Fashion Theory

A Reader

Malcolm Barnard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415413398, 9780415413398
• eBook ISBN: 9781351567244
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

From its beginnings in the fifteenth century, intensified interest in fashion and the study of fashion over the last thirty years has led to a vast and varied literature on the subject.

This collection of essays surveys and contextualizes the ways in which a wide range of disciplines have useda variety oftheoretical approaches to explain, and sometimes to explain away, the astonishing variety, complexity and beauty of fashion. Themes covered include individual, social and gender identity, the erotic, consumption and communication.

By collecting together some of the most influential and important writers on fashion and exposing the ideas and theories behind what they say, this unique collection of extracts and essays brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we think and say about fashion.

PART ONE

Fashion and fashion theories

THE INTRODUCTION TRIED TO ANSWER the questions ‘what is theory?’, ‘what is fashion?’ and ‘what is fashion theory?’ This section looks in more detail at the relation between fashion and fashion theories.

One of the problems referred to in the Introduction concerned the extent to which the object of study was the product of the theory employed to study it. Standing in a field and asked to describe what they see, the general saw the exposed killing field and the art student saw the pastoral idyll – at least partly because they were using different theories. Another problem that arises is the extent to which any explanation that is given using such theories are partial, or reductive: the farmer’s description or explanation of the field as a profitable unit does not exhaust the account that might be given of that field. These problems also affect the ways in which theories describe and explain what fashion is and how it works. There is a sense in which any conception and explanation of fashion is the product of the theory used to describe, explain and understand it. For example, if the theory is that fashion is about expression of gender identity, then any and all examples of fashion will be constructed and explained in terms of gender and identity. And there is a sense in which any theory used to explain and understand fashion will inevitably reduce the phenomenon of fashion to its own terms. The explanation of fashion as the expression of gender identity, for example, will not be interested in those aspects of fashion that are not about gender identity and to that extent will be open to accusations of reductionism. This section will introduce the relation between fashion and fashion theories by considering the ways in which theories construct and explain fashion.

The artist and art historian, Quentin Bell, writing in 1947, is quite explicit on these matters, devoting an entire chapter of On Human Finery to ‘Theories of Fashion’. At the end of this chapter, he sets out what he believes ‘the facts’ to be and he says that ‘any theory’ of fashion must ‘fit those facts’ ([1947] 1992: 105). In Bell’s account ‘the facts’ pre-exist the theories that are to explain them, and the force behind his critical review of the four types of theory is based upon them not fitting the facts. The facts, then, exist independently of the theories that are to explain them in Bell’s account, rather than being the products of those theories. The second problem noted concerns reductionism and is to do with the way in which a theory or an explanation of fashion reduces fashion to the terms of that theory and that explanation. All the theories that Bell discusses in this chapter are presented as attempts to answer the following questions: ‘What sets this incredibly powerful evolutionary process [fashion] into motion, what maintains and increases its velocity, gives it its vast strength and accounts for its interconnected phenomena?’ (ibid.: 90).

Bell identifies four types of theory that are proposed in the attempt to explain the changes of fashion. The first sees fashion as the work of individuals. The second proposes fashion as the ‘product’ of human nature. The third explains fashion as the ‘reflection’ of political or spiritual events. And the fourth suggests ‘the intervention of a Higher Power’ ([1947] 1992: 90). What Bell finds, however, is that ‘the facts’ do not fit these theories. Fashion is not the work of individuals because individuals such as Beau Brummel and Paul Poiret were, in fact, often ‘unable to stand against the current of taste’. This form of theory also provides no account of why anyone should wish to ‘obey’ these individuals (ibid.: 93). Fashion is not the product of human nature because ‘as a rule’ men and women have been happy to wear what their parents wore: only recently and only in Europe have people worn ‘fashion’ (ibid.: 94). Neither is fashion the reflection of great historical and political events. Bell cites numerous wars and economic crises in which fashion conspicuously failed to ‘mirror’ events, and he discusses various histories of religion and nationalism in which what people wear also does not reflect events (ibid.: 79–102). Bell uses Heard’s account of evolution in fashion as an example of fashion being explained in terms of a Higher Power. Evolution fails as an explanatory theory because evolution in living things ‘is one in which the fittest survive and the claims of utility are inexorable’ (ibid.: 104). Exactly the opposite is true of fashionable dress, according to Bell, in that utility is often the last thing one thinks of when one thinks of fashion.

Despite his arguments concerning fashion and natural selection, Bell still wants to think of fashion as an ‘evolutionary process’ and he appears committed to the idea that it can and will be explained in terms of its motive force ([1947] 1992: 89–90). Bell says that fashion is the ‘grand motor force of taste’, and the way in which he explains it turns out to have much in common with Veblen’s concept of consumption, a socialised account of class emulation and class distinction (see Part Eight, ‘Production and Consumption’, for more on this). Clearly, there are other definitions of fashion (as a sequence of random differences, or as the expression of inner psychological states, for example) and there are other questions that could be asked of it (’What pleasure does it afford?’ or ‘How does it relate to consumption?’, for example). To the extent that other quite legitimate definitions and other entirely appropriate questions exist, Bell’s account may be said to be reductive.

This is essentially Elizabeth Wilson’s thesis in her chapter on fashion theories in Adorned in Dreams, tellingly entitled ‘Explaining It Away’. She looks at economic and anthropological theories of fashion; her argument is that all are reductive, or ‘simplist’, as she puts it (1985: 54). While she is not explicitly concerned with the ways in which facts are produced from within theories, rather than existing objectively or independently of them, the ways in which economic and anthropological theories presuppose the nature of the thing they are to explain (fashion) is of concern to her. Baudrillard’s (economic) account of fashion consumption, for example, is said to be ‘oversimplified and over-deterministic’ because it reduces fashion to class emulation through consumerism and ‘grants no role to contradiction … or pleasure’ (Wilson 1985: 53). That is, Baudrillard’s theory, which owes much to Marx and Veblen, presupposes a definition of fashion and it ignores anything that does not ‘fit’ into that definition. The definition of fashion here is that it is about class emulation; contradiction and pleasure are ignored here because they do not fit easily into that definition. It will be noted that this is the same move as that made by Bell when he marshals ‘the facts’ and tries to find a theory that will ‘fit’ them.

Gilles Lipovetsky (1994) provides an argument that sounds as though it is in almost complete disagreement with both Wilson and Bell. Writing from a philosophical perspective, he says that fashion has ‘provoked no serious theoretical dissension’ (1994: 4). This is quite a claim. However, it is not to say that there is no such thing as fashion theory; it is to say that there are theories, but that there is no conflict between them. There exists within fashion theory a profound ‘critical unanimity’ and that unanimity is not produced by accident but is ‘deeply rooted in the thought process that underlies philosophical reflection itself’ (ibid.: 9). What Lipovetsky is getting at here is that all critics of fashion, all fashion theorists, have agreed that fashion is fickle or superficial and that it may be fully explained in terms of fashion’s role in ‘class rivalries’ and in the ‘competitive struggles for prestige that occur among the various layers and factions of the social body’ (ibid.: 4). In this, Lipovetsky is essentially in agreement with Wilson (if not with Bell), who says that ‘[f]ashion writers have never really challenged Veblen’s explanations’ (Wilson 1985: 52). This is because Veblen is one of the first writers to suggest that fashion is to be explained in terms of struggles over prestige between different social classes.

Lipovetsky’s account of the relation between fashion and theory is a version of the argument that theory (in this case western philosophy) produces the phenomenon to be studied. The argument is that since Plato western thought has operated with a conception of truth and knowledge that distrusts and devalues images and surface appearance. In Plato’s cave, humans are misled by the play of shadows on the wall: they do not see, and therefore cannot know what actually causes them. Fashion is thought to be like the play of shadows in this argument and as a result western thought mistrusts fashion, seeing it as distracting and superficial. Consequently, fashion theorists are only following some of the most basic tenets of western thought when they construct fashion as enchanting and condemn it for its triviality and superficiality. This is the ‘ruse of reason’ (Lipovetsky 1994: 9) that operates in all fashion theorising as far as Lipovetsky is concerned. The notion that knowledge is like light in some way, and that light may be used as a metaphor for knowledge (as in ‘enlightenment’, for example), is one of the founding metaphors of western thought and it is hardly surprising that it plays a profound role in western theory, including western theories about fashion.

So, in the light of these considerations (to follow the Platonic metaphor again) it seems insufficient to suggest that, if all theory is tied to disciplines and therefore reductive, then as many disciplines and theories as possible should be employed in order to try to escape the charge of reductionism. That is, if any one theory concerning what fashion is and how it should be explained and understood is likely to be reductive, then interdisciplinarity is required to avoid oversimplifying and reducing fashion to the terms of that discipline’s theory. It may sound insufficient, but this interdisciplinarity is precisely what theorists such as Wilson, Tickner and Braudel were seen to suggest in the Introduction. All were agreed that fashion, perhaps uniquely, demanded the use of a number of disciplines in order to define, explain and understand it. If it is the nature of disciplinary theory to pre-construct its object (and thus to be reductive) then many disciplines, many theories, many constructions and many different types of explanation and understanding are necessary in order to minimise (if not escape) the less helpful consequences of fashion theorising.

Bibliography

Bell, Q. ([1947] 1992) On Human Finery, London: Allison and Busby.

Lipovetsky, G. (1994) The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tseëlon, E. (2001) ‘Fashion Research and Its Discontents’, Fashion Theory 5, 4: 435–52.

Wilson, E. (1985) Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: Virago.

Chapter 1

Elizabeth Wilson

EXPLAINING IT AWAY

[…]

BECAUSE FASHION is constantly denigrated, the serious study of fashion has had repeatedly to justify itself. Almost every fashion writer, whether jour nalist or art historian, insists anew on the importance of fashion both as cultural barometer and as expressive art form. Repeatedly we read that adornment of the body pre-dates all other known forms of decoration; that clothes express the mood of each succeeding age; that what we do with our bodies expresses the Zeitgeist. Too often, though, the relationship that of course exists between social change and styles of dress is drawn out in a superficial and cliché-ridden way. The twenties flapper becomes the instant symbol of a revolution in manners and morals after the First World War; the New Look symbolizes women’s return to the home (which anyway didn’t happen) after the Second World War; the disappearance of the top hat signals the arrival of democracy. Such statements are too obvious to be entirely true, and the history they misrepresent is more complex.

The serious study of fashion has traditionally been a branch of art history, and has followed its methods of attention to detail. As with furniture, painting and ceramics, a major part of its project has been accurate dating of costume, assignment in some cases of ‘authorship’, and an understanding of the actual process of the making of the garment, all of which are valid activities.¹ But fashion history has also too often been locked into the conservative ideologies of art history as a whole.

The mid twentieth century was a prolific period for the investigation of fashion. Doris Langley Moore, one of the few women then known for her writings on the subject, commented that the subject matter was women, the writers almost exclusively men.² Their acceptance of prevailing conservative attitudes towards women led to a tone sometimes coy, sometimes amusedly patronizing, sometimes downright offensive, and itself fundamentally unserious, as if the writer’s conviction, often stated, of the transcendent importance of his subject matter was subverted from within by his relegation of women to a denigrated sub-caste. Because fashion has been associated with all that is feminine, these writers wrote about it as they would write about women; indeed, Cecil Willett Cunnington, author of many books about dress, even contributed a book to a series called ‘Pleasures of Life’ – the subject matter Women.³ Other ‘pleasures of life’ included cricket and gardening!

Art history has also tended to preserve the élitist distinction between high art and popular art. Fashion then becomes essentially haute couture, and the disintegration of this tradition, the decline of the Dress Designer as Artist, together with the ascendancy of the mass clothing industry, are alleged to have brought about the end of ‘true’ fashion. Once we are all in fashion, no one can be, so the hallmark of both bourgeois democracy and socialism is said to be uniformity of dress, that ‘grey sameness’ by which all fashion writers are haunted. So Cecil Willett Cunnington sighed for the Edwardian glamour of lace and chiffon, and the charm of bustle and crinoline, regretful that

The modern woman no longer finds costume a sufficient medium for the expression of her ideals …

As the twentieth century lunges on towards the accomplishment of its destiny it is natural that it should discard those forms of art which have ceased to suffice. This is Progress and part of its price is the Decline and Fall of the Art of Costume.⁴

Quentin Bell, on the other hand, while he comes to the same conclusion, does so for the opposite reason, since he foresees that if abundance became universal

class distinctions would gradually be swamped from below and the pecuniary canons of taste would slowly lose their meaning; dress could then be designed to meet all the needs of the individual, and uniformity, which is essential to fashions, would disappear.⁵

Those who have investigated fashion, finding themselves confronted with its apparent irrationality, have tried to explain this in functional terms. The most bizarre styles and fads, they argue, must have some function; there must be a rational explanation for these absurdities, if only we could find it. Yet this gives rise to a dilemma, for how can what is irrational have a function?

This line of argument seems to assume that because fashionable dressing is an activity that relates directly to the human body, as well as being a form of art, it must therefore be directly related to human biological ‘needs’. Furthermore, because when human beings dress up they often make themselves uncomfortable and even cause themselves pain, there has been a tendency to explain this ‘irrational’ behaviour in terms that come from outside the activity itself: in terms of economics, of psychology, of sociology. We expect a garment to justify its shape and style in terms...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One Fashion and fashion theories
• Part Two Fashion and history/fashion in history
• Part Three What fashion is and is not
• Part Four What fashion and clothing do
• Part Five Fashion as communication
• Part Six Fashion
• Part Seven Fashion, clothes and the body
• Part Eight Production and consumption
• Part Nine Modern fashion
• Part Ten Post-modern fashion
• Part Eleven Fashion and (the) image
• Part Twelve Fashion, fetish and the erotic
• Index