Convegno Internazionale

CHE GENERE DI MODA

Milano, 6 Maggio 2005
Aula Pio XI

Universit Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

L.go Gemelli, 1

FASHION, GENDER AND VISUAL CULTURE

Malcolm Barnard - University of Derby
Abstract
I was asked to say something about fashion, gender and visual culture. This paper is about fashion,
gender, meaning and communication. In that it is about these things, I see it as being about visual
culture. What Id like to do is to explain how fashion, gender, meaning and communication relate to
each other in doing this, I think Im explaining visual culture what visual culture is and how it
works.
One way to go about this task is to take each of the terms in turn and explain how they relate to the
others. Given that it is impossible to explain any one of these terms without reference to all of the
others, it may be the only way to go about this task
Fashion
a) What modern, western people wear from catwalk creations to police uniforms
b) Fashion may be about bodies (Joanne Entwistle). But is also, as JE says, about fashioned bodies
that is, produced, cultured bodies and differently cultured bodies wear different things, different
fashions
c) And fashion is meaningful, it is about communication. It is therefore, to that extent, cultural
because culture is about shared/non-shared meanings and communication of those meanings
So we can say that differently cultured bodies communicate different things, meanings, with the
different fashions that they wear. I see my first problem as explaining what sort of meaning fashion
communicates and my second problem as explaining what sort of communication fashion is.

Slide: Roz Chast cartoon

Now, I also want to argue that fashion is one of the ways in which people are constructed as
members of cultural groups. So my third problem is how fashion as meaningful communication
constructs people as members of cultural groups.
Gender
The meaning or significance a culture ascribes to biological, sexual differences. This definition is
based on OSullivan et als Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies and is not
intended to be controversial. Gender is culture to sexs nature - up to a point - exactly where that
point is either a matter of some debate or neither here nor there (OSullivan et al) Gender may be
performance (Butler). But it is meaningful performance.
To that extent, it is cultural and it is communication.
Different cultures - different meaning ascribed to masculinity/femininity this, I assume is the sense
of saying that femininity means something different in 21st C Europe from what it meant in 19th C
Europe. Or: masculinity/femininity have different values in different cultures this is what people are
getting at when they speak about cultural values something that a culture thinks is important,
valuable. Or: masculinity/femininity have different identities in different cultures hence we write of
gender identity/identities
It is these different meanings, values, identities associated with different ways of being masculine or
feminine by different groups of people that make those groups of people into different cultures.
Gender, then, is a set of meaningful differences that are constructed and communicated through
fashion, what people wear Fashion and clothing construct, communicate and either reproduce or
challenge these meanings, these gender identities and differences.
Meaning
Basically, Barthes connotation, without the sense that somewhere there is denotation ie connotation
all the way down Meaning on this account is a product of cultural beliefs, values different beliefs
generate different meanings. Barthes famous old account in Rhetoric of the Image scrupulously
explains each of his five connotative signs in terms of the culturally specific knowledges needed to
understand, or construct, those meanings.
Meaning, then, is a product of the interaction between an individuals cultural values and some
example of visual culture - in our case, fashion Meaning does not pre-exist that interaction the piece
of fashion/clothing is not meaningful in itself the item of fashion or clothing is not meaningful
because of any individual intention. One may be aware of the meaning an item of clothing has for,
or within, a culture but that is already to interact with that cultures values and beliefs.
So, until we know the values and beliefs of the culture, we dont know what version of femininity
they are using fashion to construct.

Slide Victorian women

The Victorian English women here are doing something different from modern English women
femininity here means something different from what it means in modern Europe.
Slide Modern woman
Because of the different beliefs surrounding the notion of femininity shared meaning constructs one
as member/non-member of cultural group. If you dont share it/understand it, youre not
produced/reproduced as a member of the culture
Communication
Now, this is where many people disagree with my kind of approach - a semiological/cultural studies
type approach. Most analysts seem to agree that fashion is not a language in any straightforward
sense. In The Language of Clothes, Alison Lurie takes a metaphor and takes it literally, if that is
possible. I want to argue that if meaning is connotation then it is not the sort of thing that can be
expressed, sent, received, conveyed, or transmitted, and communication cannot involve any of these
things :
1) So, I want to argue that communication of gender through fashion is neither individual nor
cultural expression. Joanne Entwistle says that clothes can be expressive of identity (2000: 112)
She says that clothing is part of the expressive culture of a community (2000: 66).
The points made above suggest that we need to be a bit careful with this notion of expression .
Cultures and individuals are not expressing their gender identity through what is worn.
2) Fashion does not convey or send a message about gender
Slide: Roz Chast cartoon
As Elizabeth Rouse suggests in her Understanding Fashion (p. 24) when she writes of fashion
conveying an impression. Eicher, Evenson and Lutz (2000) suggest that individuals often select
items of dress because of the personal or public meaning that it conveys (2000: 297). Again, on
this model, something has to pre-exist the conveying or sending. As a passenger on a bus, eg
Colin Campbell takes issue with this model of communication in his essay When The Meaning Is
Not A Message: A Critique Of The Consumption As Communication Thesis. He is correct to do
so, but the communication of gender in fashion need not suppose that communication is the sending
and receiving of a message.
Communication of gender through fashion is not a simple sending and receiving of messages. This
is because meaning does not pre-exist the process of communication. And because meaning does
not pre-exist the members of cultures who are communicating. There is no meaning until the
interaction between cultural values and items of fashion. So fashion is not a vehicle for conveying
messages.

3) Nor is communication of gender the reflection of something else. A cultures values, for example
Victorian women are not reflecting their cultures view of them as weak and helpless. And the
modern woman isnt reflecting her cultures view of women as mobile and independent. For any of
these things to happen, there has to be something that pre-exists the expression or the sending and
receiving of it - and this is where I and others differ. I dont think there is a beyond to
representation.
And I dont think anything can pre-exist expression, or representation, even in experience or
spoken/thought language. We are back with Wittgenstein - no private language(s).
Rather, communication is the negotiation of meaning the result of the interaction between cultural
values (ideas and beliefs) and the visual. Communication is also the process in which an individual
is, or is not, constructed as a member of a cultural group.
If I may argue by analogy:
When I watch Sex and the City or the football on tv, the values and beliefs I hold as a result of my
social and cultural positions as a white, middle-class European male generate the meanings of the
programmes for me. Meaning is a product of the interaction between culture - cultural values,
beliefs and ideas - and the visual. The meanings produced are shared with other white, middle-class
European males. It is the sharing of the values and thus the meanings that makes us into an
identifiable cultural group. Members of other cultural groups will construct the meanings differently
Non-European, or Muslim, or old, or working class women, for example, will almost certainly
construct different meanings for the show.
Because they will hold different beliefs and values. Those shared meanings are what construct and
identify people as members of that group. So, the meaning of items of fashion will likewise be
produced through the interaction between cultural values and ideas and the visual appearance of the
items of fashion. This meaning includes gender
Slide Blair/Berlusconi
Neither is sending a message about gender.
Neither is expressing their gender identity.
Both have selected an outfit the gender connotations of which they already know and the
connotations of which they also know will be understood by the other members of their culture.
This is one of the things that being a member of a culture means.
Both are thus reproducing themselves as members of a specific culture - 21st century, European.
Conclusion
There is a phrase in English - we say something sends out all the wrong messages. This sounds
like support for the sender/receiver model of communication and we can all think of examples
where we have changed what we were planning to buy, or wear for this sort of reason...

But what it actually implies is one already knows how the receiver is likely to construct the
meaning. How can we know it is the wrong message/meaning, unless we know how the receiver
will interpret it?
So, if fashion and clothing are said to be sending a message about gender, then it is a message that
the receivers already know the meaning of. And, for the most part, senders know that the
receivers know the meaning of the message. The idea of communication in fashion needs
thinking about more carefully
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland (1977) Rhetoric of the Image, in Image-Music-Text, Glasgow, Fontana/Collins
Campbell, Colin (1997) When The Meaning Is Not A Message: A Critique Of The Consumption
As Communication Thesis, in Nava, Mica et al (eds) Buy This Book, London, Routledge
Davis, Fred (1992) Fashion, Clothing and Identity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press
Eicher, Joanne B., Evenson, Sandra Lee and Lutz, Hazel A., (2000) The Visible Self, New York,
Fairchild
Entwistle, Joanne (2000) The Fashioned Body, London, Polity
Lurie, Alison (1992) The Language of Clothes, London, Bloomsbury
Rouse, Elizabeth (1989) Understanding Fashion, Oxford, Blackwell
OSullivan, Tim et al (1994) Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, Second
Edition, London, Routledge