Fashion

Joanne Finkelstein A C14 meaning of fashion (from L facere) was to make, and that included what an object was made from a human face could be fashioned from poor temper, or a strong physique from noble stock. Fashion revealed the essence and origins of the individual: as in dressed like a Spaniard or draped in Frensche fasshyon. Fashion also referred to a manner, as in a warlike facion or after a fashion. From its earliest mention fashion has had multiple meanings; it refers to appearances (fair in faciun for to sei), styles of behavior (for fashyon sake), and social status (the facyon of the londe). In the same way as physical characteristics of race and physiognomy have been used to explain psychological properties, so fashion has been invoked to make visible the invisible, specifically the psychological. Appearances can show how the fashionable feel; the man of quality must, for fashion-sake, appear in love. In the mC18, Lord Chesterfield famously advised his son, If you are not in fashion, you are nobody (cit. McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, 1982: 39). Other functions of dress include giving warmth and protection. In cultures where clothes are minimal and the body almost fully exposed, there are still strong rules about appearance, decoration, display, and modesty. The body is always a communication system whether it is through dress, masks, scarification, paint, or tattoos. Dress is always unspeakably meaningful, declared Thomas Carlyle (1908 [1831]). By this logic, being fashionable once meant the opposite of its contemporary use, which is often to indicate frivolity, the ephemeral, and the superfluous, as in the dismissive phrase fashionable French theories. Tailoring and eyed needles have been dated back 40,000 years. Fitted or tailored clothes were then a sign of the active barbarian to both the idle Greeks and Romans, who favored draped, loose dress; likewise to the members of the imperial courts of China and Japan, who wore draped garments but distinguished themselves with color and ornamentation. Between the C5 and the C11, across Europe, loose robes were worn by both sexes. Differences in appearances were determined by wealth; the poor wore rougher, woolen garments, the rich favored silks and more ornamentation. In the C12, womens clothes became tighter and more clinging, and by the C14, with early mercantile capitalism and the increasing circulation of goods, fashionability can be seen to have arrived. It was quickly adopted as a visible marker of identity, status, and gender. Shapely, revealing clothes, elaborate headdresses and long, pointed shoes were favored by both sexes. The extremities of the body soon became the focus of attention. Thus the codpiece, originally designed for modesty after the shortened doublet came into style, actually drew attention to the very sexual organs it was supposed to hide. In many portraits, the codpieces are depicted as large and elaborate, studded with the family jewels and jutting out from the body, suggestive of the detachable phallus that would arrive several centuries later. Whenever material goods have been in limited supply, possessions including dress have become symbolic of status boundaries. Between the C14 and the C16, sumptuary laws were enacted across Europe as a means to control what an individual could own and how they could present themselves. Distinctive dress for certain occupations (bakers, clergy, physicians, street vendors, etc.) became visible in the late medieval period. Soon after, fashion begins to be written about, and continues to be into the C21. This indicates its significance as a language conveying cultural tastes and distinctions between social levels or classes. With the expansion of ready-made clothing, the wealthy have sought

ways of displaying superiority. A high turnover of fashion styles separates them from those unable to emulate their levels of material consumption. Thus unfashionable dress comes to signify inferior status. At the same time, uniforms and set styles of clothing (the business suit) become identified with specific occupations, gender, and status (white-, blue-, and pink-collar workers). In the eC20, definitions of fashion and its sociological importance became increasingly contested (Benstock and Ferriss, 1994). Veblen suggested (1899) that women displayed fashions to draw attention to the stature of their husbands and fathers. Virginia Woolf (1929) put the opposite view: that womens fashionability was a relatively simple social amusement, but for men it was an assertion of complex rewards associated with power, authority, and privilege. Oscar Wilde is said to have declared that fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. He followed Kant in the separation of fashion from beauty; the latter transcended the human condition, giving a sense of freedom. Georg Simmel alternatively defined fashion as part of social progress. The more advanced the age, the more rapidly its fashions changed (Simmel, 1957 [1904]). From the mC20, fashion has become a cornerstone of economic expansion in an increasingly fragmented postindustrial society. Appearances are unreliable as social indicators. At one moment, it is fashionable to display womens breasts and at another time a V-neck is daring. In the past, the rich have worn heavy clothing embroidered with jewels; now they wear thin garments of diaphanous viscose, cotton, and pure wool. At another time, it was conventional for men to parade in ringlets, high heels, and rouge (Q. Bell, 1947); now only actors and entertainers might do so. Fashion displays the tensions between conformity and repression: it is at once exuberant and reassuring. Particular garments, such as tight-laced corsets, faux animal skins, floating overlays, stiletto heels, black leather pants, sweat pants, and pumped-up trainers, can transmit a multitude of ambiguous messages. A white bridal gown, symbolic of innocence, is remade by Vivienne Westwood into a brazen display of the brides breasts and fecund sexuality. Here fashion has been displaced by the visual image: appearances represent subcultural interests in S & M, street style, political resistance, and transvestism. In the mC20, Roland Barthes made fashion intellectually serious with his analysis of it as a conservative system for maintaining order: Fashion is never anything but an amnesiac substitution of the present for the past (1985: 289). Barthes contradicted the assumption that fashion was about the new and radical, and argued it was always about preserving the status quo. pp. 126-128