Читать книгу Dress as Metaphor British Female Fashion and Social Change in the 20th Century - Katarzyna Kociolek - Страница 14

In order to interpret the metaphorical meaning of clothing, it is necessary to examine theories that consider fashion to be a form of a language as well as to discuss how and what fashion and clothing can potentially communicate. The current analysis of a communicative role of fashion is based on semiotic theories of culture and clothing developed among others by Umberto Eco, Malcolm Bernard, Fred Davies, and Colin Campbell.

That clothing exceeds its primary utilitarian function of offering protection becomes evident on closer examination of sartorial practices across cultures and historical periods. The ideas of what types of clothes are appropriate, and hence viewed as providing sufficient protection from either inclement weather or from the gaze of others (i.e. allow to preserve modesty), vary from culture to culture and have been changing from one century or even decade to another (Bernard 137). As noted by Bernard, “People will always require some protection from the elements and they will usually need to be properly (modestly) dressed; what they wear to achieve these requirements will change from culture to culture, and it is these differences that are meaningful and hence communicative” (137).

Based on the “semiotic” or “structuralist” approach, “communication through or by means of fashion and clothing […] is a social interaction that produces or constitutes the individual as a member (or not) of a culture” (139). Through connotations, which according to Barthes are “associations or feelings” dependant on one’s cultural background, items of clothing communicate the wearer’s “cultural values and beliefs” (139). These in turn are influenced by the individual’s “age, nationality, class, gender” (139). Although Bernard observes that meanings produced by clothing are by no means clear and uniform, what the wearers communicate by clothing is their membership in and identification with the set of values of a given group. This observation seems particularly useful when examining the meaning of female clothes in public discourse, since it permits insight into the wearers’ sense of belonging to a group of women in general and the group of female public figures in particular. If assumed that clothing is a metaphor (as it is argued in Chapter 2) or that any expression which includes a metaphor is a metaphorical expression, one may easily note that when communicating through fashion and clothing, individuals can downplay membership in some groups while highlighting their belonging to others (e.g. In Chapters 4 and 6 specific examples of sartorially suppressed femininity are examined). While Bernard ←19 | 20→points to the shortcomings of the semiotic approach, stressing its inability to arrive at clear conclusion as to what is communicated through fashion, this criticism seems less valid for the study of sartorial practices in the public realm of politics. Unlike other sartorial practices, dressing for the public gaze appears to be far less accidental, spontaneous and subjective, and is on the whole more tightly linked with other forms of communication (verbal and non-verbal) that the political figure uses. In fact, as is often testified by such sources as autobiographies, dress is carefully selected and attentively accessorised in order to complement the verbal message constituting a coherent communication process to achieve a specific political objective. It is the sphere of politics that the question of belonging to a specific group seems of considerable importance, especially when lobbying for legislative change (e.g. suffragettes, feminists) or securing an important political role (e.g. Thatcher, Boothroyd). When examining such forms of communication through fashion, the application of what Bernard terms “ideological connotation” model, “in which meanings are constructed by members of cultural groups” (141) may be complemented by “the sender-receiver model,” where the sender/the wearer is deliberately projecting meanings, by means of the metaphorical language of fashion.

Fred Davis’s “Do Clothes Speak? What Makes Them Fashion?” aims to fill the analytical void in scholarship on fashion theory by seeking to answer the question about the meaning of fashion, which he views as embedded in the communication process. According to Davis, the meaning of fashion is related to how “the images, thoughts, sentiments, and sensibilities (are) communicated by new and old fashion and the symbolic means by which this is done” (149). Because fashion is a form of a code, which in linguistic terms would be regarded a “quasi-code” of “low semanticity” (149), Davis notes that semiotics offers the possibility of investigating its meanings. According to Davis, even though fashion as a code is different to a language, for in fashion the relationship between the signifier and the signified is less precise than in a spoken or written language (155), clothes communicate meanings through design elements. Through “associative linkages,” qualities of garments such as angularity-curvilinear, dark-light colour, connote femininity-masculinity, formality-informality. While it is hard to disagree with Davis, who advises caution when “ascribing meanings to most clothing” (150) and following Sapir (1931) observes that the exact meaning of various qualities of clothing such as cut, fabric, colour is difficult to determine, fashion used in the public realm of politics seems less ambiguous, fitting neatly the three major characteristics of the clothing-fashion code proposed by Davis, namely: “context-dependency, high social variability in the signifier-signified relationship, undercoding” (150–152).

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While according to Davis, “different combinations of apparel with their attendant qualities are capable of registering sufficiently consistent meanings for wearers and their viewers” (154) and people are generally competent “readers” of “styles of clothing,” it is in the public sphere of politics that this communicative function of fashion becomes not only most noticeable but also most important. Cross-cultural and historical variations of styles and fashions adopted for political purposes, easily prove fashion’s context-dependency. For example, while the suffragettes in the early 20th century willingly wore styles that connoted commonly held beliefs about normative femininity, their followers, second-wave feminists, sartorially challenged the feminine ideal, offering alternative looks and clothing styles. Both suffragettes and feminists of the 1970s, however, used clothes to communicate their membership in a group of progressive-thinking, independent women (the subject is discussed at length in Chapters 3 and 6), although they did so in radically different ways. Viewing fashion as a code in which individual items of clothing communicate shared cultural values helps to appreciate that difference.

The second quality of the clothing-fashion code is best evident in the uniformed appearance of suited male public figures. The desire to reduce this high level of variability of how the viewers may “read” their style, since the 19th century has gradually led male politicians to opt for clothing that is virtually devoid of any significant variations in form, colour or fabric, and effectively has become a uniform. While in the early 20th century women started to claim the public space making more definite inroads into the sphere of politics, one of the challenges they encountered was the necessity of inventing a new dress code that would make them neither too obtrusive nor too dismissive when compared with the uniformly attired and hence homogenously looking male colleagues.

Sociological studies of consumption generally accept fashion as a system of signs, which is used by individuals to construct their identities. However, Colin Campbell in his essay “When the meaning is not a message. A critique of the consumption as communication thesis” (159–169), refutes such a claim. Summarising the five main tenets of the theory on fashion as communication, which regards clothing as having symbolic meanings that are shared by consumers, who through fashion “ ‘send messages’ about themselves to others” (159) communicating and reinforcing their self-identities, Campbell proposes an alternative theory. Countering Thorstein Veblen’s view that fashion is “the language of wealth” (161), he points to the multiplicity of ‘languages’ that fashion comprises, such as the language of lifestyle or sexuality. According to Campbell, what makes it difficult to accept that fashion is a language is the lack of any sound evidence to prove that the wearer and observer share sufficient competence to communicate ←21 | 22→through fashion. To support such a claim, Campbell uses the example of the general public’s lack of consensus on fashionable clothing, and notes that the theory which regards fashion to be a language needs to be narrowed down to specific contexts. The current study proposes to examine such a specific context, namely that of the arena of politics, based on the assumption that unlike common fashion consumption patterns, consuming fashion by public figures is far less ambiguous and is usually directed at the specific target audience. Sartorial messages sent by politicians and activists seem also clearer because the observer is usually informed about clothing’s “intended context of use” (162) and already knows the social role of the wearer. Therefore, it appears that for the sake of the present analysis pertaining to how fashion reinforces political messages, it can be assumed that clothing is a form of a language.

Since according to Campbell, fashion communicates impressions about the wearer, one may regard clothing worn by public figures as what he terms “a ‘language of character’ ” (163). Just like a prospective employee who intends to impress an employer at a job interview by wearing suitable attire, people in the public space communicate that they are “ ‘smart’, ‘tidy’ or at least ‘respectable’ ” (163). However, this is not enough to treat fashion as a language, argues Campbell, entering into polemics with Davis’s notion of fashion as a “quasi-code.” What for Campbell excludes fashion from the category of language is its inability not to send messages (164). A consumer of fashion, argues Campbell, can only abstain from communicating messages when alone, while any viewer automatically becomes a receiver of messages, whether voluntarily or involuntarily sent by the wearer. Although such argument can be rightly used to challenge a more general/universal theory of fashion as a language, it seems less harmful to the view proposed in this study, namely that fashion is form of a political language employed to enhance and reinforce messages transmitted in other ways.

Even though Campbell refutes the claim that fashion is a language, he contends that clothing performs a communicative function, bringing about “a range of cultural associations” (165). According to Campbell, “clothing functions as a means of personal expression, and hence should be regarded as an art form” (165) rather than a language. Being incapable of communicating anything more than “a mood, whim or temporary need” (165), clothes are “largely unrelated to the basic personality, let alone the social identity of the wearer” (165), he claims. When compared to art forms, however, fashion is closer to architecture than to music. Unlike music, fashion fails to communicate through an “agreed system of abstract symbols” (165), whereas similarly to architecture clothes have “instrumental functions” and “expressive properties” (165).

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While Campbell’s views seem to fit relatively well the sartorial practices of average fashion users, who may or may not be aware of the messages they communicate through their garments, in the public sphere of politics, what Campbell calls “the clothing as language argument” appears to be still valid. Political and public figures, unlike average fashion consumers, rarely choose their attires randomly, and the management of their appearance usually plays relatively important role in their political careers (often even if they claim to be otherwise). In fact, the dismissal of “the clothing as language argument” seems only possible when one omits (as Campbell does) all the cultural contexts in which fashion/clothing is intended to communicate the wearer’s identity, for example ethnic clothing, religious garments, or clothes worn by representatives of some professions. For instance, while it can be noted that clothes worn by for example builders on construction sites perform mainly instrumental functions, ensuring body protection, the freedom of movement, etc., the conventional dress of for example High Court judges is intended to first and foremost “make a statement” and express “ ‘singular’ meaning” (166), evoking various cultural associations. The growing visualisation and mediation of politics, which started in the late 19th century and has continued into the 21st century, seems to have brought politics closer to a form of a spectacle, in which like in performative arts (theatre and film), clothing can be regarded as “ ‘conveying a message’ ” (166) about an individual who is wearing them.

It is Malcolm Barnard who sheds some more light on the communicative role of fashion in the political context, examining Bush’s and Blair’s attires as his case study in the essay entitled “Fashion Statements: Communication and Culture.” In modern western cultures, fashion is regarded as meaningful, “Clothes are selected for purchase, and for wearing, according to the meaning we believe them to have, or the messages we believe them to send” (171). Based on the understanding of fashion as a “cultural phenomena” (171), Bernard proposes a view that communication through fashion “is the cultural construction of meaning and, thereby, identity” (171) rather than a process of reception and transmission of messages. Borrowing Anne Hollander’s broad definition of fashion as “everything that people wear” (171), Barnard notes that fashion is closely linked to a society’s social structure and social mobility, with classless societies having no fashion or indeed even no need of fashion. Because fashion produces meaning, it is a form of “communication” that “constructs people as members, or non-members, of cultural groups” (172).

In order to explain the way fashion communicates meaning, Barnard refers to Barthes’ concept of connotation, explaining that it is far more convincing than alternative definitions of meaning, which treat meaning as either related to ←23 | 24→the intention of the wearer or as inherent in the garment. Similarly to Barthes, Barnard notes that connotations cannot be “correct or incorrect” because they are culture and context specific as well as dependent on “an individual’s socio-historical location” (173). Yet, unlike Barthes, Barnard proposes to define meaning as purely connotational, that is eliminating anything that is not a connotation for example denotation, observing that “a piece of fashion is not meaningful in itself and a piece of fashion or clothing is not meaningful because of any individual intention” (174).

Barnard’s ideas about how fashion communicates meaning resemble Davis’s in that both theorists regard communication through fashion as “a negotiation of meanings through the interaction between items of visual culture and the values (beliefs and ideas) held by an individual as a member of a cultural group” (174). This semiological definition of communication appears to be linked with metaphor theories (discussed in Chapter 2), and therefore the current study of communication through fashion proposes a view that fashion communicates through visual metaphors. Striving to develop a more accurate theory of communication through fashion, Barnard observes that meanings in fashion are negotiated in the process of “interaction between an individual’s values and beliefs […] and the item of visual culture” (175) that is specific garment. Therefore, opposing Campbell’s approach to fashion as expressive of individual’s self, Barnard prefers to view the process of communication through fashion as constructing and reproducing identities (175). In other words, Barnard challenges Campbell’s model of communication through fashion by establishing that there are no pre-established meanings inherent in the items of clothing and hence the sending and receiving of messages through clothes is different from the linear model that operates in the case of languages.

Barnard illustrates this point by referring to clothes worn by male political figures representing radically diffident cultural contexts: Tony Blair and George Bush on the one hand and Osama bin Laden on the other. According to Barnard, the use of fashion by the three men as depicted in two photographs, counters the theory that clothes are a form of “individualistic self-expression” (177) based on sender-receiver model of communication. Neither the two suited western male political figures nor the white-turbaned Afghan leader chose their attires to express themselves. However, as argued by Barnard, their clothes correspond with the public’s expectations of what they should look like, and the clothes are largely a response to these expectations (178). Unlike in the sender/receiver model, it is not possible to claim that all the meanings are predicted by the wearer, as these are constructed by the observers based on their specific cultural context, and will vary from culture to culture and across social groups (179).

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