When all that is Solid Melts into Fashion - fashions FLIRT with modernity DKDS // CDF // 2006

Two Papers on Fashion Theory

TwO PApErs ON FAsHiON THEOrY

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When all that is Solid Melts into Fashion - fashions FLIRT with modernity Nikolina Olsen-Rule // External Lecturer, University of rhus // nor@dkds.dk // Research Assistant // Danmarks Designskole // 2006

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Ferns in FashioN - On the Logic of Trends Maria Mackinney-Valentin // Ph.D. Scholar // mmk@dkds.dk // Center for Design Research // Danmarks Designskole // 2006

ISBN 87-983504-0-4 side 1

Nikolina Olsen-Rule // 2006

WHEN All tHAt is SOlid MElts iNtO FAsHiON

- fAsHiONs flirt witH mOdErNitY

Figure. 1. From Alexander McQueens show, What a merry-go-round(AW 2001-02). Photography: hansen-hansen.com.

Nikolina Olsen-Rule, External Lecturer, University of rhus Research Assistant // Danmarks Designskole // 2006

From heroin chic to Alexander McQueen, the distressed body of much 1990s fashion exhibited the symptoms of trauma, the fashion show muted into performance and a new kind of conceptual fashion designer evolved (Caroline Evans 2003: 4) Several readings of fashion in the 1990s stress the relationship between fashion and modernity. As the title of this paper suggests it is the connection between the rise of industrial capitalism and contemporary fashion that inspires the following reading. 1 But how can we analyse this bond between fashion and modernity and avoid re-telling the grand narrative of the twentieth century, and how can we use past-time to prope into now-time? In her article The Greatest Show on Earth, (2001) Ginger Gregg Duggan argues that avant-garde fashion in the 1990s has a strong similarity with performance art in the 1960s. One of the characteristics of this type of performative or theatrical fashion is that it appropriates the techniques of conceptual 1960s art performances. One thing to bear in mind however, is that fashion, no matter how artistic it may seem, is a commercial affair 2. True, it is often hard to differentiate between fashion and art, but we must separate the artistic staging of fashion from the clothes and apparel sold in the shops. It is precisely the staging, the acting out, the performance or the artistic branding that I will discuss in the following. But first a clarification of my interpretation of fashion as a search for, and a reconstruction of a spectacular and modern self-image. As Charlotte Andersen points out in her book about fashion photography Elsa Schiaparellis unconventional and conceptual fashion from the 1930s can be interpreted as a way of inscribing the body in the symbolic language of culture. Thus it is not a question of fitting the clothes to the natural body, but fitting the body to the clothes (Andersen 2006:

174-175). Put differently, the modern perception of self and identity is strongly connected to visual conceptualization and stylization of the self. From a theoretical point of view then, we can approach fashion as a material matter that sculpts the body and set of ideas that shape the self. Accordingly, in the current interpretation I do not interpret the body from a biological and physiological point of view, but rather view it on a more abstract and metaphorical level. This is why I find the notion of fitting the body to the clothes a suitable illustration because it describes the strong ties between the modern sense of identity and representational and image-related practices. Furthermore, I find it fruitful to follow Caroline Evans method, of segueing into the past in order to understand what it means to be modern in the present and how fashion can be seen, in this context, as an interface between humans and their surroundings. Although clothes cannot talk, they carry stories and memories in the form of traces and shapes that are to be unfolded and reshaped by the contemporary interpreter. Hence, the conceptualization of the cultured body becomes central for the understanding of the ways that we shape our identities. But how, then, does fashion shape modern identity? And how can we theorize fashion as a way of designing modern identity? Much of recent literature about fashion is strongly connected to modernity. Art historian Caroline Evans has published extensively on the theme, and I will draw on her work in the following. 3

Modernity To be modern, I said, is to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find ones world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air. (Berman 1988: 345-346) In her book Fashion at the Edge Caroline Evans unveils the liaison between images of illness, decay and death in contemporary fashion

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and the underlying cultural anxieties. Drawing on pivotal writers on modernity such as Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940) and Marshall Berman (1940) 4, she illuminates the interconnectedness of two poques each at the closing of a century, respectively the end of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. In other words she links contemporary concerns with the rise of the western industrial society. As the title suggests, Evans addresses not only the positive sides of modernism, but also the downsides and traumatic aspects. One of the key figures in the book is that of the scavenger, which theoretically is comparable with the German philosopher Walter Benjamins idea of historical rag-picking or scavenging. A person that scavenges is discribed as an official who collects scavage, in everday speech refered to as a garbage digger, or an insect that feeds on dead or decaying matter. 5 If we pause for a moment and reflect on the scavenger as a metaphorical conception of modernity, a contradiction occurs in the sense that modernity is associated with mobility, movement and progress forward motion whereas the notion of scavenging is associated with decay, history, waste and refuse. I will follow Evans interpretation of the scavenger, in relation to modernity and fashion, as an analytic practice that impregnates the modern with a historical consciousness; a historically reflective modernity, so to speak. According to Evans, Benjamins approach to history is dialectical. It is based on the idea, that dialectical images can not be drawn from simple contradictions and opposites, but that history always causes a complex shift in meaning. With this dialectical sense of history in mind it becomes possible to compare fashion with the technique of photographical montage in the sense that it creates new expressions by appropriating and paralleling unfamiliar elements. The eschewment can thus be seen as a re-contextualisation of historical fragments, bits and pieces (Evans 2003: 33). Consequently, this technique of finding traces of the past in the present that are articulated through visual means is a convenient way for the fashion scholar and the fashion historian to connect past, present and future (Ibid). The correlation of past, present and future in unpredictable and unorthodox historical samplings can also be symbolized visually by the labyrinth. As Evans suggests, the twists and turns one has to negotiate in search of a way out are comparable to fashion designers or historians probing into the past to learn about the present.

Crucial to the understanding of the interference between fashion, selfimage and modernity is the industrial capitalism causing population explosion in the large cities. A student of the German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918), known for his early writings on fashion 6, Benjamin echoes some of his teatchers concerns. In his essay on Charles Baudelaire, Benjamin compares the technicalities of the modern city, in particular the traffic light and the camera, to what he terms a post Hume chock (Benjamin 1996: 149). These are modern objects or tools that take part in the disciplining of the body. The traffic light may seem like a banal piece of technology to some, but to Benjamin, and to the new city dweller, this regulatory device represents an intimate part of the modern experience of fragmentation and rootlessness. 7 Benjamin saw in Baudelaire, the figure of the flaneur who botanised on the sidewalk or in the Parisian passageway. The flaneur represents the opposite of the fast city pace and the new bourgeoiss lifestyle: he personifies the artist whose talent is to distil the eternal from the transitory. Thus the tempo of the city fashioned new behaviours and social attitudes. Simmel connects the aloof and unresponsive character of the city dweller with the socialization of the individual in the metropolis. The transient can thus be understood, not only as a short lived passage or a temporary activity, but also as an attitude or a mentality tied to modern urban life.

Modernity in 1990s avant-garde fashion In the following I will first outline the principal notions concerning how the scavenger can be interpreted as a specific modern transient identity - an identity that is conceptualised in the works of fashion designer Hussein Chalayan. Later, I will turn to the question of how Chalayans work mediates between the spheres of fashion, architecture and art. Secondly I will try to explain what Alexander McQueens spectacular fashion has to do with the ghost of modernity.

Figure 2. The picture captures the ephemeral sense of modernity, where individual acquaintances are formed by quick glances; where multiple image layers combine into modern experience. Here the shop window becomes an image screen displaying the mannequins frozen and articial beauty while at the same time reecting the city, as the shadow modernity. Photography: i-stockphoto.com

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Nikolina Olsen-Rule // 2006

Fashion as ritual Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan is educated in Britain, and his work has a biographical sensibility in the way it reflects his background as a Turkish Cypriote. The nationalistic trace is neither nostalgic or romantic, but rather abstract and philosophical. In general, Chalayans design centres on and confronts such themes as split identity, religion and ethnicity. Both in his designs and in the way he stages a runway show, he is known for his unique architectural and sculptural style, which reflects his approach to clothing as

a form of body architecture. As Duggan points out, Chalayans runway shows have an air of artistic performance or ritual, rather than a commercial catwalk show, and the (design) process seems to overshadow the product itself (Duggan 2001: 250). The perception of transience and the ephemeral spirit of modernity appears already in 1994, in Chalayans graduation collection from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, titled The Buried Collection. As the title indicates, the fabric that was later to be sewn together, was buried in a hole in the ground where it was left to decompose and mould. When it was time to show the collection the spectators

Figure 3. From Hussein Chalayans Collection Afterwords (AW 2000-01). The collection was shown in a large retrospective exhibition Hussein Chalayan, 10 years work held in the fall of 2005 at Grninger Museum showing the last 10 years work of Chalayan. A monograph on the work of Hussein Chalayan has been published in conjunction with NAi Publishers Rotterdam. Authors: Caroline Evans, Suzy Menkes, Bradley Quinn, and Ted Polhemus. 176 pages, paperback, edited by Barbera van Kooij and Sue-an van der Zijpp. The press material for the exhibition describes: This collection refers to the reality of the refugee. In this, the upholstery is transformed into dresses, the chairs into suitcases, and the coffee table unfolds to become a skirt. Photography: Chris Moore.

Figure 4. This pictures shows Hussein Chalayans collection Temporal Meditations (SS 2004), taken from the exhibition at Grninger Museum. Characteristic for Chalayan the border between the clothed body and the surrounding environment is blurred by mirroring reections. Furthermore this photo captures how matching patterns in dress and wallpaper obscure the spatial boundaries. Photography: Marten de Leeuw

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received a text that neatly described the deterioration process of the fabric. In this manner, Chalayan infuses the material nature of the fabric with the eventual and inevitable decay of the human flesh and body. The transformation and manipulation of physical objects by technology seem to be emblematic for Chalayan, as well as the juxtaposition of new and old in an almost melancholic fashion. When opening his show Panoramic (1998-99) Chalayan used Wittgensteins phrase what you cannot speak of you most pass over in

silence. 8 With these words, Chalayan whished to express the discursive limitations of language, technology, religion and science (Evans 2001: 74) The philosophical theme was emphasized by the robotic movements of the models and the reflections of the mirrors covering the surrounding stage. In effect the sense of spatial depth was dissolved into a pulsating movement of mirrored and reflected shapes and light. The boundaries between the bodies of the models bodies and the surroundings melted into a panoramic moving picture.

Figure 5. From Alexander McQueens show,What a merry-go-round(AW 200102). Here the double sidedness of modern society is embodied by the golden skeleton as a symbol of the reckless consumption as a form of cannibalistic capitalism. Photography: hansen-hansen.com.

Figure 6. Alexander McQueen What a merry-go-round(AW 2001-02).The illustration of fashion as a circus is conceptualised in McQueens dramatic scenography where the merry-go-round is the perfect prop, as it shows the frivolity and the endless circulation of fashion. Photography: hansen-hansen.com.

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In one of his most extravagant shows for the collection Afterwords (AW 2000-01) Chalayan literally transformed the scenography into ambulant wearables (figure 3). The idea of turning furniture and architecture into ambulant and wearable structures is not entirely novel, however. It calls to mind the 1960s blow up architecture by the experimental British design group Archigram. In Chalayans show the chairs upholstery changes into dresses and the table becomes a skirt. In essence, Chalayan activates the space between the world of physical objects and the human body in the way that he extends the sphere of clothing to include a wider range of objects such as furniture and buildings. Consequently, the world becomes a mere symbolic surface; a fabric that clothes the body. In the retrospective exhibition Hussein Chalayan, 10 years work held at Grninger Museum in The Netherlands (2005) the idea of extending the body into space is emphasised by the architectural display, the photography and the arrangement of his design (figure 4). With Schiaparellis fitting the body to the clothes in mind, Chalayan may be interpreted as doing something different: he does not fit the body to the clothes, but keeps interpreting and reinterpreting the clothed body as a cultural process or a cultural metamorphosis, so to speak. In other words Chalayan expresses the ambivalence of cultural authenticity, and his works often has an aura of being unfinished or transitory. Alexander McQueen, on the other hand, seems to be more in line with surrealism and Schiaparelli. I will now discuss the way his design is haunted by the past in a ghostly manner.

The spectacle of modernity Like his contemporary, Hussein Chalayan, British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, was educated at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. However, the two are very different in style and artistic expression. In her article on performance art and fashion Ginger Gregg Duggan categorizes McQueen as a spectacular designer. She describes McQueens show as a drama without a plot. This type of fashion show is characteristic in its thematic explicitness, its extravagant sense of beginning and end and its choice of models. Designers that fall into the category of spectacle are closely connected to the performing arts of theatre and opera as well as feature films and music videos (Duggan 2001: 245). Known as the young rebel of 1990s fashion, Alexander McQueen has always had a love affair with death. In shows like La Poupe (1997) and What a Merry-go-Round (2000) he conceptualizes historical moments and turns familiar things into dramatizations of excess, fatality and destruction. Often the models in his shows appear more like monsters or melancholic clowns than standard icons of beauty. As McQueen explains in an interview, I want people to be afraid of the women I dress. 9 But does McQueens femme fatale look and agressive sexual connotations reflect a fascination with lesbian decadence, or is it an experssion of mysogyny? 10 McQueens aggressive aesthetics thus seems to be intoxicated by a strain of surrealism, which is highlighted in his show for the collection La Poupe (SS 1997). The show is directly referring to surrealist ar-

Figure 7. Spinning carousel. Photography: i-stockphoto.com

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When all that is Solid Melts into Fashion - fashions FLIRT with modernity

tist Hans Bellmers lithographic series of dolls, from the 1930s, where he reconstructs the fragmented and torn limbs of dolls in a painful and haunting montage. Likewise, in McQueens updated version the female body is adorned by a rectangular piece of metal that wraps itself around her body like an ornament of distress and mutilation. And in the more recent show staged on a merry-go-round in front of a Victorian toy shop gothic undertones are reverbating as models, dressed as melancholic clowns, drag golden skeletons across the floor (figure 5 and 6). McQueen plays with aspects of frivolity and death as the fleshy body of the model is shadowed by the golden skeleton; the death-defying acrobat by the aliented clown. (Evans 2001: 102). McQueens theatre of fashion is a carnevalesque staging of modern dreams and fears, but it is also an operational practice. As the fun-fair carousel it is a celebration of a superficial and stylized childishness; the pleasure of the aesthetic and a dramatized ceremonial mimicking of everyday life. Like fashion the carousel is a symbol of pleasure and leisure. Its rare and outlandish charm is experienced in the thrill of the ride, where the spinning movement liquefies familiar images and turns the real world into a hazy backdrop. But on a more serious note the carousel can also be associated with abandoned fun-fairs along the seaside of old industrial British towns and symbolize a melancholic or ghostly trace of modernity. Consequently, McQueens juxtaposition of the carousel, beauty and decay can be viewed as a form of spectactacular staging of modernity. But how does the decomposing body relate to the glittering world of fashion, and how does surrealism fit into the picture? In her article Magic Fashion, Elizabeth Wilson argues that surrealism marked the moment in history, when fashion and art became most

intimately joined. Although the notion of artistic authorship was established in the twentieth century when Charles Frederick Worth established his haute couture enterprise, the dramatic fusion of the natural and artificial, the confusion between the animate and the inanimate is unassailably linked with surrealism. The kinship between surrealism and fashion is underlined by Richard Martin. In his book Fashion and Surrealism he writes: For surrealists, fashion became the most compelling friction between the ordinary and extraordinary, between disfigurement and embellishment, body and concept, artifice and real (Martin 1988: 15-16). The surrealists aim of breaking down the barrier between the subjective and the objective is represented artistically in the works of Man Ray, Hans Bellmer and many others. The poet and author or the surrealist manifesto Andr Breton coined the term convulsive beauty, which refers to a grotesque, uncanny and monstrous beauty illustrated in the bizarre dolls of Bellmer and Man Ray (figure 8). 11 The disfigurement of the body and fetish for unusually placed objects is a technique that in a way foresees the trauma of post-modern art. 12 As Charlotte Andersen explains, surrealism moves away from the polished museum interior and its hierarchies of good taste, and conquers the mental space as a life practice or a mindset. (Andersen 2006: 171). 13 In a similar vain, Wilson describes the surrealist experience as a gab between the organic and the inorganic or a tear in the fabric of our experience, through which we may glimpse a different version of the world. (Wilson 2004 :384). It is the tearing and splitting of the seamless rational logic that captures the spirit of Schiaparellis symbolic collections. Her work always alludes to the dressed body. Thus the space between clothes and body melts into conceptual and often erotic pieces, where parts of the body (for example nipples or nails) are rendered as fake and caricatured emblems on the garment

Figure 8. The inanimate quality of dolls was often used by surrealist artists to illustrate the degeneration of modern identity (society), articulating a so called convulsive beauty. This picture is not a surrealist photograph, but merely an illustration of that eerie sense of lifelessness characteristic of these dolls. Photography: i-stockphoto.com

Figure 9. The Venetian mask has a long history and the rst documented use of the mask during the carnival dates back to approximately 1268. The carnival is associated with hedonistic anarchic festivities. Photography: i-stockphoto.com

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surface. Essentially, the boundary between body and garment and between subject and object is blurred in Schiaparellis playful works. McQueens melodramas, on the other hand, can be viewed more as artistic interpretations of Das Unheimliche which refers to Sigmund Freuds concept of mysterious and unexplainable experiences of the unfamiliar in life. 14 But why does fashion in the 1990s delve into eerie and uncanny expressions?

Acting out identity The mystery of the modern self-identity is strongly tied to the meeting with the other. As mentioned above the confusion between subject and object and self and other is an artistic strategy for the surrealists as if identity becomes a kind of masquerade. Sociologist, Efrat Tselon, compares fashion with the act of masquerading. 15 Following Tselon, fashion is a manner by which we act out identities; however, it is not a game without boundaries, but rather a process where stereotypes, fears and dreams coalesce. The idea of identity as performance or masquerade can be traced back to Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) who distinguishes between the carnival as a historical event and the carnivalesque as a literary expression. Bakhtin associates the medieval carnival with a condition of temporary chaos; an experienced space where order and rules are temporarily transgressed (figure 9). Thus the social roles, norms and restrictions of everyday society are challenged. But according to Bakhtin the carnival terminated as an actual event and turned into a mere (literary) expression as feudalism turned into capitalism. In regards to contemporary fashion discourse, poststructuralist theories of identity (and especially gender) as a social construction has gained popularity. 16 Thus the notion of an inner and outer identity, which is emphasized by the double sided quality of the mask, is appropriated in fashion - theoretically as well as practically. 17 The distressed and disturbing expressions of contemporary fashion should therefore, as Evans suggest, be viewed more as an expression of change than an expression of pain. Likewise the ghost can be interpreted as a metaphor for historic trespassing; a way of remixing thoughts ideas and images of the past to move the present.

of their design in a way that evokes a dialogue between past, present or future. And it is in the symbolic interpretations, in the ideas and in the conceptual pieces that the ghost of modernity is revived, not as a deadly shadow, but rather as a materialization of change. 19 Finally, it should be underlined that there are risks involved in an interpretation that moves across centuries to construct meaning in the present. As Evans suggests, perhaps in the 1990s the imagery of death, decay and dereliction came to stand for mutability more than mortality. (Evans 2003: 10) As I have drawn the line from the neurasthenia of Simmels Grossstadt to the hypermodern universe of Chalayans mutable fashion, the notion of modernity has gone from industrial capitalism to trans-modern globalism. And on this conclusive note, I agree with Evans when she suggests that the historical revivals in fashion do not necessarily mean a nostalgic longing for the past, but may instead be seen as new (albeit sometimes melancholic) arrivals. (Ibid: 293) In particular, I have attempted to exemplify how fashion design can conceptualize ideas in time and space, thus materializing a poetic boundary between body and culture.

NOTES 1. The title refers to Karl Marxs famous phrase, which is also the name of Marshall Bermans
notable book on modernity, All that is Solid Melts into Air. The Experience of Modernity (see bibliography)

2. Caroline Evans underlines that Duggan in her text tends to overlook the commercial drive
of fashion.

3. Caroline Evans is Professor and reader of fashion at Central St. Martins College of Art and
Design.

4. Bermans dialectical notion of modernity can be seen as a way to appropriate the modernities of yesterday as he writes, it can be at once a critique of the modernities of today and an act of faith in the modernitiesand in the modern men and womenof tomorrow and the day after tomorrow (Berman: All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York: Penguin Books, 1982 p. 36)

5. The denition is taken from Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2006 6. Simmel. G: Philosphie der Mode, 1905. 7. The sense of modern chock is an adaptation of Georg Simmels well known text Die Grossstdte und das Geistesleben (1903) which captures the way life in the city over stimulate the nervous system, and leads to arrogance.

8. Evans cites Ludwig Wittgenstein from Tractus logico-philosopicus, trans. P. David, Routledge, London, 1991: 74

Closing words In conclusion, the relationship between 1990s avant-garde fashion and performance art, which I set out to illuminate, in this paper, do appear to share common features. But in my impression, contemporary avant-garde fashion can not be explained quite so simply. Although there are strong suggestions of the theatrical in the shows of McQueen and Chalayan, other factors such as financial backing or the lack thereof, play a large part as well. 18 However, as Evans points out, one of the key aspects seems to be that these designers, along with a number of others, transgress and push the boundaries

9. Vouge (USA) oktober 1997 s. 435 10. Due to lack of space, I have left a critique of McQueens display of the female body out
of this paper However it is something that I do have concerns with, and expand on in my masters thesis, Fashion as Experience: An examination of conceptual fashion in the 1990s and its cultural history, Copenhagen University 2005.

11. The eerie detachment of the body is a facet of the uncanny, which Hal Foster underlines
is a central part of Surrealism see Foster, Hal: Compulsive Beauty, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1993

12. Here I refer to works by for example Andy Warhol, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelly, Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith. See Foster, Hal: The Return of the Real: The Avant Garde at the End of the Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass and London, 1996.

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13. My own translation 14. Freuds concept of Das Unheimliche, coined an essay of the same title: The Uncanny
(1919), in Works: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, (ed. James Strachey), vol XIV, Hogarth Press, Lodon , 1955: 217-56.

Dybdahl, Lars: Digterens glorie I gadens maelstrom, in Kultur & Klasse, 51, 1985 Eco, Umberto: The Fortresses of Solitude, in Travels in Hyperreality (trans. William Weaver), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1986 Evans, Caroline: Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003 Evans, Caroline: The Enchanted Spectacle, in Fashion Theory (ed. Valerie Steele), Vol 5, Issue 3, Berg, 2001 Featherstone, Mike: Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Sage Publications, 1991 Foster, Hal: Compulsive Beauty, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass and London, 1993 Foster, Hal: The Return of the Real: The Avant Garde at the End of the Century, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass and London, 1996 Koda, Harold: Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2002 Martin, Richard: Fashion and Surrealism, Thames and Hudson, London, 1988 Quinn, Bradley: The Fashion of Architecture, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2003 Riviere, Joan (1929): Kvindeligheden som maskerade (trans. Winni Hauge), in Maskerade teori, tekst, billeder (ed. Charlotte Engberg og Bodil Marie Thomsen), Skriftserien Kulturstudier, Center for Kulturforskning, rhus University, 1992 Simmel, Georg (1903): Storbyerne og det ndelige liv, in Hvordan er samfundet muligt? Udvalgte sociologiske skrifter. Gyldendal, Nordisk Forlag, Danmark, 1998 Simmel, Georg: Exkurs ber den Schmuck (1908) (eng. Version titled Ornament, in, Isabelle Frank: The Theory of Decorative Art: An Anthology of European & American Writings 150-1940, Yale University Press, 2000 Simmel ,Georg: Philosophie der Mode, Berlin, Pan Verlag, 1905 (2nd Ed. by Leipzig, Kfoner, 1919) Steele, Valerie: Style in Revolt Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen & Vivienne Westwood, in Radical Fashion (ed.Claire Wilcox), V&A Publications, London, 2001 Svendsen, Lars: MOTE, et lososk essay, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 2004 Townsend, Chris: Rapture: Arts Seduction by Fashion, Thames & Hudson, 2002 Tselon, Efrat (ed.): Reections on Mask and Carneval, in Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality, Routledge, 2001 Wilson, Elizabeth: Magic Fashion, in Fashion Theory (ed. Valerie Steele), Vol 8, Issue 4, Berg, 2004 Wilson, Elizabeth: Kldt i drmme, Tiderne Skifter, 1992 Wollen, Peter: Raiding the Icebox Reections on Twentieth-Century Culture, Indiana University Press, 1993

15. Tselon, E: Masquerade and Identities, Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality 16. For further reading on performance studies in relation to cultural analysis see: Colin Counsell, Laurie Wolf Performance Analysis: An Introductory Coursebook, Routledge, 2001

17. Here I refer to texts by Efrat Tselon, Judith Butler and Elizabeth Wilson and also to works
by Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan for a further discussion on the relation between performance theory and fashion see: Olsen-Rule, Nikolina (Ibid 2005), University of Copenhagen (2005).

18. For theories of how image and information technologies affect the design process and
thinking that deal with connections between excess of communication and fashion see: Jean Baudrillard: Seduction, Trans by Brian Singer, Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1990.

19. The parallels of Victorian capitalism and the present post-industrial global economy is identied by Ken Montague as two periods of capitalist transition: the former sought to map out the world of stable, biological, racial and social difference at a time when its own systems of production, observation, and exchange were accelerating the destabilisation and mobility of signs of codes that began in the Renaissance (ref: Montague, Ken: The Aesthetics of Hygiene: Aesthetic Dress, Modernity and the Body as Sign, Journal of Design History, vol. 7, no. 2, 1994: 96). Through the twentieth century this destabilization of signs and codes appears to have accelerated exponentially, rst through print and latterly through electronic media. (Evans, 2003:10)

Bibliography:
Andersen, Charlotte: Modefotogra. En genres anatomi, Museum Tusculanums Forlag, Kbenhavns Universitet, 2006 Barthes, Roland: Mytologier (trans. Jens Juhl Jensen), in Moderne Tnkere (ed. Frederik Tygstrup), Gyldendal, 1996 Barthes, Roland: Camara Lucida: Reections on Photography (trans. Richard Howard), Vintage, 2000 Baudelaire, Charles: Det moderne livs sknhed, in Kunstkritik, Steen Hasselbalchs forlag, 1936 Benjamin, Walter: Om nogle motiver hos Baudelaire, in Fortlleren og andre essays, Gyldendal, 1996 Berman, Marshall: All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Penguin Books, 1988 Butler, Judith: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, 1990 Counsell, Colin & Wolf, Laurie: Performance Analysis: An Introductory Coursebook, Routledge, 2001 Debord, Guy (1967): Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholsen-Smith, Zone Books, 1994 Duggan, Ginger Gregg: The Greatest Show on Earth: A Look at Contemporary Fashion Shows and Their Relationship to Performance Art, in Fashion Theory, (ed. Valerie Steele), Vol 5, Issue 3, Berg, 2001

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FErNs iN FAsHiON
- ON tHE LOGic Of TrENds

Maria Mackinney-Valentin, Ph.D. Scholar Center for Design Research // Danmarks Designskole // 2006 It seems only, well, natural to take a botanical approach to something as organic and sprawling as trends in fashion. Flora and the nature of trends have quite a bit in common, and the distance between the catwalk, the sidewalk and a walk in the woods is not as far as one might assume. Not in the sense of floral patterns, sustainable development or hula skirts with coconut bras. The connection between plants and fashion lies at a deeper level, literally subterranean. Which, by the way, is not the same as subcultural. Trends in fashion fascinate us exactly because they change suddenly, irrationally and above all, constantly. As Elizabeth Wilson explains in Adorned in Dreams: Fashion is dress in which the key feature is rapid and continual changing of styles. Fashion, in a sense is change. 1 While the term fashion covers the entire field from production and media to promotion and immaterial values and does in fact include stabile factors within for instance economy, gender and social position, the term trend can be said to be a sort of logic or motor in the change. Capturing and structuring this ceaseless movement might seem like a contradiction in terms. However, an organic approach might ease the apparent conflict. The aim of this working paper is not to predict the fashion of seasons to come, but rather to conduct a preliminary exploration of the potentials in developing a botanical concept for understanding how and why trends in fashion change.

Clearly, ferns are the stuff of crazes. However, as it turns out, the course of the fern trend or any other complex trend for that matter does not follow a smooth trajectory that simply begins, peaks and ends. The fern experienced a revival in the 1980s where especially the waxy Boston fern and its plastic counterpart was found in countless windowsills next to other graceless houseplants such as the yucca. And the fern is about to be subjected to an entirely different type of fashion revival thanks less to its delicate green leaves than to how the plant is structured underground. Though the frilly fern does have all the frills required in the fashion world. Just think of the transparency of the lacy leaves when the sunlight hits the paper-thin structure, or the seductive drama of the unfurling fiddleheads in the spring. And the fern is not just beautiful and sensuous; there is even a natural history of sexual mystery, which never hurts in the world of fashion. The mystery stems from the ferns lack of seeds and flowers, an absence that shrouded fern propagation in ambiguity for centuries. Until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century, it was assumed that fern seeds existed but were invisible simply because no one had ever seen one. It was believed that if anyone ever did see one, invisibility would be conferred to that special person. It was also held; that the seed could only be collected at midnight on Midsummers Night Eve, the exact moment it fell from the plant. You could catch it by stacking twelve pewter plates beneath a fern lead; the seed would fall through the first eleven plates and be stopped by the twelfth. If you came up empty-handed, it was because goblins and fairies, roaming freely that one night of the year, had snatched the seed as it fell. 7 Despite what we know about marketing strategies, branding, cool hunting and the media we still believe and presumably like to believe that there is something mysterious about fashion propagation, that is: trends. Maybe it gives us a sense of renewal; maybe it embodies the chaos around us; or maybe we like to be seduced. No matter what the answer is, the mystery of how trends in fashion occur and how they move is very much present. It not only fascinates us. It fuels an entire industry: Trend forecasting. Because snatching that invisible seed at exactly the right time is big business. There are various types of trend forecasters but the majority of them promote the image of having a special ability to see the invisible. Though trend forecasters rely on research done by anything from philosophers, sociologist, and anthropologists to trend spotters and designers, the core of the industry is an intuitive power that feeds on this general perception of trends as elusive. Trend forecasters primarily cater to fashion professionals interested in identifying trends as early as possible for competitive advantage. 8

Unfurling the Fern Trends are not exclusive to the fashion world. There are trends in everything from food and power tools to management theories and childrens books. There are even trends in the down-to-earth world of plants. Not only houseplants but also such wild growths as the fern. From 1830 to 1860, England was swept by an insatiable appetite for ferns later referred to as the Victorian Fern Craze 2, or pteridomania to use the Latin term. Not only were ferns of all types collected from the countryside and shipped in from the colonies, it was also the rage to decorate the home with china, textiles and furniture with fern motifs. 3 Victorian book publishers also benefited as well as fuelled the Fern Craze 4 as did Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, who invented the almost airtight containers referred to as Wardian cases used for storing and transporting the popular plants. As it often happens with trends, the Fern Craze has given rise to speculation. Some have ascribed the fern trend to how it reflected the somber mood of the time because the plants supposedly love a dull, quiet atmosphere. 5 Others have suggested, that the ruffled ferns and coiled fiddleheads went well with other elements of Victorian style. But as Robbin Moran concludes: All fads, however brightly they burn during their heyday, eventually run their course, and so it was with pteridomania. 6

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All dressed-up for a debutant ball, 1956, North Carolina, USA.

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Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, founder of Trend Union, is considered to be highly skilled in this field. In 2005 at a trend seminar in Copenhagen, she announced: There will be rabbits! When asked what the background was and why rabbits and not say hamsters would be all around us, her response was that she could simply feel it. As such, she was staging herself as a trend medium and though everyone present was well aware that she was selling her product, the effect was both persuasive and inspiring.

Subterranean Sprawl Which brings us back to the fern: While the mystery of fern propagation was eventually solved in the 17th century, when botanists discovered that ferns reproduce sexually by tiny dust-like spores, the process still has a poetic, even magical air. The fertile fern connections are invisible and only the physical manifestation in the triangular shape of the leaves can be grasped. The same can be said of trends, at least at first glance. The procreation of trends is not evident, but we see the result of the hidden process in the concrete shape of fashion items. When looking at the entire field of trends in fashion, the impression is that of an overwhelming mass of diverse styles, fabrics, colors, textures, patterns and silhouettes. The world of ferns is equally diverse. Dating back more than 300 million years, there are about 12,000 different species. The highest ferns can reach an impressive 12 meters, and the colors range through the full spectrum of green but also white, silver, golden yellow, red, pink, copper, burgundy, and even blue. Fern fronds come in different textures and can be thick and leathery, succulent, hairy, waxy, or waferthin. The majority of ferns make their homes in moist tropical forests, but they also venture into cold temperate zones, bodies of water, and even the desert. In short, the world of the fern is as visually complex and geographically diverse as that of trends. How then can one create a sense of unity in this diversity? When it comes to a passion for fashion, the invisible be it above or below ground has less of a seductive power than the actual object of desire. Which has the strongest allure: The propagation of the fern or the delicate frond of an oak fern with its feathery green tutu engaged in an elegant dance on the scented floor of the woods? But remember, that the leaf of the oak fern is deciduous: When the season is over, its fronds will die. The ephemeral has a seductive power in nature as well as in fashion, exactly because of the urgency in grasping the beauty before it is gone. As the German sociologist, Georg Simmel (1858 1918) says on the diffusion of fashion: As fashion spreads, it gradually goes to its doom. The distinctiveness which in early stages of a set fashion assures for it a certain distribution is destroyed as the fashion spreads, and as this element wanes, the fashion also is bound to die. 9 Or in Barbara Vinkens definition of the condition of fashion: its realization is also its destruction. 10

So while the object is what fascinates and attracts us, it would be nothing without the complicated, subterranean structure that produced it. Because the underground portion of the oak fern keeps growing, changing and moving even after the frond has withered. In botany, this deeper level of the plant is called a rhizome. The rhizome is not unique to the fern and is found in such diverse plants as potato, ginger, couch grass and lily of the valley. Rhizomes also called creeping rootstalks or rootstocks are horizontal, underground stems that strike new roots down into the soil, and shoot new stems up to the surface. While the oak fern propagates through spores, it also spreads by vegetative reproduction through its rhizome. Depending on the context, this underground, rhizomatic procreation might be described as invasive and vigorous by gardeners trying to rid their flowerbeds of obstinate couch grass; or inspirational by fashion scholars interested in understanding the logic of trends through the fern.

On the Move The rhizome is popular outside its earthy origin. Carl Jung (1875 1961) took up the rhizome as an image of life. In the prologue of Erinnerungen, Trume, Gedanken, he states: Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away an ephemeral apparition. 11 While a fitting metaphor for life, Jung does not go as far in exploring the philosophical nature and structure of the rhizome as do French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925 1995) and psychoanalyst Flix Guattari (1930 1992) who perceive the rhizome as a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing. 12 They take the rhizome to new conceptual heights in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia (ATP). Here the rhizome is used in a philosophical reaction to knowledge based on binary logic, what Deleuze and Guattari imagine as a tree. As they state: It is odd how the tree has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought, from botany to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, ontology, and of philosophy. 13 They see the stable structure of the tree with its vertical trunk, roots and crown as the image of dichotomies in philosophy between for instance human and divine, true and false, self and other. In this context, the classic dichotomy in the understanding of trends would be between in and out. While this aborescent structure is defined by static points and positions according to Deleuze and Guattari, the rhizome in contrast is a complex, dynamic structure from the perspective that: there is no dualism, no ontological dualism between here and there, no axiological dualism between good and bad. 14 The rhizome is not a closed, isolated system but defined exactly by it openness and ability to join disparate elements: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order. 15

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Oak fern. Flora Danica, Gymnocarpium Newman. 1829. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Kbenhavns Universitetsbibliotek.

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Tansy, also known as scented fern. Wallpaper by Arne Jacobsen. Photo: Nicolai Perjesi. Kunstakademiets Bibliotek (KAB).

A trend like an oak fern grows according to a rhizomatic logic that is constantly connecting and changing according to what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as lines of flight. 16 In the dictionary, the word trend is defined as a line of development. 17 A line of flight and a line of development are strikingly similar. Neither have an absolute origin nor a final destination. In other words, trends just as the line of flight have no being but exists in a constant state of becoming: A process which is not to be judged by some final result, but by the way it proceeds and its power to continue. Trends are always mutating, morphing, leaping, reflecting and dying. There is no such thing as a permanent trend with a stable center because that would stop the motor of fashion. Trends and rhizomes are to be understood not as a fixed point or product but as directions in motion. There is no singular instance that directs or controls trends, not even the trend forecasters: the rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General. 18 It is exactly this horizontal, irregular proliferation that makes the rhizome so useful in studying how and why trends in fashion change. As a model for the logic of trends, the rhizome provides a concept for capturing a dynamic line of development, as it is moving. Think of the fern-crazed Victorians sitting in their fern-patterned chair, eating from bone china decorated with fern designs while reading A History of British Ferns, and Allied Plants before rushing off on pilgrimages to the countryside to collect even more ferns for their precious Wardian cases. Trends are not stable and cannot be held in fancy glass cases no matter how decorative it looks. The Victorian Fern Craze is an example of morphing lines of flight that shoot into new territories textiles, furniture, decorative art, science, publishing, travel and break off only to start up again somewhere else: A 1980s windowsill. Evidently, the trend just as the rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. 19

Therefore, understanding trends as simply starting at one point and ending at another might apply to product-specific fads such as blue mascara and oversized shoulder pads in the 1980s. However, when dealing with a more complex trend like vintage fashion, such linear approaches are aborescent and potentially too reductive.

A Flash from the Past A lot can be and has been said about the vintage fashion trend. Because how could old clothes become big news in the early 1990s and continue to connect, leap and mutate for more than a decade, at a time when designer clothes were never more available to so many? It can be argued that vintage is merely a literal manifestation of the role history has always played in fashion. What Vinken refers to in Fashion Zeitgeist as the cyclical revival of forgotten fashions.20 Vintage is the physical exemplification of this resurrection of fashion that has been out of circulation. Judith Clark follows the same line of thought, when she says that fashion has always had a love affair with history, old themes worn as new details. Fashion is about borrowing and stealing, concealing and manipulating.21 As far back as the French Revolution when Roman and Greek styles were in vogue, fashion has drawn on history for inspiration. As Walter Benjamin puts it in Illuminations: Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tigers leap into the past.22 This tigers leap has prevailed in everything from PreRaphaelites in England looking to the medieval styles for inspiration to the imitation of Rococo dress styles in the 1920s.

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Even as recently as the 1970s, historic revivals were highly present in fashion. In the June 16, 1972 issue of Life Magazine, 23 the cover story is on the return of the 1950s: Here they are again, in practically instant revival: The Nifty Fifties as the headline reads. Its all about ducktail hairdos, poodle skirts, Elvis the Pelvis and a lot of bop-shbop-sh-bop. The explanation given in the article 24 for this revival is the young peoples flight to the 50s as a search for a happier time, before drugs, Vietnam and assassinations. A quick glance at any history book will reveal that the American 1950s were in fact uneasy times with nuclear testing, civil rights issues, the Korean War not to mention the Beats mythologized drug experiments. Evidently, the notion of history is another when it comes to fashion trends. Not only is the memory of the 1950s selective at best, the next revival of the 1950s which began as one of several trends within the trend system of the vintage craze 25 that is only rhizomatically linked to the Victorian Fern Craze in the early 1990s was not nearly as preoccupied with the Greasers and Ivy Leaguers as was the case in the 1970s. This confirms Fred Davis point that the very same apparel ensemble that said one thing last year will say something quite different today and yet another thing next year. 26 This particular 1990s love affair with history was especially directed at the 1950s housewife. Suddenly, this domestic style icon was not only having her wardrobe raided, she was also bombarded with tributes: From cookbooks such as Hostess with the Mostess: A Galaxy of Retro Recipes to more explicitly campy items such as the Subversive Cross Stitch Kit 27 where the crafty homemaker could embroider her very own Homo Sweet Homo picture. Following the same logic of the Life Magazine article, one might assume that this preoccupation was spurred by the increasing pressure on women to be a perfect wife and mother while still pursuing a career. However, the fascination with the style of the 1950s suburban superwoman and her dedication to keeping up appearances is not necessarily nostalgic longing understood in Davis Yearning for Yesterday as a social safety valve for disappointment over the loss, or presumed loss, of prized values. 28 Because as Vinken puts it, the time of fashion is not eternity, but the moment. 29 That is to say, trends are amnesic with only short-term memory. There is no hierarchical sense of historical order and progression in fashion trends. Rather history in trends acts under conditions of discontinuity, rupture, and multiplicity 30 as Deleuze and Guatarri put it. The 1950s housewife, then, is not a reproduction of the past but a proliferation. And perhaps one of the reasons for her return lies precisely in the stark contrast to the current reality of many Western women, thereby allowing for maximum discontinuity and rupture. The superficial logic of the trend rather than a deep, semiotic logic seems to be at play. This rhizomatic proliferation is not meaningless but produces a different type of meaning that has no stable center but rather a continuous circulation of states. 31
La Cage au Folle with budgie. Chr. Olsen, Kunstforlag Copenhagen.

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McCalls sewing patterns for crafty housewives.

In 1956, DuPonts slogan was Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry. Life Magazine.

Old News While vintage is an example of circulation of states and proliferation of the past, it is undeniably also a tangible, material revival of physical artifacts. The history of second-hand clothing as a commodity is long and rich dating back at least to the Renaissance. 32 The trading cultures of used clothes have primarily been driven by need among lower socio-economic groups who could not afford the new versions of the fashion worn by higher social groups with whom they identified. Though vintage is generally motivated by desire rather than need, the economic perspective is still relevant at least when looking at the early stages of vintage which was particularly strong in youth culture. Vintage with its relatively reasonable prices could be considered a reaction to the still more overpowering presence of advertising and branding through the 1990s which left less and less room for the expression of the consumers own individual style. Vintage allowed

the consumer to be far more creative because selecting the right vintage item from a pile of second-hand clothing takes a skill, and the pleasure of exercising this skill in order to create a unique look is an important aspect in understanding the popularity of vintage. The thrill of the hunt, the collectibility of the clothing, and the context of consumption that could be anything from a street market to a store resembling grannys living room, was a welcomed alternative to the increasingly sterile environments of malls and flagship stores. In this sense, vintage is similar to other second-hand cultures such as punk, grunge and the hippie movement. But vintage is not anti-consumerist. On the contrary, vintage implies an intense appreciation of the materiality of vintage, because it is assumed that authenticity is woven into the very fibers of the fabric. It is generally agreed, at least in the pink press, that when Julia Robert or rather her stylist chose to wear a vintage Valentino dress to the 2001 Oscars, vintage hit the masses. Suddenly vintage was not just for the fashion-forward or the little old

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ladies who were just wearing the same old thing. Vintage was for everyone, and the vintage brand of authenticity and uniqueness paradoxically became mainstream. Vintage started taking on dimensions of an entire fashion system mirroring the traditional fashion system. Not only have vintage stores popped up like mushrooms in fashion capitols since the mid-1990s, quite a few of the traditional charity thrift stores have opened vintage boutiques 33 as well as introduced customized vintage collections. 34 Corporations like H&M and Selfridges have released collection after collection of vintage-style clothing, and even added a section to the stores with authentic, vintage clothing. There are entire vintage chains such as Wasteland, vintage trade fairs such as Vintage Fashion Expo, Sothebys has had vintage auctions, and the leaping, morphing rhizome sprawls on. Over the last few years, high-end names such as Sonia Rykiel, Gucci and Balenciaga have re-released vintage designs from their archives. There are vintage stores such as What Comes Around Goes Around (WCAGA) in New York that call themselves a flagship SOHO boutique which is far from the smelly thrift store atmosphere the trend was associated with in the beginning. WCAGA also has a showroom that is used by designers who literally copy vintage items for their new collections. 35 In an article in New York Magazine, 36 vintage dealers are referred to as fashion detectives but also as the controllers of the inspiration supply. Vintage, it seems, now constitutes not only its own system but also informs and apparently at times even dominates the traditional fashion system.
The housewifes dream was lined with pink washing machines. Life Magazine, 1956.

Trickle Questions In a conventional trend context, this brief outline of the development in the vintage trend system contains all the so-called trickle theories. When vintage was worn in certain parts of the youth culture and spread from there, the development illustrates the notion of the status oat phenomenon also referred to as the trickle-up theory proposed by George Field. 37 The watershed moment of the 2001 Oscars marks the beginning of a trickle-down effect in Simmels definition: the fa-

Bayer Aspirin promised to cure housework fatigue, 1956.

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shions of the upper stratum of society are never identical with those of the lower; in fact, they are abandoned by the former as soon as the latter prepares to appropriate them. 38 He described fashion as a product of class distinction 39 and though the class in this case is based on the media-created class system of the celebrities rather than the aristocracy, the theory still applies. When designers copy vintage items, it is an example of the trickleup-and-down theory introduced by Rene Knig. The high-end designers borrow from subcultures, the product of which then trickles down through the layers of society. When H&M releases vintage-style designs with hardly any time lag in relation to fashion designers such as Marc Jacobs 40 that are also soaking up the vintage mood, it is an

example of the simultaneous adoption theory also called the trickleacross theory developed by Charles King. 41 Finally, it is worth noting that just because vintage clothes are used does not mean that the designing process is over. At Trans-America Trading Co. in Brooklyn, 70,000 lbs. of second-hand clothing are graded a day, some of which are sold to retailers, wholesalers, and designers of vintage and fashion clothing. Both the sorters at the plant and the pickers who eventually buy the vintage clothes are part of the particular designing process in vintage fashion. The pattern formed by the trickle theories is a criss-crossing of individual lines of fashion diffusion. Each line describes a point of a certain aspect of vintage. What characterizes these lines is that they

Making life easier for plump girls?

Girl of the Nifty Fifties. Chr. Olsen, Kunstforlag Copenhagen.

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follow the trajectory of a single aspect of vintage. In other words, the trickle theories do not resemble the lines of flight because they tend to describe being, rather than becoming. But vintage is a complex trend that does more than follow a simple curve, more than fit into aborescent categories of in and out. The vintage trend is rhizomatic, constantly changing and connecting: From housewife chic over hippie happy to plastic fantastic 1980s (so there is hope yet for the Boston fern!). Vintage also forms connections to other areas than clothing, shooting up delicate fronds in fields like textiles, furniture, design, cars and cooking.

5. Ibid. Moran is quoting one Victorian writer. p. 32. 6. Ibid. p. 257. 7. Ibid. p. 16. 8. Brannon, Evelyn. Fashion Forecasting, 2nd ed. Fairchild Publications: 2005. p. 82. 9. Simmel, Georg. Fashion (1901) in The Rise of Fashion: A Reader. Ed. Daniel Leonhard
Purdy. University of Minnesota Press: 2004. p. 295.

10. Vinken, Barbara. Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System. Berg:
2005. p. 42.

11. Jung, Carl. Erindringer, drmme, tanker. Lindhardt og Ringhof: 1984 (1961) p. 16. My translation. 12. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press: 1987. p. 21.

More than a Love Affair At first glance, the gracefully swaying oak fern is far more alluring that the obscure rhizome that sent it up through the ground to begin with. However, the wild and sprawling network of the fern rhizome is an important motor of this grace. The botanical network is horizontal without at center. It is not chaos, but a unity in diversity that is constantly in the process of becoming. There is no such thing as an eternal trend, because creation and destruction are inherent to trends in fashion. Even recurring fashions such as vintage are different with each revival, because while the objects might be materially unchanged, the perception of them is new. In this sense, trends can be said to lack interiority and depth. A CEO lipstick lesbian can dress like a 1950s housewife without it being experienced as a contradiction. Though there is no General making the calls in a trend like vintage, fashion is much more than an endless series of promiscuous, amnesic love affairs with history. The fashion system is vast and complex containing both prolific and stable elements. However, this experiment with the rhizome as a model for the logic of trends has hopefully unfurled new and frilly perspectives for understanding these lines of flight. And vintage is not the only complex trend that might be subjected to the rhizome model. It would also be interesting, if trends in denim or street wear were touched by the swaying leaf of an oak fern and its mysterious vegetative propagation. And the rhizome, being a rhizome, could also move into other fertile grounds such as music, interior design or anywhere else where trends mutate, morph, leap, reflect, and die. NOTES 1. Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. Rutgers University
Press: 2003 (1985). p. 3.

13. Ibid. p. 18.

14. Ibid. p. 20.

15. Ibid. p. 7. 16. There is continuous reference to lines of ight throughout ATP, but the term is introduced on p. 3.

17. According to Websters New Encyclopedic Dictionary. 18. ATP. p. 21. 19. Ibid. p. 21. 20. Vinken, p. 69. 21. Clark, Judith. Catalogue for SPECTRES: When Fashion Turns Back at the V&A, 2005.
p. 28.

22. Benjamin, Walter. Theses on the Philosophy of History in Illuminations. Ed. Hannah
Arendt. Pimlico: 1999 (1955). p. 253.

23. The Nifty Fifties, Life Magazine, June 16, 1972. p. 39 - 46. 24. The article is not credited. 25. Brannon. p. 108. 26. Davis, Fred. Fashion, Culture, and Identity. University of Chicago Press: 1992. 27. See www.bust.com 28. Fred Davis understanding of the term nostalgia in Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology
of Nostalgia. Free Press: 1979.

29. Vinken, p. 42. 30. ATP. p. 16. 31. Ibid. p. 21. 32. Old Clothes, New Looks. Eds. Alexandra Palmer and Hazel Clark. Berg: 2005. 33. In Denmark, Kirkens Korshr has KK Vintage and Folkekirkens Ndhjlp has
Fisk.

34. Examples are the Fisk collection Fiks (2006) and Danish Red Cross Second
Hand Haute Couture (2005).

35. According to Lauren Sweder, Public Relations Director at WCAGA. 36. Fashion Police by Amy Larocca in New York Magazine, April 29, 2002. 37. Fields, George. The status oat phenomenon The upward diffusion of innovation in Business Horizons, 8. 1970, p. 45 52.

2. In Mobee Weinsteins At Home with Ferns, Landscaping Indoors: Bringing the Garden Inside. Brooklyn Botanic Garden: 2000.

38. Fashion. p. 291. 39. Ibid. p. 291. 40. As Suzy Menkes said of Marc Jacobs in 2000: Jacobs produces clothes from
the vintage store of your dreams in A Vintage Year, or Merely Retro? International Herald Tribune, February 10, 2000.

3. Moran, Robbin. A Natural History of Ferns. Timber Press: 2004. p. 250. 4. According to Moran, 14 books were published on ferns during the Craze. He quotes
the Phytologist, a journal of the times, saying: The literature of ferns ... surpasses that of all the other branches of botanical science together. p. 254.

41. King, Charles. Fashion adoption: A rebuttal to the Trickle-down theory in

Toward Scientic Marketing. Ed. S.A. Greyser. American Marketing Association: 1963. p. 108-125.

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COpENHAGEN WOrkiNG PApErs ON DEsiGN

Address Danmarks Designskole Strandboulevarden 47 2100 Kbenhavn Tlf. +45 35 27 75 94 Editorial Committee Nina Lynge, Research Coordinator, Danmarks Designskole Thomas Schdt Rasmussen, Ph.D. Head of Research, Danmarks Designskole Associate professor Per Galle, Ph.D. Center for Design Research and Danmarks Designskole About Copenhagen Working Papers on Design Copenhagen Working Papers on Design is published by Danmarks Designskole (DKDS). Being part of the Danish Center for Design Research one of the main tasks for DKDS is to enforce design research in Denmark. This journal articulates relevant research themes at DKDS internally and externally. The articles discuss theoretical, methodological and thematic aspects of design research.

2004/2005
1 Danmarks Designskoles plan for forskning og kunstnerisk virksomhed 2 Research and Artistic Practice at Danmarks Designskole 3 Snorre Stephensen og Peter Mackeprang // Keramiske Klimaskrme, 1. Etape 4 Anne-Louise Sommer // Two Papers on Modern Metropolitan Cemeteries 5 Louise Mazanti // Four Papers on Contemporary Craft 6 Ken Friedman // Of course design pays. But who says so, and how?t

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