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Fashion Theory

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader brings together
and presents a wide range of essays on fashion theory that will engage and inform both
the general reader and the specialist student of fashion. From apparently simple and
accessible theories concerning what fashion is to seemingly more diffcult or challenging
theories concerning globalisation and new media, this collection contextualises different
theoretical approaches to identify, analyse and explain the remarkable diversity, complexity
and beauty of what we understand and experience every day as fashion and clothing.

This second edition contains entirely new sections on fashion and sustainability, fashion
and globalisation, fashion and digital/social media and fashion and the body/prosthesis.
It also contains updated and revised sections on fashion, identity and difference, and on
fashion and consumption and fashion as communication. More specifcally, the section
on identity and difference has been updated to include contemporary theoretical debates
surrounding Islam and fashion and LGBT+ communities and fashion, and the section
on consumption now includes theories of ‘prosumption’. Each section has a specialist
and dedicated editor’s introduction which provides essential conceptual background,
theoretical contextualisation and critical summaries of the readings in each section.

Bringing together the most infuential and ground-breaking 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 all think and
say about fashion. This second edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader is a timeless and
invaluable resource for both the general reader and undergraduate students across a
range of disciplines, including sociology, cultural studies and fashion studies.

Contributors: Elizabeth Wilson, Gilles Lipovetsky, Barbara Vinken, Pierre Bourdieu,

Edward Sapir, Nancy J. Troy, Fred Davis, Georg Simmel, Ted Polhemus, Lynn Procter,
Roland Barthes, Paul Jobling, Erica Lennard,Tamsin Blanchard, Marie-Cécile Cervellon,
Lindsey Carey, Kate Fletcher, Alison Gwilt, Umberto Eco, Colin Campbell,Tim Edwards,
Lee Wright, Joanne Entwistle, Annamari Vänskä, Adam Geczy, Vicki Karaminas, Angela
Partington, Herbert Blumer, Emil Wilbekin, Reina Lewis, Emma Tarlo, Carol Tulloch, Irgun
Grimstad Klepp, Mari Rysst, Laini Burton, Jana Melkumova-Reynolds, Marco Pedroni,
Tim Dant, Tommy Tse, Ling Tung Tsang, Daniel Miller, Kurt W. Back, Richard Sennett,
Jean Baudrillard, Kim Sawchuk, Alison Gill, Sandra Lee Bartky, Katrin Tiidenberg, Agnès
Rocamora, Jan Brand, Jose Teunissen, Ian Skoggard, Olga Gurova, Lise Skov

Malcolm Barnard is Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture at Loughborough University, UK.

Routledge Student Readers

The Information Society Reader

Edited by Frank Webster

The Body: A Reader

Edited by Mariam Fraser and Monica Greco

Fashion Theory: A Reader

Edited by Malcolm Barnard

Social Movements: A Reader

Edited by Vincenzo Ruggiero and Nicola Montagna

Emotions: A Social Science Reader

Edited by Monica Greco and Paul Stenner

Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader 2nd Edition

Edited by Les Back and John Solomos

Crime and Media: A Reader

Edited by Chris Greer

The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures

Edited by Robin Cohen and Paola Toninato

Fashion Theory: A Reader 2nd Edition

Edited by Malcolm Barnard

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Student-Readers/book-series/SE0402
Fashion Theory
A Reader
Second edition

Edited by Malcolm Barnard

Second edition published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
And by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Malcolm Barnard; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of the Malcolm Barnard to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2007
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-29693-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-29694-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-09962-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Perpetua and Bell Gothic
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
 Contents

List of fgures xii

List of tables xiv
Preface to the second edition xv

Malcolm Barnard
INTRODUCTION 1

PA RT O N E
Fashion and fashion theories

INTRODUCTION 11

1 E l iz a b e t h W i l s o n
E X P L A I N I N G I T A W AY 17

2 Gilles Lipovetsky
T H E E M P I R E O F FAS H I O N : I N T R O D U C T I O N 27

3 B a r b a ra V i n k e n
A D O R N E D I N Z E I TG E I ST 35

4 Pierre Bourdieu
H A U T E C O U T U R E A N D H A U T E C U LT U R E 46
vi CONTENTS

PA RT T WO
What fashion is and is not

INTRODUCTION 53

5 Ed w a r d S a p i r
FAS H I O N 59

6 N a n c y J . Tr o y
A RT 66

7 Fr e d D a v i s
A N T I F A S H I O N : T H E V I C I S S I T U D E S O F N E G AT I O N 78

8 Georg Simmel
FAS H I O N 92

9 Te d Po l h e m u s a n d Ly n n P r o c t o r
E X T R A C T F R O M fa s h i o n a n d a n t i fa s h i o n 102

PA RT T H R E E
Fashion and (the) image

INTRODUCTION 113

10 Roland Barthe s
FAS H I O N P H O T O G RA P H Y 119

11 Pa u l J o b l i n g
GOING BEYOND ‘THE FAS H I O N SYST E M ’ : A C R I T I Q U E 122

12 Erica Le nnard
‘DOING FAS H I O N P H O T O G RA P H S ’ 137

13 Ta m s i n B l a n c h a r d
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A B O U D S O D A N O A N D PA U L S M I T H 144

PA RT FO U R
Sustainable fashion

INTRODUCTION 157
 CONTENTS vii

14 Marie -Cé cile Cerv ellon and Lindsey Carey

CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ‘GREEN’: WHY AND HOW
C O N SU M E R S U S E E C O - FAS H I O N A N D G R E E N B E AU T Y P R O D U C T S 161

15 Kat e Fle tcher

FAS H I O N , N E E D S A N D C O N SU M P T I O N 177

16 Alison Gwilt
F A S H I O N A N D S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y : R E PA I R I N G T H E C L O T H E S
WE WEAR 188

PA RT F I V E
Fashion as communication

INTRODUCTION 201

17 U m b e r t o Ec o
SOCIAL LIFE AS A SIGN SYSTEM 207

18 Roland Barthe s
T H E A N A LY S I S O F T H E R H E T O R I C A L S Y S T E M 212

19 Fr e d D a v i s
D O C L O T H E S S P E A K ? W H AT M A K E S T H E M F A S H I O N ? 225

20 Colin Campbell
WHEN THE MEANING IS NOT A MESSAGE: A CRITIQUE
O F T H E C O N S U M P T I O N A S C O M M U N I C AT I O N T H E S I S 236

21 Malcolm Barnard
“ FAS H I O N A S C O M M U N I C AT I O N R E V I S I T E D ” 247

PA RT S I X
Fashion: identity and difference

INTRODUCTION 259

22 T i m Ed w a r d s
EXPRESS YOURSELF: THE POLITICS OF DRESSING UP 269

23 Le e Wright
OBJECTIFYING GENDER: THE STILET TO HEEL 275
viii CONTENTS

24 Joanne Entwistle
‘POWER DRESSING’ AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE
CAREER WOMAN 285

25 A n n a m a r i Vä n s k ä
F R O M G AY T O Q U E E R – O R , W A S N ’ T F A S H I O N A LW AY S
A L R E A DY A V E RY Q U E E R T H I N G ? 297

26 A d a m G e c z y a n d V i c k i K a ra m i n a s
L E S B I A N ST Y L E : F R O M M A N N I S H W O M E N T O LI P ST I C K DYK E S 307

27 A n g e l a Pa r t i n g t o n
P O P U L A R F A S H I O N A N D W O R K I N G - C L A S S A F F LU E N C E 328

28 Herbert Blumer
F A S H I O N : F R O M C L A S S D I F F E R E N T I AT I O N T O C O L L E C T I V E
SELECTION 340

29 Emil Wilb ekin

G R E AT A S P I R AT I O N S : H I P H O P A N D F A S H I O N D R E S S F O R
EXCESS AND SUCCESS 355

30 Reina Le wis
TA S T E A N D D I S T I N C T I O N : T H E P O L I T I C S O F S T Y L E 361

31 E m m a Ta r l o
I S L A M I C FAS H I O N S C A P E 374

32 C a r o l Tu l l o c h
Y O U S H O U L D U N D E R S TA N D , I T ’ S A F R E E D O M T H I N G :
T H E ST O N E D C H E R R I E – ST E V E B I KO T - S H I RT 389

PA RT S EV E N
Fashion, clothes and the body

INTRODUCTION 405

33 Joanne Entwistle
A D D R E SS I N G T H E B O DY 411

34 Ingun Grimst ad Klepp and Mari Rysst

D E V I A N T B O D I E S A N D S U I TA B L E C L O T H E S 430
 CONTENTS ix

35 Laini Burt on and Jana Melkumova-Re ynolds

“MY L E G I S A G I A N T ST I L E T T O H E E L ” : FAS H I O N I N G T H E
P R O ST H E T I S E D B O DY 448

36 Malcolm Barnard
FAS H I O N , C LO T H E S A N D T H E B O DY 461

PA RT E I G H T
Fashion: production, consumption, prosumption

INTRODUCTION 477

37 Marco Pe droni
THE CROSSROAD BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION 483

38 Tim Dant
CONSUMING OR LIVING WITH THINGS? WEARING IT OUT 505

39 To m m y Ts e a n d L i n g Tu n g Ts a n g
R E C O N C E P T UA LI S I N G P R O SU M P T I O N B E YO N D T H E
‘ C U LT U R A L T U R N ’ : PA S S I V E F A S H I O N P R O S U M P T I O N I N
KOREA AND CHINA 517

40 Kat e Fle tcher

AT T E N T I V E N E S S , M AT E R I A L S , A N D T H E I R U S E : T H E S T O R I E S
O F N E V E R WAS H E D , P E R F E C T P I E C E A N D MY C O M M U N I T Y 532

41 Daniel Miller
T H E L I T T L E B L A C K D R E S S I S T H E S O LU T I O N , B U T W H AT I S
THE PROBLEM? 546

PA RT N I N E
Modern fashion

INTRODUCTION 559

42 E l iz a b e t h W i l s o n
ADORNED IN DREAMS: INTRODUCTION 565

43 K u r t W. B a c k
M O D E R N I SM A N D FAS H I O N : A S O C I A L P SYC H O LO G I C A L
I N T E R P R E TAT I O N 570
x CONTENTS

44 Richard Sennett
PUBLIC ROLES/PERSONALITY IN PUBLIC 580

45 A d a m G e c z y a n d V i c k i K a ra m i n a s
W A LT E R B E N J A M I N : F A S H I O N , M O D E R N I T Y A N D T H E
CITY STREET 594

PA RT T E N
Postmodern fashion

INTRODUCTION 607

46 Jean Baudrillard
THE IDEOLOGICAL GENESIS OF NEEDS/FETISHISM
AND IDEOLOGY 613

47 Jean Baudrillard
F A S H I O N , O R T H E E N C H A N T I N G S P E C TA C L E O F T H E C O D E 624

48 Kim Sawchuk
A TA L E O F I N S C R I P T I O N / F A S H I O N S TAT E M E N T S 637

49 Alison Gill
D E C O N ST R U C T I O N FAS H I O N : T H E M A K I N G O F U N F I N I S H E D ,
DECOMPOSING AND RE-ASSEMBLED CLOTHES 651

PA RT E L EV E N
Digital/new media and fashion

INTRODUCTION 673

50 S a n d ra L e e B a r t k y
N A R C I S S I S M , F E M I N I N I T Y A N D A L I E N AT I O N 677

51 A g n è s R o c a m o ra
P E R S O N A L FAS H I O N B LO G S : S C R E E N S A N D M I R R O R S I N
D I G I TA L S E L F - P O R T R A I T S 692

52 Katrin Tiide nb erg

B R I N G I N G S E X Y B A C K : R E C L A I M I N G T H E B O DY A E ST H E T I C
VIA SELF-SHOOTING 707
 CONTENTS xi

53 A g n è s R o c a m o ra
M E D I AT I Z AT I O N A N D D I G I TA L M E D I A I N T H E F I E L D
O F FAS H I O N 725

P A R T T W E LV E
Global and transnational fashion

INTRODUCTION 739

54 Malcolm Barnard
G L O B A L I Z AT I O N A N D C O L O N I A L I S M 743

55 J a n B ra n d a n d J o s e Te u n i s s e n
E X T R A C T F R O M g l o b a l fa s h i o n l o c a l t r a d i t i o n 757

56 Ian Skoggard
T R A N S N AT I O N A L C O M M O D I T Y F L O W S A N D T H E G L O B A L
PHENOMENON OF THE BRAND 770

57 Olga Gurova
T H E A RT O F D R E SS I N G : B O DY , G E N D E R , A N D D I S C O U R S E O N
F A S H I O N I N S O V I E T R U S S I A I N T H E 19 5 0 S A N D 19 6 0 S 782

58 Lise Skov
H O N G K O N G F A S H I O N D E S I G N E R S A S C U LT U R A L
INTERMEDIARIES: OUT OF GLOBAL GARMENT PRODUCTION 796

Index 810
 Figures

12.1 The Girl on the Pier, Santa Margarita, Italy, 1979 141
12.2 Audrey, Deauville, 1980 142
12.3 Untitled 143
13.1 Paul Smith labels 151
13.2 Paul Smith bag campaign, 1997 152
13.3 Paul Smith Fragrance 2000 153
13.4 Paul Smith women’s stripe bag, 1999 154
13.5 Paul Smith Eau Extreme fragrance bottles, 2002 155
16.1 Diagram based on the clothing care function 191
16.2 Mending the hole in a T-shirt 194
16.3 Planning and documenting the repair task 195
16.4 Applying a clothing patch to hide garment damage 196
16.5 Textural patterns hide damage in Bruno Kleist’s menswear.
Danish designer Kleist developed a natural dye process from
materials such as fungus, compost and iron. 198
16.6 London-based designers Queenie and Ted upcycle damaged
garments to specific customer requirements 199
19.1 Drawing by R. Chast C 1988 The New Yorker Magazine inc. 227
26.1 Author Radclyffe Hall, right, and Lady Una Troubridge with
their dachshunds at Crufts dog show. February 1923 308
26.2 Lady Una Troubridge by Romaine Brooks, oil on canvas 310
26.3 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge 311
26.4 Lesbian chic: pants, Opus 9 by Justine Taylor,Alexander McQueen
jacket,A.F.Vandervorst boots, Chanel bracelet, Raphael Mhashilkar
crystal pendant. 322
 FIGURES xiii

26.5 Lesbian chic: pants, Opus 9 by Justine Taylor,Alexander McQueen

jacket,A.F.Vandervorst boots, Chanel bracelet, Raphael Mhashilkar
crystal pendant. 325
36.1 A woman looks at a giant poster showing Isabelle Caro, part
of a campaign against anorexia by Italian photographer Oliviero
Toscani, in Milan, Italy,Tuesday, 25 September 2007.The
campaign, sponsored by an Italian clothing firm, came up in
Italy just as the Milan fashion shows started. 462
36.2 Yolanda Dominguez 2011 ‘Poses’ 474
37.1 The cultural diamond 488
37.2 The culture industry system and the cultural diamond 490
40.1 533
40.2 A twofold relationship between on-going use of fashion and a
garment’s materiality is best understood in the round 536
40.3 Anti-establishment 538
40.4 Coffee + laughter 539
40.5 ‘In the unique conditions of my life they are ideal’ 540
40.6 Body changer 541
40.7 Fell into my path 542
40.8 Pattern of the islands 544
40.9 Brooklyn geometry 545
52.1 The left image came with a caption:‘I think it’s time you took
some dictation’ and the right:‘Clearly, I need a secretary to
assist me’. 713
52.2 These images were posted as a part of Hotel series and within
a game of Full Frontal Friday, some of the self shooters play.
The images were originally in color. 715
52.3 These images were posted as a set, with a caption that read: Hey
grayface-who-thinks-I-should-keep-my-‘slightly-overweight’-body-
off-the-internet-because-it is-not-beautiful, one of my defining
personality traits is that, when someone bosses me around, I itch
to do the opposite. I had had no plans to take any more selfies until
you showed up spreading body-fascism, but you gave me the
impetus to rediscover my body again.Thank you, love, Rachel.
She tagged it with a lot of tag words, among others ‘fuck body
fascists’ and ‘anonymous coward’. 717
54.1 Zambian coat of arms 751
 Tables

15.1 Fundamental human needs 180

 Preface to the second edition

This second edition would not exist were it not for Gerhard Boomgaarden’s encour-
agement, Marie Roberts’ and Emma Brown’s diligence and hard work and the col-
legial good sense of the anonymous reviewers and critical readers who pointed out
omissions and suggested new readings. I am grateful to you all.
Following the advice of the reviewers and critical readers, some sections from the
first edition remain and some have been left out.There are new sections on globalisa-
tion and fashion, digital/new media and sustainable fashion. And there are revisions
to and new contents in those sections that are still here.Appropriately, and inevitably,
these changes will be the result of complex and changing conditions involving func-
tion and desire, economics, copyright and fashion itself.
 Introduction

j Malcolm Barnard

What is this book about?

I T I S A B O U T T H E T H E O R I E S (or organised ideas) behind what we think,

write and say about the things we wear. When, for example, we mock our male
friends for wearing a shirt that is a bit ‘girly’, complex theories of gender, social status
and communication lie behind what we say, usually without our knowing it. When we
say that one of our friends has an endearingly retro style but that another is locked
in some ghastly eighties time warp, we are using theories about what history is and
how fashion relates to history. This book is about these theories and ideas in a way
that makes us think about what ideas or theories are and how they colour or even
make possible the things we think, write and say about the things we wear. It is about
these ideas in a way that makes us think ‘Who is this “we”, this “us” that is doing
the thinking, writing and saying?’ How does what we wear make us a group, an ‘us’
or a ‘we’? And it is about the relations between ‘us’, what and how we communicate
through what we wear and how, as Jean-Luc Nancy says, that communication, that
being ‘in touch’, makes us into an ‘us’ in the frst place (Nancy 2000: 13, quoted in
Derrida 2005: 115).
When we say ‘fashion’, do we mean the same thing as when we say ‘clothing’ or
‘dress’, and is saying ‘the things we wear’ any different from saying ‘fashion’, ‘cloth-
ing’ or ‘dress’? What ideas and theories lie behind these words, and how might they
affect the meaning of what we think and say about fashion? It is not impossible that
we are thinking and saying things we don’t actually understand, and if we don’t know
what we’re talking about, how will anyone else? So, this book is an attempt to identify
and explain some of the ideas and theories behind what we think and say about what
we wear. In order to begin this task, the following sections of this Introduction will
consider three questions, ‘What is fashion?’, ‘What is theory?’ and ‘What is fashion
2 MALCOLM BARNARD

theory?’ They will look at some of the ideas and theories that people have had about
what fashion, theory and fashion theory might be.

What is fashion?

Even at frst glance, the apparently simple question ‘What is fashion?’ is not an easy
one to answer. Fashion is either one of the crowning achievements of western civilisa-
tion or it is incontrovertible evidence of consumer culture’s witless obsession with
the trivial and the unreal. It is either creative to the point of being an ‘art’, enabling
individuals and cultures to express their inner feelings and personalities, or it is
exploitative to the point of criminality, forcing people to work and spend more than
is healthy for them or society. For H. G. Wells’s extinct uncle, fashion was ‘the foam
on the ocean of vulgarity . . . the vulgar – blossoming’ (Wells 1895: 17). For William
Hazlitt, fashion was merely the sign of ‘folly and vanity’ (quoted in Bell 1947: 112).
However, for James Laver, fashion and clothing are ‘the furniture of the mind made
visible’ (quoted in Lurie 1981: 3), and for Susan Ferleger Brades, art and fashion
‘overlap’ and pursue a common set of visual discoveries (Ferleger Brades in Hayward
Gallery 1998: Preface). Taking a more practical approach, one may point to one’s
coat and say, ‘This Balenciaga coat is fashion’, or one may suggest that ‘Fashion
is what people wear’. Answers such as these would suffce for most people in most
situations most of the time. However, most people are not routinely occupied in the
analysis and critical explanation of fashion, and some people never involve them-
selves in such activities. For those of us that are so engaged, the question ‘What is
fashion?’ demands our full attention: how are we to analyse and explain fashion if we
do not know what fashion is?
Answers such as the one given earlier, in which a particular example (the Balen-
ciaga coat) is given as a defnition of a concept (fashion), will not do. Such responses
assume that one already knows enough about what fashion is to identify Balenciaga
coats as examples of it, but do not actually tell us anything about what fashion is.They
are therefore said to ‘beg the question’. They also hide or obscure the way in which
the meaning of ‘fashion’ drifts in and out of the sense of the ‘fashionable’: while this
Balenciaga coat may be fashionable now, it will be unfashionable next year and yet it
will still be an example of fashion. Answers such as the one earlier in which it is sug-
gested that fashion is simply what people wear will not do either. It, too, presupposes
that one already knows what fashion is (how could one identify people wearing it oth-
erwise?). Also, some people do not wear fashion in the sense that what they have on is
fashionable, or ‘in fashion’ at the moment, and others wear things that are simply not
fashion items.This drifting or slippage of ‘fashion’ in and out of the sense of ‘fashion-
able’ is something that requires explanation.
The Oxford English Dictionary provides nine different senses of the word ‘fashion’,
and Princeton University’s WordNet Search engine (http://wordnet.princeton.edu)
offers fve senses. Between them, they offer a range of meanings and defnitions, from
‘the action or process of making’, ‘dress’, ‘manner’, ‘a particular shape or cut’, ‘char-
acteristic or habitual practice’ and ‘form’ through to ‘consumer goods in the current
 INTRODUCTION 3

mode’ and ‘the latest and most admired style’. However, both distinguish ‘fashion’ as a
noun from ‘fashion’ as a verb. As a noun, ‘fashion’ means ‘kind’, ‘sort’, ‘style’ or ‘man-
ner’ and as a verb it indicates the action of making or doing something.
It is as a noun that the word ‘fashion’ is probably most familiar to us, and it is
as a noun that the word leads us into more or less confusion. As such, ‘fashion’ may
apparently be used interchangeably with words such as ‘dress’ and ‘style’, as in ‘the
latest and most admired style’, noted earlier. Consumer goods in general also appear
to be synonymous with ‘fashion’, as in ‘consumer goods in the current mode’, as also
provided earlier. (It will be observed that these senses also introduce the notions of
consumption and the admiration of others into our understanding of what fashion
might be.) Ted Polhemus and Lynn Procter add other words for which ‘fashion’ might
be substituted when they point out that ‘in contemporary western society, the term
“fashion” is often used as a synonym of the terms “adornment”, “style” and “dress”’
(Polhemus and Procter 1978: 9). Adding ‘adornment’ to the defnition or understand-
ing of the word ‘fashion’ as ‘style’ and ‘dress’ complicates the issue even more.
Two things are happening here. First, fashion is being defned in relation to various
other phenomena (‘dress’, ‘adornment’ and ‘style’, for example). Entwistle points out
that ‘dress’ and ‘adornment’ have an anthropological pedigree and are used because
anthropology is looking for an ‘all-inclusive term that denotes all the things that peo-
ple do to their bodies’ (Entwistle 2000: 40). ‘Fashion’ is more specifc than ‘dress’ or
‘adornment’ and denotes a particular ‘system of dress that is found in western moder-
nity’ (Ib.). Second, fashion seems to invite or include the sense of ‘in fashion’. This is
the same move as found in the word ‘style’, where the meaning of style as ‘the manner
or way of doing something’ slides into ‘a socially or culturally approved way of doing
something’, and it is probably just as unavoidable.
While neither of these things helps us to fnd a simple or once-and-for-all defni-
tion of fashion, neither actually prevents us from gaining an understanding of what
fashion is. Defning fashion in terms of a network or structure of other elements is
inevitable: it is the way language works, and we should get used to it. And the second
thing, the inclusion of being in fashion into the meaning of fashion, is probably also
unavoidable.
We seem to end up with Anne Hollander’s defnition of fashion:

Everybody has to get dressed in the morning and go about the day’s
business . . . [w]hat everybody wears to do this has taken different forms
in the West for about seven hundred years and that is what fashion is.
(Hollander 1994: 11)

This may sound, ironically enough, as though we are back where we started, with
‘fashion is what people wear’, but ‘what people wear’ should be understood to include
(but not be exhausted by) all instances of what people wear, from catwalk creations,
through High Street and outlet purchases, to police and military uniforms. Conse-
quently, this volume will not concentrate exclusively on fashion: it is interested in what
people wear, and insofar as what people wear in modern western countries is fashion,
then it is interested in fashion. Another problem that arises here is that fashion sounds
4 MALCOLM BARNARD

as though it is different from clothing; while clothing sounds like, or has connotations
of, the sort of thing one wears every day and is mundane, fashion connotes glamour
and sounds somehow special and different from clothing. However, if fashion is what
people wear to go about their everyday lives, as Anne Hollander says, then fashion has
to include what we would usually want to call clothing or ‘what people wear’.
Such a defnition, however useful it is here, invites challenges as to what counts as
‘western’ and what counts as ‘modern’. It may presuppose ‘modernity’ and ‘westernity’.
In response, it can be argued that it is simply the case that the existence of fashion in a
society is a good test of whether that society is modern, or western. A society in which
there are not different classes, no social structure and in which upward mobility in a
class structure is neither possible nor desirable has no need of fashion, and it might
reasonably be described as being neither modern nor western.
Similarly, while fashion may be about the body, as Joanne Entwistle says, it is also,
as she also says, about the ‘fashioned’ body (Entwistle 2000: 1). By ‘the fashioned
body’ one is obliged to understand, not a natural or Edenic body, but a ‘produced’
and therefore ‘cultured’ body. This is partly because one of the meanings of fashion
(as a verb) is ‘to make’ or ‘to produce’ and partly because there can be no simple,
un-cultured, natural body. (Babies are probably as close as one gets but, unlike their
parents, they tend not to be interested in fashion.) Even when naked, the body is posed
or held in certain ways, it makes gestures and it is thoroughly meaningful.To say that
the fashioned body is always a cultured body is also to say that the fashioned body
is a meaningful body, and that it is therefore about communication. This is because
saying that fashion is meaningful is to say that fashion is a cultural phenomenon.
The reason for this, in turn, is that culture is about shared meanings and the com-
munication and understanding of those meanings. The sharing of meanings and being
in communication is what makes a cultural group a cultural group ‘in the frst place’
(Cherry 1957: 4). Given this, we can say that differently cultured bodies communicate
different things (meanings) by means of the different things (clothes, fashion) that
they wear. Fashion is thus defned as modern, western, meaningful and communicative
bodily adornments, or dress. It is also explained as a profoundly cultural phenomenon.

What is theory?

It is probably not unreasonable to suggest that common, everyday or non-specialist

accounts of theory include the ideas that it involves the use of highly abstract and
often needlessly diffcult conceptual frameworks to provide complex explanations of
phenomena that are actually quite simple and straightforward. Playing a series of
crunchy, satisfying power chords on an electric guitar does not need (and sounds
no better for knowing) the music theory that concerns perfect ffths. Checking one’s
change at the store is no less accurate for not knowing the theory of real numbers.
It may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that our word ‘theory’ derives from an
ancient Greek word (theoria) meaning nothing more abstract or complicated than
‘looking’ or ‘vision’: ‘theorein’ means ‘to look at’ and ‘theoros’ means ‘spectator’. The
abstraction, complexity and diffculty associated with theory and conceptual activity
 INTRODUCTION 5

appear to be entirely absent from what is experienced every day in the simple prac-
tices of seeing, looking at and spectating or beholding something.
However, this surprise should be short-lived if we consider the well-known story
concerning the farmer, the general and the art student standing together in a feld.
Asked to describe what they see, each gives an entirely different account. The farmer
sees a proftable unit with good drainage, which would be easy to plough and would
support arable crops. The general sees an exposed killing feld that would be impos-
sible to defend. And the art student sees a pastoral scene that would make a delightful
watercolour if the trees on the left were a darker shade of green and moved a little to
the right. Looking at the feld, each sees something different, according to the concep-
tual frameworks they adopt: to this extent, what they see is a product of the theories
they are accustomed to using. The farmer is employing a combination of economics,
biology and geology to produce what one might call agricultural theory; the general is
employing military theory; and the student is employing aesthetic theory. As a result
of the different theories, the different conceptual and abstract resources each has
at their disposal, each ‘sees’ something different. A theory, then, might be thought of
as a set or framework of concepts, the purpose of which is to describe and explain a
specifc phenomenon.
This story introduces a problem that is relevant to all theory, theories and theoris-
ing.The problem concerns the extent to which the object being studied is a product of
the theory employed to study it and is known as the ‘theory-ladeness’ of ‘facts’ or the
theory-dependency of what is ostensibly innocent observation.To the farmer, it is true,
or a fact, that the feld will support arable crops; to the general, it is a true fact that
the feld is impossible to defend; and to the art student, it is a fact that the imagined
watercolour would be improved by moving the trees. Each of the ‘facts’, however, is a
product of or dependent upon the theory that is being used.
Paradoxically, then, while theory may be the use of abstract, conceptual frame-
works in the explanation and analysis of phenomena, theory is also necessary in order
to see those phenomena ‘in the frst place’. The derivation of our word ‘theory’ from
the Greek ‘theoria’ (‘vision’ or ‘looking’) should therefore alert us to the role of con-
ceptual work in constructing our visual experience. Everything we see is the product
of conceptual frameworks, or what amount to theoretical constructs, being applied
to the so-called raw data that are supplied by the eyes to the brain. The derivation
might also help us to appreciate the metaphorical drift in the meaning of the word
‘see’ from seeing as a visual experience to seeing as understanding. This drift is well
understood in the everyday English phrase ‘I see what you mean’, where a word used
to describe a visual experience (seeing) is used to represent an experience which is
not visual (understanding). Seeing is already understanding because it is a product of
the application of conceptual frameworks (theories) to visual experience, and conse-
quently the everyday and apparently straightforward activities of ‘seeing’ and ‘looking
at’ involve a good deal more abstraction and are a good deal more complicated than
was implied earlier. In short, they involve more conceptual or theoretical activity than
is commonly appreciated.
The story also introduces a signifcant difference between the sorts of theories
that are appropriate to, and the kinds of accounts that might be expected from, the
6 MALCOLM BARNARD

study of fashion.The farmer used theories from biology and geology to construct and
describe what she or he saw, and the art student used aesthetic theory to construct
and describe what she or he saw; the difference to be noted is that between the natural
sciences on the one hand and the social sciences and humanities on the other.
The natural sciences are concerned with the explanation and predictability of nat-
ural phenomena – the ‘mastery’ of the physical universe. And in the natural sciences it
was long thought that theory was the product of the observation of those phenomena.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was one of the frst scientists to depart from medieval
traditions and to ‘emphasise the role of positive science and its observational char-
acter’ (Larrain 1979: 19). Positive science stresses the role of facts, and a science
that begins with the observation of phenomena is called empirical science.The idea is
that the scientist observes the phenomena and then constructs a theory to explain the
facts.This is known as the inductive method, and it was thought to be a description of
the scientifc method used by the natural sciences: in other words, it was believed to be
a description of what happened in the natural sciences.The empirical natural sciences
were developing rapidly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Giddens, for
example, writes of the ‘sensational illumination and explanatory power’ of the natural
sciences at this time (1976: 13). The methods used to such tremendous effect by the
natural sciences at this time, then, were positivist (stressing the objective existence of
facts) and empiricist (stressing the role of observation).
The social sciences of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries needed a method
that would guarantee them the same levels of explanatory and predictive success that
were being enjoyed by the natural sciences. In the social sciences and humanities, how-
ever, idealist and interpretative traditions that are absent from the natural sciences
come into play. Idealist traditions insist on the predominant role of thought, or theory,
in investigation, and interpretative traditions emphasise the part that an individual’s
or actor’s understandings of what is happening plays in human knowledge. It is over
the nature of facts and observation, and the roles of positivism and empiricism, that
some of the major methodological debates in the social sciences have occurred. One
debate, noted earlier, concerns whether observations and facts in the social sciences
are the same kinds of thing as observations and facts in the natural sciences.
Another has been to do with whether empiricism is the best way of understand-
ing social actors; the social sciences want to provide true explanations of social
phenomena, but an additional claim, to understanding, is also made on their behalf.
Consequently, the predicting and controlling functions of the natural sciences are
often received rather poorly by social scientists, but the notion that understanding
social phenomena is key is often stressed. Bauman, for example, says that ‘social
phenomena . . . demand to be understood in a different way than by mere explaining’
(1978: 12). ‘Mere explaining’ is found in the natural sciences, but understanding
social phenomena ‘must contain an element missing from the explanation of natural
phenomena’. What is missing from natural phenomena is the actor’s purpose or
intention, the fact that what people do is meaningful to those people and to the
people around them, and the social sciences must therefore pay attention to under-
standing that meaning.This extra dimension that is present in the social sciences and
humanities is an interpretative or ‘hermeneutic’ dimension.
 INTRODUCTION 7

What is fashion theory?

Having explained what fashion is and having explained what theory is, this Introduc-
tion should now be perfectly placed to explain what fashion theory is. It would appear
to be simply a matter of adding the one to the other. Unfortunately, the situation is not
quite as simple as that.There is no one set of ideas or no single conceptual framework
with which fashion might be defned, analysed and critically explained. Consequently,
there is no single discipline, approach or discrete body of work that can be identi-
fed and presented here as fashion theory. Rather, there are theories about fashion
or, to put it another way, there are fashion theories. What one fnds is that various
and diverse academic disciplines apply themselves or are applied to the practices,
institutions, personnel and objects that constitute fashion. Each discipline has its own
set or sets of ideas and conceptual frameworks in terms of which it defnes, analyses
and explains fashion. Each discipline, then, comes with its own theory, or theories, in
terms of which it goes about the task of studying fashion. This Introduction needs to
ascertain which disciplines and which theories therefore might be applied to fashion
in order to explain, analyse and understand it.
In his The Structures of Everyday Life, Fernand Braudel (1981) says that the
history of costume is ‘less anecdotal than would appear. It touches on every issue –
raw materials, production processes, manufacturing costs, cultural stability, fashion
and social hierarchy’ (Braudel 1981: 311). By ‘less anecdotal’ he means less depen-
dent on random or accidental observations and more on the product of sustained
theoretical or idea-driven enquiry.The idea-driven enquiries he has in mind here are
academic disciplines, and they include economics and cultural and social theory.
Lisa Tickner also stresses the way in which many different academic disciplines are
required for the study of fashion. Fashion is ‘a rich and multi-disciplinary subject,
and a point at which history, economics, anthropology, sociology and psychology
could be said to meet’ (Tickner 1977: 56). To this list could be added art history,
for, as Elizabeth Wilson says, the ‘serious study of fashion has traditionally been a
branch of art history’ (Wilson 1985: 48 and Cf. Lipovetsky 1994: 64–74). Fashion
and dress history may indeed be said to have ‘followed’ the methods of some of the
more traditional or ‘old’ art histories in their interest in the dating of costume, the
attribution of ‘authorship’ and in preserving the distinction between high art and
popular art.
It is interesting to note at this point that the fashion historian Valerie Steele
(1998) and the dress historian Lou Taylor (2002: 69), who both support the idea
of an ‘object-based’ history, also both propose a three-part ‘method’ for the study of
those objects that is based on the work of Jules Prown, professor of art history at
Yale. Prown said that

analysis proceeds from description, recording the internal evidence of the

object itself; to deduction, interpreting the interaction between the object
and the perceiver; to speculation, framing hypotheses and questions which
lead out from the object to external evidence for testing and resolution.
(Prown 1982: 1, quoted in Steele 1998: 329)
8 MALCOLM BARNARD

According to Steele, Prown cites the earlier work of Fleming as a ‘model’ for his
own work, and she describes it as a ‘supplement’. Fleming suggests a four-part
method:

1 Identifcation (factual description)

2 Evaluation (judgement)
3 Cultural analysis (relationship of the artefact to its culture)
4 Interpretation (signifcance)
(quoted in Steele Ib.)

This method is proposed by Steele as a way of investigating or ‘reading’ items of

dress.The frst step, that of factual description, relies heavily on observation. Steele
provides an example of such factual description or observation by using a dress
from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut; she says that it was a ‘woman’s
dress . . . [and] consisted of a bodice and a skirt . . . a shirred apron overskirt cov-
ered most of the front of the skirt which was full and backswept with a train’ (Ib:
330). Steele says that ‘the next stage, speculation’ involves the framing of hypoth-
eses, which are then tested against external evidence and, in the case of the dress,
these hypotheses are ‘inextricably connected with cultural perceptions of sexuality
and gender’ (Ib. 331).
As was seen earlier, there are various problems with this method, which contains
elements of both empiricism (in its emphasis on observation and description) and pos-
itivism (in its emphasis on a split between facts and hypotheses).The most signifcant
problem is that the notion of ‘identifcation’ or factual description presupposes that it
is possible to give an ‘objective’ account of the ‘object itself’ without the infuence of
any cultural preconceptions. Any words that one uses to describe the object will exist
and be meaningful within a language, and that language will inevitably contain and
communicate any number of cultural preconceptions. There are no ‘neutral’ or ‘pas-
sive’ descriptions of what is observed: even observation is not passive or neutral in
this sense (see Williams 2000: 34). Consequently, to describe the object as a ‘woman’s
dress’ is to use two culturally loaded words which depend on one’s membership in a
certain culture in order to be understood. These words are only meaningful within an
existing conceptual framework of beliefs and values, a cultural perspective, and to
that extent are already the product of theoretical (conceptual) activity. The cultural
phases are therefore already present in the frst phase and, no matter how careful one
is, one cannot undertake the method strictly in sequence and keep the stages discrete,
as Prown urges (Steele 1998: 329).
There are many academic disciplines, then, that take an interest in the history,
analysis and critical explanation of fashion. Each discipline will have its own idea, or
theory, of what fashion is and of what sorts of activities count as analysis and expla-
nation. It is the task of this book to try to represent the range of those disciplines and
to give some idea of what sorts of things they say about fashion.
There are also many different accounts of the relations between those disciplines
and their theories and fashion. As noted earlier, theory may be seen as an unnecessary
and unnecessarily diffcult detour or diversion from the main activity. Or theory may
 INTRODUCTION 9

be conceived as a necessary evil, something that one is obliged to pay lip service to
in the obtaining of educational qualifcations. In her Adorned in Dreams, Elizabeth
Wilson (1985) employs the metaphor of spectacles to describe the relation between
fashion and academic study:

The attempt to view fashion through several different pairs of spectacles

simultaneously – of aesthetics, of social theory, of politics – may result in
an obliquity of view, or even of astigmatism or blurred view, but is seems
we must attempt it.
(Wilson 1985: 11)

Appropriately enough (given the Greek derivation of ‘theoria’ as ‘looking’), theories

are conceived here as various different pairs of spectacles through which one may
view or study fashion. Also appropriate is the insistence on the necessity of using
different theories in order to see, however obscurely, and study the phenomenon
that is fashion. What is less welcome in this metaphor is the (slightly inconsistent)
implication that, as spectacles may be taken off, so theory might be dispensed with:
the argument here has to be that, in the absence of some form of theory or set of
ideas, the phenomenon that is fashion would not even appear. Fashion theory is
therefore inevitable; it cannot be avoided, and there is a sense in which one is always
already engaged in theoretical activity when commenting on or studying fashion.
As noted in the very frst paragraph, calling a friend’s shirt ‘girly’ or ‘endearingly
retro’ is already to have employed theories of gender, history and communication,
for example. Fashion theory is not an evil, necessary or otherwise, and it is not
something that can be escaped: we are doing it all the time, whether we recognise
it, or like it, or not.
It will have been noted that the theories in terms of which it is suggested that
fashion is to be studied are all from the humanities and social sciences, rather than
the natural sciences.This is not to say that natural science disciplines, (such as chem-
istry, physics and biology, for example) do not or cannot have interesting and useful
things to say about fashion and clothing. Some fashionable clothing would not exist
were it not for the knowledge of certain chemical processes that are used in con-
structing synthetic fabrics, for example, and an explanation of that clothing would
strictly be incomplete without an account of those processes. Nor is it to deny the
fascination of such projects as Wills and Christopher’s (1973) attempt to apply
mathematical stochastic approaches to fashion trends. Stochastic models are con-
cerned with calculating the probability of events occurring, and Wills and Christo-
pher apply the techniques involved in Markov chain processes and epidemic theory to
try to explain the movement or transition from one fashion state to another (1973:
17ff). It is, however, to recognise that this volume is concerned with explaining and
understanding (the meanings) of fashion: it is therefore a humanities/social science
reader. The essays that are collected here are all from the disciplines that make up
the humanities and social sciences, because they all deal, in their own ways, with the
explanation and understanding of the objects, institutions, personnel and practices
of fashion.
10 MALCOLM BARNARD

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Barnard, M. (2001) Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Bauman, Z. (1978) Hermeneutics and Social Science, London: Hutchinson University
Library.
Bell, Q. (1947) On Human Finery, London: Allison and Busby.
Braudel, F. (1981) Civilisation and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, Volume One, the Struc-
tures of Everyday Life, London: Collins and Fontana.
Cherry, C. (1957) On Human Communication, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.
Derrida, J. (2005) On Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Entwistle, J. (2000) The Fashioned Body, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1976) New Rules of Sociological Method, London: Hutchinson University
Library.
Hollander, A. (1994) Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress, New York: Kodansha
International.
Larrain, J. (1979) The Concept of Ideology, London: Hutchinson University Library.
Lipovetsky, G. (1994) The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Lurie, A. (1981) The Language of Clothes, London: Bloomsbury.
Nancy, J.-L. (2000) Being Singular Plural, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Polhemus,T. and Procter, L. (1978) Fashion and Anti-Fashion: An Anthropology of Clothing
and Adornment, London:Thames and Hudson.
Steele, V. (1998) ‘A Museum of Fashion Is More Than a Clothes Bag’, Fashion Theory,
2(4): 327–336.
Taylor, L. (2002) The Study of Dress History, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tickner, L. (1977) ‘Women and Trousers’, in Leisure in the Twentieth Century, London:
Design Council Publications.
Wells, H. G. (1895) Conversations with an Uncle Now Extinct, London: John Lane.
Williams, M. (2000) Science and Social Science: An Introduction, London: Routledge.
Wills, G. and Christopher, M. (1973) ‘What Do We Know about Fashion Dynamics?’, in
G. Wills and D. Midgley (eds.), Fashion Marketing, London: George Allen and Unwin.
Wilson, E. (1985) Adorned in Dreams, London: Virago.
PART ONE

Fashion and fashion theories

Introduction

T H E I N T R O D U C T I O N T R I E D T O A N S W E R 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
feld and asked to describe what they see, the general saw the exposed killing feld 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 is partial, or reductive: the farmer’s description or explanation of
the feld as a proftable unit does not exhaust the account that might be given of that
feld. 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 the 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
12 FASHION AND FASHION THEORIES

‘any theory’ of fashion must ‘ft those facts’ (1992: 105). On 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 ftting the facts. The facts, then,
exist independently of the theories which are to explain them on Bell’s account, rather
than being the products of those theories. The second problem noted earlier 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 ques-
tions: ‘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?’ (Ib.: 90).
Bell identifes four types of theory that are proposed in the attempt to explain
the changes of fashion. The frst sees fashion as the work of individuals. The second
proposes fashion as the ‘product’ of human nature. The third explains fashion as the
‘refection’ of political or spiritual events. And the fourth suggests ‘the intervention
of a Higher Power’ (Ib.: 90). What Bell fnds, however, is that ‘the facts’ do not ft
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 (Ib.: 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’ (Ib.: 94). Neither is fashion the
refection of great historical and political events. Bell cites numerous wars and eco-
nomic 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
refect events (Ib.: 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 fttest sur-
vive and the claims of utility are inexorable’ (Ib.: 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 (Ib.: 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 Chapter 9 for more on this).
Clearly, there are other defnitions of fashion (as a sequence of random differences or
as the expression of inner psychological states, for example) and there are other ques-
tions 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 defnitions 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 and her argument is that all are reductive, or
 FASHION AND FASHION THEORIES 13

‘simplist’, as she puts it (Ib.: 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
‘over-simplifed and over-deterministic’ because it reduces fashion to class emulation
through consumerism and ‘grants no role to contradiction . . . or pleasure’ (Wilson
1992: 53). That is, Baudrillard’s theory, which owes much to Marx and Veblen, pre-
supposes a defnition of fashion and it ignores anything that does not ‘ft’ into that
defnition.The defnition of fashion here is that it is about class emulation; contradic-
tion and pleasure are ignored here because they do not ft easily into that defnition. It
will be noted that this is the same move as that made by Bell when he marshals ‘the
facts’ and tries to fnd a theory that will ‘ft’ 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 philosophi-
cal 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 confict between
them. There exists within fashion theory a profound ‘critical unanimity’ and that una-
nimity is not produced by accident, but is ‘deeply rooted in the thought process that
underlies philosophical refection itself’ (Ib.: 9). What Lipovetsky is getting at here
is that all critics of fashion, all fashion theorists, have agreed that fashion is fckle
or superfcial 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’ (Ib.: 3–4). In this, Lipovetsky is essentially in
agreement with Wilson (if not with Bell), who says that ‘fashion writers have never
really challenged Veblen’s explanations’ (Wilson 1992: 52). This is because Veblen is
one of the frst 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 phenom-
enon 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 superfcial. Conse-
quently, 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 superfciality. This is the ‘ruse of reason’ (Ib.: 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 ‘enlight-
enment’, 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.
14 FASHION AND FASHION THEORIES

In the light of these considerations (to follow the Platonic metaphor again) it
seems insuffcient 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 over-simplifying and reducing fashion to
the terms of that discipline’s theory. It may sound insuffcient, but this interdiscipli-
narity is precisely what theorists such as Wilson, Tickner and Braudel were seen to
suggest in the Introduction. All agreed that fashion, perhaps uniquely, demanded the
use of a number of disciplines in order to defne, explain and understand it. If it is
the nature of disciplinary theory to 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) what
might always be misunderstood as the less helpful consequences of fashion theorising.
There is one discipline that has not been thematised as yet but which is presup-
posed by all the discussions so far and in which interest has developed signifcantly
since the frst edition: that discipline is philosophy. In 2006 Lars Svendsen’s Fashion:
A Philosophy was published; this was followed by Wolfendale and Kennett’s (2011)
edited collection, Fashion Philosophy for Everyone, and by Matteucci and Marino’s
(2017) edited collection Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion. While not explicitly
concerned with fashion, Anne-Marie Willis’s (2019) edited collection of essays in
The Design Philosophy Reader does contain a few references to fashion and provides
ample context for further exploration of the discipline and how fashion and clothing
might be explained. Svensen’s monograph has chapters on many of the subjects cov-
ered in the present collection, including the nature of fashion, the body, fashion as/
and art and fashion and consumption. Wolfendale and Kennett’s collection contains
a number of essays central to the concerns of this volume. Andy Hamilton’s essay,
‘The Aesthetics of Design’, takes up the concerns of Nancy Troy in this volume as
to whether fashion is art or not. Samantha Brennan’s essay provides an alternative
perspective on the matter of sexual identity, and Part Four of Wolfendale and Ken-
nett’s collection is dedicated to questions of philosophical ethics as they relate to the
production of fashion items.
The readings extracted here from Barbara Vinken and Pierre Bourdieu also fol-
low up these concerns. Vinken’s chapter relates fashion to art and to history and
temporality, arguing that fashion completes the task that art set itself, of expressing
the zeitgeist in visible form, thus eliminating the difference between fashion and his-
tory or, more accurately, effectively being or becoming the identity of fashion and his-
tory. Modernist theoreticians such as Baudelaire and Benjamin are marshalled and
used to discuss the work of Chanel and explaining the fash-like moment of fashion.
Bourdieu’s chapter explores the apparently jokey but actually very serious relation-
ship between the production of haute couture and the production of haute culture. The
idea that fashion, even the high-status versions of it known as haute couture, might be
the equivalent of culture, let alone high culture, might seem preposterous to some, but
Bourdieu argues the case via the concepts of magic, cultural struggle and revolution
and the surprisingly likely comparability of Coco Chanel and President de Gaulle on
 FASHION AND FASHION THEORIES 15

the matter of ‘succession’ in fashion and politics.The extracts in this section illustrate
some of the range of possible and potential forms that theorising the nature, produc-
tion and consumption of fashion can take.

Bibliography/further reading

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

Bourdieu, P. (1993) ‘Haute Couture and Haute Culture’, in P. Bourdieu (ed.), Sociology in
Question, London: Sage.
Lipovetsky, G. (1994) The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Matteucci, G. and Marino, S. (eds.) (2017) Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion, London:
Bloomsbury.
Svendsen, L. (2006) Fashion: A Philosophy, London: Reaktion Books.
Tseëlon, E. (2001) ‘Fashion Research and Its Discontents’, Fashion Theory, 5(4):
435–452.
Vinken, B. (2005) Chapter Three ‘High and Low: The End of a Century of Fashion’, in
Fashion Zeitgeist, London: Berg.
Willis, A.-M. (ed.) (2019) The Design Philosophy Reader, London, Bloomsbury.
Wilson, E. (1992) Adorned in Dreams, London, Virago and I.B.Tauris.
Wolfendale, J. and Kennett, J. (eds.) (2011) Fashion Philosophy for Everyone, Chichester,
Wiley-Blackwell.
Chapter 1

Elizabeth Wilson

EXPLAINING IT AWAY

B E C A U S E FA S H I O N is constantly denigrated, the serious study of fashion

has had repeatedly to justify itself.Almost every fashion writer, whether journal-
ist or art historian, insists anew on the importance of fashion both as cultural barom-
eter 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 fash-
ion. 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 convic-
tion, often stated, of the transcendent importance of his subject matter was sub-
verted from within by his relegation of women to a denigrated sub-caste. Because
18 ELIZABETH WILSON

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 elitist distinction between high art
and popular art. Fashion then becomes essentially haute couture, and the disintegra-
tion 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 same-
ness’ 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 pecu-
niary 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 expla-
nation 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 ‘irra-
tional’ 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 of moral and intellectual criteria we do not normally apply to other
artistic forms; in architecture, for example, we may all have personal preferences,
yet most of us can accept the pluralism of styles, can appreciate both the austerity
of the Bauhaus and the rich convolutions of rococo. When it comes to fashion, we
become intolerant.
 E X P L A I N I N G I T AWAY 19

Because the origins and rise of fashion were so closely linked with the development
of mercantile capitalism, economic explanations of the fashion phenomenon have always
been popular. It was easy to believe that the function of fashion stemmed from capital-
ism’s need for perpetual expansion, which encouraged consumption.At its crudest, this
kind of explanation assumes that changes in fashion are foisted upon us, especially on
women, in a conspiracy to persuade us to consume far more than we ‘need’ to.Without
this disease of ‘consumerism’, capitalism would collapse. Doris Langley Moore argued
that this is simply not true of the fashion industry, since the men’s tailoring trade, where
fashion changed more slowly, has proved far more stable than the fluctuating women’s
fashion market, where undue risks have to be taken since it is never known in advance
which fashions will catch on and which will expire as fads.6
Underlying such arguments is a belief that human individuals do have certain
unchanging and easily defined needs. The attempt to define and classify such needs
has proved virtually impossible, however, and in fact even such biological needs as the
need for food and warmth are socially constructed and differentially constructed in
different societies.The concept of need cannot elucidate fashion.
Another related argument explained fashion in terms of the fight for status in
capitalist societies. In such societies costume became one arena for the continuous
social struggle of each individual to rise by dint solely of merit and ruthlessness.The
old, rigid boundaries of feudal life dissolved, and all were now free to copy their bet-
ters. Unfortunately, as soon as any fashion percolated down to the middling ranks of
the bourgeoisie, or lower, it became disgusting to the rich.They moved on to some-
thing new. This in turn was copied. According to this argument, fashion became an
endless speeded-up spiral.
The most sophisticated version of this explanation was Thorstein Veblen’s The-
ory of the Leisure Class.Veblen argued that fashion was one aspect of the conspicuous
leisure, conspicuous wealth and conspicuous waste he held to be characteristic
of an acquisitive society in which the ownership of wealth did more to confer
prestige on its owner than either family lineage or individual talent. Veblen, like
Engels, also argued that the women of the bourgeoisie were effectively the prop-
erty of their men:

It has in the course of economic development become the office of the

woman to consume vicariously for the head of the household; and her
apparel is contrived with this object in view. It has come about that obvi-
ously productive labour is in a peculiar degree derogatory to respectable
women, and therefore special pains should be taken in the construction
of women’s dress, to impress upon the beholder the fact (often indeed a
fiction) that the wearer does not and cannot habitually engage in useful
work . . . [Women’s] sphere is within the household, which she should
‘beautify’ and of which she should be the ‘chief ornament’ . . . By vir-
tue of its descent from a patriarchal past, our social system makes it the
woman’s function in an especial degree to put in evidence her household’s
ability to pay . . .
The high heel, the skirt, the impracticable bonnet, the corset, and the
general disregard of the wearer’s comfort which is an obvious feature of
all civilized women’s apparel, are so many items of evidence to the effect
20 ELIZABETH WILSON

that in the modern civilized scheme of life the woman is still, in theory,
the economic dependent of the man – that, perhaps in a highly idealized
sense, she still is the man’s chattel.7

Veblen argued that conspicuous waste accounted for change in fashion, but he also
believed in a ‘native taste’ (that is, some kind of essential good taste) to which con-
spicuous wastefulness was actually abhorrent. It is abhorrent, he argued, because it is
a ‘psychological law’ that we all ‘abhor futility’ – and to Veblen the stylistic oddities
of fashion were manifestly futile. He explained fashion changes as a kind of restless
attempt to get away from the ugliness of the imposed, irrational styles, which every-
one instinctively did recognize to be ugly. For Veblen, then, the motor force of fashion
was a wish, forever frustrated, finally to escape the tyranny of irrational change and
perpetual ugliness.
Fashion writers have never really challenged Veblen’s explanations, and his analy-
sis still dominates to this day.Yet his theory cannot account for the form that fashion
changes take.Why did the bustle replace the crinoline, the leg of mutton sleeve the
sloping shoulder? Theodor Adorno, a Marxist cultural critic, exposed deeper inad-
equacies in Veblen’s thought, arguing that for Veblen

progress means, concretely, the adaptation of the forms of consciousness

and of . . . economic consumption to those of industrial technology.The
means to this adjustment is science.Veblen conceives of it as the universal
application of the principle of causality, in opposition to vestigial [magical
thinking]. Causal thinking is for him the triumph of objective, quanti-
tative relations, patterned after industrial production, over personalistic
and anthropomorphic conceptions.8

In other words,Veblen, according to Adorno, has succumbed to the nineteenth-century

obsession with the natural sciences. In Veblen’s ideal world there was no place for the
irrational or the non-utilitarian; it was a wholly rational realm. Logically, pleasure
itself must be futile since it is unrelated to scientific progress.This was the measure of
Veblen’s utilitarian, clockwork universe, and he therefore hated pursuits such as fash-
ion and organized sport.This ideology led him to reduce all culture to kitsch and to
see leisure as absurd in itself.This utilitarian ideology fatally marked the movements
for dress reform.
The persistence of Veblen’s theories is curious. They have not only continued to
dominate discussions of dress by a variety of writers in the fashion history field but have
also influenced recent, supposedly ‘radical’, critics of ‘consumer culture’. In America,
Christopher Lasch9 and Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen10 have condemned modern culture,
including fashion; in France Jean Baudrillard has explicitly made use of Veblen’s theory
to attack consumerism. Like Veblen, Baudrillard condemns fashion for its ugliness:

Truly beautiful, definitively beautiful clothing would put an end to

fashion. . . . Fashion continually fabricates the ‘beautiful’ on the basis of
a radical denial of beauty, by reducing beauty to the logical equivalent of
ugliness. It can impose the most eccentric, dysfunctional, ridiculous traits
as eminently distinctive.11
 E X P L A I N I N G I T AWAY 21

and he regards fashion as a particularly pernicious form of consumerism, since it

embodies a compromise between the need to innovate and the other need
to change nothing in the fundamental order. It is this that characterizes
‘modern’ societies. Thus it results in a game of change . . . old and new
are not relative to contradictory needs: they are the ‘cyclical’ paradigm
of fashion.12

Such a view is over-simplified and over-deterministic; that is, it grants no role to

contradiction, nor for that matter to pleasure. Baudrillard’s vision is ultimately a
form of nihilism. The attack on consumerism perceives our world as a seamless
web of oppression; we have no autonomy at all, but are the slaves of an iron sys-
tem from which there is no escape. All our pleasures become, according to this
view, the narcotics of an oppressive society; and opera, pop music, thrillers and
great literary ‘masterpieces’ should therefore logically be condemned along with
fashion.
What is especially strange about Baudrillard’s analysis is that he appears to reject
Marxism while accepting this most conspiratorial of Marxist critiques of capitalism.
He furthermore suggests that there is some ultimate standard of ‘authentic’ beauty,
while elsewhere he rejects the idea of such rationalistic standards and seems to sug-
gest that desire, which after all creates ‘beauty’, in a sense, is necessarily contradic-
tory and divided, implying that artefacts would reflect this ambivalence.Where then
does the notion of ‘true beauty’ come from?
One type of economic explanation of fashion interprets it in terms of techno-
logical advance, and it is, of course, true that without the invention of the sewing
machine (which Singer patented in 1851), for example, the mass fashion industry
could not have come into being.This, though, does not explain the parade of styles of
the past 135 years.
A more complex economic explanation would include the cultural conse-
quences of expanding trade and expanding economies in western Europe. Chandra
Mukerji argues that Europe was already a ‘hedonistic culture of mass consumption’
in the early modern period. According to her, this contradicts the prevailing view,
elaborated by the sociologist Max Weber and popularized in Britain by R. H. Taw-
ney, that the ‘Protestant Ethic’ which fuelled capitalist expansion was one of ‘ascetic
rationality’, that the early capitalists were thrifty, ‘anal’ character types who saved
rather than spent, and that only with the arrival of industrial capitalism, and espe-
cially in our own period, did modern consumerism begin. Even the English Puri-
tans, she suggests, wore costly and elaborate clothes – and in any case, their clothes
were influenced as much by the sober but fashionable wear of the Dutch as by reli-
gious considerations.13
Economic simplism was matched by nineteenth-century anthropological sim-
plism. So long as the biblical account of the Creation was accepted, the wearing of
clothes might be not only a sign of vanity but paradoxically might also reflect human-
kind’s consciousness of its fallen state. However remote the first fig leaf of Adam
and Eve from the peculiarities of Victorian dress, it could be argued that women and
men wore clothes out of modesty, to hide their nakedness and the sexual parts that
reminded them of their animal nature.
22 ELIZABETH WILSON

This naive view was shattered as the truth of Genesis began to be questioned. In
addition, the explorations of early European anthropologists, the discovery of lost
worlds and ‘primitive’ societies, contributed to a gradual but radical questioning of
the nature of European culture in general and of European costume in particular
(although this was usually still in supremacist terms). Anthropology undermined the
belief that clothes are ‘needed’ to shield us from the excessive heat and cold of the
climate.
Already in 1831 Thomas Carlyle was writing:

The first purpose of Clothes . . . was not warmth or decency, but

Ornament . . . for Decoration [the Savage] must have clothes. Nay, among
wild people we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes.The first
spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see
among the barbarous classes in civilized Countries.14

Later such views were further confirmed by Charles Darwin’s description of the
people of the Tierra del Fuego.This people, although living in one of the most inclem-
ent regions of the world, near the Falklands Islands, wore little clothing:

The men generally have an otter skin, or some small scrap about as large
as a pocket-handkerchief, which is barely sufficient to cover their backs
as low as their loins. It is laced across the breast by strings, and accord-
ing as the wind blows, it is shifted from side to side. But these Fuegians
in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full-grown woman . . . It
was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled
down her body.

Later, Charles Darwin commented:

We were well clothed, and though sitting close to the fire were far from
too warm; yet these naked savages, though farther off, were observed, to
our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such
a roasting.15

and when given pieces of cloth large enough to have wrapped themselves in, they tore
it into shreds and distributed the pieces, which were worn as ornaments. Darwin,
whose writings on this subject were permeated with the racism of his time, poured
scorn on the ‘savages’, and for him this behaviour was merely further evidence of
their idiocy.What it actually suggests is that dress has little or nothing to do with the
‘need’ for protection.
It has as little to do with modesty. As Havelock Ellis, a pioneer sexologist,
pointed out:‘Many races which go absolutely naked possess a highly developed sense
of modesty’.16
The growing importance of anthropology in the twentieth century, and its usu-
ally imperialist assumptions, had an impact on western fashion and on the way in
which fashion was perceived. On the one hand designers could rifle ‘primitive’ soci-
eties for exotica to give a new flavour to Jazz Age dress, matching the ‘primitivism’
 E X P L A I N I N G I T AWAY 23

of ‘Negro music’ with African designs and ornaments. (Nancy Cunard always wore
an armful of ivory bangles.) On the other hand, the diversity of ways of dressing
found in distant lands could make western fashion appear completely relativistic.This
implied another kind of conservative explanation.The bizarre varieties of dress could
all be seen as reflecting the sameness of ‘human nature’, at all times and in all places.
The abstract entity ‘human nature’, it was argued, always loves novelty, dressing up,
self-importance and splendour. This cliché reduces all social and cultural difference
to a virtually meaningless surface scribble, but actually dress and styles have specific
meanings. Mass-produced fashion from 1980 is not at all the same as Nuba body
painting, the sari or Ghanaian robes.
Anthropological discussion of dress tends to blur the distinctions between
adornment, clothing and fashion, but is interesting because when we look at fashion
through anthropological spectacles we can see that it is closely related to magic and
ritual. Dress, like drama, is descended from an ancient religious, mystical and magical
past of ritual and worship. Many societies have used forms of adornment and dress
to put the individual into a special relationship with the spirits or the seasons in the
enactment of fertility or food-gathering rites, for war or celebration. The progres-
sion from ritual to religion, then to secular seriousness and finally to pure hedonism
seems to have been common to theatre, music and dance – the performing arts – and
dress, itself a kind of performance, would seem to have followed this trajectory from
sacred to secular. Fashion, too, contains the ghost of a faint, collective memory of the
magical properties that adornment once had.
Even today garments may acquire talismanic properties, and both children and
adults often become deeply and irrationally attached to a particular item. Billie
Jean King, for example, wore a favourite sixties-style mini-dress for her big tennis
matches in the belief that it brought her luck; during the Second World War British
Spitfire pilots used to attach their girlfriends’ bras to their cockpits for the same
reason.
Fashion offers a rich source of irrational and superstitious behaviour, indispens-
able to novelist and social commentator. And, as Quentin Bell has pointed out,‘there
is . . . a whole system of morality attached to clothes and more especially to fashion,
a system different from, and . . . frequently at variance with that contained in our
law and religion’.17 He suggests that this has to do with a whole covert morality and
is symptomatic not of conformity but of commitment to another hidden and partly
unconscious world, a hidden system of social, collective values.
Alison Lurie sees clothes as expressive of hidden and largely unconscious
aspects of individual and group psyche, as forms of usually unintentional non-verbal
communication, a sign language.18 Her vignette interpretations of the sartorial
behaviour of both groups and individuals are sharp and amusing, but although dress
is, among other things, a language, it is not enough to assume that our choice of
dress makes unintended statements about self-image and social aspiration. Alison
Lurie is always the knowing observer, treating others to put-downs from some
height of sartorial self-knowledge and perfection; she assumes that even those who
most knowingly use clothes to ‘make a statement’ are letting their psychic slips
show in spite of themselves. Her use of the metaphor of language (for it is only a
metaphor), far from explaining the ‘irrationality’ of dress, merely reinforces the
view that it is irrational.
Another random document with
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 Fig. 486. Fig. 487.
Author’s Case.

Case I.—Mr. R., aged thirty-two; foreman mechanic. Had been

operated upon for angular nose, also at point of nose by Dr. S.
Presented himself for operation October 19, 1904, when cast was
made (see Fig. 486). Bromides given during recovery. Patient had
been subject to fits of depression on account of his nose for over a
year. Wounds healed in ten days, when second cast was made (Fig.
487). Complete recovery.
Case II.—Miss B. P., aged twenty-two; actress. Patient presented
herself for operation March 22, 1905. A long, irregular depressed
cicatrix showing at point of nose, the result of an attempt to reduce
tip of nose by an elliptical extirpation of the lobule (Dr. N.). No cast
was made of the case at the time, so that a second cast showing the
result would be of no use. Recovery complete in twelve days. Patient
returned to her profession three weeks later much pleased with the
result.
 Fig. 488. Fig. 489.
Author’s Case.

Case III.—Mr. L. L., aged twenty-eight; broker. Presented himself,

at the advice of Dr. T., for operation May 2, 1905. Cast of cast made
and shown in Fig. 488. Uneventful recovery in twelve days, when
case Fig. 489 was made.
Case IV.—Mr. M. B., aged twenty-eight; operatic baritone.
Presented himself for operation June 4, 1906. Photograph shown in
Fig. 490. Uneventful recovery in fifteen days, when photograph in
Fig. 491 was made; angular nose operated upon (at this time
discharged; recovery complete).
 Fig. 490. Fig. 491.
Author’s Case.

Case V.—Miss L. W., aged twenty-seven. Presented herself for

operation and cast (Fig. 492) made August 4, 1906. Uneventful
recovery in ten days. Cast of result made August 18, 1906 (see Fig.
493).
In each of these cases the patient was discharged highly satisfied
and well pleased with the result of the operation, although in Case V
the patient was requested to return in about one month for an
operation to reduce the width of the wings of the nose, which was
not attempted at the first sitting, but could have been with little
difficulty by beginning the primary incision at E, Fig. 483, higher up,
and cutting out a triangular section on either side of the flap A, the
apex of each triangle being at point E, and the base along the line D.
The wounds are sutured along the dorsum of the nose with No. 1
twisted silk, after exsecting much of the lower lateral cartilages of the
wings, as can easily be reached in the triangular point formed by the
raw dorsal border and the inferior edge (F). The latter method,
however, would be likely to leave a slight cicatricial line on either side
of the nose. This could be much overcome by making the incision
from point E to B obliquely to the plane of the skin, likewise the
posterior sides of the triangles mentioned, just as the incisions at B,
and across the columna at C, are made. Recovery should be
complete in five days.

Fig. 492. Fig. 493.

Author’s Case.

DEFICIENCY OF NASAL LOBULE

Where there is a lack of lobular prominence it may be enlarged
and brought forward by a subcutaneous prothesis if the skin is
flexible enough to permit of injection, as has heretofore been
described. If this cannot be done, the following operation may be
employed to advance the point of the nose, and reduce the width at
its base so commonly observed with these cases.
Gensoul Method.—A deep incision is made from the floor of each
nostril downward and backward, meeting at a point just below the
union of the subseptum with the upper lip, as in Fig. 494.
The deeper tissues are loosened from their attachments to the
bone until the subseptum at its base, including the triangular
appendage thus made, is freely movable.
The lobule is now drawn forward to its required prominence and
the parts are sutured Y fashion, as in Fig. 495.
If the subseptum be too wide, an elliptical section is removed,
including the cartilage, sufficient to give it the desired thickness when
brought together, as illustrated. The lips of the wound are brought
together as shown.

Fig. 494. Fig. 495.

Gensoul Method.

CORRECTION OF WIDENED BASE OF NOSE

When the base of the nose at its juncture with the lip is too broad,
the reversed procedure mentioned under correction of a broad lobule
is to be employed.
The diamond-shaped section is removed from the posterior rim of
the nares as shown in Fig. 496.
 The tissues at either side are freed from their subcutaneous
attachments so as to render them mobile.
The mucosa and skin wounds are sutured as in Fig. 497.
A retention splint or suture is to be employed to retain the parts as
with the anterior lobule operation just described until healing has
taken place.

Fig. 496. Fig. 497.

Author’s Method.

REDUCTION OF THICKNESS OF ALÆ

When the alæ are thickened they add to the width of the nasal
bone and cause more or less atresia of the nostrils. The cause may
be due to superabundant connective tissue or a congenital
enlargement of the lower lateral cartilage.
To overcome this deformity the following operations may be
followed:
Linhardt Method.—This author excises an elliptical section of
tissue from the inferior base of both nasal wings, as shown in Fig.
498.
A similar procedure has heretofore been described in Fig. 485 in
connection with correction of the lobule.
The section removed includes as much of the cartilage as is
necessary to thin out the wing of the nose and to overcome the
atresia.
 The parts are sutured as shown in Fig. 499.

Fig. 498. Fig. 499.

Linhardt Method.

Dieffenbach Method.—In this method cone-shaped section of

skin and cartilage are removed from the wings of the nose, as shown
in Fig. 500.
If the septum is too wide, two or three of the same shaped
sections are removed from it.
The skin wounds are drawn together by suture, as shown in Fig.
501.

Fig. 500. Fig. 501.

Dieffenbach Method.

CORRECTION OF NASAL DEVIATION

In this deformity the nose is bent or twisted to one side. The cause
is usually traumatism, but may be congenital.
 The interior cartilaginous septum is usually found malformed on
one or both sides.
To correct the deviation, the redundant cartilaginous septum is cut
or sawed away to clear both nares and the anterior nasal vestibule.
After this has been done the nasal attachments are freed
subcutaneously, until the nasal organ is freely movable from its
attachment to the superior maxillary bones.
The nose is now placed in the position desired, somewhat
overdoing the correction, and is held in place by gauze packs in the
nares or by Roberts’ spear-pointed pins thrust through the lateral
skin of the nose at either side and through the septum, as shown in
Fig. 339, p. 365.
The use of the pins placed as shown allows of free drainage to the
nares and gives little inconvenience to the patient.
Plugs of gauze contract and harden, thus overcoming the object of
their use and cause a disturbance of the wounds and pain when
reapplied.
The pins should not be withdrawn until the nose has healed into its
new position, or begin to cause irritation of the parts punctured.
Where the deviation is unilateral it should be corrected by
subcutaneous injection, as previously described.

UNDUE PROMINENCE OF NASAL PROCESS OF

THE SUPERIOR MAXILLARY
The protuberance of bone lies external to the middle meatus,
involving an abnormal convexity of the nasal process of the superior
maxillary. Its external removal or reduction involves considerable
tissue and would leave a conspicuous linear scar, therefore the
surgeon must attempt its reduction from the inner nose.
The author prefers to make a horizontal incision below the inferior
border of the process, beginning anteriorly just before the articulation
with the nasal bone and extending backward as far as the view from
the nare will allow.
Through this opening, the skin overlying the bone is raised by dull
dissection. A fine nasal saw is next introduced through the
submucous wound and several vertical incisions are made into or
even through the bone about three sixteenths of an inch apart,
dividing the convexed osseous tissue into several sections adherent
at their superior extremity which lies inferior to the insertion of the
levator labii superioris alæque nasi muscle.
A forceps, such as Adams’s, is now introduced and each section
of bone thus made is fractured from below upwards inwardly to
produce a concavity of the osseous tissue.
The operation requires considerable dexterity. The amplitude of
the sawing movement is very much restricted, because of the
palpebral muscular attachment just above.
A frail bone cutting forceps may be employed and the lower half of
the process be removed to avoid encroachment upon the middle
meatus, but this is rarely necessary, as that chamber is found
unusually wide in this case. If the bone is removed, the remaining
bone may be cut into sections, as described, or by the cutting
forceps, and fractured backwards as described.
Retention dressings must be resorted to, to keep the fragments of
the bone in their new position until cicatrization has been sufficiently
established to keep them in place.
When possible Roe advises sawing off the convexity submucously
and, after loosening the skin over the dorsum of the nose, to move
the bony plate thus made over to the opposite side of the nose and
into the concavity usually found there in these cases. If there be no
deviation at the latter site the bone plate can be entirely removed
through the inferior wound in the mucosa.
 CHAPTER XVII
ELECTROLYSIS IN DERMATOLOGY

Several references have been made in the preceding chapter to

the specific use of electricity without a description, however, of its
source or application. The author does not deem it necessary in this
volume to go into the principles of electricity, and takes it for granted
that the practitioner is sufficiently familiar with a knowledge of the
rudiments of the subject and that he understands the meaning of an
electric cell commonly known as a battery.
The Electric Battery.—An electric cell or battery is made up of
two poles which are named positive, designated by the + (plus) sign,
and negative by the - (minus) sign. In the usual form of cell used the
parts are made up of a carbon and zinc cylinder placed into a glass
jar containing the electrolyte or actuating fluid. The latter is either an
aqueous solution of potassium bichromate or salammoniac
contained in a glass jar.
For continuous use or open circuit work the Le Clanche type of cell
is most practicable.
 Fig. 502.—Electric Wet Cell.

In Fig. 502 a cell of this type is shown in which the positive pole or
element is composed of a solid piece of carbon forming a cover to
the glass jar as well, and the negative element is of zinc. The
covering over of the jar prevents evaporation of the solution and
adds much to its life.
The Voltage or Electromotive Force.—The voltage or
electromotive force from such a cell averages about 1.5 volts.
Voltage represents the force or propelling power of current known
scientifically as the electromotive force and designated EMF. Owing
to the great resistance of the body to the electric current, a
proportionate force is required to attain therapeutic results.
The unit measure of the quantity of current is known as the
ampère. As this is too great for therapeutic use, the thousandth part,
or milliampère, is employed, and for the purpose of measuring the
amount of current given the patient the milliampèremeter is included
in the circuit or flow of current.
 The unit of resistance is termed the Ohm, and to simplify the
method of electrotherapeutic administration the practitioner may
refer to Ohm’s law as a guide. He must remember the average
resistance to the current of the parts to be operated on by this
process. The law is as follows:

EMF or Voltage
C or Current in Ampères = —————————
R or Resistance,

or commonly written

R
C = ———
EMF

The Rheostat.—When we consider that the resistance between

electrodes placed on the palm of the left hand and the back of the
neck is about 4,000 Ohms, it may be readily understood that
considerable voltage is required to overcome this resistance before
the proper amount of current can be employed. Since each cell, for
quick reference, may be said to represent one volt, at least twelve
and not more than sixteen cells would be required for electrolysis.
Not all of the current given off by a battery of such number of cells
should be used on a patient for electrolytic purpose. Some method
must be employed to reduce this voltage and to control it at will. This
is necessary since the life of a cell varies and its current capacity is
limited according to the use the cell is put to. An instrument of this
nature is called a rheostat and is usually made of graphite or metal
wire. Water resistances are also used, but they do not permit of a
constant current because of the consequent heating and
decomposition of the water into its elements at the two metal poles
exposed to the water. The proper instrument will be referred to later.
The electric cell represents a certain voltage; to add to this more
cells are needed and connected with each other so that each adds
its voltage to other or the circuit. The method of connecting cells in
this manner is called series connection, in which the carbon element
of one cell is connected with the zinc of the next, and so forth, until
the last cell, leaving two free poles, one carbon and a zinc to which
the wires to hold the electrodes for the patient are connected. As has
been said, the carbon is the positive pole and the zinc the negative.
The method of connection is shown in Fig. 503.

Fig. 503.—Series Connection.

These two poles when brought in contact with human tissue

exhibit different action and effect. Without going into electro-
chemistry it may be said the current of the positive pole is sedative
and that of the negative irritant or destructive. That oxygen and acids
are freed at the positive pole and hydrogen and alkalies at the
negative pole.
It is due to these properties of the current that it is employed
therapeutically, but to properly employ it the current must be
controlled so that the exact amount given or used can be estimated.
This is accomplished first of all by the interposition of resistance
within the circuit. This resistance should be such that the current can
be increased or decreased at will. It has been referred to and is
called a rheostat. Its position in the circuit is shown in Fig. 504.
 Fig. 504.—Shunt Rheostat Connection.

Cell Selector.—The physician may do without such a rheostat and

use a cell selector with the object of adding one or more cells to the
circuit at will. Such instrument is composed of a marble or wooden
base with a number of disks upon it, each disk representing a cell of
the battery. A metal arm is made to slide over these disks, and as it
advances over each disk the current from that cell is added to the
circuit. It may have a second arm which is used to cut out the current
from the cell or cells at the beginning of the circuit—in fact, will
permit of the selection of any cell in the circuit by proper
manipulation. Such a selector is shown in Fig. 505.
 Fig. 505.—Cell Selector.

The connection of the cells of the battery when a selector is used

varies from that just mentioned. The proper wiring with the disks of
the Selector is shown in Fig. 506.
 Fig. 506.—Cell Selector and Battery Arrangement.

Milliampèremeter.—The fact that a proper resistance has been

forced in circuit is not alone sufficient to permit of the proper use of
current for electrolysis. A measuring device should be included, as
has been referred to and called the Milliampèremeter or
Milliammeter. It is shown in Fig. 507.
 Fig. 507.—Milliampèremeter.

The method of connecting this instrument in series with the current

from the rheostat has been shown in Fig. 509.
The Electric Current.—Where the operating room of the
physician is provided with street current it will be found more
economical and cleaner to use that current for this purpose.
Usually the direct current is furnished of a voltage varying from
100 to 125 volts. To utilize such a current a wall plate is employed
and connected to the circuit, as shown in Fig. 508. The resistance of
an electric lamp is added to guard against injuring the patient if by
any accident or negligence the circuit has been improperly closed.
 Fig. 508.—Direct Current Switch Board or
Wall Plate.

Whether the street or battery current is used with such a plate

makes no difference except that with a battery circuit the lamp is not
used. The connections are given in Fig. 509.
 Fig. 509.—Wall-Plate Connections.

It will be observed that a current changing switch has been added

to the wall plate. This is included in the circuit to permit of changing
the poles to the patient without interfering or disconnecting the
electrodes if desired at any time during treatment.
Portable Batteries.—The above instruments and circuits refer to
those to be used in the operating room and are stationary. The
physician may be called upon to treat a patient at a distance and for
this purpose must have a portable battery.
There are many such instruments on the market of both dry and
moist cell type. The moist cells usually require a bichromate of soda
or potash solution and are so constructed that the carbon and zinc
poles are taken out of the electrolyte or solution and placed into
water-tight compartments provided for them. Such an apparatus is
shown in Fig. 510a.

Fig. 510a.—Portable Wet Cell Direct Current Apparatus.

The best cell for this purpose is the silver chloride battery. It is
compact, light in weight, and gives a steady current. The only
objection is the high cost.
Portable batteries should be furnished with a milliampèremeter. A
type of a compact dry cell direct current apparatus is shown in Fig.
510b. In the end the best apparatus proves the most economical.