Aspects of Fashion in Popular Culture

(2006)

A. Fashion and Dance

Principles:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B. A Brief History of Fashion

C. The Fashioned Body: fashion, dress and modern social theory

Joanne Entwistle, 2000, London: Blackwell

Fashion and Dress

1 When we speak of fashion we speak simultaneously of a number of overlapping and interconnecting bodies involved in the production and promotion of dress as well as the actions of individuals acting on their bodies when 'getting dressed'.

3 The literature on fashion tends to be theoretical in scope and does not examine the mechanisms by which fashion translates into dress in everyday life....Studies of dress, on the other hand produced mainly by anthropologists, tend to be empirical in scope, examining dress in everyday life within particular communities and by particular individuals

7 the ubiquitous nature of dress would seem to point to the fact that dress and adornment is one of the means by which bodies are made social and given meaning and identity. The individual and very personal act of getting dressed is an act of preparing the body for the social world, making it appropriate, acceptable, indeed respectable and possibly even desirable also. ..Dress is the way in which individuals learn to live in their bodies and feel at home in them...

8 sanctions: "According to Quentin Bell (1976), wearing the right clothes is so very important that even people not interested in their appearance will dress well enough to avoid social censure. In this sense, he argues, we enter into the realm of feeling 'prudential, ethical and aesthetic, and the workings of what one might call sartorial conscience' (1976: 18-19)

9 This centrality of dress to social order would seem to make it a prime topic of sociological investigation. However, the classical tradition within sociology failed to acknowledge the significance of dress, largely because it neglected the body and the things that bodies do. A sociology of the body has now emerged which would seem germane to a literature on dress and fashion. However, this literature, as with mainstream sociology, has also tended not to examine dress....Studies of fashion and dress tend to separate dress from the body: art history celebrates the garment as an object...cultural studies tend to understand dress semiotically...social psychology looks at the meanings and intentions of dress in social interaction.

40 terms: Various terms are employed in the literature: 'fashion' and 'dress', 'clothing', 'costume', 'adornment' and 'decoration,' 'style' are among the most obvious. Different disciplines tend towards one or the other term and therefore one way to make sense of the terminology is to locate these words within disciplinary traditions. For example, the terms 'dress' and 'adornment' are associated with anthropological literatures, a major strand of which involves the search for universals...These words can be said to describe a more general kind of activity than either 'fashion' or 'costume'. The term 'fashion' carries with it the more specific meaning of a system of dress that is found in western modernity and as such is generally used within sociology or cultural studies as well as by social or cultural historians of fashion, while the term 'costume' tends to be found in historical texts.

43 The terms 'adornment' and 'dress' are most commonly used by anthropologists such as Roach and Eicher. "Dress', they suggests, signals 'an act that emphasizes 'the process of covering', while 'adornment stressed the aesthetic aspects of altering the body' (1965: 1).....In the west the practice of 'getting dressed' is framed by the fashion system, one dimension of which is aesthetics. The fashion system not only provides arguments for wear, it endows garments with beauty and desirability, sometimes making direct contact with art. In doing so, it weaves aesthetics into the daily practice of dressing. However, before any discussion of fashion can take place a more precise definition is need.

Barnes and Eicehr (1992) and Polhemus and Proctor (1978) disagree on the meaning of the term 'fashion'. Polhemus and Proctor argue that 'fashion' refers to a special system of dress, one that is historically and geographically specific to western modernity. In contrast, Barnes and Eicher do not recognize fashion as a special instance of dress, and indeed make no reference ot it e3xcept to argue that it is a mistake for researchers to consider fashion as a 'characteristic only of societies with complex technology (1992: 23). On the other hand, the literature produced by the disciplines of modernity..has persuasively argued that fashion must be considered a distinctive system for the provision of clothes. Fashion is understood as a historically and geographically specific system for the production and organization of dress, ....Fashion was one of the means adopted by the capital class to challenge aristocratic power and status, first by openly flouting the sumptuary laws imposed by royalty and aristocracy, and second, by adopting and agressively keeping pace with fashion in an attempt to maintain status and distinction. .. Thus, as Bell (1976) and Braudel (1981) argue, fashion is not found in feudal Europoe, which provided little opportunity for social movement. It is also not found in contemporary cultures where social hierarchies are rigid, although it has increasingly developed a global reach through the spread of consumer capitalism.


45 There is therefore consensus among a number of theorists regarding the definition of fashion as a system of dress characterized by an internal logic of regular and systematic change.

46 Polhemus and Proctor distinguish 'fashion' and 'anti-fashion'...They argue that 'anti-fashion' (for example folk dress) is not fixed and unchanging. Rather, folk dress changes slowly, often so slowly that the changes are imperceptible to the people themselves.

47 In sum, the evidence for treating fashion as a historically and geographically specific system of dress is overwhelming and convincing. There are several features which make-up the commonly accepted definition of fashion, as argued earlier: it is a system of dress found in societies which social mobility is possible; it has own particular relations of production and consumption, again found in a particular sort of society; it is characterized by a logic of regular and systematic change.

48 Fashion refers not just to the production of some styles as popular or elite, but also to the production of aesthetic ideas which serve to structure the reception and consumption of styles....The structuring influence is so strong that even dress which is labeled 'old-fashioned' and dress which is consciously oppositional to fashion is meaningful only because of its relationship to the dominant aesthetic propagated by fashion.

However, fashion is not the only determinant on everyday dress....(consider) class, gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, income and body shape, to name but a few. Not all fashion are adopted by all individuals...Other important social factors that influence clothing decisions include historical bonds to now traditional national costume (for example, kilts and the use of tartan in Scotland), and, in everyday life, the social situation or context one is to enter.

Anti-fashion and the elites: Burberry, Laura Ashley....The notion of anti-fashion proposed by Polhemus and Proctor and its adoption by a class grouping has meaning only in relation to fashion. Given the arbitrary swings fashion takes, it is always possible that an anti-fashion item like the Burberry can temporarily lose some of its class association, becoming just another fashion.

50 The taste for high quality clothing: Knowing what counts as quality and recognizing it in the dress of others requires knowledge in the form of 'cultural capital'. Indeed, in an age when jeans and casual clothes are worn by all, making class less obviously discernible in dress, it could be argued that finer gradations of difference requires an even great degree of cultural capital. ...(And are linked to the bodily dispositions of the classes) All classes have their own ways of inhabiting the body--walking, talking, body postures, gestures and the like, which convey subtle information about class.

52 Gender: Fashion is 'obsessed with gender...constantly working and reworking the gender boundary' Wilson 1985: 117)
61 Many theories have developed to explain fashion's dynamics in terms of a logic inherent to the fashion system. Three theories in particular have become quite influential as explanatory frameworks: the theory of emulation or 'trickle-down'; the theory of Zeitgeist; and the theory of 'the shifting erogenous zones'.

62 emulation....(avoiding general all-inclusive explanations of fashion change) The argument put forward here is that dress needs to be understood as a situated practice that is the result of complex social forces and individual negotiations in daily life. An approach to dress which adopts the framework of situated practice opposes crude reductionism and rejects any attempt to isolate fashion as an all-powerful and determining force.

66 considering the way in which fashion operates 'like a language'.... (cf. Alison Lurie The Language of Clothes 1981)

While the direct application of language models to fashion is problematic, the structural model and its method, borrowed from the structural linguistics of F. de Saussure, has become a dominant framework for considering fashion, particularly within cultural studies. ..

68 (But) The structuralist approach, governed by methodological concerns is thus propelled towards texts rather than practices. The 'structural purity' of the text comes from its being a 'frozen' or 'static' moment, whereas social action is complex and dynamic and difficult to capture..
70 The structuralist reading assumes that there is an objective meaning that can be discerned from the surface and which the method of structural analysis can unlock.

73 Richard Sennett The Fall of Public Man 1977

In this account the development of the bourgeoisie and the increasing separation of public and private that ensued during the late eighteenth and nineteenth century have eroded the public life of the individual. Over the course of the eighteenth century and with the rise of Romanticism, the public sphere was eroded by the intrusion of the private sphere and this was coupled with the injunction to be 'authentic' in public. This can be traced through the kinds of dress worn at the time. Up until around the mid-eighteenth century, appearance was not seen to express the self, but instead to be a performance 'at a distance from the self'. The eighteenth-century aristocratic figure, both male and female, would have worn highly elaborate dress, heavy makeup and flamboyant wigs but this striking impression did not attempt to present the individuality of the person. The elaborate dress would set the body (and thus the identity) of the wearer at a distance as 'costume' does in theatre: the body was a 'mannequin'. Appearance was all about play and performance and this enabled individuals to live fully in the public world. However, as Romanticism took hold, challenging artifice and celebrating 'natural' and 'authentic' man, the sense that dress and appearance should be related to one's identity emerged.

99 In providing a neat and tidy account of fashion and fashion change, emulation has been immensely popular. However, emulations as a concept is very problematic...
100 Emulation theories fail to explain fashion and why the idea of 'fashion' and 'fashionability' extended through so much of the population in the eighteenth century to encompass all aspects of life......
101 It was not just women who were caught up in the consumer revolution, although commentators at the time and historians of consumption since have tended to assume this.

101 C. Campbell (The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, 1989) argues that the birth of consumer culture came with the birth of modern hedonism among the Puritan bourgeoisie. This is far removed from the ethics of envy and imitation that traditional histories and theories of emulation emphasize. ...modern hedonism involves the use of the imagination to control external stimuli. This produces both the longings and dissatisfactions associated with modern consumption......the servant girl dressing like a lady encodes goods with dreamlike properties and escapism rather than envying the style.

102 While such finery attracted attention to the wearer, it 'did so by the qualities of these adornments as objects in themselves, and not as aids to setting off the peculiarities of his face or figure (Sennett 1977: 69) The body, he suggests was like a mannequin. Men and women wore wigs, which, along with large and ornate hats would have totally obscured the natural shape of the head and would have been the real focus of attention, not the individual beauty of the face. The surface of the body operated in a similar way--the increased exposure of women's breasts over the course of the century was intended as a showcase for the jewels worn around the neck.


104 Conventions of dress, speech and interaction in the eighteenth century were taken as straightforward social conventions, not as symbols behind which lies some inner truth (as they are today). For Sennett, this element of playfulness with one's public appearance and identity is a positive thing, enabling one to be artful and expressive and enjoy open social interaction. Indeed, Sennett argues that people are more sociable when there are tangible barriers such as social conventions between them. However, when one treats things as symbolic, as embodying a hidden meaning, the playfulness of conventions is lost and so too the freedom it allows in terms of sociability....Sennett is critical of the Romantic concern with authenticity which invaded the public realm in the nineteenth century and in doing so, he argues, it diminished the possibilities of an active and artful social life.

105 Tensions between the older formal French style and the English country style had repercussions both in France and abroad. In France, the "Macaroni" style (as in the song "Yankee doodle-dandy') became associated with the ultra-modern young noblemen in France; this tyle spread to England, where it was adopted by some of the more conservative aristocracy. The fashion was foppish, elaborate and considered effeiminate; some condemned its tight short coat as obscene.
108 Modernity and the Nineteenth Century....How do all these developments relate to fashion and dress? In such a world as this, fashion takes on new significance; it is the means by which people negotiate their identity, move through the city unnoticed and comes to serve almost as 'armour' protecting the individual.

Fashion and Identity

113 The dandy style was an older aristocratic style of dress which articulated a concern for individual distinction, a never ending concern to appear 'distinguished', while the Romantic style represents a more familiar desire within contemporary culture, namely to be an expressive individual and be 'true to oneself'. This tension between artifice and authenticity, between the self as constructed and self-styled and the self as natural and authentic is one that recurs in contemporary literature.

117 Fashionability depends upon distinction or differentiation which, once copied universally, is negated. A trend-setting group whose identity depends upon being 'hip" will therefore move on to adopt another style.

120 "Fashion was the key to modernity for Baudelaire," It was essentially about the continual desire for the beautiful; 'an ideal towards which the restless spirit of mankind is incessantly spurred' (Steele 1988: 90).

121 The 'intimate society' of the nineteenth century sought to probe beneath the appearance, to find the 'inner truth' of the 'other'. This attitude encouraged the idea that if there is an inner reality, then it should relate to one's outer appearance.

Sentimental dress, which threw off the excessive decoration apparent in female dress from 1815 to the 1830s, drew attention to the body and face of the wearer: bonnets, for example were plain and simple and drew close to the head, so framing the face and its features.

The idea that character is immanent in appearance became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century, although the idea stretches back much further. The desire to find inner truth behind the mask of appearance is tied to the cult of Romanticism as much as it is tied to the rise of the urban bourgeoisie. Romanticism as a philosophical and aesthetic movement stretching back to the eighteenth century prioritizes the 'natural' over the social or cultural and challenges what it sees as the artifice and superficiality of appearances. In such a moral universe as this, dress and appearance are thought to reveal one's 'true' identity; gone is the eighteenth-century idea that appearances within the public realm can act as a playful facade set at a distance from one's intimate life.

123 Modernity is strangely contradictory: authenticating narratives, such as physiognomy, make claims to know the self from its surface appearance, while at the same time there is a heightened awareness that appearance (such as the cool exterior of the blase attitude) is constructed and can therefore not be trusted as 'authentic."


126 the dandy: The style was, according to Wilson, highly erotic, the ight breeches and finely tailored jacket calling attention to the male form, as did the lack of make-up, perfume and 'fooppish' decoration. As Wilson points out, however, the term 'dandy' is sometimes confused the the 'fop', or eighteenty-century aristocrat known for his vanity, elaboraqtion and rather effeminate appearance. However, the dandy style is quite the opposite of this and inntroduced a style of masculinity that is more recognizably modern.


127 As a figure who made it his occupation to be a man of leisure, who prided himself on his aesthetic superiority, seeking disticntion through the exercise of his exquisite taste, the dandy is a contradictory character, part modern hero, part aristocrat.

131 Although the Romantic ethos was linked to spirituality and not materiality it laid the foundations for a hedonistic attitude towards the world and the objects in it, 'by providing the highest possible motives with which to justify day-dreaming, longing and the rejection of relaity, together with the pursuit of originality in life and art; and by so doing, enable pleasure to be ranked above comfort' (Campbell, C., 1989).

Like the dandy, the bohemian might not work, making leisure and end in itself. Unlike the dandy, however, the bohemian seeks out pleasure while relinquishing comfort, and looks for new experiences by which to indulge the sense.

Style and taste during the Victorian era?

133 The links between fashion and class identity are far less apparent in the twentieth century than they were in the nineteenth. In particular, 'high' fashion, once the preserve of a small elite, has been democratized...Further, the fashion hierarchy between classes has been inverted with 'high'-status styles no longer necessarily residing at the 'top' of the social ladder but 'bubbling up' from the street, from youth subcultures (Polhemus 1994 Streetstyle)

137 Style, that combination of dress and the way in which it is worn, is expressive not only of class identity but of subcultural identities. In this respect, style is the 'connective tissue' to which Wilson (1985, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity) refers: it heightens our sense of connectedness to particular groups, making visible our commitment to a particular community. It is linked to class groupings and can articulate class allegiances, as in the case of the Sloane Ranger, or can be substance which brings together a group that is a subdivision of a particular class. In all case, the boundary between the inside and the outside of the group is policed in some way: style is one ay in which one can tell if the other is a member of the same group. Subcultures depend upon particular forms of knowledge and behaviour and require particular ways of being. This is closely linked to what Bourdieu termed the habitus: subcultures produce their own particular practices which are in part bodily orientations or way so fmoving, walking, and talking which are worn like a 'second skin' on the body of the skinhead, punk raver.


Fashion and Gender
141 Clothing does more than simply draw attention to the body and emphasize bodily signs of difference. It works to imbue the body with significance, adding layers of cultural meanings, which, because they are so close to the body, are mistaken as natural.

142 Fashion has typically been associated with 'femininity' and it is therefore necessary to consider also how this association has been established historically in the west. One possible explanation for this may lie in the close association of 'woman' with the body evident in much eighteenth-and nineteenth-century social theory, as well as in Christian teachings (not to mention Hellenic social life as discussed by Page DuBois in Torture and Truth).

distinguishing sex (male and female) from gender (masculine and feminine)...Ann Oakley's Sex, Gender and Society, Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

143 Clothing is a crucial feature in the production of masculinity and femininnity: it turns nature into culture, layering cultural meanings on the body.

146 The characterization of women with the 'triviality' of fashion and men with more 'serious' business has only recently been challenged with the rise of the 'new man' whose narcissistic preoccupation with his apperance became the stuff of advertisements and men's magazines from the 1980s, and whose relationship to clothing and adornment presented a sharp contrast to the no-nonsense 'wash and go' masculinity, which had dmoninated much of the ninetenth and twentieth centuries.

147 Eighteenth century...women enjoyed some control over fashion, e.g. Rose Bertin, dressmaker to Marie Aantoinette, whose power and influence over her famous client 'provided considerable censure'..(as a result) Women's control over the fashion system was gradually broken down...female labour was progressively confined to unskilled production and later to 'sweating' and poor conditions of work and pay.


In medieval times, the (woman's) power, associated with personal and social dissplay and with the management of household expenditure, persisted for centuries and women became progressively responsible for making a home.

149 From 1100 to the beginning of the seventeenth cnetury, men's fashions were often highly erotic but it was women's immodest display that was the focus of relgiious and moral condemnation. Only a woman could be accused of seduction in dress.

152 Until the seventeenth or even the eighteenth century, sexual difference in dress was not strongly marked,,,class remained a pre-eminent feature...By the close of the fifteenth century, fashionable dress had become so fantastical and absurd that it was difficult to tell men and women at a distance. Later, the differences became more marked with an aggressive masculinity asserting itself in the sixteenth century in the form of excessive padding around the shoulders, legs, and, indeed, the genitals of men as codpieces become ever more exaggerated and elaborate.

(The codpiece raises an interesting side-issue. Samuel Piper's etymology is supported by the OED, thus suggesting that effort to link the term codpiece to the fertile fish (cf. Kurlansky's Cod) may be the result of overactive imaginations. The painting attributed to the 16th century Angelo Bronzenoze strikes us as a hilarious catachresis.)

 


Sarah suggests "Fashion Through Time" for more commentary on the history of fashion.