Fashioning Spain

From Mantillas to Rosalía

Francisco Fernández de Alba, Marcela T. Garcés, Francisco Fernández de Alba, Marcela T. Garcés

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350244580
• eBook ISBN: 9781350169289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Fashion Design
• Index: Social Sciences

Fashioning Spain is a cultural history of Spanish fashion in the 20th and 21st centuries, a period of significant social, political, and economic upheaval. As Spain moved from dictatorship to democracy and, most recently, to the digital age, fashion has experienced seismic shifts. The chapters in this collection reveal how women empowered themselves through fashion choices, detail Balenciaga's international stardom, present female photographers challenging gender roles under Franco's rule, and uncover the politicization of the mantilla. In the visual culture of Spanish fashion, tradition and modernity coexist and compete, reflecting society's changing affects. Using a range of case studies and approaches, this collection explores fashion in films, comics from la Movida, Rosalía's music videos, and both brick-and-mortar and virtual museums. It demonstrates that fashion is ripe with historical meaning, and offers unique insights into the many facets of Spanish cultural life.

Part I

Identity

Politics and Futures

1

Accessorizing the Nation

Mantillas, Cultural Identity, and Modern Spain

Inés Corujo-Martín

To an uncritical eye, accessories may be considered merely ornamental. Scholarship on the history of fashion often underappreciates the accessory, viewing it as an arbitrary and subordinate accouterment. However, accessories function far beyond their decorative qualities: they illustrate not only personal style but also, in some cases, help to shape and signify national identity. The question one must consider when interrogating the categorization of accessories as superfluous is: Why must anything that goes beyond the primary purpose of clothing the self be considered “extra”?

Jacques Derrida’s theory of the supplement is of particular relevance here. According to Derrida, the logic of supplementarity consists of the relation of power that is established between the “original” (ergon) and the “supplement” (parergon), as well as the degree of dependence of the former with respect to the latter (1997: 144–5). For the French thinker, the supplement is not an optional complement to the original: it is the condition of the original. Derrida’s analysis shows that the supplement, beyond its seemingly trivialized importance, is indispensable to and inextricably linked to the original because it fills an element the ergon lacks. The supplement operates as an optional appendix, while at the same time completing a necessary element.

In a likeness to the relationship between ergon and parergon, recent research has drawn attention to the crucial role that accessories have played throughout cultural history despite the lack of scholarly attention given to them. For instance, Susan Hiner comments that fashion accessories are fraught with complex meanings, and in nineteenth-century France they “became primary sites for the ideological work of modernity” (2010: 1–2). In a similar vein, Marni Reva Kessler looks to artistic depictions of the female veil in Paris during the late 1800s, arguing that veils served to shed light on debates surrounding the ways in which modern life was constructed, including those around public health, imperialism, and modernist art practices. As Kessler points out, accessories are “always politically, socially, and culturally determined” (2006: xxx).¹

Drawing upon the methodological approaches employed by the aforementioned authors, the objective of this chapter is to demonstrate the multiplicity of values and associations—often conflicting—that women’s fashion accessories convey over time. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the narratives and cultural functions of the most archetypal of all Spanish female accessories—the mantilla, a lace veil donned by women to cover their hair, shoulders, and upper torso. As I will analyze in the pages that follow, the mantilla functions as a privileged sartorial object upon which one can intellectually explore the social and political events in modern and contemporary Spain.

This chapter centers on three key chronological phases in which the mantilla played a decisive role in Spanish culture: its origins to the eighteenth-century phenomenon of majismo, the process of national redefinition in the nineteenth century, and the first two decades of the Francoist regime (1939–59) until now. Throughout time, this adornment raised countless controversies and bore powerful ideological messages to communicate a unified and traditionalist view of the Spanish State. Concurrently, it became synonymous with Spanish femininity and served to ambiguously forge an idealized notion of a “genuine” and exoticized Spanishness within and beyond national borders. Still today, the mantilla remains vividly alive in the Spanish imaginary with its complexities, its interrogations, and its politically charged understandings at the heart of cultural change.

The Mantilla in Context: From Its Origins to Majismo

Many historians connect the fashion for veiling to the Moorish influence produced in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, although there is not a full academic consensus.² Whatever its actual origins, the manto (large cloak) became deeply ingrained in female dress—predominantly in the southern part of Spain—in the sixteenth century, presumably as a result of the long and fertile Hispano-Islamic cultural exchange. Various artistic and literary sources from the early modern period, such as Velos antiguos y modernos en los rostros de las mujeres (1641) by Madrid-based historian Antonio de León Pinelo, report on the use of a cloak or veil that, similar to the Moorish one, covered women’s hair, face, and shoulders.³ It was used by women of all ranks to taparse de medio ojo (one-eyed veiling), a root ed sartorial custom that protected women’s identities in the public arena. As León Pinelo explains, the tapado or manteo fashion raised many controversies at the time and was forbidden by the Cortes de Castilla (Royal Council) in 1590 after numerous failed attempts, and again in 1594, 1600, and 1639 (Zanardi 2016a: 76).⁴ On this subject, Elena Pezzi writes about how there were many decrees passed with regard to women veiling their faces, but they made little impact and women continued to freely cover themselves with mantos in public (1991: 14).⁵ Despite the sumptuary laws enacted, it was popular for Spanish women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to evade this restrictive legislation around mantos and mantillas, which explains why these outer garments were still being commonly used over a century later, in the midst of the Enlightenment.⁶

Although it is difficult to pin down the exact time when the mantilla became a fashion trend and extended to all social hierarchies in the Iberian Peninsula, according to art historian Carmen Bernis, it was first documented in 1483 as a luxurious object only accessible to noblewomen (1979: 102). As Ruth de la Puerta further illustrates, upper-class women first wore it as a sign of respect during Christian festivities, horseback riding, and social gatherings, representing the passage from early childhood to youth (1996: 201). By the mid-1700s, however, there was a visual proliferation of mantillas in portraits, costume albums, fashion plates, and prints, in which the accessory appears as a quintessential item of the maja’s dress—the eighteenth-century popular, urban, and plebeian female figure that progressively became the emblem of “authentic” feminine Spanishness (Zanardi 2013: 155). The maja’s mantilla, a lightweight and shorter version of the manto, was made of different materials, including fibers like silk, cotton, and wool, and fabrics such as tulle, felt, muslin, taffeta, and especially lace. The mantilla was either white or black, and it could be further embellished with decorative patterning. Other enhancements included printed designs, embroidery, and gold or silver thread, while braids, fringe, and velvet borders could be attached to the base fabric. Moreover, it was often sported with tall hair combs or peinetas to craft a striking cascading effect. In spite of the mantilla’s “national” qualities, there were many regional differences, offering countless variations in style, size, color, and material, all of which carried distinctive meanings (Zanardi 2016b: 123).

In his Colección de trajes de España tanto antiguos como modernos (1777), Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla visualizes the mantilla as an essential component in the wardrobe of the maja, whose clothing was completed with a black basquiña (overskirt) that revealed her ankles, a striped fichu, a corseted top with tassels, a short and tight jacket with the flaps open, buckled shoes, white tights, and a fan (Figure 1.1). All these items of dress served to highlight her seductive female body and were evidence of her castizo (pure) persona. In particular, the mantilla, because of its ability to hide the wearer’s face, contained a component of mystery and eroticism, and was linked to seductiveness and sassiness, both qualities that marked the maja’s popular conduct (Zanardi 2016b: 124). This enticing allure is already perceived in travel accounts from the end of the eighteenth century. In A Journey through Spain (1791), British traveler Joseph Townsend associates the mantilla with Iberian femininity, praising how graciously women sported it. As Townsend tells us: “No foreigner can ever attain their ease, or elegance, in putting on this simple dress” (quoted in Zanardi 2013: 146). For another...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Fashion in Spain: Catalyst for Affect and Identity
• Part I Identity: Politics and Futures
• Part II Picturing Femininity: Film and Photography
• Part III Designing Fashion Stars: Film and Music
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• Copyright