The concept was introduced in the late-nineteenth century by sociologist Thorstein Veblen when he began to analyse the emerging consumer behaviours of the middle class in his text, The Theory of the Leisure Class from 1899. Nowadays it’s a popular, albeit generalist, concept often bandied about, but in basic principle it offers a systematic explanation to the commercial ebb and flow of the clothes that we wear.

For fashion, the Trend Cycle is often represented as a bell-curve following the journey from fashionable to unfashionable. The ‘trickle-down’ effect is an explanation for this transition, which, as consumer culture scholar Angela Partington explains, ‘describes changes in taste as innovations made by the dominant class, given that modern social codes allow the immediately subordinate group to emulate the tastes and preferences of the one above. According to this model, the high status groups are forced to adopt new styles in order to maintain their superiority/difference, as these tastes filter down the social scale. This happens periodically so a cyclical process is created, generating the otherwise mysterious mutations we know as fashion.’¹

Looking at the production of clothes as part of the Fashion Cycle has the effect of simplifying it all, distilling it into a formula that overlooks many of the subtleties of how we produce, buy and wear clothes.

***

Further Reading:

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular colour, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.

I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Indecent – 10 years before its time
Shameless – 5 years before its time
Outré (Daring) – 1 year before its time
Smart – ‘Current Fashion’
Dowdy – 1 year after its time
Hideous – 10 years after its time
Ridiculous – 20 years after its time
Amusing – 30 years after its time
Quaint – 50 years after its time
Charming – 70 years after its time
Romantic – 100 years after its time
Beautiful – 150 years after its time

James Laver ‘Laver’s Law’, from Taste and Fashion, 1945.

Fashion is the imitation of a given example and satisfies the demand for social adaption; it leads the individual upon the road which all travel, it furnishes a general condition, which resolves the conduct of every individual into a mere example. At the same time it satisfies in no less degree the need of differentiation, the tendency towards dissimilarity, the desire for change and contrast, on the one hand by a constant change of contents, which gives to the fashion of today an individual stamp as opposed to that of yesterday and to-morrow, on the other hand because fashions differ for different classes—the fashions 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.

Georg Simmel’s essay, ‘Fashion’, published in the International Quarterley, 1904. (http://www.modetheorie.de/fileadmin/Texte/s/Simmel-Fashion_1904.pdf)

1. J Ash and E Wilson, Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader, University of California Press, 1992 ↩

***

Further Reading:

But no matter how similar the clothes of men and women may appear, or how different, the arrangements of each are always being made with respect to the other. Male and female clothing, taken together, illustrates what people wish the relation between mend and women to be, beside indicating the separate peace each sex is making with fashion or custom at any given time. Without looking at what men are wearing, it’s impossible to understand women’s clothes, and vice versa. The history of dress, including its current history, so far has to be perceived as a duet for men and women performing on the same stage. There may come a time when sexuality is not visualized in clothing as rightly divided into two main categories; but so far it still is.

Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits, 1994.

The line of demarcation between the dress of women, priests and servants, on the one hand, and of men, on the other hand, is not always consistently observed in practice, but it will scarcely be disputed that it is always present in a more or less definite way in the popular habits of thought. There are of course free men, and not a few of them, who, in their blind zeal for faultless reputable attire, transgress the theoretical line between man’s and woman’s dress, to the extent of arraying themselves in apparel that is obviously designed to vex the moral frame; but everyone recognises without hesitation that such apparel for men is a departure from the normal. We are in the habit of saying that such dress if ‘effeminate’; and one sometimes hears the remark that such or such an exquisitely attired gentleman is as well dressed as a footman.

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899.

“Anytime I do a men’s show, I’m thinking this would be fantastic for women—or at least for me. And more and more, it feels instinctively right to translate the same idea for both genders.”

Miuccia Prada on her spring/summer 2015 menswear collection.

***

The dress she would wear was laying out on the bed. Hazel and Etta had both been good about lending her their best clothes – considering that they weren’t supposed to come to the party. There was Etta’s long blue crêpe de chine evening dress and some white pumps and a rhinestone tiara for her hair. These clothes were really gorgeous. It was hard to imagine how she would look in them.

The late afternoon had come and the sun made long, yellow slants through the window. If she took two hours over dressing for the party it was time to begin now. When she thought about putting on the fine clothes she couldn’t just sit around and wait. Very slowly she went into the bathroom and shucked off her old shorts and shirt and turned on the water. She scrubbed the rough parts of her heels and her knees and especially her elbows. She made the bath take a long time.

She ran naked into the middle room and began to dress. Silk teddies she put on, and silk stockings. She even wore one of Etta’s brassières just for the heck of it. Then very carefully she put on the dress and stepped into the pumps. This was the first time she had ever worn an evening dress. She stood for a long time before the mirror. She was so tall that the dress came up two or three inches above her ankles – and the shoes were so short they hurt her. She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.

Six different ways she tried out her hair. The cowlicks were a little trouble, so she wet her bangs and made three spit curls. Last of all she stuck the rhinestones in her hair and put on plenty of lipstick and paint. When she finished she lifted up her chin and half-closed her eyes like a movie star. Slowly she turned her face from one side to the other. It was beautiful she looked – just beautiful.

She didn’t feel like herself at all. She was somebody different from Mick Kelly entirely. Two hours had to pass before the party would begin, and she was ashamed for any of the family to see her dressed so far ahead of time. She went into the bathroom again and locked the door. She couldn’t mess up her dress by sitting down, so she stood in the middle of the floor. The close walls around her seemed to press in all the excitement. She felt so different from the old Mick Kelly that she knew this would be better than anything else in her whole life – this party.

Excerpt from Carson McCullers’ novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940, accompanied by David Armstrong’s images from the series ‘Notes on Intimacy and Dignity’, styled by Gudrun Willcocks which were originally published in Vestoj On Fashion and Magic. 

A hard-wearing cotton twill fabric, typically blue and used for jeans and other clothing. From late 17th century (as serge denim): from French serge de Nîmes, denoting a kind of serge from the town of Nîmes.

Oxford English Dictionary

JEANS ARE ONE OF the most powerful clothing icons of the twentieth-century. Famously named after the French town of Nîmes where the characteristic twill that forms the denim fabric originated, the etymological origin of the word is surprisingly literal: the simplification of the phrasing ‘de Nîmes’ into a single noun.

From their European origins, denim was adopted into American culture as a fabric ideal for workwear. During depression-era America, images of sharecroppers and farm workers in denim (like those by Walker Evans in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men from 1941) linked the fabric with the image of the ‘every man’. This symbolism was revived in later years with the rebellion of youth culture during the 1950s: the image of James Dean in a white T-shirt and jeans, for instance, is now embedded in the American iconography. Later, during the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen capitalised on this potential with his ‘Born in the USA’ tour and album. The cover (and the clothes he wore on stage for the tour) depict the singer, blue-jean clad, against the backdrop of the American flag, the blue of the denim fabric echoing that of the stars and stripes.

Today jeans have the capacity to connect to almost everyone, traversing the fashion industry from mass production to high-end. But for all the incarnations, a pair of jeans still bears most of the key features that distinguish them from just any pair of trousers: the twill fabric, the top-stitching, waistband, rivets, fly and belt loops. This makes them not only pervasive, but also singular as a powerful clothing archetype.

***

Further Reading:

SUSAN: You know, I really like those new jeans Jerry was wearing. He’s really thin.

GEORGE: Not as thin as you think.

SUSAN: Why? He’s a 31. I saw the tag on the back.

GEORGE: The tag, huh?

SUSAN: Mmm-hmm.

GEORGE: Let me tell you something about that tag. It’s no 31, and uh… let’s just leave it at that.

SUSAN: What are you talking about?

GEORGE: He scratches off a 32 and he puts in 31.

SUSAN: Oh, how could he be so vain?

GEORGE: Well, this is the Jerry Seinfeld that only I know. I can’t believe I just told you that.

Seinfeld, episode 119, ‘The Sponge’, aired December 7, 1995 on NBC

A few weeks ago, Luca Goldoni wrote an amusing report from the Adriatic coast about the mishaps of those who wear blue jeans for reasons of fashion, and no longer know how to sit down or arrange the external reproductive apparatus. I believe the problem broached by Goldoni is rich in philosophical reflections, which I would like to pursue on my own and with the maximum seriousness, because no everyday experience is too base for the thinking man, and it is time to make philosophy proceed, not only on its own two feet, but also with its own loins.

I began wearing blue jeans in the days when very few people did, but always on vacation. I found—and still find—them very comfortable, especially when I travel, because there are no problems of creases, tearing, spots. Today they are worn also for looks, but primarily they are very utilitarian. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve had to renounce this pleasure because I’ve put on weight. True, if you search thoroughly you can find an extra large (Macy’s could fit even Oliver Hardy with blue jeans), but they are large not only around the waist, but also around the legs, and they are not a pretty sight.

Recently, cutting down on drink, I shed the number of pounds necessary for me to try again some almost normal jeans. I under-went the calvary described by Luca Goldoni, as the saleswoman said, “Pull it tight, it’ll stretch a bit”; and I emerged, not having to suck in my belly (I refuse to accept such compromises). And so, after a long time, I was enjoying the sensation of wearing pants that, instead of clutching the waist, held the hips, because it is a characteristic of jeans to grip the lumbar sacral region and stay up thanks not to suspension but to adherence.

As a result, I lived in the knowledge that I had jeans on, whereas normally we live forgetting that we’re wearing undershorts or trousers. I lived for my jeans, and as a result I assumed the exterior behavior of one who wears jeans. In any case, I assumed a demeanor. It’s strange that the traditionally most informal and anti-etiquette garment should be the one that so strongly imposes an etiquette. As a rule I am boisterous, I sprawl in a chair, I slump wherever I please, with no claim to elegance: my blue jeans checked these actions, made me more polite and mature. I discussed it at length, especially with consultants of the opposite sex, from whom I learned what, for that matter, I had already suspected: that for women experiences of this kind are familiar because all their garments are conceived to impose a demeanor—high heels, girdles, brassieres, pantyhose, tight sweaters.

 

Umberto Eco ‘Lumbar Thought’, 1976, published in Faith in Fakes, Minerva, 1986.

 

Alright

Well my jeans they are a frayin’
And don’t talk Levi’s because I’ve tried
My hips they had no room to play in
and my little bum felt all trapped inside
There’s Levis all around
If there was Wranglers I would know
I’d turn the whole store upside down
and they don’t got Wranglers so let’s go
I said my jeans they are a frayin’
I said my jeans they are a frayin’ very bad

Uh oh

Why not Levis?
Why not Levis?
Cause they never seem to fit me
No matter what the size
Why not Levis?
Why not Levis?
Well the bum never fits, nor the hips nor the thighs
I said my jeans they are a frayin’
Oh my jeans they are a frayin’ real bad

This store’s got Wranglers in ’em
Even got size 31
28 bucks- now wait a minute
But these jeans they’re almost done
My jeans are nearly rags
My jeans are almost dead
And they’ve lost their little Wrangler tag
And you can see my knees right through the threads
I said my jeans oh they’re a frayin’
Oh my jeans they are a frayin’, real bad

Tell them

His jeans they are a frayin’ so bad, so bad.
Yeah you said it.
His jeans are frayin’ so bad, so bad.
What about it?
My jeans, My jeans.

Ok fellas.

Doo didoo doo doo di doo doo doo doo doop de doo de doo doo doo
doo doo de doo doo.

Jonathan Richman, ‘My Jeans’, 1985.

 

Try—I cannot write of it here—to imagine and to know, as against other garments, the difference of their feeling against your body; drawn-on, and bibbed on the whole belly and chest, naked from the kidneys up behind, save for broad crossed straps, and slung by these straps from the shoulders; the slanted pockets on each thigh, the deep square pockets on each buttock; the complex and slanted structure, on the chest, of the pockets shaped for pencils, rulers, and watches; the coldness of sweat when they are young, and their stiffness; their sweetness to the skin and pleasure of sweating when they are old; the thing metal buttons of the fly; the lifting aside of the straps and the deep slipping downward in defecation; the belt some men use with them to steady their middles; the swift, simple and inevitably supine gestures of dressing and of undressing, which, as is less true of any other garment, are those of harnessing and of unharnessing the shoulders of a tired and hard-used animal.

They are round as stovepipes in the legs (though some wives, told to, crease them).

In the strapping across the kidneys they again resemble work harness, and in their crossed straps and tin buttons.

And in the functional pocketing of their bib, a hardness modified to the convenience of a used animal of such high intelligence that he has use for tools.

And in their whole stature: full covering of the cloven strength of the legs and thighs and of the loins; then nakedness and harnessing behind, naked along the flanks; and in front, the short, squarely tapered, powerful towers of the belly and chest to above the nipples.

And on this facade, the cloven halls for the legs, the strong-seamed, structured opening for the genitals, the broad horizontal at the waist, the slant thigh pockets, the buttons at the point of each hip and on the breast, the geometric structures of the usages of the simpler trades–the complexed seams of utilitarian pockets which are so brightly picked out against darkness when the seam-threadings, double and triple stitched, are still white, so that a new suit of overalls has among its beauties those of a blueprint: and they are a map of a working man.

James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941.

The part around the neck of a shirt, blouse, jacket or coat, either upright or turned over. (Noun)

Seize or apprehend (someone). (Verb)

Oxford English Dictionary

MUCH OF OUR UNDERSTANDING, and indeed experience, of dress comes from the language we use to describe it. The etymology of dress reveals the historical changes in our understanding and use of clothes. The phonetic titling of a word is also inherent in our experience of it; take the word ‘suede’ which rolls off the tongue with a similar texture to the velvety fabric itself, an obvious example of how interactive this relationship can be. More often than not there is a profound dynamic between a word and its function as an object.

The word ‘collar’ presents a sort of curt simplicity that seems to fit its form and function as an object of dress. Thought to originate around 1300, the term originates from the old French ‘coler’, referring to the neck, which formed from the Latin term ‘collum’ having a similar meaning. There is something delightful and logical about the concept of the shirt collar deriving from the image of an architectural column.

Like many other sartorial terms, ‘collar’ presents an interesting interplay between noun and verb, with the action of ‘collaring’ someone being to grab them by the neck. Later into the twentieth-century with the rise of corporate industries and the development of the archetypal modern suit as we know it today, the collar came to have powerful social connotations within the context of menswear. The term ‘white-collar’ represents a hierarchical distinction from its counterpart ‘blue-collar’ (or perhaps even ‘pink-collar’).

Though it has many cultural and stylistic incarnations – the mandarin, the wing collar, etc – the collar acts as a sort of sartorial point of entry for the body, or so Yohji Yamamoto describes it: ‘a most elegant means of creating an opening for the head’.

***

Further reading:

The white collar men are your clerks; they are your bookkeepers, your cashiers, your office men. We call them the “white collar men” in order to distinguish them from the men who work with uniform and overalls and carry the dinner pails. The boys over on the West side got that name for them. It was supposed to be something a little better than they were.

Malcolm McDowell for the Chicago Commerce, June 12, 1914.

Simply put, the work of a fashion designer is a battle with tailoring. During my first ten years making clothing I grappled with the idea of the collar – why does clothing need it? Is there no other way to handle that part of the garment? I was obsessed with the issue. When I began to work seriously on men’s fashion, though, I finally came to understand how the tailored collar was a most elegant means of creating an opening for the head.

If we consider the issue from the perspective of a craftsman and his technique, too, we find the broad opening responds to the needs. Imagine a rounded neckline open at the front. With a cloth draped around the neck, it simply makes sense to fold it back at the front of the garment. This is where the lapel originates, the neck is wrapped in the cloth, the portion in the front is folded back, where it comes to rest. With this, the collar as we know it is born. It is all perfectly natural.

What followed were variations on that theme intended to serve as protection for the nape of the neck or as ornamentation for the sake of appearances. Not all of this was a mere matter of detail, both the weight and presence of the collar itself had important roles to play. Without sufficient weight, the collar pulls away from the body, making the clothing uncomfortable. Leaving the nape of the neck exposed inevitably triggers a psychological sense of coldness. The tailored collar is indeed “a perfect monument” in the history of fashion.

Because the collar emerged from the natural relationship between the body and the fabric, it is not something that can be toyed with lightly. If we think of the collar as the ears, then the body must be constructed in the very same vein. If the body is of type A, then it simply will not do to have the collar be of type B. The white nun’s collar of classic clothing is like the white cloth draped over the top of the seats of the Shinkansen. As I see it, a basic collar is that which works with the natural flow of the material while that which interrupts the flow of the fabric is an ornamental collar.

If one studies a pattern for a collar one soon notices that it has a boomerang shape. Perhaps it is better thought of as resembling the gentle curve of a Japanese katana, or sword. When this curved item is bent, it attaches itself to the neck. This curve is the very lifeblood of the collar, and the arc must be infused with some tension. In the tiny area allotted to this feature even a few millimeters’ difference can bring out the distinctiveness or elegance of the collar.

The tension of that arc takes its life from its point of origin in the area of the neck. From there the energy flows quickly and directly, with no margin for error, in a straight line towards the top button. In this locus is contained the heart and soul of the tailored collar.

Beware! Do not take tampering with the collar lightly, it is not to be attempted until one has mastered the techniques necessary to survive a dues with traditional beauty.

Yohji Yamamoto on the collar, from My Dear Bomb, published by Ludion, 2011.

She put the dress on for the first time on the morning of May 27, in her room. She had bought a special brassiere to go with it, which gave her breasts the proper uplift (not that they actually needed it) but left their top halves uncovered. Wearing it gave her a weird, dreamy feeling that was half shame and half defiant excitement.

The dress itself was nearly floor length. The skirt was loose, but the waist was snug, the material rich and unfamiliar against her skin, which was used to only cotton and wool.

The hang of it seemed to be right—or would be, with the new shoes. She slipped them on, adjusted the neckline, and went to the window. She could see only a maddening ghost image of herself, but everything seemed to be right. Maybe later she could—

The door swung open behind her with only a soft snick of the latch, and Carrie turned to look at her mother.

She was dressed for work, wearing her white sweater and holding her black pocketbook in one hand. In the other she was holding Daddy Ralph’s Bible.

They looked at each other.

Hardly conscious of it, Carrie felt her back straighten until she stood straight in the patch of early spring sunshine that fell through the win­dow.

“Red,” Momma murmured. “I might have known it would be red.”

Carrie said nothing.

“I can see your dirtypillows. Everyone will. They’ll be looking at your body. The Book says—”

“Those are my breasts, Momma. Every woman has them.”

“Take off that dress,” Momma said.

“No.”

“Take it off, Carrie. We’ll go down and burn it in the incinerator together, and then pray for for­giveness. We’ll do penance.” Her eyes began to sparkle with the strange, disconnected zeal that came over her at events which she considered to be tests of faith. “I’ll stay home from work and you’ll stay home from school. We’ll pray. We’ll ask for a Sign. We’ll get us down on our knees and ask for the Pentecostal Fire.”

“No, Momma.”

Her mother reached up and pinched her own face. It left a red mark. She looked to Carrie for reaction, saw none, hooked her right hand into claws and ripped it across her own cheek, bringing thin blood. She whined and rocked back “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” she whis­pered. “Many times. Many times he and I—”

“Go away, Momma.”

She looked up at Carrie, her eyes glowing. There was a terrifying expression of righteous an­ger graven on her face.

“The Lord is not mocked,” she whispered. “Be sure your sin will find you out. Burn it, Carrie! Cast that devil’s red from you and burn it! Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!”

The door slammed open by itself.

“Go away, Momma.”

Momma smiled. Her bloody mouth made the smile grotesque, twisted. “As Jezebel fell from the tower, let it be with you,” she said. “And the dogs came and licked up the blood. It’s in the Bible! It’s—”

Her feet began to slip along the floor and she looked down at them, bewildered. The wood might have turned to ice.

“Stop that!” she screamed.

She was in the hall now. She caught the doorjamb and held on for a moment; then her fin­gers were torn loose, seemingly by nothing.

“I love you, Momma,” Carrie said steadily. “I’m sorry.”

She envisioned the door swinging shut, and the door did just that, as if moved by a light breeze. Carefully, so as not to hurt her, she disengaged the mental hands she had pushed her mother with.

A moment later, Margaret was pounding on the door. Carrie held it shut, her lips trembling.

“There’s going to be a judgment!” Margaret White raved. “I wash my hands of it! I tried!”

“Pilate said that,” Carrie said.

Her mother went away. A minute later Carrie saw her go down the walk and cross the street on her way to work.

“Momma,” she said softly, and put her forehead on the glass.

Carrie was published in 1974 by Doubleday, New York.

Images by Gregory Crewdson from his series ‘Beneath the Roses’, 2005.

Born and educated within the small, but deeply conservative and religious town of Recanati in Italy, Leopardi is best known for his substantial contribution to Romanticism during the first half of the nineteenth century. Characteristically pessimistic and dark, Leopardi’s work often negotiates societal morals and is underpinned by a constant fascination with life and death, and the fineness of the boundary between the two. Writer Adam Kirsch, in an article for The New Yorker, described him as ‘the supreme poet of passive, helpless suffering’.¹ Throughout his own life Leopardi was plagued with ill-health, scoliosis and physical pain that arguably manifests in his writings. Despite this, his is distinguished as one of the most important figures of Modern discourse, particularly in Italy.

Leopardi originally wrote ‘Dialogo Della Moda E Della Morte’, (or ‘Dialogue Between Fashion and Death’) for the book Le Operette Morali (later translated to English as Essays and Dialogues), in 1824 when he was twenty-six years old. The book is an unusual publication in itself as it is a collection of ‘dialogues’ written almost as poems or short stories between various counterpoints, such as in ‘Dialogue between Physicist and Metaphysicist’ and ‘Dialogue between Hercules and Atlas’, each communicating a message, or moral lesson. Like many of the others, the conversation between Fashion and Death takes the form of a poetic dialogue. It begins with Fashion calling out to Death for recognition, claiming they are sisters: ‘Do you not remember we are both born of Decay?’ [2]. Death, with failing hearing and sight, does not recognise Fashion, who insists that they are bound by the fact that they ‘both equally profit by the incessant change and destruction of things here below’, that, ‘our common nature and custom is to incessantly renew the world.’² Death and Fashion, as Leopardi proposes in the poem, are of the same breed, both the executing decay and destruction on the body. Leopardi’s rather bleak, and at times playful depiction of fashion and death as fictional characters, conceptualises Fashion. The poem is rendered particularly profound and lasting in the context of contemporary fashion, or moreover, contemporary fashion writing. The work resonates in this context as an unusual example of fashion literature that critiques and parodies, the frivolousness of fashion. Even as this is written before the beginning of the development of the fashion industry into the Modern system (post-Industrial Revolution, Post-Charles Worth) we know it as today, the sentiment remains powerful.

Leopardi’s expressive and bleak words ultimately render Fashion as a cruel and destructive character, a perpetrator of suffering to the body whose doing is to ‘pierce ears, lips, and noses, and cause them to be torn by the ornaments I suspend from them.’ Fashion ultimately proves to Death their sisterhood in describing these inflictions on the human body. Towards the end of the dialogue the pair, somewhat perversely, race, in a sort of test to each other. Throughout the dialogue Fashion persists that she is an advocate of Death, aiding in the endeavour of shortening human life, a bleak and fantastical proposal supported by examples of the corset, the contortion of bound feet, of scarification and tattooing and painful ornamentation that damages human health and the body.

Aesthetics and trends in fashion, more so than ever before, constantly toy with symbolism and representations of death and human frailty. Among many other examples, Alexander McQueen’s theatrical and visceral designs, to the startling realism of fashion photographer Corinne Day, or Mugler’s 2011 campaign with Rick Genest, AKA Zombie Boy. ‘Death’ it seems, moves in and out of fashion on a regular basis. Although it might be a stretch to say that fashion allows us to negotiate the limits of our own mortality and thus become more reconciled with death, there is certainly a powerful connection between the two realms that Leopardi adeptly captures in this work.

***

Dialogue Between Fashion and Death (1824) by Giacomo Leopardi, and translated by Charles Edwardes in 1857

Fashion: Madam Death, Madam Death!

Death: Wait until your time comes, and then I will appear without being called by you. 

Fashion: Madam Death!

Death: Go to the devil. I will come when you least expect me.

Fashion: As if I were not immortal!

Death: Immortal? “Already has passed the thousandth year,” since the age of immortals ended.

Fashion: Madam is as much a Petrarchist as if she were an Italian poet of the fifteenth or eighteenth century.

Death: I like Petrarch because he composed my triumph, and because he refers so often to me. But I must be moving. 

Fashion: Stay! For the love you bear to the seven cardinal sins, stop a moment and look at me. 

Death: Well. I am looking. 

Fashion: Do you not recognise me?

Death: You must know that I have bad sight, and am without spectacles. The English make none to suit me; and if they did, I should not know where to put them.

Fashion: I am Fashion, your sister.

Death: My sister?

Fashion: Yes. Do you not remember we are both born of Decay? 

Death: As if I, who am the chief enemy of Memory, should recollect it!

Fashion: But I do. I know also that we both equally profit by the incessant change and destruction of things here below, although you do so in one way, and I in another.

Death: Unless you are speaking to yourself, or to some one inside your throat, raise your voice, and pronounce your words more distinctly. If you go mumbling between your teeth with that thin spider-voice of yours, I shall never understand you; because you ought to know that my hearing serves me no better than my sight.

Fashion: Although it be contrary to custom, for in France they do not speak to be heard, yet, since we are sisters, I will speak as you wish, for we can dispense with ceremony between ourselves. I say then that our common nature and custom is to incessantly renew the world. You attack the life of man, and overthrow all people and nations from beginning to end; whereas I content myself for the most part with influencing beards, head-dresses, costumes, furniture, houses, and the like. It is true, I do some things comparable to your supreme action. I pierce ears, lips, and noses, and cause them to be torn by the ornaments I suspend from them. I impress men’s skin with hot iron stamps, under the pretence of adornment. I compress the heads of children with tight bandages and other contrivances; and make it customary for all men of a country to have heads of the same shape, as in parts of America and Asia. I torture and cripple people with small shoes. I stifle women with stays so tight, that their eyes start from their heads; and I play a thousand similar pranks. I also frequently persuade and force men of refinement to bear daily numberless fatigues and discomforts, and often real sufferings; and some even die gloriously for love of me. I will say nothing of the headaches, colds, inflammations of all kinds, fevers – daily, tertian, and quartan – which men gain by their obedience to me. They are content to shiver with cold, or melt with heat, simply because it is my will that they cover their shoulders with wool, and their breasts with cotton. In fact, they do everything in my way, regardless of their own injury.

Death: In truth, I believe you are my sister; the testimony of a birth certificate could scarcely make me surer of it. But standing still paralyses me, so if you can, let us run; only you must not creep, because I go at a great pace. As we proceed you can tell me what you want. If you cannot keep up with me, on account of our relationship I promise when I die to bequeath you all my clothes and effects as a New Year’s gift.

Fashion: If we ran a race together, I hardly know which of us would win. For if you run, I gallop, and standing still, which paralyses you, is death to me. So let us run, and we will chat as we go along. 

Death: So be it then. Since your mother was mine, you ought to serve me in some way, and assist me in my business. 

Fashion: I have already done so — more than you imagine. Above all, I, who annul and transform other customs unceasingly, have nowhere changed the custom of death; for this reason it has prevailed from the beginning of the world until now. 

Death: A great miracle forsooth, that you have never done what you could not do! 

Fashion: Why cannot I do it? You show how ignorant you are of the power of Fashion.

Death: Well, well: time enough to talk of this when you introduce the custom of not dying. But at present, I want you, like a good sister, to aid me in rendering my task more easy and expeditious than it has hitherto been. 

Fashion: I have already mentioned some of my labours which are a source of profit to you. But they are trifling in comparison with those of which I will now tell you. Little by little, and especially in modern times, I have brought into disuse and discredit those exertions and exercises which promote bodily health; and have substituted numberless others which enfeeble the body in a thousand ways, and shorten life. Besides, I have introduced customs and manners, which render existence a thing more dead than alive, whether regarded from a physical or mental point of view; so that this century may be aptly termed the century of death. And whereas formerly you had no other possessions except graves and vaults, where you sowed bones and dust, which are but a barren seed, now you have fine landed properties, and people who are a sort of freehold possession of yours as soon as they are born, though not then claimed by you. And more, you, who used formerly to be hated and vituperated, are in the present day, thanks to me, valued and lauded by all men of genius. Such an one prefers you to life itself, and holds you in such high esteem that he invokes you, and looks to you as his greatest hope. But this is not all. I perceived that men had some vague idea of an after-life, which they called immortality. They imagined they lived in the memory of their fellows, and this remembrance they sought after eagerly. Of course this was in reality mere fancy, since what could it matter to them when dead, that they lived in the minds of men? As well might they dread contamination in the grave! Yet, fearing lest this chimera might be prejudicial to you, in seeming to diminish your honour and reputation, I have abolished the fashion of seeking immortality, and its concession, even when merited. So that now, whoever dies may assure himself that he is dead altogether, and that every bit of him goes into the ground, just as a little fish is swallowed, bones and all. These important things my love for you has prompted me to effect. I have also succeeded in my endeavour to increase your power on earth. I am more than ever desirous of continuing this work. Indeed, my object in seeking you to-day was to make a proposal that for the future we should not separate, but jointly might scheme and execute for the furtherance of our respective designs.

Death: You speak reasonably, and I am willing to do as you propose.

All images from the series ‘In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort, a fable by Richard Avedon’ with model Nadja Auermann, commissioned in 1995 by The New Yorker.

1. Kirsch, Adam. “Under the Volcano: Giacomo Leopardi’s Radical Despair.” The New Yorker, October 25, 2010 ↩

2. Leopardi, Giacomo. “Dialogue Between Fashion and Death.” Le Operette Morali. 1824 ↩

To put Mallarmé’s work in context; the mid-nineteenth century was a time when fashion, and images of fashion became a distinctly commercial and desirable commodity. Industrialisation and progress meant that fashion evolved into something multi-faceted, adapting to the Modern era. Dressing for a new contemporary culture became the main prerogative in the production of clothing, and with it came a new set of standards, idiosyncrasies and potential failures. All in all, fashion became a more observable and accessible phenomenon, and as such, a point of fascination for writers and artists alike. Theorists like Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier were, among others, reflective of a burgeoning interest in value of fashion in contemporary culture.

Mallarmé himself was an important figure as a writer and poet in Parisian literature circles of the time, know for his salons which invited readings and performances with fellow poets, writers and intellectuals, setting a context for his own work. His writing and work is largely associated with his involvement with Symbolism, as well as having an important influence on later art styles and movements such as Dadaism, Cubism and Surrealism.

Translated as ‘the latest fashion’, La Dernière Mode first came about on the suggestion from Mallarmé’s friend and neighbour, publisher Charles Wendelen, although the magazine was designed, compiled and executed almost entirely by Mallarmé. The first print run of 3,000, funded entirely by the poet, was largely a labour of love. Working with the illustrator Edmond Morin, the aesthetic of the magazine reflected the mode of the time, largely illustrative and gothic in style and design. The content of the project was a strange mix of fantasy and commercial authenticity, with Mallarmé writing most of the texts under a variety of pseudonyms; including ‘Marguerite de Ponty’ (for fashion, and the theory of fashion); ‘Miss Satin’ (giving news of the fashion houses of Paris); ‘Ix’, a male critic (for theatre and books); ‘Le Chef de bouche chez Brébant (for food), etc.¹ Under these pretenses, he made himself at once both a journalist and fashion designer, simultaneously able to promote the culture of fashion, as well as reflect upon its short-comings, thus creating a sort of myth through which he explored the boundaries of fashion. Behind the façade of the fashion magazine were thinly veiled witticisms and critiques of the culture of dressing. In a passage from the first issue, Mallarmé’s surreal prose is playfully critical:

‘That instinct of beauty, and of relation to climate, which, under each different sky, governs the production of roses, of tulips and carnations: has it nothing to say as regards ear-drops, finger-rings and bracelets? Flowers and jewels: has not each of them, as one might say, its native soil? This sunshine befits that flower, this type of woman that jewel?’

Stéphane Mallarmé, La Dernière Mode

Although La Dernière Mode has come to be regarded as a seminal work in the context of fashion academia, it still remains little known outside of this discourse, but remains an important and unique example of the power of myth-making in literature on commerce and contemporary culture.

1. Furbank, P. N. and Alex Cain. Mallarmé on Fashion. Oxford: Berg, 2004 ↩

The 20m high Prada Transformer was commissioned by Prada for the city of Seoul in South Korea as a dynamic space for exhibitions and cultural programming in 2009. The temporary structure, located adjacent to the city’s Gyeonghui Palace, was formed with each of the four walls as a geometric shape: a circle, a cross, a hexagon, a rectangle, held together with a translucent membrane. It could therefore be physically repositioned or rolled onto a new side to change the dynamic of the interior space and suit the planned use. For instance, in one event on the program, Prada presented an exhibition in the space, ‘Waist Down’, of Prada skirts displayed as gallery objects.

The structure was the outcome of a dynamic rethinking of architectural form and use, a highly valuable affiliation for the Prada brand in that it broadens the otherwise narrow concerns of high fashion. In presenting her garments in the space we are encouraged not only to look at Prada clothing as a work of art, affording uniqueness in status, but also as a socially and culturally flexible brand, and one that can be engaged with in a variety of ways. For Koolhaas the value is perhaps less straightforward or aesthetic, in that working with Prada instead offers his studio, OMA, an opportunity to design a solution, or outcome that challenges and furthers their architectural practice.

On the one hand the work between Koolhaas and Prada is innovative and forward-thinking, exploring new ways for the public, or moreover, consumers to engage with fashion and architecture on a cultural level, however it is important not to forget that the project has a commercial underpinning. What large-scale projects such as this ultimately succeed in, is selling more products through a dynamic and captivating spectacle.

Designer: Dai Fujiwara for Issey Miyake

Set Design: James Dyson

Hair and Make up: Eugene Souleiman

IN THE FIRST INSTALMENT to our series about collaborations between fashion designers and other artists, we look at the ongoing collaboration between the creative director of Issey Miyake, Dai Fujiwara and product designer James Dyson. The creative marriage has given birth to a series of projects between the two companies which began when Fujiwara invited Dyson to work on the Issey Miyake spring/summer 2006 collection. The collaboration then fuelled the launch of a limited edition vacuum cleaner for Dyson, the Dyson DC16, and an installation at the Design Museum Holon which featured the diffusion line A-POC, for the exhibition ‘Mechanical Couture’, in 2008.

In creating the collection for the 2006 catwalk show, Fujiwara physically disassembled a Dyson vacuum cleaner, examining the parts and reproducing the internal mechanical forms as design solutions that were directly translated into the garments. The hoses and internal parts were directly translated as forms in the patternmaking and toiling process, demonstrating that ‘industrial and very purposeful components can be transformed into very fluid items of clothing.’¹ Optimistically proposing the potential for the design and fashion worlds to work together more cohesively. By translating the forms of the parts of the vacuum, Fujiwara ensures that the design and engineering of the product are enmeshed in the clothing, which becomes a metaphor for the collaboration itself.

Collaborating with Dyson – and the relevant exposure in design press that this generated – helped reinforce Issey Miyake’s position in the fashion industry as a brand with design focus. Similarly for Dyson, working with Issey Miyake brought prestige and designer status, not necessarily associated with a household appliance or product brand, thus repositioning them in this market as a more high-end brand. The partnership also openly presented the working process between Fujiwara and Dyson in press and communications released by the companies, revealing a dialogue between the studios that welcomed experimentation, as opposed to the traditional working process of fashion designers which is largely hidden and contained. This collaboration sets a template for these types of collaborations in general, from the practical level of garment design, to demonstrating more broadly how fundamentally different practices can interact with one another and adapt to new disciplines.

1. James Dyson interviewed for Wallpaper Magazine, 6 October, 2007. http://www.wallpaper.com/design/james-dyson-interview/1816 ↩