”’. The Holland Sentinel, 8th July 1998, viewed 15th September 2010, . Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1984. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. J .D., An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Caplan, J., ‘Messengers of Cool’. The Time, 17th October 2005, viewed 15th September 2010 . Crane, D., ‘Diffusion Models and Fashion: A Reassessment’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 566, 1999, pp. 13-24. Fallers, G. A., ‘A Note on the “Trickle Effect”’. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 18, 1954, pp. 314-321.

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__________________________________________________________________ Field, G .A., ‘The Status Float Phenomenon: The Upward Diffusion of Innovation’. Business Horizons, Vol. 13, 1970, pp. 45-52. Fontenele, I. A., ‘Os Caçadores do Cool’. Lua Nova, Vol. 63, 2004, pp. 163-177. Gibson, W., Pattern Recognition. Berkeley Publishing Group, New York, 2003. Gladwell, M., ‘The Coolhunt’. The New Yorker, 17th March 1997, p. 78. Gloor, P. A. and Cooper, S. M., Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. Amacom, New York, 2007. Goodman, B. and Dretzin, R., ‘The Merchants of Cool. A Report on the Creators and Marketers of Popular Culture for Teenagers’. Frontline, Pbs, Wgbh, Boston, MA, 2001. Grossman, L., ‘The Quest for Cool’. Time Magazine: What’s Next?, Vol. 162, No. 10, 31st August 2003, pp. 48-54. Kerner N. and Pressman, G., Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today’s Cluttered Marketplace. Atria Books, New York, 2007. Klein, N., No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Flamingo, London, 2000. La Ferla, R., ‘Once Hot, Now not, Cool Hunters are in a Deep Freeze’. The New York Times.com, 7th July 2002, viewed on 15th September 2010, . Lipovetsky, G., The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1994. McCracken, G., ‘Hunting the Cool Hunt’. CultureBy, 28th December 2002, viewed on 15th September 2010, . McCracken, G., ‘Who Killed the Cool Hunter?’. CultureBy, 2nd June 2006, viewed on 15th September 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ McKelvey, K. and Munslow, J., Fashion Forecasting. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2008. Pedroni, M., Coolhunting. Genesi di una Pratica Professionale Eretica [Coolhunting. Genesis of a Heretical Professional Practice]. FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2010. Polhemus, T., Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk. Thames and Hudson, London, 1994. Riekert, M., ‘Coolhunting on the Web’. The Age, 21st September 2006, viewed on 15th September 2010, . Saviolo, S. and Testa, S., Le Imprese del Sistema Moda. Il Management al Servizio della Creatività [Fashion Firms. Management at the Service of Creativity]. Etas, Milano, 2005. Simmel, G., ‘Fashion’. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62, May 1957 [1904], pp. 541-558. Southgate, N., ‘Coolhunting with Aristote’. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 21, No. 7, 2003, pp. 453-461. Volonté, P. (ed), La Creatività Diffusa. Culture e Mestieri della Moda Oggi [Spread out Creativity. Culture and the Work of Fashion Today]. FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2003. Willis, C., Bellwether. Bantam Books, London, 1996. Marco Pedroni is a sociologist of culture. He is currently Research Fellow at the University of Bergamo (Italy) and teaches Theories of Communication at the Politecnico of Milan and Research Methods at the Milano Fashion Institute. Marco has a PhD in Sociology and Social Research Methodology from the Università Cattolica of Milan, where he collaborates with the Centre for the Study of Fashion and Cultural Production (Department of Sociology). He has published articles on cultural industries such as fashion and gambling, social theory and methodology of research. Among his books, Coolhunting (FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2010) and Moda e Arte (‘Fashion and Art’, FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2012).

Fashion Apps: Altering the ‘Fashionscape’ through Smartphone Technology Mario J. Roman Abstract Fashion media has leaped off of magazine pages and computer screens and into the palms of every tech-savvy on-the-go fashionista. Smartphone ‘apps’ (short for ‘applications’) change how both consumers and retailers interact with fashion products, media, and one another. Chanel’s app offers runway videos, Chanel news, and stories on designer Karl Lagerfeld. Hugo Boss’s app helps fans match items from their wardrobe with clothes currently in stores. The Gap’s StyleMixer app allows customers to create ‘looks’ with current in-store products, which can then be shared in a virtual forum. Inspired by Arjun Appadurai’s analysis of modernity and globalisation through ‘scapes,’ this chapter explores how these apps impact spatial and social dynamics on the ‘fashionscape,’ or the fluid and irregular landscape, which is shaped by fashion capital, people, and media. The shrinking of fashion’s virtual space between designer and consumer, and the social networking of consumers is constantly changing the terrain of the fashionscape where digital images, text communication, and the flow of fashion capital occur in the palm of our hands. Key Words: Apps, fashion, fashionscape, smartphones, social networking. ***** 1. Introduction: Smartphones and Apps Shortly after purchasing an iPhone in the winter of 2008, I perused Apple’s Apps Store and stumbled upon the Chanel app. In the following months, after discovering the Chanel app, I downloaded numerous fashion related apps but was disappointed by their material. Most were informational in content, e.g. how to tie a necktie multiple ways, or they were game-centric, like a digital version of paper dolls. Additionally, most of the non-corporation affiliated apps were poorly designed. The Chanel app, however, was and remains well-designed, user-friendly, and offers multiple kinds of content. It functions much like Chanel’s website providing users a product look-book with information, Chanel News, corporate biography, and video content of Chanel fashion shows and Chanel related projects. I regularly logged onto the Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, and Gucci apps in-between classes, while on the bus, or waiting for a friend. I soon realised that I was developing a new relationship with these brands. Normally, my connections were restricted to print and online media. These three apps changed that binary media relationship so that I could be in contact with a brand at a moment’s notice: these brands were literally on my person much like an article of clothing. This spatial

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__________________________________________________________________ alteration, however, is more than just a diminishing of distance; it is changing the central relationship between the customer and the brand. A smartphone is a mobile phone, which offers the user personal digital assistance (PDA), Internet access, media players, and software capabilities. The word ‘app’ is short for application, which is a third-party software programme created primarily for smartphones and other personal computing devices as well. Apps cover a wide range of functions like informational, organisational, recreational and/or creative. For example, an app can allow the user to create a grocery shopping list from a recipe found online and give the shopper measurement conversions and/or definitions of certain ingredients. Each app can be downloaded directly to a smartphone or to a computer and then transferred to a mobile device. The online app stores normally divide their apps into genres rather than functionality such as education, finance, social networking, and travel. Fashion apps mostly fall into the lifestyle category but they can also be found in the entertainment and photography genres. According to The New York Times, Apple leads the market with over 250,000 apps. The Android market is second with over 80,000 apps. 1 Indisputably, the iPhone is the leader among smartphones with fashion apps. At the beginning of January 2011, there were approximately seven hundred fashion related apps for the iPhone. 2 Fashion apps are small in number and variety on the other smartphone platforms; however, just as the iPhone app world grows daily, the Blackberry 3 and the Android 4 app worlds are growing to catch up to Apple. Though fashion apps come from accessory, e-commerce, lifestyle, luxury, and media companies, this paper will focus on apps developed by apparel corporations. This chapter will explore this mobile-spatial relationship through various fashion apps and note how the customer-brand relationship is altering, as a result of this new mobile media. I will incorporate the concept of ‘scapes,’ which can be thought of as mobile-spatial building blocks for a global economy. The ‘fashionscape’ will be introduced and how smartphone technology is evolving this landscape to affect the larger fashion imaginary. 2. Scapes and Fashion’s Imaginaries In his book Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Arjun Appadurai proposes five ‘scapes’ (ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes) for understanding a new global cultural economy. As he explains: The suffix -scape allows us to point to the fluid, irregular shapes of these landscapes, shapes that characterize international capital as deeply as they do international clothing styles. These terms with the common suffix -scape also indicate that these are not objectively given relations that look the same from every angle

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__________________________________________________________________ of vision but, rather, that they are deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by the historical, linguistic, and political situadedness of different sorts of actors... 5 Appadurai’s five scapes, while thought-provoking and useful, elide the numerous ingredients that develop a complete understanding of a new global cultural economy. His conception reduces a global cultural economy to people, images, technology, and capital. Building, therefore, upon Appadurai’s idea of scapes, I propose that more scapes need to be included to create a fuller understanding of the contemporary world. These scapes include but are not limited to agriculturescape, artscape, climatescape, designscape, diseasescape, sciencescape, and violencescape. Indeed, Saumyashree Ghosh speaks of city and architecturescapes, which imagined collectively ‘can incessantly breed experiences of disenchanment.’ 6 In each of these aforementioned scapes, the main component occupies a fluid globalised landscape that evolves according to the loci of control on this metaphorical terrain. Additionally, I propose a separate and distinct ‘fashionscape.’ This scape is a fluid and irregular space constructed by the movement of fashion people and fashion products across the globe and controlled by various fashion groups: imagined consumer groups, fashion brands, invented brand categories, and fashion media. As he explains, Appadurai distinguishes that these scapes are not controlled by individuals, Indeed, the individual actor is the last locus of this perspectival set of landscapes, for these landscapes are eventually navigated by agents who both experience and constitute larger formations, in part from their own sense of what these landscapes offer. 7 By explaining that the individual actor is mostly insignificant, Appadurai sets up scapes are collective in their experience, where power originates externally for these agents rather than internally. The reason the concept of scapes and the fashionscape will be used in this chapter is when fashion is analysed many researchers leave out the spatial component that is inherent in fashion. In our contemporary world, fashion is a global concept but not every type of fashion exists in all locations concurrently. Fashion becomes localised in its many avatars while simultaneously being omnipresent. In regards to this paper, how smartphone apps affect fashion communities spatially will be considered. Appadurai continues by drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson, he argues, These landscapes thus are the building blocks of what … I would like to call “imagined worlds”, that is, the multiple worlds

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__________________________________________________________________ that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe … An important fact of the world we live in today is that many persons on the globe live in such imagined world (and not just in imagined communities) and thus are able to contest and sometimes even subvert the imagined worlds of the official mind and of the entrepreneurial mentality that surround them. 8 Benedict Anderson’s theory of ‘print capitalism’ argues that imagined communities, and later nationalisms, formed around the distribution of script languages. 9 One could argue that dress and fashion had an equal affect on the human subconscious. Just in the way that printed words are read individually but collectively as an imagined community, dress and fashion are donned and doffed individually but collectively within imagined fashion communities. Appadurai saw his scapes as building blocks for Anderson’s imagined worlds. In terms of fashion, the above scapes can be thought of as the building blocks for imagined fashion worlds and invented fashion brands. This paper will focus on imagined fashion worlds, e.g. Lagerfeld devotees or Gucci fanatics, and brands, like Hugo Boss and Banana Republic, because while the undeniable purpose of a fashion app is to sell more products, it also incites community and affects the fashion imaginary and the ownership of fashion. Before proceeding to the analysis, a note on the usage of the word ‘invented’ refers to the work, The Invention of Tradition edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. This work brings together scholars who argue that traditions often seen as steeped in history were fabricated in modern times, specifically the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in order to create a connection to the ancient past or a sense of belonging. 10 Some scholars argue for the emergence of the idea of fashion was concomitantly with the idea of modernity. Fashion, therefore, should be understood as an invented idea and its fashionable products as invented commodities. As will be discussed below with smartphone apps, the products and media distributed by brands are inventions that help to produce the solidification of imagined fashion worlds. 3. Typical Fashion Apps The majority of the fashion apps assessed for this paper function like basic condensed versions of companies’ websites and therefore possess some or all of the following components: a product photo album, 11 product information, 12 company biography, 13 store locator, 14 and an e-commerce window. 15 So, when a fashionista is waiting for a date at a café, she can tap into the latest pieces from TopShop. When stuck in traffic on the 405 in Los Angeles, a young fashionisto can view the latest accessories from Costume National and then share a find with his friends on Facebook. 16 As such, these apps manage to tap into the restless minds

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__________________________________________________________________ (and fingers) of a visually saturated and over-communicated society. Since these features are familiar to smartphone users and many other consumers, these fashion apps do not creatively engage with consumers because they are merely acting as a secondary platform for a website. They are not creating a conversation between customers and companies beyond that of a sales narrative. Though these apps increase accessibility to products and create more informed customers, they fail to capitalize on the mobile action of their consumers and the close proximity to their consumers that these devices provide. 4. Creating Loyalty beyond the Product Not all fashion companies with apps have an e-commerce window component. These companies recognise that purchasing through a smartphone is still a hesitation among many users. These brands instead choose to use their apps for more entertainment purposes, which generate sales indirectly. Such apps bring their customers further into a particular label’s mindset through brand promotion. Brand promotion moves beyond product advertisement and publicises a label’s image or lifestyle mood. On a fashion app this is delivered through video content, Twitter 17 feeds, and blog entries. For example, Armani’s Acqua di Gioia app and Dior’s app convey the lifestyles that these labels are currently promoting. Acqua di Gioia features a series of short blog entries called ‘Drops of Joy’ that have a decidedly Earth conscious slant to them. Dior seeks to further promote the image of the Lady Dior handbag collection through short films, behind-the-scenes videos and other media. As such, these apps move beyond product promotion by publicising the invented images and stories behind the merchandise. This kind of marketing connects the consumer to the company behind the product and ultimately forms a connection to an imagined fashion community of other Acqua di Gioia or Lady Dior devotees. Curious fashionistas often seek to know more about the designers behind the labels they patronise. On the Chanel app, ‘Chanel News’ features short stories and videos about Karl Lagerfeld, his inspirations, and other stories about Chanel from across the globe. On Dolce & Gabbana’s app, one can follow D&G news from three different sources: Twitter posts, Facebook updates, and Swide.com 18 stories. The news stories on the Chanel app are more crafted while the D&G posts appear to be less about maintaining a specific rarefied image and more about giving D&G fans the spectrum of highbrow news and popular culture. Though Chanel and D&G promote an image as Armani and Dior choose to, the avenue for these brands’ campaign is decidedly different as it focuses more on the creative personalities behind the label and not just the invented images and stories of the labels. Chanel and D&G capitalise on the celebrity statuses that their creative heads have achieved and choose to use this to market products and the brand. This promotional decision creates a stronger bond with each of these label’s fan bases because these companies recognise that in our current age of celebrity obsession and social

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__________________________________________________________________ networking, customers identify more easily to a person than a visually and textually produced brand. The Gucci app exceeds the above four apps in its efforts to promote the Gucci image and their products because it brings together image, celebrity, and the head designer Frida Giannini. On the Gucci app, image marketing comes in the form of short videos, news stories, a Gucci Music Channel, and a Little Black Book. The latter two features go beyond typical news content and help to create mood and place. The music channel is streaming music that helps to put a fan in the Gucci mood. The Little Black Book features different locations across the globe (Aspen, The Caribbean, Dubai, Las Vegas, São Paulo, Shanghai, etc.) and lists bars, hotels, and restaurants that Gucci recommends. The Little Black Book also features a list created by Frida Giannini of places she recommends in these Gucci identified fashion capitals. One can also carry along some of Ms. Giannini’s favourite music with a downloadable playlist 19 she created with iTunes. Lastly, through the Gucci news and events window, a user can learn of upcoming Gucci events, on what magazine covers Gucci is featured, and what celebrities are wearing or carrying Gucci products. In one particular news story called ‘1973 Gucci Tote - The Newest Celebrity Must Have’ 20 - nine celebrities including Angelina Jolie, Madonna, and Heidi Klum are all noted as recently being seen in public carrying this specific tote. Many apps, including those discussed in this section, have edited videos of the most recent fashion shows. Typically, these videos are about two minutes in length and feature looks and products that the brand will most likely promote in the coming season. Gucci Connect goes one step further. Following in the footsteps of Alexander McQueen’s 21 collaboration with SHOWstudio, 22 Gucci Connect allows fans access to the live viewing of a Gucci fashion show. A recent Gucci Connect show happened on 17th January 17th 2011 and streamed the Men’s Autumn-Winter 2011 show. Gucci took the McQueen-SHOWstudio web-spectacle further by featuring a panoptic-spectacle complete with two runway views, one backstage camera, and a front door eye on the fashionistas and celebrities coming to the show. This and other Gucci Connect events, while best viewed on a computer, could be viewed wirelessly through Gucci’s app. 5. Giving Customers Fashion Tools An app can interact with customers beyond news stories and streaming visual narratives thereby giving the fan the opportunity to play with products or by creating an exchange of information. As consumers provide more feedback as to what they are buying and why they are buying an item, this information could yield improvements to future product offerings. These forms of creative interaction with customers through fashion apps were identified as one of three forms: shopping assistance, wardrobing assistance and styling features. Banana Republic developed two apps, one for the American market and a second for the South Korean market. The app for the South Korean market has a

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__________________________________________________________________ seasonal shopping assistance function geared towards promoting specific apparel and accessories. In the fall of 2010, this app helped users find the right chinos to wear for certain occasions, like a midweek meeting, an outing with friends, or a weekend date. The current app is called ‘Banana Republic Holiday Gift Guide.’ Users are prompted to select gender, occasion, price range, and one of three descriptors: ‘Luxury,’ ‘Warm,’ or ‘Chic.’ As an example: For Him - Luxury Congratulations - < 250,000 Won. 23 After information is determined, options appear on the screen for the customer to browse. These two examples of shopping assistance show how a company can develop a more personalized experience on a basic level while enticing the customer into the actual store. Additionally, if the shopping assistance results in a purchase, companies can begin to understand which garments and/or accessories are purchased for particular occasions but only if they analyse this data. The Hugo Boss app takes shopping assistance one step further with their ‘Color-Matching’ function which helps consumers wardrobe items from their existing closet with apparel and accessories currently in Hugo Boss stores. First, users choose to take a photograph of an item or choose a photo from their existing smartphone’s photo album. Then, the customers are prompted to choose a colour on a garment or accessory they seek to match or to compliment. After this selection, the function generates a scrollable list of items for the user to browse and to store desirable pieces in a virtual wish list for future purchasing at a store. This particular function that Hugo Boss created goes beyond shopping assistance and helps customers build a wardrobe with Hugo Boss products, as well as, show consumers how to do this. Hugo Boss fans learn that they can pick one item and a colour from a garment to narrow the numerous possibilities in a store. These examples of shopping assistance and wardrobing assistance from Banana Republic and Hugo Boss differ from other companies like Chanel and Gucci because these generated forms of information provide new content rather than only the image centred advertising of which the customers are familiar. While building and maintaining a company brand is important to sustain consumer desire, the informational content creates a client base which is more knowledgeable about products and in the case of Hugo Boss, how to style products. The companies that rely solely on the image they created must depend on their clientele to be attracted to the invented image. The informational features discussed above move beyond brand image attraction and give their customer base brand knowledge to hold onto for the duration of their relationship. 6. In the Mix Mango, BCBG, and The Gap allow their customers to playfully style ‘looks’ 24 with the companies’ apparel and accessories. For Mango and BCBG, they preselect what items the user can mix and match. Though these are very limited, it allows customers to virtually play with products, which serves two purposes: to

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__________________________________________________________________ better acquaint consumers with products before entering a store and to increase a look purchase rather than an item purchase. The Gap app called ‘StyleMixer’ is one of the most innovative fashion apps because it allows customers access to a lot of products and brings Gap enthusiasts together through social networking. The StyleMixer lets fans create looks from Gap apparel and accessories currently in the store along with personal items from the users’ wardrobes. Items are mixed and matched, stored in a virtual closet, and can be uploaded to The Gap’s StyleMixer forum and shared on Facebook. This fashion app features a company that allows boundaries to breakdown, which expands customers’ senses of brand ownership: a distinction between the StyleMixer and the apps discussed above. Chanel, Armani, and Gucci control the carefully crafted images their fans see on their apps. Mango and BCBG allow their patrons to create looks but, these are not shared so that the image of these brands is still managed from their corporate headquarters. The Gap, however, relinquishes partial control of their image to be shaped by their smartphone owning public. This open forum, created by The Gap, is a true departure from a system of meticulously styled models expertly photographed by professionals. The StyleMixer drifts towards a democratised field, where all persons within the mobile landscape shape a brand’s image. 7. Conclusion: Fashion Apps as Viral Agents The main component on the fashionscape that apps change is spatial. Since smartphones are hidden in pockets and thrown in purses, smartphones essentially are worn accessories. When they are not on a person, they are most often within hand’s reach. These mobile devices, however, differ from apparel and accessory pieces because they are more than a product. When a fashionista leaves a store, the distance between her and the brand is still large. When she pulls out her smartphone and opens a brand’s app, she has essentially opened up more than the doors to a virtual store: she has opened the doors to the company. Fashion apps allow constant access to entire seasonal apparel collections, company information, fashion designer biographies, styling assistance, and e-commerce capabilities to name just a few. These forms of digital media go beyond mobilising the brick-andmortar store with an e-commerce website to creating a peripatetic brand. If fashion apps continue to grow in popularity, brands will become viral ideas on the fashionscape because this technology becomes the agent that controls spatiality on the fashionscape. For example, Diane von Furstenberg’s company is currently physically present on six continents, but DVF can be present wherever her public takes her fashion company and wherever a network exists. Fashion apps, therefore, present brands the opportunity to be part of a customer’s daily ensemble and to be a part of their quotidian virtual lives. This shrinking of distance between the customer and the company and simultaneous viral spread of brands on the fashionscape through cellular mobility

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__________________________________________________________________ is the forefront for changing imagined fashion communities into imagined fashion worlds. As discussed above, Arjun Appadurai incorporates Benedict Anderson’s idea of imagined communities; however, Appadurai alters the term to ‘imagined worlds.’ Appadurai must make this syntactical substitution because Appadurai’s text deals with migration of people, capital, and ideas that are not confined to borders, as are the linguistic communities in Anderson’s work. Contemporary fashion must therefore follow Appadurai’s construction of imaginaries because fashionable people, apparel industry capital, and en vogue ideas are all migratory in our contemporary world. Gucci best illustrates these ideas. Gucci began as an Italian leather goods company in the 1920s confined to Florence and to Rome. In the 1950s, Gucci expanded beyond its Italian borders and opened its first international store in New York City. During the jet-set era of the 1960s, celebrities and the aristocracy brought Gucci further into the international limelight that continues through today. 25 Gucci maintains its invented image of exclusivity by placing their products in the hands of the ‘it’ girls and playboys of the moment. The Gucci app, however, breaks down the exclusivity of Gucci by only keeping their products as elite status symbols through price barriers but opening virtual doors to their company through mobile media content. The Gap’s StyleMixer, however, is the sole app to challenge what flows and type of information occur and who controls the distribution of invented imagery on the fashionscape. Fashion ideas are normally communicated from company to consumer and customer feedback is relayed back to the company. Feedback from a brand’s client base normally is limited to sales figures, focus groups, and consumer comments. By allowing customer developed looks to be shared in a social networking forum, The Gap adds an additional layer of communication between customers. The two-way conversation between company and consumer now has tertiary or conference-style communication between all StyleMixer participating stylists and The Gap. This visual conversation is an immense departure from depending on traditional numbers, written commentary, or vocal exchanges for an industry which is visually oriented. Additionally, the exchange of images in the StyleMixer forum is flexible as the participant-stylists respond to the looks posted in this virtual setting. This app goes beyond the imagined fashion worlds of other brands, like DVF and Gucci, because while DVF and Gucci fanatics create a viral effect on the fashionscape by toting along virtual gateways to these brands, these customers continue to be disconnected from one another as they roam. The Gap’s StyleMixer is a truly modern imagined fashion world since The Gap recognises that fashion is a social experience being performed by a wanderlust diseased multitude of fans that must be able to associate with and perform for one another when the chic desire overtakes the fashionistas.

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__________________________________________________________________ 8. The Next Taps Forward As Kathryn Franklin, 26 discusses in her chapter contained in this volume, Tom Ford relies on the present tangled worlds of fashion and film. He capitalises on this relationship as an indirect form of marketing to garner new customers and take his brand in a new direction. As the above research shows, fashion companies are moving beyond traditional forms of marketing and advertising to respond to the cultural and generational changes to their customer bases. In this examination of apps, the brand image inventors are slyly creating brand loyal fans through media not product. Throughout this research, there was one unanswered question: Since smartphones provide a direct line of communication with consumers, are companies monitoring the information that consumers are generating; from the styles they view to which company produced videos they are watching, etc.? This question still remains unanswered from the corporations that were contacted, yet reviews from various serials and blog articles imply that brands are merely developing these apps but not placing any kind of observational tracking as a component. The New York Times, however, revealed that the reason monitoring customer habits through smartphones did not exist on these apps yet, as it is in the hands of a few software companies who have decided to capitalise on their own ‘geosocial’ ingenuity. During the spring of 2009, social networking morphed into ‘geosocial networking’ or social networking through websites that allows users to publicise their locations through ‘geotagging,’ 27 which is purported to encourage social dynamics. 28 Many of these geosocial sites have a game aspect to them where users compete for virtual ownership of locations while they accrue points for checking-in to locations. After the obvious success of these sites, particularly in urban locations, many social networking websites incorporated geotagging into their services; the more notable sites include Facebook, Myspace, Gmail, Linked In, Skype, and Hotmail. In the summer of 2009, Shopkick followed a similar geosocial format; however, Shopkick awards ‘kickbucks’ that actually accrue into redeemable monetary awards. 29 Additionally Shopkick users do not have to check-in to a site; small devices installed in stores detect a user’s mobile device that has the Shopkick app installed. 30 Macy’s was one of the first apparel retailers to embrace Shopkick. Macy’s and Shopkick show us that merely sharing fashion ideas, like the StyleMixer, is not enough. Just as consumers want more access into the faces behind the labels, companies want greater access into their customers’ closets and shopping habits. As Claire Miller explains, Shoppers also earn points, which Shopkick calls kickbucks, for entering a store, even if they do not make a purchase. These are redeemable for a variety of things, including gift cards, Facebook

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__________________________________________________________________ credits and Napster song downloads. … Stores will eventually be able to customize rewards based on where in the store someone visits… 31 For example, a mother may receive an additional coupon on her phone for visiting the bedding area of Macy’s, while her son may receive a coupon for visiting the denim area for teens. 32 The Shopkick app is producing the necessary feedback that stores desire, actual foot traffic patterns from the moment a customer walks into a store. ‘If you know the customer, who they are, when they come in and what they’re doing, you can serve them in a whole new way,’ 33 explained Margita Labhard of Best Buy to The New York Times. The quality and abundance of information produced by the Shopkick app for each store will eventually affect store layouts, merchandising concepts, and ultimately how brands and consumers conceive of the shopping experience. GoldRun is another rewards based app that garnered the loyalty of retailers like Barnes & Noble, H&M, Sorel, and Airwalk. GoldRun is a self-subscribed ‘augmented reality’ or, …placing virtual elements into real-world settings in real time. … Airwalk, the sneaker brand, directed consumers to what it called “invisible popup stores” in Washington Square park in Manhattan and Venice Beach in California, both popular sites for skateboarding. There, users who photographed virtual versions of sneakers could purchase one of just 300 pairs of a limited-edition skate shoe. 34 While e-commerce has taken the shopping experience beyond the store, the GoldRun app is placing the shopping experience into the spatial-temporal situation where it best affects a labels’ fans, ‘It’s content delivered to you that meets you at the pace and pattern of your life,’ 35 explained GoldRun vice president Shai Rao. GoldRun, therefore, actually has the potential to achieve the intent behind geosocial networking. Checking-in was meant to cause other users of these various services to migrate to where their friends posted as their locations; however, the effect seems to be merely one more step in the announcing of the minutiae of our daily lives. After purchasing one of the limited-edition Airwalk sneakers mentioned above, users have the option to post this information on Facebook. It is inconceivable that after such an announcement, other skateboarding friends would not want to hop on their boards and head over to Washington Square Park for a chance to get a pair of these sneakers. For a brief consuming moment, an imagined world of Airwalk fans becomes a reality from the production of a company’s augmented reality idea. As fashion apps continue to evolve, they are changing how we interact with and utilise fashion, which impacts the topography of the fashionscape and how fashion

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__________________________________________________________________ imaginaries are formed. Websites move off of laptops and become completely portable, therefore, altering our spatial relationship to various labels. Utilising The Gap’s StyleMixer intricately networks public and private fashion spheres into a highly stylised social network of Gap product imagery. A big brother’s gaze, once fiction, passes from military worlds to the world of fashion retailers via GPS locators and noise detection. Smartphones and apps show us that with each change to how we interact with fashion there is a shift, alteration, or disruption to the fluid and irregular movement of complicated fashion information and fashionable capital within the palm of our hands.

Notes 1

The New York Times, ‘iPhone’, The New York Times, 11th January 2011, viewed on 18th January 2011, . 2 The following list of the iPhone apps reviewed in preparation of this paper. I chose to focus on apparel and accessory apps that are geared towards adult consumers. After reviewing these, I chose to concentrate on apparel related apps. Where necessary the company name is provided in parentheses: 100 Trunks (Louis Vuitton), Abercrombie & Fitch, Acqua di Gioia (Armani), Adidas Stores, Agnès b., AllSaints Spitalfields, Athleta (Gap Inc.), B.zero 1 (Bulgari), BCBG Max Azria, Bebe, Bell & Ross, Bluefly, BR (Banana Republic), BR Holiday (Banana Republic - South Korea), Chanel, Charles & Keith, Charms (Van Cleef & Arpels), Chiffre Rouge (Dior Homme), Chronomat B01 (Breitling), Coach Gift Finder, Coldwater Creek, Converse Gallery, Cosmo (Cosmopolitan Magazine), Costume National, Dace, Debenhams, D&G (Dolce & Gabbana), A Day in Paris (Van Cleef & Arpels), DeWitt, Dior, The DKNY Cozy, DK (Donna Karan), DVF (Diane von Furstenberg), eBay Fashion, Elie Tahari Fall Fashion Show 2009, Elie Tahari Spring Fashion Show 2010, Elle, Elle Canada, Elle Shopping Guide, Esprit, Esquire, Express, Fendi, Forever 21, Fran & Jane, Gant, Gap, Gap Holiday (South Korea), Gilt on the Go (Gilt Groupe), Glamour Magazine, Ask A Stylist (Glamour), GQ, GQ Style Picks, G-Star RAW, Gucci, H&M, H.E. by Mango (Homini Emerito), Hollister, House of Vans, Hugo Boss, iRunway (Wet Seal), Issac Mizrahi for QVC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, JCP Weekly Deals (JCPenney), Joe Fresh Style, Karen Millen, Kate Spade, KC Wish List (Kenneth Cole), Lacoste.com, Lacoste L1212, Lacoste Red!, LaPerla, Lucky At Your Service (Lucky Magazine), Lulu Guinness, Macy’s iShop, Mango MNG, Massimo Dutti, Missoni Collection Winter 2010, MUJI Apparel, Mulberry, Net-a-Porter, New Balance, Nike iD, Nina Shoes, NM Gifts (Neiman Marcus), Nylon, Old Navy, PaperMag (Paper Magazine), Piaget Polo Forty-Five, Piperlime (Gap Inc.), Printemps, Ralph Lauren, ‘S Max Mara for iPhone, Sartorialist, Silvian Heach,

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__________________________________________________________________ Style.com, Today’s Shoe (Bergdorf Goodman), ShopStyle, Tommy Hilfiger, Topshop, Ugg Australia Mobile, Uniqlo, UO Mobile (Urban Outfitters), Vanity Fair, Victoria’s Secret, Vogue Nippon, Vogue Stylist, Wallpaper* Magazine, Warehouse, Yoox.com, Your Reebok, Zara. When I searched for the term ‘fashion’ in Apple’s Apps Store, over 1,400 apps were cross-listed with this search term; however, by my examination only about half, or 700 apps, actually have fashion as the core content of their programme. 3 As of January 2011, Blackberry offers the following sixteen apps, which were developed for fashion companies and/or other enterprises which contain fashion related content: Elle, Elle Canada, Ellegirl, Ellegirl Latina, Elle Québec, Evening Standard, Harper’s Bazaar, House of Holland, Les Petites, Marie Claire, Nylon, NY Times, OK!, Sears2go, Yorkdale, and Zara. 4 As of January 2011, Google’s Android offers the following fourteen apps, which were developed for fashion companies and/or other enterprises which contain fashion related content: Amazon.com, Banana Republic Holiday (South Korea), Cosmo.It (Cosmopolitan Italia), Gap Holiday (South Korea), Gap StyleMixer, Gilt.com, Lacoste L1212, NY Times Global, NY Times Magazine, Nylon Magazine, Overstock.com, People Mobile (People Magazine), Rue La La, and Vans Hub. 5 A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, p. 33. 6 S. Ghosh, ‘Malling of a Factory: Apprehending a Chronicle of Change in Calcutta’, 3rd Global Conference: Fashion, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, available at: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/fashion/peoject-archives/2nd. 7 Appadurai, p. 33. 8 Ibid. 9 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London, 1991, pp. 1-7. 10 E. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition, E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 1-14. 11 A product photo album is a collection of thumbnail or full-screen photographs that the user can scroll through easily to search for potential purchases. 12 Product information can include some or all of the following: item name, style number, price, fabric information, sizing options and colour options. This information appears either next to the photograph or is brought up by tapping an information icon. 13 The company bio is a statement of the company’s founding with a brief history. Some apps choose to include target market information and/or a personal profile of the current head designer.

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__________________________________________________________________ 14

Store locators allow the consumer to search for a store through a variety of options; the three most common search options are a Google pinpoint map, continent list and GPS locator. It should be noted that many apps choose at least two store locator options. The Google pinpoint map is a global map that features pinpoints where stores are located. Tapping on a pinpoint brings up that store’s information including a hyperlinked phone number, which calls that particular store. A continent list is a menu that the user progresses through to find a store that the user desires. First the continent is selected, then country, then city, then a particular store if multiple locations exist. Third is the GPS locator via Google Maps, which locates the iPhone’s position and the nearest store simultaneously and brings both user’s location and the nearest store on a map for navigation. 15 An e-commerce window features products available in the stores. These windows function much like the companies’ websites, however, pictorial and textual information is reduced to accommodate the palm-sized screen. 16 Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) is a social networking website founded in 2004. Users accept one another’s ‘friend requests’ to build a social network. Each user develops their own profile page where they can posts updates about their daily activities, pictures, and personal information like education, employment, e-mail address, and/or music, television, and books preferences. 17 Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) is a social networking website founded in 2006 that centres on microblogs called ‘Tweets.’ Each tweet is 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page. Tweets are publicly visible but can be restricted to the user’s followers. 18 Swide (http://www.swide.com is an online blogazine, which covers fashion, style tips, beauty, celebrities, Twitter tips, music, artists, gadgets, travel, and food. 19 A playlist is a collection of songs that can be a random assortment or thematically based. Frida Gianinni’s January 2011 Playlist: 1) ‘It’s My Life’ by Talk Talk, 2) ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ by New Order, 3) ‘Such A Shame’ (Original Version) Talk Talk, 4) ‘Lullaby’ (Extended Version) The Cure, 5) “Rocket” Goldfrapp, 6) ‘Sunburn’ Muse, 7) ‘Strangelove’ Depeche Mode, 8) ‘11th Dimension’ Julian Casablancas, 9) ‘Le Chat du Café des Artistes’ Charlotte Gainsbourg, 10) ‘Trick Pony’ Charlotte Gainsbourg, 11) ‘16th & Valencia’ Devendra Banhart, 12) ‘The Day the World Went Away’ Nine Inch Nails, 13) ‘Requiem Pour Un Con’ Serge Gainsbourg. 20 Gucci Inc.,‘1973 Gucci Tote - The Newest Celebrity Must Have’. Gucci iPhone App, viewed on 19th January 2011. 21 Alexander McQueen’s S/S 2010 collection, ‘Plato’s Atlantis’, was streamed lived via web through a collaboration with SHOWstudio on 7th October 2009.

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SHOWstudio.com (http://showstudio.com) is a highly-acclaimed fashion website that challenges the established conventions of online fashion media and its communication. 23 The currency of South Korea. 24 A look is a head-to-toe complete outfit. It includes many product categories from apparel top and bottom garments, underwear, outerwear and accessories. Depending on the range of products offered by a company, this could include hair accessories and make-up as well. 25 Gucci Inc., ‘Gucci History’, gucci.com, 21st January 2011, viewed on 21st January 2011, . 26 K. Franklin, ‘Vintage Paperback Meets Vintage Couture: How Tom Ford Brought Christopher Isherwood Out from behind the Lens’, in this volume. 27 Geotagging is identifying locations through a person’s latitude and longitude. 28 A. Newman, ‘Appearing Virtually at a Store Near You…’, The New York Times, January 2011, viewed on 19th January 2011, 18th . 29 Shopkick, ‘The App: Check It Out’, 21st January 2011, viewed on 21st January 2011, . 30 C. Miller, ‘Score Loyalty Points for Walking in a Store’, The New York Times, 4th August 2010, viewed on 9th August 2010, . 31 Ibid. 32 As of January 2011, Shopkick is available in only eighteen U.S. markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, D.C., Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis. The participating retailers that Shopkick lists on its website are Best Buy, Crate & Barrel, Macy’s, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Target, Wet Seal, and Simon Malls. 33 Miller, op. cit. 34 Newman, op. cit. 35 Ibid.

Bibliography Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London, 1991.

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__________________________________________________________________ Appadurai, A., Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996. Clifford, S., ‘Linking Customer Loyalty with Social Networking.’ The New York Times, 28th April 2010, viewed 28th April 2010, . Franklin, K., ‘Vintage Paperback Meets Vintage Couture: How Tom Ford Brought Christopher Isherwood Out From Behind the Lens’. In this volume. Gap Inc., ‘StyleMixer iPhone App’. Gap.com, 30th July 2010, viewed on 30th July 2010, . Ghosh, S., ‘Malling of a Factory: Apprehending a Chronicle of Change in Calcutta’, 3rd Global Conference: Fashion, Inter-Disciplinary.Net. . Gucci Inc., ‘Gucci History’. Gucci.com, 21st January 2011, viewed on 21st January 2011, . Gucci iPhone App, ‘1973 Gucci Tote - The Newest Celebrity Must Have’. Gucci iPhone App, viewed on 19th January 2011. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds), The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992. Lohr, S., ‘A Data Explosion Remakes Retailing’. The New York Times, 2nd January 2010, viewed on 30th July 2010, . MacKay, F., ‘In the Palm of Your Hand….’. The New York Times, 8th March 2010, viewed on 30th July 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ Miller, C., ‘Score Loyalty Points for Walking in a Store’. The New York Times, 4th August 2010, viewed on 9th August 2010, . Newman, A., ‘Appearing Virtually at a Store Near You….’. The New York Times, 18th January 2011, viewed on 19th January 2011, . The New York Times, ‘iPhone’. The New York Times, viewed on 11th January 2011, . Shopkick, ‘The App: Check it Out’. Shopkick.com, viewed on 21st January 2011, . Mario J. Roman worked in the New York apparel industry as a print and colour specialist before obtaining a Masters of Arts from Cornell University’s Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design. Currently, he is working towards a doctorate at London College of Fashion where he is researching the construction of contemporary editorial fashion spreads and masculinities within these features in the British and U.S. editions of GQ.

Ecology and Fashion: Development Lines and Prospects Ines Weller and Sabine Walter Abstract Since the 1990s there has been a more intensive debate on how non-sustainable consumption and production patterns could be directed to more sustainability. Part of the central goals of sustainable consumption and production patterns are conservation of natural resources, global justice, and quality of life. But in recent decades, only gradualistic changes in production and consumption have been observed. The present Climate Change debate contributes to the acknowledgement that fundamental changes need to be achieved. Basically, sustainability criteria should be applied in the field of clothing, too. In this area ecological and human health problems as well as risks associated with production and consumption have been worked on since the 1980s. These discussions resulted in the development of a broad spectrum of diverse ecological innovations along the global production network. They range from organically produced natural fibres over clothes tested for harmful substances to ecological product label. Recently, more and more fashion brands are interested in ecological issues corresponding to the growing interest in fashionable and sustainable clothes of their target groups, particularly the LOHAS (‘Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability’) - conscious buyers for which the trend towards global environmental protection has become an attitude to life. Against this background the presentation focuses on the following questions: What sort of innovations has been implemented by the textile and clothing manufacturers in the past 30 years in reaction to ecological requirements? Which development lines can be observed in the more and more differentiated market? Which ecological or sustainability criteria are referred to? What potential do these developments have with a view to the goal of shifting towards sustainable consumption and production patterns? Key Words: Sustainable consumption and production patterns, ecological and social hot spots, socio-ecological innovations, sustainability potential. ***** 1. Definitions and Objectives of Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns 1 The overall objectives of a sustainable development are conservation of natural resources, global justice and quality of life. Given the global growth rates and the associated environmental problems, a fundamental change of non-sustainable production and consumption patterns still has major importance. On a general level, consumption and production patterns contribute to a sustainable development in meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of

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__________________________________________________________________ future generations to satisfy their needs. 2 Ecological, economic and social requirements have to be considered to specify this still very general objective. From an ecological perspective, the topics are conserving natural resources as well as avoiding environmental pollution. Since the debate on climate change, the focus lies on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. From a social point of view, questions of justice and health, especially in the context of labour conditions, have priority. When it comes to the economic perspective, far less concrete criteria and indicators have been developed. The following reflections focus on sustainable consumption patterns. In each case, the production sphere is meant as well while in the first instance, the starting point is the consumer point of view. Sustainable consumption patterns comprise three approaches: firstly the consumption of resource-efficient and environmentally sound products (‘consuming differently’), secondly, the consumption of fair products (‘consuming responsibly’) and thirdly, a reduction in the consumption level (‘consuming less’). The last aspect, the reduction in the consumption level, has more and more lost its importance in the last years and is given only marginal consideration at present. Recently, the definition of sustainable consumption has been more differentiated by distinguishing between sustainable consumption in a broad sense and sustainable consumption in a narrow sense. 3 The main priorities of sustainable consumption in a broad sense are relative improvements of ecological and social impacts compared with the status quo. Ecological dimensions such as an improvement of the energy efficiency or the substitution of harmful substances in the life cycle of products are in the forefront. Partly, social requirements are taken up as well. Sustainable consumption in a narrow sense reaches beyond demanding a consumption level that is compatible with a sustainable development. This concept requires the identification of one consumption level for all living human beings that is compatible with the objectives of a sustainable development. Further operationalisation remains to be done. One possible point of reference is the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per capita and year. According to calculations e.g. from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) two tons of carbon dioxide per capita and per year are considered as objective to limit the impacts of climate change. For the industrialised countries this objective represents a considerable challenge regarding the carbon dioxide emissions in the year 2008: The EU-27 average is at 8.4 tons, the average in Great Britain is at 8.8 tons and in Germany at 10.0 tons. 4 Regarding Germany the carbon dioxide emissions per capita and per year had to be reduced around 80%. 2. Ecological and Social ‘Hot Spots’ of the Textile Chain Since the 1990s the following central ecological problem areas have been specified regarding the global textile industry: 5

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__________________________________________________________________ Table 1 - Ecological ‘hot spots’ of the textile chain Natural fibre production Synthetic fibre production Textile finishing Use phase Waste phase

Use of pesticides in cotton cultivation Water consumption in cotton cultivation Use of non-renewable resources Amount and variety of textile chemicals Fresh water consumption and waste water loads Energy consumption of textile care short lifespan of products Amount of old clothes Low rates of recycling and recovery

A major social problem in the textile chain is the working conditions. Especially - but not exclusively - in low income countries these are considered as ‘social hot spots’ due to e.g. extremely low wages, excessive working times, temporary work, sexual discrimination and sometimes completely unprotected informal work from home. 6 Additionally, workers and people living near the textile companies are exposed to health risks und hazards due to insufficient occupational health and safety and inadequate environmental protection measures. Altogether, the main ecological objectives for the textile sector are the following: first, the consumption of resources and carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced around 80% as in other consumption areas. Furthermore, specific ecological problems of the textile chain have to be considered. These are in particular the high consumption of freshwater and the waste water load, the input of pesticides and other biocides in the cotton production, the amount and variety of textile chemicals, the energy consumption of the use phase as well as the waste issue. From the social point of view, the implementation of fair working conditions along the global textile chain is in the focus. 3. Reactions of the Textile Sector The textile sector has been pursuing a broad spectrum of different innovation lines that vary considerably in their ecological and social objectives. They can roughly be divided into three groups: firstly, tested for harmful substances, secondly, natural textiles and thirdly, selectively ecological improved clothing. 7 A. Clothing Tested for Harmful Substances This development line concentrates on analyses of chemicals with toxicological risks applied in the textile finishing. The concentration of selected harmful substances in the textile end product is analysed and certified. Compliance with forbidden substances and/or defined threshold values is crucial for the certification of a piece of clothing. The focus lies on those textile chemicals with toxicological

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__________________________________________________________________ risks already known and verified. As an identification mark the label ‘Confidence in textiles - Tested for harmful substances according to Oeko-Tex® Standard 100’ has prevailed. Meanwhile, this Oeko-label has been achieving a broad impact worldwide. Currently, more than 9.000 textile and clothing manufacturers of all processing stages are certificate holders. 8 The certification procedure includes textiles and clothing made from natural as well as synthetic fibres. This strategy refers only to the end product, neither production and processing methods nor social questions are taken into consideration. Therefore, this innovation line is often being considered only as ‘state of the art,’ its ecological impact is evaluated ranging from limited to very small. 9 B. Natural Textiles Compared to textiles and clothing tested for harmful substances, this innovation line pursues an integrated approach covering all stages of the textile chain and ranging from process- and product-related ecological criteria to social criteria. The natural fibres producing companies that are joined together in the International Association Natural Textile Industry (IVN) generally use natural materials for the textiles as well as for the (chemical) additives. They also work according to a comprehensive catalogue of criteria referring to production and human ecology as well as social conditions. Compliance with these social-ecological requirements is reviewed to obtain the permissions to use the relatively ambitioned label ‘IVN zertifiziert BEST (BEST)’ or the less far-reaching but international widely used label ‘Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS).’ 10 Natural textiles, produced according to this criteria catalogue, address one main ecological ‘hot spot’ of the textile chain by converting to organic cotton. In relative terms, their potential for ecological improvements is very high due to their abandonment of the use of pesticides and other biocides and their implementation of other ecological ‘hot spots’ in the textile chain. In practice, however, the impact of these innovations remains still marginal in absolute terms as natural textiles are sold in a niche market. One indicator for this position is the market share of organic cotton as one central raw material of natural textiles: Organic cotton contributes at present 0.76 % of global cotton production. 11 Leader in this niche market, with an annual turnover of 55,000,000 € (2008) is the natural apparel company ‘Hess Natur Textilien’ that was founded in 1976 and has been a direct selling company. Recently, the company started to open retail stores. Another big player in this niche market is the Swiss company ‘Remei’ that was founded in the middle of the 1980s and has an annual turnover of about 20,000,000 € now. Another major provider of natural textiles is the British company ‘Bishopston Trading’ that was founded 1985 and generates an annual turnover of 1,000,000 €. Moreover, it is an especially recommended company by meeting all social and ecological requirements presented in this study.12

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__________________________________________________________________ Since the beginning/middle of 2000 there has been some new movement in the natural textile market. Since this time, a wide range of fashion suppliers aims to distinguish itself with social-ecological fashion. A recent study listed 204 of these rather small companies with a social-ecological profile for the year 2009, e.g. American Apparel, Kuyichi, Noir illuminati II, Regenerate, Unique Nature, just to mention some few. Though, for many of these fashion labels with a socialecological profile, there is a lack of transparency which specific requirements are fulfilled and how they are verified. 13 The debates concerning responsible and sustainable consumption as well as the increasing importance of the so called LOHAS (‘Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability’) surely contributed to this growing market supply of fashion with a social-ecological image. 14 Especially the LOHAS, representing a high-income consumer group, are expected to promote the demand for fashionable and sustainable garments. C. Selective Ecological Improvements of Clothing Especially regarding conventional textile companies a heterogeneous spectrum of product- and process-related rather selective innovations could be observed in the last ten years. The ecological improvements may refer to single stages or specific problems but can also cover the whole product line. In the latter case, these lines represent, as a general rule, a rather small part of the whole and otherwise conventional product portfolio. The ecological (and partly social) improvements can encompass garments made out of natural fibres as well as synthetic fibres. The ecological and social optimisations range from closed-loop processing of water and operating materials, the reduction and substitution of hazardous substances, energy and water saving measures, organic cotton, the implementation of an environmental management system to an orientation towards a Code of Conduct for fair working conditions. 15 These approaches are considerably different especially regarding their social-ecological requirements, their extent of realisation and the expected improvements. Three innovation lines are discussed below. The development of Organic Cotton Clothing has become more and more important in recent years. By now, a large number of conventional clothing companies operate in this field. Companies or brands among these are e.g. C&A, H&M, Otto Versand and Zara. Furthermore, social requirements according to Fair Trade principles are partly considered as well. However, in many cases it remains vague whether further ecological requirements as chemical inputs in the finishing process or energy and water efficient processes play a role. This lack of transparency is enhanced through not marking the garments at all or with ecological private brands whose significance and comparability are hard to judge. Instead, interested customers can gather information of highly different level in the internet. As already mentioned, the conversion to organic cotton principally provides an enormous potential for ecological and social improvements. The latter

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__________________________________________________________________ focuses on the workers health protection. Nonetheless, the effect remains only small considering the extremely low market share of organic cotton. 16 A specific social-ecological innovation has been introduced onto the German clothing market by Trigema in 2008: Compostable Organic Cotton Clothing. These T-shirts are produced with organic cotton, all substances and textile auxiliaries are compostable and bio-degradable according to the cradle-to-cradle principle. Therefore, they can be returned to the natural cycle of substances after the use phase without any problem. 17 Further social and ecological dimensions are considered because the whole production is located in Germany and processrelated ecological improvements are implemented. An external verification and certification does not take place with the exception of the test for harmful substances according to Eco-Tex Standard 100. Up to know, this segment of Trigema is rather small. 18 In the last years, the production of Clothing made out of PET-bottles has been established by producing polyester fibres. This recycling process saves resources and carbon dioxide. Some of the companies offering such products are e.g. Patagonia, Wolfskin and Kuyichi. In the beginning, however, not the waste problem of the textile but only of the food chain had been addressed. Meanwhile, Patagonia produces recycled textiles not only from PET-bottles but also from substandard goods and old clothes. In this way also the waste issue within the textile chain is taken up. Altogether, it is difficult to track whether or not further ecological requirements are considered. For the fabrication and finishing processes, rather general remarks are usually made regarding environmental issues. Definite social and ecological product-related information that could be documented by a certificate or product label are lacking. And furthermore, textiles made out of recycled raw material only form a small proportion of the total product portfolio. Further innovations in the textile sector are already developed and partly even implemented. Including the substitution of ecological or toxicological harmful substances e.g. the antimony-free polyester production, the substitution of azo dyestuffs by natural plant dyes or the substitution of formaldehyde resins. Others refer to the optimisation of production and finishing processes. In addition to the innovation lines of the textile sector, comprehensive action plans are being developed. Within e.g. the UK Action Plan for the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap, many different actors coming from politics, economy and society agreed upon a broad variety of actions to be implemented along the textile supply chain. 19 4. Potentials for Sustainable Textile Production and Consumption Patterns? The first point to be made here is that, altogether, many reactions to the ecological and social problem fields have been taken place. Some impressive alternatives are offered on the market. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental

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__________________________________________________________________ problem when trying to assess the potential of these different innovation lines for achieving the objectives of sustainable development. On the one hand, there are the activities related to the tests for harmful substances of the end product. These are successful in the sense of having become part of the textile mass market. Despite addressing a meaningful ecological problem when focusing on textile chemicals, fundamental changes in amount and variety of textile chemicals can hardly be achieved when solely testing an end product. On the other hand, there are developments in the niche market with a focus on organic cotton where in principle huge improvements can be expected. Due to their small market share, however, these textiles have a very limited effect as well. Considering sustainable consumption, these innovations target on relative improvements. Therefore, they contribute to a sustainable consumption in a broad sense at best. Altogether, these measures are predominantly widely unrelated to mainstream fashion trends in the mass market having little effect on the latter. From a sustainability point of view, required substantial reductions of energy and resources consumption as well as environmental pollution are hardly yet in sight. Therefore, it would be necessary to consider ecological requirements when developing fashion trends. In this context one should ask for the power of the consumer. Their influence is being discussed rather controversial at present. There are empirical data that show the increasing significance of ecological and social aspects for an increasing number of consumers and especially for the LOHAS. 20 Other results show that consumers hardly take sustainable aspects into consideration at all when buying clothes. 21 One reason may be the lacking in transparency regarding ecological and social improvements along the textile chain. Furthermore, to really promote sustainable consumption patterns, a better cooperation between designers, producers, consumers and policymakers in a sense of a ‘triangle of change’ is important.

Notes 1

This chapter was written in the context of the research project: C. Eifler and I. Weller, Sustainable Consumption and the Interrelationship of Cultural and Ecological-Technological Factors: The Example of Lady’s Outerwear in Black, funded by the German Research Foundation. 2 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987; U. Schrader and U. Hansen, ‘Nachhaltiger Konsum - Leerformel oder Leitprinzip?’, in Nachhaltiger Konsum Forschung und Praxis im Dialog, U. Schrader and U. Hansen (eds), Campus, Frankfurt and New York, 2001, pp. 17-45.

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M. Bilharz, “Key Points” Nachhaltigen Konsums: Ein Strukturpolitisch Fundierter Strategieansatz für die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation im Kontext Aktivierender Verbraucherpolitik, Metropolis-Verlag, Marburg, 2008. 4 H.-J. Ziesing, ‘Differenzierte Entwicklung bei Insgesamt Weltweit weiter Steigenden CO2-Emissionen’, ETV Energieverlag GmbH, viewed on 12th August 2010, . 5 Enquête-Kommission, ‘Schutz des Menschen und der Umwelt’ des Deutschen Bundestages (eds), Die Industriegesellschaft Gestalten. Perspektiven für einen Nachhaltigen Umgang mit Stoff- und Materialströmen, Economica Verlag, Bonn, 1994; H. Schönberger and T. Schäfer, Beste Verfügbare Techniken in Anlagen der Textilindustrie, UBA-Texte 13/03, Berlin, 2003; I. Weller, Stand und Perspektiven ökologischer Innovationen im Textilbereich, ISOE-Diskussionspapiere Nr. 15, Frankfurt/Main, 2000; I. Weller, Nachhaltigkeit und Gender. Neue Perspektiven für die Gestaltung und Nutzung von Produkten, oekom Verlag, München, 2004; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, London, viewed on 9th August 2010, . 6 I. Wick, ‘Frauenarbeit im Schatten. Informelle Wirtschaft und Freie August 2010, Exportzonen’, Suedwind-Institut, viewed on 9th ; Clean Clothes Campaign, ‘Cashing In. Giant Retailers, Purchasing Practices, and Working Conditions in the Garment Industry’, CCC, viewed on 9th August 2010, . 7 Weller, Stand und Perspektiven ökologischer Innovationen im Textilbereich, op. cit. 8 International Association for Research and Testing in the Field of Textile Ecology, Oeko-Tex® Standard 100, Zürich, Edition 04/2010. 9 A. W. Marin and M. Tobler, ‘The Purpose of LCA in Environmental Labels and Concepts of Products 18th Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment’, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Vol. 8, 2002, pp. 115-116. 10 Internationaler Verband der Naturtextilwirtschaft e.V., 2010, viewed on 9th August 2010, ; Internationaler Verband der Naturtextilwirtschaft e.V. (iVN), Richtlinie Naturtextil. Global Organic Textile Standard Version 2.0, International Working Group on Global Organic Textile Standard (IWG), Stuttgart, 2008 IVN Richtlinie Naturtextil BEST Version 4.0, Internationaler Verband der Naturtextilwirtschaft e.V. (iVN), Stuttgart, 2008; D.

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__________________________________________________________________ Kloos, ‘Sozial-Ökologische Mode auf dem Prüfstand. Überblick und Analyse’, Südwind Institut für Ökonomie und Ökumene, viewed on 9th August 2010, . 11 S. Ferrigno, et al., ‘Organic Cotton Farm and Fibre Report 2009 Executive Summary’, Organic Cotton, viewed on 9th August 2010, . 12 Kloos, op. cit. 13 Ibid. 14 P. Parwan, 3rd September 2009, viewed on 9th August 2010, http://lohaslifestyle.blogspot.com/2009/12/all-about-sustainablefashion.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed %3A+LohasGermany+%28LOHAS+%3D+Lebensstil+auf+Basis+von+GesundheI t+und+Nachhaltigkeit%29. 15 Weller, Stand und Perspektiven ökologischer Innovationen im Textilbereich, op. cit. 16 Ferrigno, op. cit. 17 M. Braungart and W. McDonough, Die Nächste Industrielle Revolution: Die Cradle to Cradle-Community, Europ. Verl.-Anst., Hamburg, 2008. 18 TRIGEMA GmbH & Co. KG, 8th August 2010, viewed on 9th August 2010, . 19 Defra, op. cit. 20 Parwan, op. cit. 21 A. Tukker, et al., Sustainable Consumption and Production: A Framework for Action, SCORE 2, Brussels, 2008.

Bibliography Bilharz, M., “Key Points” Nachhaltigen Konsums: Ein Strukturpolitisch Fundierter Strategieansatz für die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation im Kontext Aktivierender Verbraucherpolitik. Metropolis-Verlag, Marburg, 2008. Braungart, M. and McDonough, W., Die Nächste Industrielle Revolution: Die Cradle to Cradle-Community. Europ. Verl.-Anst., Hamburg, 2008. Clean Clothes Campaign, ‘Cashing in. Giant Retailers, Purchasing Practices, and Working Conditions in the Garment Industry’. CCC, viewed on 9th August 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, London. Viewed on 9th August 2010, . Enquête-Kommission, ‘Schutz des Menschen und der Umwelt’ des Deutschen Bundestages (eds), Die Industriegesellschaft Gestalten. Perspektiven für einen Nachhaltigen Umgang mit Stoff- und Materialströmen. Economica Verlag, Bonn, 1994. Ferrigno, S. et al, ‘Organic Cotton Farm and Fibre Report 2009 Executive August 2010, Summary’, Organic Cotton. Viewed on 9th . Internationaler Verband der Naturtextilwirtschaft e.V. (iVN), Richtlinie Naturtextil. Global Organic Textile Standard Version 2.0. International Working Group on Global Organic Textile Standard (IWG), Stuttgart, 2008. —––, Richtlinie Naturtextil. IVN Richtlinie Naturtextil BEST Version 4.0. Internationaler Verband der Naturtextilwirtschaft e.V. (iVN), Stuttgart, 2008. Kloos, D., ‘Sozial-Ökologische Mode auf dem Prüfstand. Überblick und Analyse’, Südwind Institut für Ökonomie und Ökumene. Viewed on 9th August 2010, . Marin, A. W. and Tobler, M., ‘The Purpose of LCA in Environmental Labels and Concepts of Products 18th Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment’. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Vol. 8, 2002, pp. 115-116. Parwan, P., 03rd September. 2009, viewed on 9th August 2010, . Schönberger, H. and Schäfer, T., Beste Verfügbare Techniken in Anlagen der Textilindustrie. UBA-Texte 13/03, Berlin, 2003.

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__________________________________________________________________ Schrader, U. and Hansen, U., ‘Nachhaltiger Konsum - Leerformel oder Leitprinzip?’, in Nachhaltiger Konsum - Forschung und Praxis im Dialog. U. Schrader and U. Hansen (eds), Campus, Frankfurt and New York, 2001, pp. 17-45. Steinberger, J. K., Frio, D., Jolliet, O., Erkman, S., ‘A Spatially Explicit Life Cycle Inventory of the Global Textile Chain’. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Vol. 14, March 2009, pp. 443-455. TRIGEMA GmbH & Co. KG, 8th August 2010, viewed on 9th August 2010, . Tukker, A. et al., Sustainable Consumption and Production: A Framework for Action. SCORE 2, Brussels, 2008. Weller, I., Stand und Perspektiven Ökologischer Innovationen im Textilbereich. ISOE-Diskussionspapiere Nr. 15, Frankfurt/Main, 2000. –—–, Nachhaltigkeit und Gender. Neue Perspektiven für die Gestaltung und Nutzung von Produkten. oekom Verlag, München, 2004. Wick, I., ‘Frauenarbeit im Schatten. Informelle Wirtschaft und Freie Exportzonen’. Suedwind-Institut, viewed on 9th August 2010, . World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), Our Common Future. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987. Ziesing, H.-J., ‘Differenzierte Entwicklung bei Insgesamt Weltweit weiter Steigenden CO2-Emissionen’. ETV Energieverlag GmbH, viewed on 12th August 2010, . Ines Weller has been working as a Professor at the University of Bremen Research Centre Sustainability (artec) and Centre Gender Studies (ZGS) since 2000. At present, her research and teaching focuses on sustainable consumption and production patterns, sustainability and gender, sociological sustainability research.

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__________________________________________________________________ Sabine Walter is Research Assistant at the University of Bremen Research Center Sustainability (artec). While interested in sustainable development of companies and their supply chains, currently she is working in the research project ‘Sustainable Consumption and the Interrelationship of Cultural and EcologicalTechnological Factors: The Example of Lady’s Outerwear in Black.’

Taste and the Rise of Branded Cult Items: Secondary Lines, Counterfeited and Look-Alike Luxury Cecilia Winterhalter Abstract The object of this contribution is the contradiction between the importance attributed to good taste, expressed by a growing luxe consumption, and the contemporary rise of branded cult items, counterfeited and look-alike goods. By observing the use of branded cult items, this text reveals how new identities are built by means of clothes. Taste is tied to socially defined patterns of preference, which create the demand on the market, generating a modern concept of luxury. In this new luxe the desired cult items lack the requisites of traditional luxury and status is expressed through visible brand names and logo-splashed items. Counterfeit and look-alike products have also a great impact on the market and their demand is continually growing, endangering the market by their increased quality, popularity and social acceptance. The driving force behind the aggressive consumption of mass luxury, branded goods and counterfeits, has been interpreted as a need of the masses for social inclusion, although lately consumers seem less interested in the intangible appeal of the brands and luxury is rather destined at making oneself visible. Today we must not ask what brands offer to consumers, but how buyers use them. As traditional categories do no longer define one’s identity, clothes are today used to communicate oneself to the world. With the entire history of style constantly present, all the immaterial meanings cancel each other and all the items can be mixed to endless personal combinations. While the fashion industry goes on, producing total look collections and fuels the aura of its brands, in the global village a new communication prevails and high-end luxury, branded items, counterfeits and look-alikes are used by the creative consumer to compose an individual stylistic message, which produces a global consumer with a transnational identity. Key Words: Taste, branded cult items, aura of the logo, label, counterfeits and look-alikes, strategies against counterfeiting, luxe consumption, the use of branded cult items, identity construction through personal styles. ***** This contribution studies the contradiction between the importance attributed to good taste, expressed by a general and growing consumption of luxury, and the contemporary rise of branded cult items, secondary lines, counterfeited and lookalike luxury goods.

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__________________________________________________________________ 1. Taste Taste, one of the five senses, is the human ability to detect flavours 1 and to judge what is beautiful, good and proper. Taste is tied to culturally and socially defined patterns of choice and preference, which create the demand on the market and generate a modern concept of luxury. That taste is an acquired faculty, learnt by exposing oneself to consumption, is, in this respect, a favourable circumstance. In the consumption of luxury goods, taste leads to the preference for certain clothes, food or commodities rather than others, while in fashion it represents what is considered adequate and correct in a certain place, situation or time. 2 Taste, as fashion and luxury, is the product of a specific society and time. 3 It is born from emulation and distinction processes, used to define oneself and to construct identity. Emulation favours the consumption of certain distinctive goods, chosen, so we have learnt, 4 adapting to what is believed to be preferred by the élite to which one hopes to be able to belong to one day. While distinction implies the intent of distinguishing oneself from the ordinary, by wearing certain goods which allow to escape seriality. 2. Branded Cult Items The desire for distinction is a central demand to modern luxury, although the branded cult items chosen for this purpose and the extreme emulation processes that these unleash, blur all distinctions. 5 Modern taste needs luxury, but it is a luxury which has changed its appearance. 6 The quantity of objects defined as luxurious has enormously grown and almost every product is proposed as exclusive, even if it is destined to the masses. The luxe industry has managed to charge high prices for exclusivity, while selling products to everyone. 7 A ‘semi luxury’ 8 made of an unlimited quantity of branded products, 9 gives access to the inaccessible, 10 although most of these goods lack all the requisites of luxury. The Louis Vuitton purses or the chairs by Kartell succeed in turning a serial into a distinctive good and propose plastic as a prestigious material. 11 Status is today expressed through visible brand names, logo-splashed canvas bags, belts, baseball caps and shoes paid by instalments or traded for entire salaries. 12 The diffusion of innumerable equivalent branded items and the general proliferation of brands, a mass branding, produces a loss of value of the objects and a globalised consumer deprived of originality and personal identity. 3. Aura of the Logo The observed contradiction arises from a gap between what the item is and what it represents to the consumers, from an incorrect value attribution. The products are not considered valuable due to an intrinsic superior quality. They fund their value on the immaterial meaning conveyed by the label, which makes them evocative signs of the desire to belong to a privileged class. For Renzo Rosso,

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__________________________________________________________________ founder of Diesel Jeans, ‘People don’t buy products but their effect.’ 13 Skilled craftmanship, exclusivity and personalisation 14 have been substituted the aura of a logo. 4. Label The label, which distinguishes the products of a brand, is a graphical sign composed of letters, shapes or colours, but other distinctive visual idioms, such as the Chanel gold chains or the Burberry checks are also used. 15 Labels are a modern set of symbols, worn to define identity and social position, 16 which tie the goods to value, guarantee their good taste and the continuity of their style. 17 The brand (the critical ‘no logo’ operation included 18 ) moves the products into the sphere of desire. A process, called also ‘meaning manufacture,’ which moves significant meanings into the goods. 19 This is what consumers buy much more than a bag. The ‘logo-fication’ of accessories, a splattering of recognizable symbols in continuous patterns all over the items to let people know what you are wearing, created a ‘cheap’ luxury, which opened the doors of exclusivity to ordinary people and allowed the luxe companies to expand to new markets. 20 As the demonstrative monograms, are what consumers are after, 21 every brand started producing one. Logos account for up to 80% of luxe sales. Moreover brands stretched to offer all kinds of products to fit every aspect life, an inescapable invasion. 22 This massification, the aesthetical degradation and the frenzy for brands 23 exposed luxury to counterfeiting. 24 5. Counterfeits and Look-Alikes The label, originally a protection against imitation, 25 is today used to mask fake products. Counterfeiting is an operation which gives objects, an identity already owned by another product. 26 It uses confusion, in which a familiarity effect deceives the consumer; association, in which the consumer is made believe in a tie between a fake and a genuine product; and hooking up to a famous brand, in which a fake assumes identical exterior traits (forms, confection, labelling) as an items by another producer. 27 According to Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, two reports produced in 2006 28 and 2007 29 by the solicitors Davenport Lyons, counterfeited and look-alike products, with the top preferred brands Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Burberry, 30 have a mighty impact on the market and their demand is continually growing. 31 The key findings of these reports are that the same customers are found to buy fake and authentic products, that today near-perfect clones attract also the wealthy clientele 32 and that fake buying is growing increasingly accepted. In 2007 over 3 million people in the UK bought a fake. Fake buyers spend more money than non fake buyers and are more likely to buy also genuine items. In 2007 64% of them bought authentic luxury as well. 33 Fakes are growing socially acceptable and while in 2006, 44% of the buyers would confess that they had bought a fake, in 2007 it was already a 64%. Valued by some

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__________________________________________________________________ producers, such as Patrizio Bertelli, CEO of Prada, as symptom of the success of the brand, 34 the rising quality, popularity and acceptance of counterfeits endangers the luxury market. The benevolence towards look-alikes is also growing, 35 driven by popular tieups between famous designers and fast fashion producers, such as the collections of Karl Lagerfeld, Rocco Barocco, Stella McCartney and Victor&Rolf for H&M. The belief that look-alikes damage luxe brands fell in 2007 at 39%, down from 47% in 2006, 36 although it has been shown, that shoddy imitations 37 and ugly copies, which devaluate the brand and attract a range of buyers who will never buy a genuine, are much more harmful than fakes. 38 6. Stategies against Counterfeiting The luxe producers have an ambivalent attitude towards fakes, which could depend on the fact that fake buying often acts as introduction to real brands. 39 According to the luxury brand protection managers, the strategies adopted against fakes should differ according to the buyer’s motivations. A closer analysis of the measures taken by Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari and Coach, gives nevertheless the impression that instead of collecting knowledge on the motivations, the fake producers and buyers, the luxe industry simply re-affirms the aura of the brand, by reassuring its customers on the value, the selective exclusivity and the special services guaranteed by a genuine item. The mistaken believes that ‘producers themselves sell part of their genuine production as fakes’ 40 or that ‘the copies are made in the same factories as the genuine articles,’ 41 expressed by over 1/3 of the buyers, are never corrected. As main deterrent luxe producers use the rumour that fake buying is funding organised crime, 42 which seems not very likely, considering that money laundering requires legal and not clandestine businesses, such as the fake production. 43 In fact no evidence for contacts between counterfeiters and organised crime have ever been documented 44 in Italy’s super-sized fake industry, estimated at 1.2 billions €. 45 The loss of appeal of the brands caused by fakes is countered by fuelling the aura of branded articles. Bulgari’s new B.zero1 ring by Anish Kapoor for example tries to multiply the value of an accessible jewel just by stirring in the cool quotient of art. 7. Luxe Consumption and the Use of Branded Cult Items Finally let us make some remarks on the growing luxe consumption and the consumers’ use of branded cult items. The unprecedented volume of growth of the luxury sector, 46 which between 1995 and 2004 has reached 15% annually, 47 cannot just be read as the rise of the people’s frenzy to consume more luxury. It is caused by a change of the buyers and a change of the ‘luxury’ articles. The new consumers spring from the emerging markets of China, Korea, Japan, India and Russia.

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__________________________________________________________________ The world’s biggest market, Asia, constituted in 2006, 37% of the global luxury good sales, which correspond to a 62 billion € market, and produced alone more than ½ of the revenues for Bulgari, Cartier, Gucci, Hermès and Louis Vuitton. 48 40% of the world luxury sales come from Japanese pockets. 49 It is true that this democratized luxe, making the consumers believe that everyone can spend his way up the social ladder, 50 has led to a monumental consumption of ‘mass luxury’ and counterfeits. On the other hand it has been found that in the UK while the overall percentage of luxury acquisitions has remained at 43% in 2006 and 2007, in 2007, buying of clothing and shoes has grown considerably at the cost of jewels and watches. This means that while consumption grows, ‘true’ luxury is substituted by more visible categories. 51 The opening to the global market, a new concept of luxury, the grown visibility 52 of high-end items, exposed by commercials on the city walls and by a colourful cast of celebrity testimonials and the fact that ostentatious comparison is no longer carried out among components of the same élite, as in Thorstein Veblen’s times, are probably accounting for an exaggerated perception of the luxe consumption growth. 53 8. Identity Construction through Personal Style The driving force behind the aggressive consumption of mass luxury, branded goods and counterfeits, has been interpreted as a need of the masses for distinction and social inclusion, 54 which is expressed by the desire of the new rich and of the immigrants to parade distinctive status symbols, 55 of Eastern peoples to conform to the group, 56 of Western peoples to search ‘distinction’ 57 to make up for a disappeared social identity. 58 These examples show that “consumerism is far more than just an economic activity: ‘it is also about dreams and consolation, communication […] and identity.’ 59 Indeed lately consumers seem less interested in the intangible appeal of the brands and luxury is no longer exclusively directed at impressing the others. According to Marc Jacobs, creative director of Louis Vuitton, it is rather destined at ‘pleasing oneself’ 60 and at making oneself visible. 61 The ‘right clothes’ declare a pecuniary standing, but the ‘being accepted by the right people’-part is no longer the primary focus. By wearing the right logo, you are the right people. The emulation of the higher social class has given way to a personification of an imaginary élite. 62 Today we must not ask what brands offer to consumers, but how buyers use them. 63 The way clothes are worn and combined today turns the brand form a guarantee offered by the stylist to the consumer into a form of communication between the buyer and his world. 64 The great success of branded cult items and counterfeits, reveals not only the triumph of consumption, but signals a radical change. 65 As traditional categories, such as class, nationality, or profession do no longer define one’s identity, 66 clothes are today used to communicate oneself to the world.

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__________________________________________________________________ Consumers are what they choose to be and their search for similar human beings includes the entire global village. 67 ‘Traditional’ fashion, prescribed 68 by a charismatic stylist or by marketing strategies, 69 has been substituted by personal styles, or referring to taste, by a preferred fashion flavour. 70 For the anthropologist Ted Polhemus, people ‘style surf’ among the clothes of stylists, ethnic cultures, street styles, second hand shops, celebrities and mix them to a personal look. Rather than a coordinated look, a very personal juxtaposition of items is deliberately searched, as a signal for an interesting personality. 71 With the entire history of style of the whole world constantly present, all the immaterial meanings cancel each other 72 and an enormous quantity of items can be mixed to endless personal combinations. Luxe producers still pretend to ignore that 69% 73 of the counterfeits are bought consciously. 74 As a matter of fact their function has been transformed and it has become fashionable to wear a combination of authentic and fake. 75 This new ‘mixing cheap’ trend allows to combine single statement-making pieces, such as a van Cleef & Arpels diamond bracelet, with neutral or fake elements, such a white fruit of the loom T-shirt or a Cartier watch bought in Shenzen. 76 While the fashion industry goes on, producing total look collections for just one season 77 and fuels the aura of its brands, in the global village a new form of communication prevails 78 and high-end luxury, branded items, vintage pieces, secondary lines, counterfeits and look-alikes are all together used by the creative consumer to compose an individual stylistic message, 79 which prevents him from getting lost in the global masses. 80 A personal consumption of fashion is a new way to assert own ideas changing traditional mentalities, to imagine culture in a different way and to invent a new transnational and individual identity. After all it is encouraging to know that ‘one desire that is getting stronger than all other demands, remains the desire to be unique.’ 81

Notes 1

La Piccola Treccani, Vol. V, Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 1995, s.v. ‘gusto’, p. 593. 2 U. Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, in Enciclopedia della Moda, Vol. III, Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, p. 139. 3 R. Arnold, Fashion, Desire and Anxiety: Image and Morality in the 20th Century, I. B. Tauris, London 2001, p. 125 cited in D. Ward and C. Chiari, Keeping Luxury October 2008, , p. 3. 4 Cf. T. Veblen and M. Banta, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008.

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E. Mora, Fare Moda. Esperienze di Produzione e Consumo, B. Mondadori, Roma, 2009, p. 184. 6 A. Casiccia, Lusso e Potere. I Segni Dell’ineguaglianza e Dell’eccesso, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 2008, p. 56. 7 R. Chadha and P. Husband, The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury, N. Brealy International, London and Boston, 2006, p. 10. 8 G. Lipovetsly, Il Tempo del Lusso, Sellerio, Palermo, 2007, pp. 16 and 45. 9 Ward and Chiari, p. 6. 10 Casiccia, p. 111. 11 Ibid., pp. 56-57. 12 Chadha and Husband, p. 2. 13 Ward and Chiari, p. 4. 14 Ibid., p. 22. 15 Chadha and Husband, p. 39. 16 Ibid., p. 3. 17 Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, p. 27. 18 P. Calefato, ‘Lusso’, in Enciclopedia della Moda, Vol. III, Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, p. 216. 19 The term meaning manufacture is used by G. McCracken in Culture and Consumption, cited in Chadha and Husband, pp. 30-31. 20 Ibid., p. 19. 21 Ibid., p. 20. 22 Ibid., p. 21. 23 U. Volli, ‘Gusto e Cattivo Gusto’, in Enciclopedia della Moda, Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, p. 437. 24 Casiccia, p. 110. 25 Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, p. 28. 26 S. Casillo, ‘L’irresitibile Ascesa Dell’industria del Falso in Italia’, il mulino, No. 4, luglio/agosto, 1998, p. 696. 27 Ibid., p. 697. 28 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, commissioned by Davenport Lyons Solicitors, consumer research carried out by Ledbury research, 2nd Edition June, 2007. This report was preceded by Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, commissioned by Davenport Lyons Solicitors, written by Ledbury research, April, 2006. 29 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, 2007, op. cit. 30 Ibid., pp 14-15. 31 Ibid., p. 3. 32 Chadha and Husband, p. 269. 33 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, p. 7.

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Chadha and Husband, p. 69. Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, p. 16. 36 Ibid., p. 17. 37 Chadha and Husband, p. 69. 38 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, p. 16. 39 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 40 S. Casillo, Le False voci sui Prodotti e in Marchi Industriali, Napoli, Liguori, 1996, p. 179. 41 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, p. 15. 42 Ibid., p. 21. 43 Casillo, ‘L’irresitibile Ascesa Dell’industria del Falso in Italia’, p. 707. 44 Ibid., p. 706. 45 Chadha and Husband, p. 279. 46 Casiccia, p. 118. 47 Ward and Chiari, p. 11. 48 Chadha and Husband, pp. 22-23. 49 Ibid., p. 73. 50 Ibid., p. 2. 51 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, p. 22. 52 Volli, ‘Gusto e Cattivo Gusto’, p. 432. 53 Casiccia, p. 40. 54 Mora, p. 24. 55 Ibid. 56 Chadha and Husband, p. 80. 57 Ibid., p. 83. 58 Casiccia, p. 14. 59 Arnold, pp. 1 and 3-4, cited in Ward and Chiari, p. 3. 60 D. Thomas, Deluxe. Come i Grandi Marchi Hanno Spento il Lusso, De Agostini, Novara 2007, p. 25. 61 Volli, ‘Gusto e Cattivo Gusto’, p. 437. 62 Chadha and Husband, p. 34. 63 Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, pp. 28-29. 64 Ibid., p. 29. 65 T. Polhemus, ‘Style Surfing’, in Enciclopedia della Moda, Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, p. 359. 66 Ibid., p. 360. 67 Ibid.. 68 Ibid., p. 359. 69 Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, p. 6. 70 Volli, ‘Gusto e Cattivo Gusto’, p. 430. 35

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Polhemus, p. 361. Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, pp. 5-10. 73 Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, p. 13. 74 Casillo, ‘L’irresitibile Ascesa Dell’industria del Falso in Italia’, p. 703. 75 Ibid., p. 704. 76 Chadha and Husband, pp. 59-60. 77 Polhemus, p. 363. 78 Ibid., p. 362. 79 Volli, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, p. 29. 80 Polhemus, p. 362. 81 This often repeated quote is apparently by John Galliano, cf. for example . 72

Bibliography Arnold, A., Fashion, Desire and Anxiety: Image and Morality in the 20th Century. UK. I.B. Tauris, London, 2001. Casiccia, A., Lusso e Potere. I Segni Dell’ineguaglianza e Dell’eccesso. Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 2008. Calefato, P., ‘Lusso’, in Enciclopedia della Moda. Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana. Roma, 2005, pp. 203-218. Casillo, S., Le False Voci sui Prodotti e in Marchi Industriali. Napoli, Liguori 1996. —––, ‘L’irresitibile Ascesa Dell’industria del Falso in Italia’. Il mulino, No. 4, luglio/agosto, 1998, pp. 696-710. Chadha, R. and Husband, P., The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury. N. Brealy International, London and Boston, 2006. Codeluppi, V., La Sociologia dei Consumi. Teorie Classiche e Prospettive Contemporanee. Carrocci, Roma, 2003. —––, Dalla Corte alla Strada. Natura ed Evoluzione Sociale della Moda. Carrocci, Roma, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths, commissioned by Davenport Lyons Solicitors, written by Ledbury research, April, 2006. —––, commissioned by Davenport Lyons Solicitors, consumer research carried out by Ledbury research, 2nd Edition June, 2007. ‘Gusto’, La Piccola Treccani. Vol. V, Enciclopedia Italiana. Roma, 1995, p. 593. Lipovetsky, G., L’impero Dell’effimero. La Moda nelle Società Moderne, Garzanti, Milano, 1989. —––, Il Tempo del Lusso. Sellerio, Palermo, 2007. Mora, E., Fare Moda. Esperienze di Produzione e Consumo. Bruno Mondadori, Roma, 2009. Polhemus, T., ‘Style Surfing’, in Enciclopedia della Moda. Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, pp. 359-364. Sellberg, A. M., ‘Sociologia della Moda’, in Enciclopedia della Moda, Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, pp. 139-160. Thomas, D., Deluxe. Come i Grandi Marchi Hanno Spento il Lusso. De Agostini, Novara, 2007. Veblen T. and Banta, M., The Theory of the Leisure Class. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. Volli, U., ‘Gusto e Cattivo Gusto’, in Enciclopedia della Moda. Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, pp. 429-440. —––, ‘Moda’, in Enciclopedia della Moda. Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005 pp. 5-10. —––, ‘Semiotica della Moda’, in Enciclopedia della Moda. Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, pp. 11-30. —––, ‘Stile’, in Enciclopedia della Moda. Vol. III. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 2005, pp. 353-358.

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__________________________________________________________________ Ward, D. and Chiari, C., Keeping Luxury Inaccessible, viewed on 28th October 2008, . Cecilia Winterhalter is a contemporary historian, interested in social history and in the history of mentalities, with main researches on construction of transnational identities through fashion and food, on the construction of gendered identities through religion and on the construction of identity through the selectivity of memory (Second World War). Born in Seattle, she is currently living in Rome. After her studies, she left Switzerland and an employment at the Swiss Ministry of Culture, to write her PhD in History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. Later she left an employment at Christie’s Int. to follow the publication of an essay. At the moment, she is an independent scholar and works as a consultant in the staff formation for the human resources and as a translator. She is fluent in four languages and devotes her free time to agonistic sailing.

Re-Framing Fashion: From Original and Copy to Adaptation Tiziana Ferrero-Regis Abstract Partington notes that clothing produced by individual consumers through adaptation of patterns is contextualised as a watered down version of original couture. In its most reductive form, this notion characterises fashion as commercial and exploitative. Descriptors such as appropriation, imitation, copy and so forth have restricted the opportunity to understand fashion as a major global cultural form and institution. Therefore exploring and understanding the concept of adaptation will shift the attention from a superficial assessment of original versus imitation or copy to adaptation as a practice that provides a better framework for the understanding of designers’ and couturiers’ innovative practices and creativity, describing also the active engagement of consumers with fashion at the micro level. Adaptation can also provide a way to understand different historical shifts in the fashion system, from individual creative agency with home dressmaking and re-making to the explosion of the mass market and the consequent abandonment of such practices. Home dressmaking has been replaced by fashion remix of mass produced garments, a practice that thrives in our environment of globalised fast fashion. Thus this chapter suggests the need for a contextual requalification of concepts such as original, copy, imitation and copyright, and argues that these categories have been played against each other, but they are in fact interdependent. Today, big labels and conglomerates try to control knowledge and innovation through copyright, but, fashion escapes copyright because, in fashion, creativity is contextual. The institutionalisation of couture from 1868 served as a way to control knowledge about production processes in fashion; on the other hand, adaptation practices, often subversive, have been fundamental to the democratisation of fashion. Key Words: Fashion, adaptation, imitation, original, copyright, agency, creativity. ***** My mother and I would travel for two hours and go to the city to buy European fabrics to make our Chanel suits out of Vogue patterns (Rowen, New Zealand). 1 1. Fashion Original The conceptual understanding of fashion-original grew out of a heroic and Romantic narrative, which advocated a clear distinction between original works as the result of imagination and innate creativity, and works of imitation that were impoverished by convention. Through this difference, an opposition between

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__________________________________________________________________ naturally creative and mechanical work was created, thus translating into an opposition between industry and art. 2 The concept of creativity was translated into the notion of the authentic work of art. In the fashion system, these distinctions took the form of couture connected to a name. As Lipovetsky maintains, within a logic of profit-making connected to the capitalist system, haute couture owed its honorific recognition to the cult of individuality and hence of independent creative freedom. 3 Haute couture promised change, innovation and newness. Yet, the notion of authenticity and the aura of a couture dress served the purpose of promoting, making popular and selling reproduction of the dress to the middle class. 4 Today, the concept of the designer as visionary is persistent. Both Breward5 and Kawamura 6 discuss the institutionalised mythology surrounding the fashion designer and how the myth facilitates the promotion of fashion, continuing to support a commercial discourse whereby ‘fantasy garments’ 7 are presented on the catwalk to create media attention. 2. Copyright An increase in licensing and branding from the 1970s, and the explosion of the knowledge economy and intellectual property rights, has made copyright a pressing issue of the fashion system. In the 1980s, licensing practices intensified as luxury labels were grouped in large conglomerates through a practice of progressive acquisitions. Thus legislation has been put in place to protect fashion design from cheap knock-offs through the registration of designs. Despite this, legislation varies greatly in different countries and is still limited to a few elements: the two-dimension pattern, original printed fabric and man-made fibre. The premise at the base of intellectual property protection of fashion design is that fashion design is included in the copyright act as a form of work similar to literary or artistic work. France, for example, has a broad protection of fashion design because in France ‘fashion creation is potentially protected under the incidence of two different rights: the right of authorship and the protection of designs and models.’ 8 But in the US and Canada, legislation separates artistic from functional, classifying clothing as ‘useful,’ whose reproduction does not infringe the copyright act. 9 Thus the concept of functionality is set against the concept of fashion as adornment. In reality, staple or iconic garments such as the little black dress, the cardigan, the blazer, the trench, the bomber jacket and so forth, despite having created archetypes, are impossible to patent or copyright. They have gone through processes of adaptation and innovation, crossing the boundary between functionality and fashionableness, and therefore closing the cultural divide between original and imitation, art and commerce. 3. Fashion Adaptation Adaptation is a social practice grounded in culture. This study looks at what consumers do with dress in two particular instances, gender practices in home

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__________________________________________________________________ dress-making, and cross-cultural exchanges of styles. The first case study has to do with women’s engagement with fashion through home-dressmaking practices, drawing from a pilot project on women and fashion in rural Australia and New Zealand. The second case study looks at the Harajuku phenomenon and outlines theoretical underpinnings that have to do with cross-cultural adaptation. Another occurrence of adaptation practices, not explored here, entails the writing of rigorous histories of individual garments to trace adaptation practices that have transformed the garment from functionality to fashionableness. In all case studies, analysis should investigate the garment in a triangular way: a focus on the actual garment itself; an identification of the strategies that have been employed to innovate design; and a reconstruction of the diversity of use of the garment by consumers in different contexts. The writing of these histories would start moving towards an understanding of fashion as a place of exchange and hybridity instead of bricolage and pastiche. Cultural adaptation occurs in many media and practices, ranging from television to film, to architecture, lifestyle and other forms of entertainment and consumption. Moran defines cultural adaptation as ‘multifarious processes of identification, adaptation, possible rearrangement and redeployment of cultural forms and styles, often in unexpected and highly productive circumstances.’ 10 In established forms of popular entertainment such as film, television, music, literature that are controlled by large conglomerates, adaptation is managed through copyright and trade, which establish boundaries, rules and forms of possible localisation and variation of a cultural product. In fashion, adaptation takes various forms that grow inside and outside the industry, are highly productive and are driven by macro and micro forces. The reason for focussing on the ‘twin approach’ of macro and micro analysis 11 has to do with, on the one hand, the inner dynamics of the fashion industry, driven by accelerated fashion cycles and controlled by financial conglomerates and groups, and, on the other, individual agency, whereby adaptation is a way to reinvigorate individual creativity and originality. In the case of consumers, sewing machines and circulation of magazines from 1850 facilitated home dressmaking, with the adaptation of styles and designs to women’s own circumstances, fit, size and taste. In more recent times, women have used magazine patterns adapted from couture, licensed by couture houses, to make elegant clothes and look fashionable. Thus adaptation of clothes is far from being a tension in the fashion system; it is a process, or set of practices that is part and parcel of the industry, the fashion system and everyday practices of dressing. The macro forces are epitomised by designers and couturiers, and are expressed through the globalising economy that has imposed standardisation and mass production in the fashion system. Today’s global fashion industry provides great variety at a cheaper price and frequently, causing the phenomenon of fast fashion. Progressively, the wide availability of ready-to-wear and copies at a price point

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__________________________________________________________________ inspired by fashion shows all over the world has made home sewing redundant. The adaptation or alteration of styles have been replaced by the mix-and-match practice, whereby ready-to-wear, including accessories, is mixed to either imitate looks seen on the catwalks, or to invent new eclectic looks. Designers and big brands usually lament that copy and imitation threaten the industry and hamper creativity. The problem with this interpretation is that it rejects adaptation as a fundamental fashion practice. In the past, adaptation of patterns and their licensing by couture houses developed and maintained growth in the fashion industry at a time in which the ready-to-wear market was yet to be fully expanded. The recent re-conceptualisation of the fashion industry as creative economy has refocussed the economic agenda on the generation of knowledge and thus exploitation of intellectual rights. For this reason, the creation and control of property rights has become a pressing issue in the industry. However, in fashion, copyright is difficult to establish. Even when we see exclusive fashion design in the luxury market, we notice that inspiration may have come from many different sources, including fashion’s own history and foreign cultures. These sources constitute knowledge content, while Aspers also argues for specific conditions of knowledge in which creative aesthetic work is allowed to emerge. 12 According to Aspers, designers also exchange information and knowledge through networks, art worlds and consumer markets. 13 Creative knowledge is thus contextual, and not solely based on the creative individual. This is an important theoretical approach because it shifts creativity onto adaptation, also recognising imitation of trends by designers as an important part of the fashion industry. Similarly, Potvin, quoting Homi Bhabha, rejects the essentialism of a prior given original culture, arguing instead for ‘acts of cultural translation’ which recognise that all forms of culture are constantly engaged in transformation and hence are hybrid. 14 Referring to Armani’s work, Potvin highlights how the sources of inspiration and ‘specifics of the borrowed original,’ 15 are difficult or nearly impossible to identify, as Armani translates historical sources re-contextualising them to the moment of production. This important hypothesis can in fact be extended to all fashion production, rejecting the trite notion of fashion as pastiche and bricolage. Adaptation involves interpretation or translation and transformation. The process is creative and refers specifically to actively engage with a set of operations or ideas that modify an existing product or concept into a new one. Fashion adaptation has taken various forms that are strictly connected with changes in the fashion system and with culture more generally; it is simultaneously global, in its dealings with franchising, and local, through individual customisation. In this case, home dressmaking involves the manipulation of garments, making and remaking, to create different styles and designs. This set of operations often involve unpicking existing clothes to copy patterns to make new garments with new fabrics or with different trims and decorations, or to adapt and modify an

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__________________________________________________________________ existing sleeve into a different design. In other instances, patterns licensed by couture houses are employed to create copies of an ‘original,’ as in the case of Rowen and the Chanel suit. 16 In this case, a Chanel suit trickled down to a mother and a daughter, who lived in a small town in New Zealand, in the form of a pattern from a couture original, licensed to a magazine and distributed via the magazine. Their adaptation process was based on a deep knowledge of, and engagement with, the materiality of fashion: properties of textiles, transformation from a twodimensional form to a tri-dimensional one, sketching, understanding of sizing, knowledge of stitches, fit and form, and, eventually, creation of surface embellishments. From merely reproducing a couture suit that was laid out for them, it can be argued that Rowen and her mother designed their clothes, because they were making meaningful objects. Similarly, growing up in Dalby in the 1950s, two hundred fifty kilometres east from Brisbane, in Queensland, the Jones sisters had few possibilities to be fashionable. The local haberdashery provided ready-made items such as jeans, shirts, work-wear, hosiery and underwear, but all the sisters had been taught how to sew by their mother. Through reading Seventeen, which promoted the latest fashions and advice that emphasised the rules of good taste, they were on trend. In the process of copying, through adaptation and transformation of McCall patterns, available at the local haberdashery, the Jones sisters helped each other to adapt the most difficult garments to look appropriately fashionable. Their versions of glamorous clothes were more comfortable and functional, without sacrificing style and elegance. This form of adaptation has been linked to a re-definition and re-evaluation of gender practice in home dressmaking. Significant studies in this area have been developed from within a feminist and gender studies perspective. Most notably, Cheryl Buckley documents her historical analysis of making and designing clothes at home through the study of life and design activities of a group of women in England between 1910 and 1960. 17 Angela Partington 18 focuses on British women’s take on Dior’s New Look and their practices of appropriation of a style commonly considered as ornamental and restrictive. In both studies, women emerged as skilled designers and producers of fashion in their own rights, challenging common views about their passivity and deference to the elite designers. The second form of adaptation involves the restyling of clothes, jewels, ornaments and make-up from other cultures. The inclusion of these items in everyday dress is usually defined as appropriation. This form of adaptation entails a transfer of meaning from one culture to another and reflects eclecticism. In the case of designers, the interaction with other cultures is part of the creative process of designing from a stimulus. Borrowing clothes across cultures creates interesting hybrid appearances that mix local culture and foreign influences. Often this fusion is functional to the creation of new identities that use these new styles in different

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__________________________________________________________________ contexts and with different meanings, which often are not necessarily understood by the original group. The concept of ‘cultural authentication’ 19 can be used as theoretical understanding of fashion adaptation across cultures. Usually labelled as appropriation, and seen in an exploitative way, adaptation of clothes from other cultures can be explained through a process of cultural authentication, whereby an ‘outside aesthetic influence is integrated into and becomes part of an existing style tradition.’ 20 The creative transformation presents four stages: selection, characterisation, incorporation and transformation, but not necessarily consequential. These stages end with the final internalisation, acceptance and integration of the borrowed artefact by the accepting culture as a means to internalise the outside influence. In this process, exotic cultures offer sub-cultural groups an allure of otherness that promises individuality, distinction and, often, forms of resistance. One historical example is Paul Poiret’s (1879-1944) adaptation of Oriental dress - the ancient Greek chiton, the kimono, and the kaftan - which not only demonstrated his enthusiasm for the Orient, but, importantly, revolutionised women’s fashion by dispensing with corsetry and providing elegant and functional fashion at once. Harajuku is a contemporary and well-known case of cross-cultural fashion fertilisation and offers an interesting case study that aptly illustrates cultural authentication through adaptation. From the middle of the 1980s, Japanese youth adopted Western street fashion directly from British mods, punks and Victorian fashion, incorporating traditional British textiles. This work of cultural adaptation included also the integration of traditional elements of Japanese ancient dress with vintage and second hand items. The integration of Japanese cultural symbols from manga and animé characters with British sub-cultural and traditional styles produced an eclectic mix that challenged and redefined the notion of what is fashionable. This sartorial and gender redefinition of aesthetic eventually evolved in a myriad of sub-cultures, creating multiple interactions between Japanese teenagers. Make-up and fashion items and brands are incorporated in specific styles and named according to an aesthetic or lifestyle that they come to represent. Thus groups known as Kogal, Ganguro, Yamamba, Lolita, and so forth, stand for an authenticated way of life and aesthetic, according to Tonye Eeerokisima’s cultural authentication concept. The phenomenon of Harajuku Street fashion put Tokyo on the global fashion map, inspiring more than the youth contained in one-square-mile within the city. Harajuku fashion circulated back to Western youth who adapted some references to popular culture, such as manga characters which were integrated in their everyday style. 21 Importantly, the Harajuku phenomenon has formed a new business model and a system with specific diffusion strategies that is independent from the mainstream fashion system.

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__________________________________________________________________ 4. Conclusion In this chapter I have examined the conditions that have allowed the concepts of fashion original and copy to emerge and continue as interdependent practices of the fashion system. I have argued that the concept of adaptation provides a better model to explain fashion’s historicism and practices that involve processes of translation, transformation and re-contextualisation of garments in cross-cultural contexts and trans-historically. At a micro level these practices have shifted from making, which requires a deep knowledge of fashion, to mix-and-match, as the market has become more open and focussed on mass production and consumption. Adaptation involves localisation and indigenisation (as in the case of style tribes and sub-cultural groups). To understand what consumers do with clothing, I have proposed that by combining Homi Bhabha’s suggestion of the ‘third space’ as the creation of hybrids that displace the histories that constitute them, and Tonye Eerekosima’s process of ‘cultural authentication’ it is possible to form a theory of fashion adaptation that explains processes of transformation and circulation of styles among consumers. Conversely, concerns with copy and copyright issues are part of hard-core market strategies of conglomerates when it comes to sell their products and protect their profit.

Notes 1

P. Aspers, ‘Contextual Knowledge. Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 5, p. 746. D. Williamson, Authorship and Criticism, Local Consumption Publications, Sydney, 1989, p. 7. 3 G. Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994. 4 N. Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, London, 2003. 5 C. Breward, Fashion, Oxford University Press, London, 2003, p. 34. 6 Y. Kawamura, Fashion-ology, An Introduction to Fashion Studies, Berg, Oxford, New York, 2005, p. 65. 7 T. Polhemus, ‘Implications for the Appearance-Alteration Industries’, in The Fashion Reader, L. Welters and A. Lillethun (eds), Berg, Oxford and New York, p. 410. 8 A. Balasescu, ‘After Authors: Signifying Fashion from Paris to Tehran’, Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 10, 2005, p. 210. 9 J. Katz, ‘IP Protection for Fashion Designs: Limited in Scope, but Available’, Ottawa Business Journal, 1st December, 2009 viewed on 1st December 2009, . 2

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A. Moran, ‘Introduction: The Global Flow of Creative Ideas’, Continuum, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2009, p. 109. 11 Ibid., p. 110. 12 Aspers, p. 746. 13 Ibid. 14 J. Potvin, ‘Cross-Dressing Fashion and Furniture: Giorgio Armani, Orientalism and Nostalgia’, in Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, A. Myzelev and J. Potvin (eds), Ashgate, Farnham, 2010, p. 238. 15 Ibid. 16 This is a case study part of a pilot project on dress and fashionableness in rural Australia and New Zealand. 17 C. Buckley, ‘On the Margins: Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home’, Journal of Design History, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1998. 18 A. Partington, ‘Popular Fashion and Working Class Affluence’, in Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader, J. Ash and E. Wilson (eds), Harper Collins, London, pp. 145161. 19 T. Eerekosima in Changing Fashion: A Critical Introduction to Trend Analysis and Meaning, A. Lynch and M. D. Strauss (eds), Berg, Oxford and New York, 2007, p. 154. 20 Ibid.

Bibliography Aspers, P., ‘Contextual Knowledge’. Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 5, 2006, pp. 745-763. Balasescu, A., ‘After Authors: Signifying Fashion from Paris to Tehran’, Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 10, 2005, pp. 289-310. Baudrillard, J., Symbolic Exchange and Death. Sage, London, 1993 [1976]. Beucler, A., ‘Chez Madeleine Vionnet’, in Madeleine Vionnet. P. Golbin (ed), Rizzoli, New York, 2009, pp. 273-285. Blakley, J., ‘Keynote Speech’, Ready to Share: Fashion and the Ownership of Creativity. A Norman Lear Center Conference, USC Annenberg School for Communication, 29th January 2005, viewed on 6th April 2010, .

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__________________________________________________________________ Breward, C., Fashion. Oxford University Press, London, 2003. Buckley, C., ‘On the Margins: Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home’. Journal of Design History, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1998, pp. 157-171. Cox, C. and Jenkins, J., ‘Between the Seams, a Fertile Commons: An Overview of the Relationship between Fashion and Intellectual Property’, in Ready to Share: Fashion and the Ownership of Creativity, A Norman Lear Center Conference, USC Annenberg School of Communication, 29th January 2005, viewed on 6th April 2010. . Craik, J., Fashion: The Key Concepts. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2009. Fashion Products, B2B Marketplace of Fashion & Beauty Industry, 2010, viewed on 9th March 2010, . Godoy, T. and Vartanian, I., ‘Harajuku Made Me Do It’, in Tokyo Street Style: Fashion in Harajuku. T. Godoy (ed), Thames and Hudson, London, 2007, pp. 1013. Katz, J., 2009, ‘IP Protection for Fashion Designs: Limited in Scope, but Available’, Ottawa Business Journal, 1st December 2009, viewed on 1st December 2009, . Kawamura, Y., Fashion-ology, An Introduction to Fashion Studies. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2005. —––, ‘Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion’. Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 5, 2006, pp. 784-801. Lipovetsky, G., The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994. Lessig, L., Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy. The Penguin Press, New York, 2008. Lynch, A. and Strauss, M. D., Changing Fashion: A Critical Introduction to Trend Analysis and Meaning. Berg, Oxford and New York, 2007.

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__________________________________________________________________ Menchen, J., ‘A Design for the Copyright of Fashion’. Intellectual Property and Technology Forum, Boston College Law School, viewed on 19th April 2010, . Moran, A., ‘Introduction: The Global Flow of Creative Ideas’. Continuum, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2009, pp. 107-114. ‘New Military Trench Coat’, West End Gazette, October 1915, viewed on 15th April 2010, . Partington, A., ‘Popular Fashion and Working Class Affluence’, in Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. J. Ash and E. Wilson (eds), Harper Collins, London, pp. 145-161. Polhemus, T., ‘Implications for the Appearance-alteration Industries’, in The Fashion Reader. L. Welters and A. Lillethun (eds), Berg, Oxford and New York, pp. 409-410. Potvin, J., ‘Cross-Dressing Fashion and Furniture: Giorgio Armani, Orientalism and Nostalgia’, in Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity. A. Myzelev and J. Potvin (eds), Ashgate, Farnham, 2010, pp. 225-244. Rocamora, A., Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2009. Socha, M., ‘Arnault Upbeat on LVMH’s Prospects’. Women’s Wear Daily, Vol. 199, No. 82, 16th April 2010, viewed on 4th May 2010, . Troy, N., Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, 2003. Wearden, G., ‘Luxury Goods Brand LVMH See Sales Soar’. The Guardian, 14 April 2010, viewed on 4th May 2010, . Wilcox, C., Vivienne Westwood. Victoria and Albert Museum Publications, London, 2004. Williamson, D., Authorship and Criticism. Local Consumption Publications, Sydney, 1989.

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__________________________________________________________________ Tiziana Ferrero-Regis is Senior Lecturer in Fashion Theory and History at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She is interested in aspects in the fashion industry that have to do with globalisation and the political economy of luxury fashion; Made in Italy; fashion sustainability.

Part 7 Stopping the Clock: A Case Study in Archival and Curatorial Practice

The Lipperheide Costume Library: An Archive of Clothing and Fashion Susan Ingram Abstract The focus of this chapter is the Sammlung Modebild - Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek (Fashion Collection - Lipperheide Costume Library) in Berlin, the largest library and graphic collection focusing on the cultural history of clothing and fashion. When Baron Franz Lipperheide donated his extensive collection to the Prussian state in 1899, three years after the passing of his wife, Frieda, he renamed it not the Lipperheide Fashion Library but rather the Lipperheide Costume Library, even though the Lipperheides owed the wealth which had allowed them to mount the collection to the enormous success of the fashion magazine they began publishing in September 1865: Die Modenwelt, Illustrirte Zeitung für Toilette und Handarbeiten (The Fashion World, An Illustrated Magazine for Dressing and Handiwork). Since its beginnings, the library has successfully been able to turn the slippage between costume, dress, and fashion to its own advantage. This chapter explores the status of fashion in the history of the Lipperheides’ collection and the Berlin museum landscape of which it is part. Key Words: Berlin, fashion collections, fashion museums, Lipperheide Costume Library. ***** 1. Introduction: Fashion, Dress, Costume 1 In the instituting of Fashion Studies as an academic discipline, a pivotal question, and point of contention, has been the distinction between fashion (understood as contemporary practices and processes which are subject to rapid change) and dress (understood as an historical object of curatorial preservation). Alison Bancroft has astutely noted that ‘the lack of a fixed definition of fashion dogs all of its scholars,’ pointing to the ‘lexical disjuncture between fashion as garments that are worn and fashion as something popular.’ 2 It may well be true that what Christopher Breward has termed an ‘inevitable generational and professional shift’ has ameliorated the “‘deep disjuncture” between object-focused curators and humanities-based academics’ that existed a decade ago and continues to occupy the memories of ‘many Anglo/American fashion historians.’ 3 However, as the field of Fashion Studies in Anglo-American academia and publishing enlarges to take on a more global orientation and to include collections and bodies of work in languages other than English, it becomes apparent that the traditions of that academy require a certain amount of revisiting. As Elizabeth Wilson argued at the symposium held to mark the 2006 launch of the University of Stockholm’s

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__________________________________________________________________ Department of Fashion Studies, we need ‘increased understanding and collaboration among the various sections of the fashion world,’ 4 and not only in the case of challenges to ‘Western’ fashion, such as that of the Muslim veil. Wilson concluded her paper ‘How Do We Understand Fashion?’ with the ‘provocative’ comment that ‘Western fashion can no longer be the “default” position - that “we” have fashion and everyone else has “dress.”’ 5 This chapter hopes to intervene in such discussions to show that ‘the West’ is also a heterogeneous concept in need of unpacking, and it does so by considering the Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek (Lipperheide Costume Library, hereafter referred to as LKB) in Berlin. Given that the LKB is, according to its promotional materials, ‘the world’s largest library and graphic collection focusing on the cultural history of clothing and fashion,’ it has been the subject of remarkably little English-language scholarship. 6 One reason for this neglect resides in what one might term ‘disciplinary jet lag.’ While historians (and not only of dress) have made ample use of the collection’s riches, it has remained for them, as the dictates of their discipline set out, a source, something that can illuminate greater social workings but not of interest in and of itself. It has only been with the shift to a more theoretically inflected Fashion Studies that archives have taken on a significance of their own, a situation of particular interest as one goes beyond the Anglo-American context. What we find with the German-language work with and study of Kostüme (that is, ‘costume’ in the sense of dress and not the more colloquial theatre-related usage one finds in, for example, Anne Hollander’s Seeing through Clothes) is that while it has tended to be more in line with the approach of the journal Costume than Fashion Theory (to draw again on Breward), fashion (that is, Mode) has played a major role in making that work possible. An examination of the historical formation of the LKB will help me to substantiate and elaborate on this argument. 2. The Lipperheides The Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek takes its name from its benefactors, Franz Joseph Lipperheide (1838-1906) and Wilhelmine Amalie Friederike Lipperheide, née Gestefeld (1840-1896). From educated backgrounds - Franz’s father was a secretary of the court (Gerichtsaktuars) in Berleburg, Westphalia; Frieda’s a district judge (Amtsvogt) in Lüchow bei Hannover 7 - both made their way to Berlin, where they met while working in the fashion department of Louis Shäfer’s publishing house on one of the leading fashion magazines of the day, the Bazar, and quickly discovered a shared sensibility and set of ambitions. Upon marrying on 18th May 1865, the Lipperheides started up their own publishing house in order to publish a new kind of fashion magazine. 8 On 1st October 1865, the first issue of the biweekly Die Modenwelt, Illustrirte Zeitung für Toilette und Handarbeiten (The Fashion World, an Illustrated Magazine for Dressing and Handiwork) appeared under Frieda’s editorship, a position she maintained until her sudden death at the age of 56. 9 Unlike the Bazar and other popular contemporary

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__________________________________________________________________ fashion magazines, the Modenwelt contained no literary content but only articles about fashion and craftwork, which made it less expensive than its competitors. Also popular was the practical nature of the fashion reports and advice for making one’s own clothes. 10 The Modewelt was an enormous success. By 1872 it had joined the ranks of the top five magazines in Germany in terms of circulation, while of the 51 fashion magazines that appeared in Germany between 1865 and 1890, it was one of the two that had not gone under or been amalgamated. 11 It also appeared abroad in twelve languages and employed almost 400 persons in Berlin (99), Leipzig (283), Konstanz (6), Vienna (4), Paris (3), Erfurt (1), London (1) and Rome (1). 12 Franz enjoyed great renown in Berlin society as a spectacularly successful businessman as well as a knowledgeable collector and acquired property in the process: first, in 1874, a residence in Berlin at Potsdamer Straße 38 (now 96), which became a well-known address among late nineteenth-century Berlin society and which they renovated so that the main and second floors could serve as living areas, while the rest of the building housed their offices and collections; and Schloß Neumatzen bei Brixlegg, the castle they had built in the Tirolian Alps after acquiring the lands around Bad in der Au in 1883 (it is still on the market as this volume goes to press; the asking price is 2.85 million Euros). In 1892, the Lipperheides were both ennobled and granted the titles of Baron and Baroness. The Lipperheides became active in Berlin’s cultural scene as it was undergoing a massive sea change, brought about in the first instance by the building of the Museum Island and, in the second, by the influence of Wilhelm von Bode, under whose tenure as director of all Berlin museums (from 1905 to 1920), said museums went from ‘provincial backwater to world-class art center.’ 13 Not only were the five museums erected on the northern part of the island formed by the Spree in the centre of Berlin decisive for the shape that art museums took on in the nineteenth century (cf. Vogtherr, Klonk), they were also revealing in terms of internal class struggle: From the 1860s on, members of the educated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum) such as Bode increasingly entered governmental ranks. In the process, they displaced aristocratic administrators whose appointments had been motivated more often by nepotism than by professional qualification … When Bode began his service, for instance, the Berlin museums were headed by Count Guido von Usedom, a failed diplomat whose relationship to the royal family led to his subsequent museum appointment. 14 McIsaac points out that the innovative mode of display Bode initiated was directly tied to his relations to the wealthy middle classes, whose donations and other forms of support were at least as important for making Berlin’s collections world class as

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__________________________________________________________________ the support of the Emperors; he gives as an example James Simon, who brought, among other items, the bust of Nefertite to Berlin. 15 The moneyed members of Berlin’s Besitzbürgertum literally bought into the sophistication and learning that Bode exuded, reinforcing the hegemonic position of the Museum Island’s high culture approach to art that fashion has repeatedly challenged from upstart locations slightly removed from Unter den Linden, the city’s central monarchical avenue. There may have been a ‘distinct line’ that existed between ‘the aristocrats and everyone else,’ as Alexandra Richie claims in Faust’s Metropolis, 16 but there are also key distinctions to be made among that ‘everyone else.’ The Lipperheides, for example, felt no need of Bode’s sophistication or learning. They rejected his valorising of ‘old’ art and browbeating of collectors. 17 Rather, the popularity of their pragmatic publishing strategy allowed them to set their own priorities, which involved establishing resources for doing solid research in costume (‘fundierte Kostümkunde’). 18 Lipperheide’s passion for collecting was, as reported by friends and colleagues, a personal one: He was loath to rely on the learned and not only purchased from firms with good reputations but also from small, unknown dealers. Experts meant nothing to him, through hard work and devotion he tried himself to be knowledgeable in a wide range of areas. 19 Unlike Bode’s strict policing of the art world, the Lipperheides published and collected material on the history and the international scope of clothing practices that opened up a variety of possible clothing styles for readers to choose among. In other words, the Lipperheides not only rejected depending on others for expertise but their preference for self-cultivation carried over to their publishing and collecting practice: making available to as wide an audience as possible materials related to a cultural practice everyone in one way or another followed, namely, dress. In 1876, Lipperheide began publishing Blätter für Kostümkunde, Historische und Volkstrachten, Neue Folge (Pages on the Study of Costume, Historical and Folk Costumes, New Edition); each year until 1890 two issues appeared with twelve coloured steel engravings (Stahlstiche) and thirty pages of text each. 20 As he wrote in the introduction to the 1896 catalogue of what had by then come to be known as a ‘collection for the scientific study of costume’ (Sammlung für Kostümwissenschaft), ‘For more than a half century the study of costume [Trachtenkunde] has enjoyed a constantly growing interest: how appropriate for it now to properly become the object of scientific study.’ 21 He went on to make clear that he meant costume ‘in the broadest sense of the word.’ 22 The shift from the fashion focus of their original magazine to the dress focus of their collection and later publishing efforts reveals the intertwined relations of fashion and dress in the

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__________________________________________________________________ Lipperheides’ success: fashion proved the material enabler, while dress gave them legitimacy in the face of Bode’s hegemony over Berlin’s high art world. 3. Fashion and Kunstgewerbe Given their approach to collecting, one would not expect that when the Lipperheides’ extensive collection became property of the Crown on 6th July 1892, it would end up on the Museum Island. Rather it found a home not too far from the Lipperheides’ fashionable residence in the Potsdamer Straße. On 1st October 1899, the doors of the Baron von Lipperheide Costume Library opened for the first time in rented rooms at Flottwellstraße 4 as an independent department in the Kunstgewerbemuseum library, which itself had been elevated to the rank of museum in 1894 with Peter Jessen appointed as its director. 23 At that time, the 8,000 odd volumes and 30,000 individual pages in the collection were available for the public to borrow every weekday and two evenings, with the paintings in the collection remaining in the Lipperheides’ residence for reasons of space; only after the Second World War did the library revoke its lending privileges and insist that its contents be used on site. 24 The Kunstgewerbemuseum has proven to be a most appropriate institution for the LKB to have as its neighbour, as it has navigated the fashion-dress nexus to similarly successful effect. Kunstgewerbe is one of those endearingly untranslatable concepts that German seems to take pride in producing. Variously translated into English as ‘applied arts,’ ‘decorative arts,’ and ‘arts and crafts,’ the lack of a standardized, one-to-one translation points to the inability of any term in English to capture the jarring dissonance that is produced by the original’s combining Kunst (art) and Gewerbe, which can, in addition to ‘craft,’ be rendered as ‘industry,’ ‘trade,’ ‘business’ and even ‘art’ - as in ‘graphisches Gewerbe’ (graphic art). Like Bildung, ‘whose range of meanings includes (and combines) formal education, aesthetic cultivation and character formation,’ 25 Kunstgewerbe also covers a particular spectrum, in its case, of handiwork practices that include (and combine) a range of skills and talents that have their roots in the medieval guild system but which had to readjust to modern developments in aesthetics (artistic autonomy) and industrial production. As late as the 1873 Grimm Dictionary and the 1908 Meyer’s Konversationslexikon, it was considered a synonym of ‘art industry’ (Kunstindustrie) and deemed to be an ‘abomination’ (Unding) that should not really exist. 26 When the Deutsches-Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin opened in 1868 to showcase items from the 1867 Paris world exhibition, it was following in the footsteps of London’s South Kensington complex (now the V&A), which opened in 1852 in the aftermath of the Great Exhibition, and of Vienna’s Museum for Art and Industry (now the MAK - Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Museum for Applied Arts), which opened in 1863. The Gewerbe-Museum’s founding director, Julius Lessing, a good friend of the Lipperheides,’ was responsible for its acquisitions and

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__________________________________________________________________ organised a successful exhibition of crafts from Berliners’ private collections that took place in 1872 and led to the key acquisition in 1875 of 6,570 historical crafts from the Prussian Kunstkammer. With the success of this exhibition, the GewerbeMuseum earned itself a permanent home, the Martin Gropius Bau, which it moved into in 1881 (two years after having being renamed the Kunstgewerbemuseum); Lessing earned himself the undying enmity of Bode; 27 and a space opened up for fashion to infiltrate, complicate and decorate ‘this upstart capital,’ whose nouveau pretensions had begun to make it an object of ridicule in the older European capitals, a state of affairs reflecting its increasing importance. 28 Like the Lipperheides, the Kunstgewerbemuseum has received important impetus from fashion while at the same time garnering an international reputation as one of the leading institutions of its kind. In February 2003, it acquired one of the largest costume and couture collections ever to go on the market: the 1572piece Kamer/Ruf collection. The collection takes its name from London-based Martin Kamer, who was born in Zug in Switzerland and developed a keen knowledge of the history of costume and theatre history from studies and work in costume and theatre design in Europe, America and Australia, and Wolfgang Ruf, who founded the Galerie Ruf AG in Rastatt, Germany, in 1981, moved to Beckenried bei Luzern in 1998 and is recognised as one of the foremost experts on European textiles and costumes from the thirteenth through to the twentieth centuries. 29 In acquiring the Kamer/Ruf collection, the Kunstgewerbemuseum enriched its holdings with 660 pieces of clothing and 912 accessories, including rare items of male clothing in the style of the French court dating back to the eighteenth century, and 280 women’s dresses by designers who constitute a who is who of the fashion world, beginning with Charles Frederick Worth and including Paul Poiret, Mariano Fortuny, Coco Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli, Cristóbel Balenciaga, Madame Grès, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Rudi Gernreich, Paco Rabanne and Gianni Versace. 30 Acquiring the Kamer/Ruf collection had the domino effect of bringing another prestigious fashion collection to the Kunstgewerbemuseum: that of Uli Richter, the post-WWII ‘ambassador of German fashion.’ 31 The Kunstgewerbemuseum has also taken to hosting fashion shows during Berlin Fashion Week, as well as promoting the work of promising young designers, such as c.neeon, whose colorful clothes it exhibited in the summer of 2006. Like the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the LKB has remained active. 32 Not only does it organise exhibits to showcase the treasures in its collection and raise the profile of local heroes, it also runs a lecture series called Mode Thema Mode, in which local and international scholars give public talks on a wide variety of fashionrelated topics. In short, fashion has been increasing influential to the success of the LKB and the Kunstgewerbemuseum, and scholars can benefit from attending to it and how it intersects with understandings of dress. The Library in particular has shown itself to be aware of how diverse the channels of communication have

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__________________________________________________________________ become in fashion and the fact that, without communication, fashion cannot reach its market and neither can the museums that house and care for fashion collections. Museums need to find new ways of responding to the challenges of making their holdings available in ways that will help to guarantee their survival while at the same time striving to reach new global audiences and receive global recognition. Academics should not underestimate the role that we too can play in this process.

Notes 1

I would like to thank Dr Adelheid Rasche, Director of the Sammlung Modebild Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek, for her encouragement and helpful feedback. 2 A. Bancroft, ‘Book Review. Fashion: A Philosophy by Lars Svendsen’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2008, p. 394. 3 C. Breward, ‘Between the Museum and the Academy: Fashion Research and its Constituencies’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2008, p. 84. 4 Cited in P. McNeil, ‘“We’re Not in the Fashion Business”: Fashion in the Museum and the Academy’, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2008, p. 69. 5 Ibid., p. 69. 6 Its website is at: . This issue is the starting point for S. Ingram and K. Sark, Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion, Intellect Books, London, 2011, the first chapter of which deals with fashion and Berlin’s museal landscape and offers a more detailed accounting of the LKB and its context than this space allows. 7 The first translation is from the MWB Mijnwoordenboek online German- English August 2012, dictionary, viewed on 26th The second . translation is from Oliver Weiss’ ‘Old German Professions’ website, viewed on 26th August 2012, . 8 A. Rasche, (ed), Frieda Lipperheide, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, 1999, p. 13. 9 Ibid., pp. 16-17. The cause of her death is subject to debate; however, whether a stroke, as reported in the Modenwelt, or a heart attack as reported in the letters of her close friend Hugo Wolf, it was in any case unexpected and sudden (cf. Rasche, op. cit., p. 16). 10 G. Wagner, ‘Der Sammler Lipperheide’, Preußischer Kulturbesitz: Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Vol. 3, 1964, p. 140.

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A. Graf, ‘Modezeitschriften’, in Die Ursprünge der Modernen Medienindustrie: Familien- und Unterhaltungszeitschriften der Kaiserzeit (1870-1918), p. 46, viewed on 26th August 2012, . 12 R. Schmidt, ‘Franz Lipperheide’, in Deutsche Buchhändler. Deutsche Buchdrucker, Band 4. Berlin, Eberswalde, 1907, pp. 622-626, viewed on 26th August 2012, . 13 P. M. McIsaac, ‘Public-Private Support of the Arts and German Cultural Policy: The Case of Wilhelm Bode’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2007, p. 373. 14 Ibid., p. 375. 15 The new visitor pavilion on the island is named after Simon. 16 A. Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin, HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 1999, p. 207. 17 Cf. B. W. Lindemann, ‘Bode und Seine Sammler: Ein Blick auf die Sammelkultur in Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Zum Lob der Sammler: Die Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin und ihre Sammler, A. Bärnreuther and P. K. Schuster (eds), Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 2008, pp. 142-163. 18 A. Mayerhofer-Llanes, Die Anfänge der Kostümgeschichte, Scaneg, Munich, 2006, p. 261. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 19 Wagner, op. cit., p. 141. 20 Mayerhofer-Llanes, op. cit., p. 259. 21 A. Rasche (ed), Die Kultur der Kleider: Zum Hundertjährigen Bestehen der Lipperheideschen Kostümbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 1999, p. 114. 22 Ibid., p. 114. 23 A. Rasche, ‘Peter Jessen, der Berliner Verein Moden-Museum und der Verband der Deutschen Mode-Industrie, 1916 bis 1925’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Historische Waffen- und Kostümkunde, 1995, Vol. 1-2, p. 66. 24 Rasche, Die Kultur der Kleider, p. 114. 25 J. Sheehan, Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2000, p. 115. 26 M. Franke, ‘Schönheit und Bruttosozialprodukt: Motive der Kunstgewerbebewegung’, Packeis und Pressglas: Von der KunstgewerbeBewegung zum Deutschen Werkbund, eine Wissenschaftliche Illustrierte von Angelika Thiekötter und Eckhard Siepmann, Anabas-Verlag, Berlin, 1987, p. 167. 27 B. Mundt, ‘125 Jahre Kunstgewerbemuseum. Konzepte, Bauten und Menschen für eine Sammlung (1867-1939)’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Vol. 34, 1992, p. 175. 28 See Richie, op. cit., pp. 211-212.

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A. Schönberger, ‘Die Modesammlung Kamer/Ruf’, in Die Sammlung Kamer/Ruf. Mode im Kunstgewerbemuseum, KulturStiftung der Länder and SMB Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, 2005, pp. 11-12. 30 Ibid., p. 13. 31 See C. Waidenschlager and G. Kessemeier (eds), Uli Richter: Eine Berliner Modegeschichte, A Berlin Fashion Story, DuMont, Cologne, 2007. 32 Information on the exhibitions it has held is available in Berliner Chic.

Bibliography Bancroft, A., ‘Book Review. Fashion: A Philosophy by Lars Svendsen’. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2008, pp. 393-396. Breward, C., ‘Between the Museum and the Academy: Fashion Research and its Constituencies’. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 83-93. Franke, M., ‘Schönheit und Bruttosozialprodukt: Motive der Kunstgewerbebewegung’, in Packeis und Pressglas: Von der KunstgewerbeBewegung zum Deutschen Werkbund, eine Wissenschaftliche Illustrierte von Angelika Thiekötter und Eckhard Siepmann. Anabas-Verlag, Berlin, 1987, pp. 167173. Graf, A., ‘Modezeitschriften’, in Die Ursprünge der Modernen Medienindustrie: Familien- und Unterhaltungszeitschriften der Kaiserzeit (1870-1918), p. 46, viewed on 26th August 2012, . Hollander, A., Seeing through Clothes. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975. Ingram, S. and Sark, K., Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion. Intellect Books, London, 2011. Klonk, C., ‘Mounting Vision: Charles Eastlake and the National Gallery of London’. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 2, 2000, pp. 331-347. Lindemann, B. W., ‘Bode und Seine Sammler: Ein Blick auf die Sammelkultur in Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Zum Lob der Sammler: Die Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin und ihre Sammler. A. Bärnreuther and P. K. Schuster (eds), Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 2008, pp. 142-163.

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__________________________________________________________________ Mayerhofer-Llanes, A., Die Anfänge der Kostümgeschichte. Scaneg, Munich, 2006. McIsaac, P. M., ‘Public-Private Support of the Arts and German Cultural Policy: The Case of Wilhelm Bode’. International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2007, pp. 371-391. McNeil, P., ‘Conference Report: “The Future of Fashion Studies”’. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 105-110. —––, ‘“We’re Not in the Fashion Business”: Fashion in the Museum and the Academy’. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 65-81. Mundt, B., ‘125 Jahre Kunstgewerbemuseum. Konzepte, Bauten und Menschen für eine Sammlung (1867-1939)’. Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Vol. 34, 1992, pp. 173-184. Rasche, A. (ed), Die Kultur der Kleider: Zum hundertjährigen Bestehen der Lipperheideschen Kostümbibliothek. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 1999. —––, ed. Frieda Lipperheide. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, 1999. —––, ‘Peter Jessen, der Berliner Verein Moden-Museum und der Verband der Deutschen Mode-Industrie, 1916 bis 1925’. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Historische Waffen- und Kostümkunde, Vol. 1-2, 1995, pp. 65-92. Richie, A., Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin. HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 1999. Schmidt, R., ‘Franz Lipperheide’, in Deutsche Buchhändler. Buchdrucker. Band 4. Berlin/Eberswalde, 1907.

Deutsche

Schönberger, A., ‘Die Modesammlung Kamer/Ruf’, in Die Sammlung Kamer/Ruf. Mode im Kunstgewerbemuseum. KulturStiftung der Länder and SMB Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, 2005, pp. 10-14.

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__________________________________________________________________ Sheehan, J., Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2000. Vogtherr, C. M., ‘Das Königliche Museum zu Berlin. Planungen und Konzeption des Ersten Berliner Kunstmuseums’. Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Vol. 39, 1997, pp. 3-302. Wagner, G., ‘Der Sammler Lipperheide’. Preußischer Kulturbesitz: Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Vol. 3, 1964, pp. 140-147. Waidenschlager, C. and Kessemeier, G. (eds), Uli Richter: Eine Berliner Modegeschichte, A Berlin Fashion Story. DuMont, Cologne, 2007. Susan Ingram is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, where she is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies and the Research Group on Translation and Transcultural Contact. Publications such as Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion (Intellect 2011) and the edited volumes World Film Locations: Berlin (Intellect 2012) and Historical Textures of Translation: Traditions, Traumas, Transgressions (Mille Tre 2012) reflect her interest in the institutions of European cultural modernity.