Читать книгу Dress as Metaphor British Female Fashion and Social Change in the 20th Century - Katarzyna Kociolek - Страница 15

The theory of fashion that regards clothing as essentially meaningful and hence a form of communication, corresponds with studies which view fashion as an area where identities are constructed and negotiated. Since there is no identity without difference, consumers of fashion are constantly engaged in a process of sartorially separating themselves from their others. At the same time, however, individuals use clothes to avoid social exclusion and to accentuate their membership in specific social groups, based on gender, class, ethnic distinctions. Trapped in what Barnard calls “ ‘structure and agency’ debate” (2007, 184), consumers of fashion are bound to construct their identities using a toolbox of existing sartorial practices (structure), which entails conformity, whereas any alteration to the established styles is an expression of agency. As Barnard maintains, “What we wear is a way of negotiating identity and difference in that the same outfit is used to construct an image (an identity) that is similar to that of our friends but also, crucially, different from them as well” (2007, 184).

In the 20th century the sphere in which fashion most clearly mediated the construction of identities and the negotiation of meanings in relation to differences was gender. Being a cultural representation of sexual differences (generally), gender demanded appropriate fashion in order to successfully reproduce distinctions between femininity and masculinity. Yet, the characteristics of feminine or masculine styles were constantly changing, rather than being inherent in the attire, stress such scholars as Joanne Entwistle, Lee Wright or Tim Edwards. The history of some sartorial practices proves that the categories of masculine and feminine clothing are fairly arbitrary.

Since the 19th century, gender distinctions in clothing have communicated “Protestant-oriented values of hard work, sobriety, frugality” (Davis 1994, 38). Particularly, male clothing has become the “primary visual medium for intoning the rejection of ‘corrupt’ aristocratic claims to elegance, opulence, leisure” (Davis 1994, 38). Likewise, Entwistle observes that following “the great masculine renunciation” male clothes stressed “solidarity and uniformity” (2000, 154) of the middle-class men who acquired their wealth and status through professional career rather than inheritance, thereby accentuating more democratic principles. Both Davis and Entwistle note that from the 19th century onwards, a man’s suit communicated commitment to the ideals of hard work, honesty, seriousness (Davis 38), and connoted “sobriety and work as opposed to a life of aristocratic idleness, sloth, and leisure” (Entwistle 2000, 154). Most importantly, however, ←25 | 26→the bourgeois suit delineated the boundary between male public space and female private sphere of the home.

The elaborated female sartorial practices contrasted sharply with “men’s restricted dress code” (Davis 1994, 41) accentuating inequalities in social status of women and men. Entwistle (2000) emphasises the fact that since the Industrial Revolution the separation of male and female spheres was represented metaphorically through clothing. While the 19th century standard of respectable femininity demanded that women be confined to their roles of wives and mothers, ideas about normative femininity and masculinity were conveyed metaphorically by clothing which either allowed body movement, was dark and unornamented (male clothes), or restricted body movement through corsets and crinolines, was colourful and stressed fragility of female bodies through styles that reduced the size of shoulders and waists (female clothes). While the former might be regarded as metaphorically communicating such masculine traits as mobility/action, practicality, and rationality, the latter metaphorically conveyed socially acceptable femininity that was characterised by passivity, childishness, and weakness.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory allows insight into the social signification of women’s elaborate dress styles in the past, which can be viewed as connected to the conceptual space of aesthetics in general; and decorative arts in particular, where functionality gives way to aesthetic emotion and pleasure. Therefore, unlike the male suit, the female dress could be seen as fulfilling the same purpose of pleasing the viewer as paintings or interior designs do. Men’s tailored clothing, on the other hand, related to the conceptual space of industrial enterprises marked by accuracy and efficiency, dominated by the functionality of a well-designed and carefully-crafted machinery, which is deprived of any excessive and purely decorative elements. While women could only gain status through their husband’s position, female clothes metaphorically conveyed the idea that a woman is a male accessory, a decorative element that both enhances and reflects male social status. At the same time, men’s plain clothing metaphorically communicated status by linking the wearer with conceptual space of industrial development, scientific advancement, and democratic promise of social mobility through serious commitment to hard work.

While gender ambiguity in dress is rare, argues Davis, “spatial and semantic metaphors” (1994, 46) are deployed to encode “the identity ambivalence” (46). Androgynous clothing has been frequently mentioned as an example of gender ambiguity in dress, although its metaphorical function has remained unexplored. While Davis (1994) and Crane (2000) point to the asymmetrical development of androgynous clothing, in which more masculine elements of dress ←26 | 27→have been incorporated into womenswear than vice versa, they also agree that androgynous clothing served the purpose of downplaying femininity. According to Davis, unisex clothes metaphorically communicated “instability of gender identity” (35), as androgynous clothing was deprived of elements that sartorially indicated gender. Yet, in the visible absence of feminine elements of dress, those borrowed from menswear would frequently include “entailments” (to use Lakoff and Johnson term, 139) to boyishness rather than mature male identity. Such items of clothing as “Eton jackets, button-down shirts, loose fitting loose slacks” (Davis 1994, 37), incorporated into female fashions could be metaphorically communicating the fact that despite their avoidance of feminine clothes, women do not pose a serious threat to male domination (37).

Already by the end of the 19th century such elements of men’s attire as ties, hats, and trousers, were adopted by women for sports and manual work. Knickerbockers, divided skirts or bloomer dress and pants, accessorised with buttoned blouses, ties or neckties and straw hats comprised what Crane calls “alternative dress” (2000, 99) at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, metaphorically connecting femininity with masculine active leisure pursuits and technological innovation. Such masculine elements of female attire entailed areas of men’s leisure or professional activity, with sports, manual labour and university education being the conceptual spaces to which they related. As demonstrated by a selection of photographs in Crane’s work, women sporting “alternative dress” were found among college students, affluent members of aristocracy, but also physical workers. While the outfit seemed to metaphorically place women on an equal footing with men, in the case of female physical labourers, male clothes downplayed gender differences not only to ensure safety and protection at work but also to mark class distinctions, legitimising the social demand for women’s hard physical work, which clashed with the dominant models of middle- and upper-class femininity. In other words, working-class women’s exclusion from normative female identity was metaphorically indicated by the fact that they wore trousers. In contrast, middle and upper-class women most often appropriated ties, which also in menswear metaphorically connoted the higher status of the wearer, informing about his “regimental, club, sporting, or educational” background (Gibbings 1990, 81, qtd. in Crane 102). As observed by Crane, middle-class women wore ties as part of their “business dress, school uniform” (103) or servants livery. The ties worn by women in public spaces seemed to metaphorically link feminine identity with spheres formerly dominated by men, becoming a “symbolic statement about women’s status” (Crane 106). On the other hand, Susan B. Kaiser observes that women’s fashion mimicked male fashion’s “evolutionary streamlining” (135), which resulted in the simplification ←27 | 28→of vestimentary habits. With few notable exceptions, such as “wedding dresses, bouffant skirts, little girls’ tutus” (136) since late 19th century womenswear could be characterised by a general tendency to simplification and reductionism. Sartorial renunciation in female fashion, according to Kaiser followed the great masculine renunciation, metaphorically linking simplicity of attire with authority and high social position.

While several fashion scholars (Wilson, Entwistle, Crane, Davis) point to the fact that gender differences are communicated through clothing, they also view sartorial expression of gender as historically intertwined with the expression of class identities. In fact, many of the 20th century ideas about female fashions and female sartorial practices have their roots in the 19th century’s marked distinction between female and male identities in relation to public and domestic space and also the radically different fashions for men and women. Both Fred Davis (1994) and Joanne Entwistle (2000, 2007) focus on historical, social, and political developments that led to the infusion of male and female fashions with meanings related to middle-class (Davis) and bourgeois (Entwistle) values of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution.

Mass consumerism of the 1950s encouraged sartorial experiments with class identities, but the importance of dress in the construction of class identities can be traced back to Thorstein Veblen’s theories of “conspicuous consumption”, which viewed fashion as a site of class struggle (Partington 221). Unlike in Veblen’s model that was based on the so-called trickle down theory, according to which the lower classes emulated styles of the more affluent and privileged social groups, since the 1950s, fashion started to represent greater consumer fragmentation, catering to a variety of tastes and trends. The fashion industry seeking ways to lure customers of all social backgrounds, became more expert in producing and controlling consumer tastes through the use of the mass media “so [that] the flow of information and influence [was] primarily within, rather than across, class groups” (Partington 223). In that way fashion merely concealed rather than obliterated class divisions within societies, offering “always enough ‘choice’ between a range of equally fashionable styles to meet the demands of different tastes” (Partington 223).

In the mid-20th century various social groups represented radically different approaches to fashion. While in the 1950s lower-class women on tight budgets were keen on adopting latest trends, the better-off female consumers were using dress to communicate either hereditary privilege, choosing ‘classic’ styles (the upper-class), or to accentuate their professional high status, opting for clothes that indicated affluence and luxury (the upper-middle class) (Partington 223–224). In view of this ‘trickle across’ or ‘mass-market’ theory of fashion, ←28 | 29→fashion is hardly a democratising factor. Instead, as noted by Partington, “class differences do not disappear in this system, on the contrary more complex and multiple differences are made possible through increasingly elaborate and complex manufacturing, media and retailing strategies” (224). Such complexity of meanings was reflected in the changed connotations of fabrics. With the arrival of synthetic fabrics in the 1950s, class associations of cotton and wool shifted. Clothes made of synthetic fibres replaced those made of cotton, as distinctively working-class garments, “because to working-class women quantity, disposability, colour, and ‘easy care’ became a priority while craftsmanship and ‘naturalness’ did not” (224). At the same time, the 1950s marketing of natural fabrics as more exclusive resulted in both cotton and wool becoming preferred textiles of the socially privileged consumers.

Since the 1950s there has existed a new relationship between the fashion producers and the fashion consumers, with the latter being increasingly skilled in discerning brands, and adopting styles, demonstrating that “consumer choices became an integral part of identity-formation” (Partington 225). It was also in the 1950s that conflicting views on ideal femininity became represented in fashion. Utility styles and Dior’s New Look, argues Partington, were the two styles that connoted radically different ideals of womanhood. On the one hand, the New Look evoked “bourgeois ideal of womanhood as ‘decorative’,” on the other hand Utility styles represented a woman as a “dutiful homemaker” (226). While in the domestic sphere, practical, simple unornamented styles were deemed and promoted as appropriate (e.g. advertisements and commercials of domestic products featured models wearing such dresses), the highly decorative, excessive fashions based on the New Look became “accepted as a separate but complementary look, which could exist alongside Utility styles as long as it was not adopted for ‘inappropriate’ situations” (227).

Regardless of the view one takes on the relationship between individuals in society, it can be noted that members of different social groups adopt diverse styles, and that “fashion constructs and communicates social identity/difference” (Partington 187). Through dress, individuals are also capable of expressing their resistance to the commonly accepted fashions. Instead of being just passive consumers of existing styles, for example the working classes could sartorially subvert the power relations by appropriating and modifying the upper-class dress code, as it was the case in the Teddy Boys and Mod subculture. According to Barnard, “Fashion and clothing are […] one of the ways in which cultural identity may be challenged and resisted” (2007, 189). In this way, fashion seems to be overtly political.

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Despite the fact that “for a long time, fashion has been seen as an apolitical phenomenon, outside of politics, and of little concern to politicians” (191), as Tim Edwards argues, the 20th century saw the politicization of fashion largely due to the arrival of identity politics following the social changes in the 1960s and 1970s. In spite of radical political and cultural transformations that found their expression in minority movements and peace protests of the 1960s, the fashion of the decade was a continuation of the styles popular in the 1950s. In the 1960s similarly to the 1950s styles, gender distinctions were visibly marked and “men looked like men in their sharp, shoulder-widening suits and slick hair-styles, and […] women equally looked like women with their hour-glass figures and high-heels” (192). It was only after the arrival of the hippy fashions that the true sartorial revolution began, according to Edwards. With identity politics gathering momentum in the 1970s, the hippy styles came to visually represent more profound cultural changes that centred around “the tension of the individual and the social” (193). Because personal identities became more fluid, hippy fashion encouraged a disjunction between formal clothes and the middle-class, middle-aged conservatism, promoted interest in personal appearance and consumption of clothes as well as facilitated appearance of “politically correct dress centred particularly on an anti-middle-class and anti-formal rhetoric” (193).

Edwards contends that the connection between fashion and identity politics was formed following “a collapse in whatever sense of political unity” (193) that existed in the earlier decades. The diverse groups, such as feminists, gays, ethnic minorities, participating in the 1960s and 1970s social revolutions revised their attitudes towards “dress and appearance” (194). Feminists, like gay men, had to find ways of sartorially expressing their newly-forged identities. In the case of gay fashion, the new sexualised look either fully embraced the effeminate (as in drag) or it steered towards the ultra-masculine imagery. By stressing the connection between donning a look and the expression of minority identity, Edwards views fashion as a vital communication channel through which the socially underrepresented gain visibility and “media attention” (195).

While Edwards offers an overview of gay men’s styles, Lee Wright in one of his essays entitled “Objectifying Gender. The stiletto heel” proposes to examine meanings attached to the ultra-feminine item of clothing that came under the attack of feminists in the 1960s. In order to explore and explain the meaning of “stiletto” shoes, Wright traces the post-war development of high-heels, which he views as a reaction against the wartime Utility fashion on the one hand and as a response to the demands of new more feminine fashions of the 1950s on the other (200). Surprisingly, due to their unexpected popularity, the impact of “stilettos” went far beyond the realm of fashion, deeply affecting floor design and ←30 | 31→manufacturing. In the 1950s, while researchers were busily engaged in developing stilettoes that would sustain extensive daily wear, floor designers and manufacturers faced an urgent need to introduce new, more resilient flooring in such places as buses, planes, and dance halls (202). Stilettoes gained notoriety and wide media coverage also due to their detrimental effect on health. All of a sudden, as noted by Wright, the meaning of the stiletto heels shifted from the one expressing feminine attributes to the one connoting aggressive and exaggerated female sexuality.

Despite such overtly negative connotations, the popularity of stilettos continued and they became particularly appealing to the young generation of consumers who sought to sartorially separate themselves from their mothers. According to Wright, thanks to the fact that “the stiletto did not symbolise the housewife” (Wright 203), from the late 1950s onwards it “was associated with glamour, with rebellion; it represented someone who was in some way ‘modern’ and ‘up to date’, and, above all, someone who inhabited a world outside the home” (203). Such connotations allow to view stilettos as liberatory rather than repressive, observes Wright, adding that stilettoes are too hastily blamed for women’s subordination in the 1950s. While the fashion of the decade accentuated gender differences more than the styles that followed, Wright suggests that this might have been a better strategy to empower femininity than its alternative, that is the downplaying of gender differences and the adoption of male styles. In Western cultures stilettos are chiefly associated with mature femininity, but the variety of designs results in a number of conflicting meanings assigned to them.

The discourse of women’s empowerment through fashion is deeply ingrained in the “ ‘power dressing phenomenon” (Entwistle 2007, 208) that appeared in the 1980s. Unlike Wright, Joanne Entwistle, who examines the issue, argues that borrowings from the male sartorial practices allowed to construct new modes of femininity. Through their power suits, the new professionally successful women connoted independence and ambitious career prospects as well as manifested changes in the social position of women. In order to examine the meanings of power dressing, Entwistle traces the developments in female sartorial practices in the context of women’s access to paid labour. She observes that while already in the 19th century women could secure positions as clerks and secretaries, the clothes they wore to work signified their separation from the higher ranks of business hierarchy, and indicated their exclusion from the top managerial jobs. It was not until the 1970s and the 1980s that suited women gained public visibility and numerous conduct manuals offered advice on how to dress for executive, as opposed to secretarial, jobs. Although, as noted by Entwistle, dress manuals had long pre-dated the phenomenon of power dressing, the “rules of ←31 | 32→‘dress for success’ ” (2007, 210) constructed entirely novel way of being a woman. Addressing women who made inroads into traditionally male occupations, these manuals stressed the importance of “the management of appearance” (211) and offered advice on how to achieve “something previously the preserve of men, career success” (211).

Entwistle proposes associating the changes in womenswear to economic transformations that characterised the 1980s, such as the arrival of “ ‘enterprise culture’ ” (214) with its “powerful rhetoric of individualism and enterprise” (214). As self-employment gained popularity from the 1970s onwards, the successful management of a company became equated with the successful management of the self and the fulfilment of one’s ambitions. The properly managed looks started to serve the purpose of communicating women’s commitment to achieving professional success; according to Entwistle “the ‘power suit’ became a more or less reliable signal that a woman was taking her job seriously and was interested in going further” (215). Although in her analysis of the ‘power suit’, Entwistle does not explicitly refer to the concept of a metaphor, her observation that the power dress “is important because it tells us something about her, about her professionalism, her confidence, her self-esteem, her ability to do her job” (216) seems to imply that clothes metaphorically convey ideas about the self.

Some inherent qualities of power dress of the 1980s made it evoke these metaphorical meanings. Since the styles incorporated in the female power suit drew from the well-known repertoire of male sartorial practices, like the male suits, the power dresses were conservative uniforms. As a female version of a male professional dress code, these suits replaced ornamentation with top-quality tailoring and fabrics. Although power dressing manuals urged women “to avoid trousers in the boardroom at all costs since these are supposedly threatening to male power” (Entwistle 2007, 216), in fact, the masculinisation of womenswear was inevitable albeit in a more covert and subtle form. Since tailoring had been traditionally reserved for male garments, with Saville Row’s tailors’ creations becoming the emblem of as much Englishness as gentlemanliness, the arrival of fashion for female suits can be regarded as a direct inroad into this male territory and hence a form of sartorial empowerment of women. It is through the metaphorical reading of tailored suits with all their culturally English connotations that the full significance of the female power dress look can be appreciated.

The power dress was masculine in character not only thanks to adhering to the “great masculine renunciation” (Entwistle 2007, 216) principle, but also because it generally reflected a more ostensibly rational approach to clothing; the type of attitude to fashion that had been traditionally associated with manliness. For centuries affluent women had gained notoriety as frivolous consumers ←32 | 33→of fashion, while the fickle capriciousness of their characters would often be likened to fickleness and irrationality of fashion itself. In contrast, since the 19th century men’s rational minds and well-formed characters were to be reflected in their practical, unornamented suits. Unlike womenswear, formal menswear has undergone little change over the course of the last two centuries, for its chief objective has been to connote respectability, decisiveness, stability, reliability – chief characteristics of good leadership, considered essential for the running of any enterprise (being it a private company or a nation state). Not surprisingly when in the 1980s women forged leading positions in business and in politics, they needed to internalise the principles that guided the male sartorial practices. As Entwistle argues, the publication of dress for success manuals stressed the importance of more ‘scientific’ rather than emotional or aesthetic approaches to fashion when shopping for clothes, urging women “to make their clothing decisions on the basis of ‘science’ and not aesthetic or emotion” (2007, 217).

Entwistle’s essay cuts across a number of debates in fashion theory, which pertain to the role of dress in the context of a political empowerment of women, including debates on gender and class identity formation. It is through the analysis of power dress that the role of fashion in the construction of the new female self in the public space and for the public gaze becomes more apparent. Because of effectively mixing elements of womenswear (skirts, high heels) with men’s styles (tailoring), the power suit became a uniform for the new way of being a woman, and therefore, could be seen as a visual metaphor of “an individual (who) has internalised the concept of a career as a project of the self” (2007, 215). However, as will be demonstrated later in this book, some top female political leaders sometimes chose to modify the power suit or even opted for attires that connoted more femininity than power. The reading of such ensembles through the lenses of metaphor theories and visual communication theories allows to better understand the relevance of such choices.

The debates about communication of gender and class identities through dress and fashion seem particularly relevant for the study of sartorial practices adopted by key British female politicians in the second half of the 20th century. Admired or detested for their politics, Margaret Thatcher or Betty Boothroyd for many citizens were emblems of gender equality in British politics, forever securing their places in history almanacs and school books as the first female Prime Minister and the first female Speaker in the House of Commons, respectively. Because of this, they were also expected to be more sensitive to women’s issues in terms of the standards they set for normative femininity. How they related to the dominant notions of female identity could be found not only in directly expressed opinions but also in their visual presence for example in the ←33 | 34→media. The way their looks were managed either by themselves or by professional advisers reflected the tastes and norms dominant in the society. And it seems that like the fashion in the 1950s embraced conflicting femininities, so their styles were meant to negotiate conflicts between diverse modes of gender and class identities.

Although more recent theories on fashion and class identity deviate from the understanding of fashion as a marker of status, copied by the lower classes, Georg Simmel’s view of fashion as “a form of class differentiation” (Blumer 234) frequently forms the theoretical backdrop of new conceptualisations of fashion. Herbert Blumer proposes a view that while Simmel’s ideas may be applicable to the mechanisms of fashion before the 20th century, it fails to explain the phenomenon of the 1960s fashions. Unlike in the past centuries, Blumer argues, “in our contemporary epoch with its many diverse fields and its emphasis on modernity” (235), fashion is no longer ‘dictated’ by the social elites and emulated by the masses, “The design has to correspond to the direction of incipient taste of the fashion consuming public. The prestige of the elite affects but does not control the direction of this incipient taste” (237). According to Blumer, contemporary fashion operates in relation to “historical continuity”, “modernity”, “collective taste”, and “psychological motives”. Its constant dialogue with the past trends ensures that new styles are always created in response to the ones in the past. Changes in fashions depend more often on “shift in interests and taste” (239) than on “the nature of the medium” itself, as when for example a mini skirt cannot be any shorter, and the fashion for a long skirt appears. Moreover, fashion embraces modernity in the form of novel production technologies, innovative fabrics, but also and most importantly it responds “to political happenings, and to major social shifts such as the emancipation of women or the rise of the cult of youth” (239).

Far from having “only trivial or peripheral significance”, the domain of fashion from Blumer’s perspective looms large over many fields such as the arts, architecture, medicine, industry, literature, and even politics (232–233). Therefore, he proposes to free debates about fashion from the constraints imposed by psychological studies, which tend to concentrate on fashion as a form of expression of the individual’s psychological needs. Such an approach, notes Blumer, fails to explain the “collective process which constitutes fashion” (241) and does not adequately account for the role fashion “plays in modern group life” (241).

Highlighting the need for a comprehensive sociological analysis of fashion mechanisms, Blumer observes that changes in dress styles always correspond to wider socio-political transformations. In fact, he goes on to argue that a certain observable uniformity of styles that at a given time appears as fashionable ←34 | 35→suggests the existence of “a common ‘apperception mass’ ” (235–136) among the producers and the consumers of fashion. This is largely due to the fact that fashion designers are inspired by “expressions of modernity” in such areas as literature, culture and politics, and in their creations “translate themes from these areas and media into dress” (236). Because fashionable dress reflects the present reality and at the same time already is “an orderly preparation for the immediate future” (245), common and shared tastes ensue. Fashion facilitates the existence of a “common approach to the world” and offers shared ways of “handling and digesting the experiences which the world yields” (Blumer 245).

Such an approach seems to justify analysis of sartorial practices as reflected and embedded in the socio-political context. Even though the sender-receiver communication model is not in operation in the mechanism proposed by Blumer, dress can be clearly interpreted as communicating meanings which correspond to the set of values and power relations governing specific societies at specific times. Consequently, dress, clothes, and fashion (which Blumer clearly perceives as the change in styles) appear to form society’s outer layer. To borrow a linguistic term, they are society’s signifier.

That fashion is a form of communication and a language of identities is widely proved by theories on subcultural styles. Scholarly research on hip hop fashions by Emil Wilbekin, subcultural fashions in general by Dick Hebdige, or oppositional dress by Elizabeth Wilson demonstrate that styles are invented, used and marketed as conveyors of specific beliefs and worldviews which distinguish one group from another. In selecting specific attire, these groups seem to be guided by the metaphorical meanings of specific garments. For example, as noted by Wilson, the adoption of “traditional working-class clothes” by skinheads signified their “conservative proletarian” (2007, 253) values, while the wearing of Afro hairstyle after the 1960s was “a much more openly ideological reassertion of the distinctive nature of the black experience” (254).

In fact, Wilson points to the centuries-long practice of expressing social and political rebellion through attire. The 16th and the 18th centuries saw the implementation of official bans on wearing respectively Irish and Scottish national dress in recognition of their revolutionary connotations; the 19th century witnessed the appearance of rebellious masculinity expressed through dandy clothes. According to Wilson dandyism and its narcissistic preoccupation with looks was a sartorial response to social transformations at the end of the 18th century. Through adoption of less ornamental and less excessive dress styles, the dandy communicated more democratic ideals of the European societies after the French Revolution. Turning impressions into realities and his life into an artwork, he became the aristocrat of the new times (Wilson 2013, 182), for as ←35 | 36→observed by Wilson, “his perfection in all the inessentials of life was a kind of performance of aristocracy” (2013, 182). Dandy’s sartorial practices combined with his celebratory attitude to the self and openly practiced idleness was ultimately an expression of rebellion against the middle-class ideals of masculinity; “the dandy, whether aristocrat, artist or romantic radical […] was and is above all anti-bourgeois” (2013, 183).

Equally expressive of radicalism and revolutionary in character was another sartorial transformation, namely the appearance of “aesthetic dress” in women’s fashion. Adopted by bohemian women, particularly the famous Bloomsbury set, the aesthetic dress communicated opposition to the socially accepted femininity and signalled the wearer’s affiliation with anti-bourgeois, progressive thinking circles of the society (Wilson 2013, 185). Similarly to dandyism, which was viewed as expressive of democratic principles, the reformed female dress began to be associated with socialism, for, as noted by Wilson, socialist artists like Walter Crane or William Morris “saw dress as an expression of social relations” (216). Although initially the reform dress was justified on moral and hygienic grounds, gradually it became “a symbol of the wearer’s tastes and politics” (218), comments Wilson, stressing that as such the reform dress started to communicate identity in a way modern fashion does. The unconventional hairstyles (bob for women) and loose robes became manifestations of “a general rejection of the conventions and bourgeois lifestyle” (216).

Subcultural fashions may perhaps be regarded as a legacy of oppositional dress, for like the dress reform styles or dandyism they seemed to have invested clothing with metaphorical meanings. Referring to semiotics and the writings of both Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, Dick Hebdige in his text on subcultures (2007) proposes to view clothing as signs, which “contain a whole range of messages” (257) about “class, status, self-image and attractiveness” or are at least “expressive of ‘normality’ as opposed to ‘deviance’ ” (257). Yet, while fashion choices may not be fully intentional, the stylised subcultural attire is “a visible construction, a loaded choice”, which “gives itself to be read” (257). The main goal of subcultural sartorial practices is “the communication of a significant difference” (257) from the society at large as well as simultaneous communication of the subcultural group’s identity. The model proposed by Hebdige to examine subcultural fashions resembles quite closely the sender-receiver model of communication, for according to him the use of clothes by members of subcultures is “motivated” and “intentional” (257).

Although Hebdige’s theory has been subject to numerous criticisms, with scholars such as Angela McRobbie accusing it of gender bias, the general mechanisms of transmitting meaning through clothes described by him provide ←36 | 37→some insight into what seems to be equally intentional sartorial communication in a public/political context. As the entrance of women into the public sphere of politics was often marked by the adoption of oppositional or what Hebdige terms “revolting” styles (259), it seems worthwhile to recount the main tenants of his theory, examining to what extent such concepts like “bricolage” and “homology” apply to fashions adopted by suffragettes, Flappers, and feminists (discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 6).

Bricolage, which involves “blending of dissonant elements,” serves the purpose of disconnecting individual items of clothing or an accessory from its usual context/meaning. By being placed in an unusual combination with other supposedly incongruous elements of attire, the item starts to communicate a different message. According to Hebdige, bricolage occurs when elements of dress are “stripped of their original connotations” (2007, 259), as for example when “the conventional insignia of the business world – the suit, collar and tie” cease to metaphorically convey “efficiency, ambition, compliance with authority” (259), becoming instead a subcultural uniform, and “ ‘empty’ fetish” (259).

The subcultural practice of bricolage opened the ground for endless incorporations into fashion of elements that had been previously firmly outside the conventional understanding of style and aesthetics. Examples of Punk new fashion accessories given by Hebdige include lavatory chains, safety pins, plastic bin liners. The ultimate goal of incorporating these objects into fashion was to communicate revolt and dissent from normative femininity and masculinity alike. Not surprisingly, the repertoire of social taboos was readily exploited by Punks, who constructed their “confrontation dressing” (259) referring to fetish gear and sex-shop imagery. Yet, as the current study argues, the subversive styles were but a metaphor of the subversive behaviour of the Punks, who according to Hebdige “posed the clearest threat to law and order […] subverting the conventions of concert and night-club entertainment” (2007, 261).

Homology, which is another concept that Hebdige uses to examine subcultural styles and which he borrows from Levi-Strauss and Paul Willis, allows us to view Punk as supremely integral and coherent. Because subculture’s fashion is in homological relation to both anti-social behaviour of the subculture group members and their cacophonic music, it is “made to form unity with the group’s relations, situation, experience” (Hall et al., 1976, qtd. in Hebdige 2007, 263). According to Hebdige, the supposedly incongruous and chaotic styles that characterised Punk subculture were meant to reflect the social position of Punks and became a form of a visual protest against the orderly society in which Punks experienced marginalisation. Also following Willis, Hebdige stresses that contrary to commonly held views, subcultures are not “lawless forms” (263). On the ←37 | 38→contrary, all elements characteristic of a given subculture, such as dress, music and a way of being correspond to the values and self-image of that subculture.

In a more recent subcultural phenomenon, namely hip hop of the 1990s, dress and clothing also seemed to serve the important communicative function of producing and enhancing specific identities, establishing a sharp dividing line between those inside and outside the subcultural group. In his essay entitled “Great Aspirations. Hip hop, and fashion dress for excess and success,” Emil Wilbekin examines hip hop’s complex relation with the world of fashion, commenting on the importance of designer fashion for hip hop “character and identity” (250). While hip hop style is changing as quickly as its music, what remains a fairly stable characteristic of the subculture’s fashion is its constant engagement with designer labels. World famous fashion houses do not flinch from openly endorsing hip hop, reaping profits from the immense popularity of the music genre and its aesthetics. As Wilbekin observes, “beyond the blatant courting by both sides, fashion now takes aesthetic direction from hip hop culture more than ever” (251). This resulted in hip hop clothing being emblazoned with brand names, and the designers’ emulation of street fashion. Although such close affinity between a subculture and haute-couture fashion may be viewed as indicative of the new times of more democratic and equal social relations, the top fashion brands still communicate exclusiveness of their collections by “creating […] garments in luxe fabrics: cashmere, silk, mohair, and mink” (251–252), notes Wilbekin.

Likewise, Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Bubolz Eicher stress the communicative function of dress and accessories, particularly in the public context of politics. According to the authors, wearing clothes is an “aesthetic act” and as such it is highly context specific, for “the language of personal adornment is acquired from others” (109), they argue. Individual societies or even social groups create their own dress codes through which they communicate their concepts of beauty and their systems of values. The clothed body is always meaningful, argue Roach and Eicher, as it “carries a number of other messages, frequently of social and psychological significance” (110). Therefore, the authors propose to group messages communicated by adornment under the following headings: “social role”, “social worth”, “economic status”, “political symbol”, “magico-religious condition” (112–117). Closely reminiscent of a linguistic message, clothing transmits information about social and power relations in a given society. Yet, like language, attire can be misleading, for “individuals can assume disguise to deceive the observer” (112). The messages about social role are closely linked to the ones about social worth and economic status. As pointed out by Roach and Eicher, adornment serves the purpose of marking the division between classes, indicating the high ←38 | 39→economic status of the elite. While in the past the sartorial distinction between representatives of various economic groups in society was sanctioned by sumptuary laws, contemporary sartorial practices, particularly in Western societies tend to be “generally more ambiguous in its symbolism”, Roach and Eicher argue.

Politics is another sphere where adornment has played an important communicative function. According to Roach and Eicher, political power has been sartorially represented by the use of “symbolic dress” as well as diverse accessories that are personal “mark of identification” (116). While political figures may occasionally resort to wearing historical costumes for the sake of “traditional ceremonial display” (which is discussed in Chapter 7), subtler forms of sartorial demonstration of power and political ideology are more frequently adopted. Nowadays, these include wearing emblems and badges, whereas in the past trousers cut, powdered hair or beauty patches signalled class and political party affiliation. Also, the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s recognised the importance of clothes in politics, targeting fashion and bodily adornment as oppressive to women, and demanding “rejection of cosmetics, elaborate hairstyles, foundation garments, and of the practice of removing body hair” (117), note Roach and Eicher. The second wave feminists continued the sartorial crusade started by suffragettes, who protested against clothes that heavily restricted body movements and posed a threat to women’s health.

Early 20th century women’s rights campaigners not only wore and promoted dresses that were looser and more comfortable, but also used clothing to stress their sense of community and group cohesion. Emmeline Pankhurst and other members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) used dress “as reinforcement of belief, custom, and values” (118) by creating their own dress code, which was meant to connote freedom from the social constraints, independence, equality and fraternity. The WSPU’s colour scheme, badges and sashes on the one hand were expressive of political views, while on the other hand they served the purpose of establishing a visual code that helped female activists to forge their new identities of liberated women. The marches of thousands of white-dressed women made a terrific visual impact of which the suffragettes were perfectly aware. If a white dress became a suffragette’s uniform, the badges, pins and brooches adorned with WSPU colours became “medals” for courage and commitment to the cause. Therefore, it can be noted that it was through the connotation with the military attire that the women’s movement metaphorically communicated its political power (one of the notable WSPU members, Flora ‘General’ Drummond famously posed for a portrait photograph wearing a military attire including a jacket with epaulettes, and a military hat).

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Despite covering a vast range of topics related to the meanders of meanings in fashion in relation to gender and social class, major works on fashion theory, including the seminal reader entitled Fashion Theory by Malcolm Barnard (2007), fail to discuss dress in the context of age or even more specifically aging. In part six of Malcolm’s Reader, diverse topics connected with fashion, identity and difference are grouped under the four main headings: “Sex and gender”, “Social class”, “Ethnicity and race”, and “Culture and subculture”. Age, despite being a vital component of individual’s identity, and having a substantial influence on any person’s sartorial choices, fails to appear in the list. Such omission, though striking for anyone investigating the trajectories of meanings related to dress and vestimentary habits that underpin construction of social identities, might only testify to the deeply entrenched conviction that fashion is for the young. Yet, while it is largely true that fashion industries are targeting consumers whose spending powers are at their peak, clothing and dress is of some concern to most people regardless their age; according to Entwistle (2000) “the social world is a world of dressed bodies” (6), so dress involves everyone on a daily basis.

The sartorial performativity of individual identities cuts across gender, class, ethnicity and age, since garments as well as complete attires tend to metaphorically communicate more than one identity at a time. Though expression of class through dress has been widely explored by sociologists (Veblen 1953; Simmel 1957), in modern youth-dominated cultures research on aging has been concerned primarily with addressing the problems (such as ill health) rather than pleasures (i.e. consumption of beauty and fashion products) of old age. The imbalance in the social perception and construction of aging has been only recently redressed, with the cosmetics industry offering products segmented by age groups (Gilleard, C. J., Higgs, Paul, 116). Also, the formerly more restrictive regulations concerning age appropriate clothing, in the last decades have become more relaxed, as “some older women are being drawn into the sphere of fashion” (Twigg 2015, 60). One may have an impression that designers such as Vivienne Westwood, who has consistently challenged the stereotypical representations of not only gender, but also class and age identities through dress, play the key role in this transformation. Westwood’s predilection for wearing oversized, ripped and torn garments visibly clashes with the mainstream view summarised by Twigg as “the harsher judgements (…) apply [to] torn, stained clothing when displayed by the old, compared with the easy tolerance of ripped jeans and scruffy dress in the young” (58).

According to Gilleard, C. J., Higgs, Paul (2013), recent developments that led to the establishment of a valid connection between aging and the fashion/beauty industry followed and mimicked the class revolution of the 1960s, when youth ←40 | 41→groups undermined vestimentary class distinctions in search of “self-expression” (117). The same market mechanisms that supported self-expression of youth cultures since the 1960s have gradually expanded to engage the elderly, assisting their defiance of aging, as well as providing “model ways of ‘ageing without becoming old’ ” (Gilleard & Higgs, 117). Yet, with the 1960s emphasis on modernity and democracy of youth styles, fashion industry found it hard to bridge the age gap by attracting middle-aged customers. As noted by Gilleard & Higgs (126–127) everything about the 1960s fashion connoted opposition to the older, class and age-conscious generation, as the “process of ‘informalisation’ became one of the key cultural tropes of the time” (126). However, the aging of the 1960s youth that occurred around the 1980s entailed inclusion of the older women and men into the fashion industry, as those who initiated the sartorial revolution were hardly willing to embrace the styles against which they used to rebel.

The ageing of 1960s’ youth undermined the very age segmentation system that these cohorts had helped establish. By the mid-1980s, the 1960s youth were approaching middle age, reaching the chronological ages of those earlier cohorts whom they had once been exhorted to ignore or disregard. Few were ready to abandon the investment in clothes and fashion that had made them once feel so distinct and so not old. (127)

For example, Westwood, who in her Punk days was at the forefront of the sartorial questioning of class distinctions, developed a personal dress style that helped navigate the sartorial expression of old age in a less limited way, opening up a range of opportunities for women over 70, which in the not so distant past would not be available to that age group, for example wearing asymmetrical minis accessorised with colourful tights. Based on research into older women’s attitude to fashion, Gilleard & Higgs stress that despite their age, most of these women express both interest in fashion and willingness to shop for clothes in fashionable stores (128). The authors also note that in recognition of that tendency “The clothes industry has shifted increasingly from ‘lifestage’ toward ‘lifestyle’ ” while “fashion is and remains age conscious, but it is no longer designed to exclude” (129). “Dress practices encode and reflect meanings about age, and in doing so help constitute age like class and gender as a social category” (Twigg 2015, 60).

Sartorial metaphors of youth seem crucial for the construction of the fashionably-aged identity. While beauty industry markets their anti-aging lines of products by referring to a range of orientational metaphors such as HEALTH IS UP, ALIVE IS UP (Lakoff and Johnson 18) and offering lifting creams that help defy sagging of the aging skin, the fashion industry offers styles that establish metaphorical connections with such youth conceptual spaces as active leisure and sports or subcultural aesthetics. Youthfulness of attire and appearance ←41 | 42→connotes not only physical attractiveness but also superior mental and psychological well-being. In the case of women, who while aging lose their reproductive abilities and hence a vital component of their feminine identity, youthful style of dressing might help to assert femininity. As observed by Sharron Hinchliff and Merryn Gott (2008), Western women are encouraged to hide symptoms of aging and tend to be represented as “useless” when they reach menopause. Based on interviews with women aged over 50, Hinchliff and Gott concluded that sexual activity is viewed as essential for healthy aging and that the majority of the interviewed women “rejected the asexual discourse of aging” (65). Therefore, the dress styles that metaphorically communicate sexual attractiveness when worn by older women not only help to camouflage age but also play an important role in reconfirming their gender identities.

The intersection of gender and age identities in dress, like the interconnectedness of gender and class, becomes particularly relevant in the context of publicly constructed identities by women occupying prominent social and political roles. While the Qualification of Women Act of 1918 recognised age as a sole criterion for allowing women their voting rights, the women who topped the British political scene in the 20th century were predominantly over 40. Emmeline Pankhurst was 45 when she founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, Ellen Wilkinson was aged 52 when appointed Minister of Education in 1945, Margaret Thatcher was 54 when elected the Prime Minister in 1979, while Betty Boothroyd was 63 on becoming the Speaker of the House of Commons. Because unlike fashion, politics seems to favour maturity to the extent that the media never fail to report on the age of those who enter politics early in their lives, female public figures could be viewed as sartorially negotiating conflicting ideals of female identity, metaphorically bringing together youthfulness of fashionable femininity and level-headed maturity of what Vogue labelled “Ageless Style”. In view of the above, the purpose of the current study is to at least partially answer the following questions regarding the use of fashion in public space: how do fashion and clothes communicate women’s identities; what ideals of femininity are communicated through female clothes, and which feminine traits in the 20th century were metaphorically expressed by specific items of clothing.