Rose Blakemore Consider the ways in which our Megan Culture Impacts on Fashion and the Body A discussion between how fashion has responded to culture, the effect of great historical events such
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Consider the ways in which our Culture Impacts on Fashion and the Body A discussion between how fashion has responded to culture, the effect of great historical events such as France coming into power and how fashion was used to provide an established social structure. We are born into a cultural society, one which consists of the fashioned body and nakedness is considered inappropriate to almost all situations; be it at the beach, by the swimming-pool or even in the bedroom. However, you will find that even in a situation where a lot of skin is showing, the body is still likely to be adorned in a personal way, either by jewellery or perfume: in 1960 a film was produced of Marilyn Monroe, when was asked what she wore to bed, her response was only Chanel No.5, a perfect illustration of how even without fashion the body is still ‘dressed’. In some ways, this is a simple element of culture and society. The universal nature of how different cultures fashion the body points out that, by doing this, it gives a person an identity. Each person prepares their body in a distinct way in order to make one’s self look appropriate, doing this has become some-what a cultural norm operating on the boundary of acceptance. In everyday life, the social outcome and cultural pressures come hand in hand with the fashioned body and the symbolic situation in which it is found. In this essay, to fully understand how culture impacts on fashion I will be concentrating and discussing in more detail historical, universal changes in culture and society, such as when Spain faded in power and France rose, I will deliberate the influence in which this had in politics as well as how this impacts on fashion. I will also be questioning if this has any impact on the body, looking towards designers such as Hussein Chalayan as his collections are innovative and conceptual often responding to what is happening around us. Contraire to Hussein Chalayan, I will be arguing if other designers such as John Galliano for example, who respond to culture in a different way. This will offer a different perspective on how culture impacts fashion. Alongside my research of designers, I will be sharing a brief insight into theorists and anthropologists; Roland Barthes, Valerie Steele and Bryan Turner who will support or argue my theory on fashion and culture. Firstly, I will start by saying that I think impact is the wrong word to use in this situation, to suggest culture has an impact on fashion is suggesting that fashion and fashion designers have been significantly influenced by what is happening around them. I do however, think it is true to put forward that fashion responds to cultural change, reflecting and reproducing these changes. Designers do not directly create collections based on what is happening, they reply to it and modernise it. “The feature of modernity in fashion is especially significant. Fashion is always modern; it always seeks to keep abreast of the times. It is sensitive to the movement of current developments as they take place in its own field…Thus women’s dress is responsive in its own trend” (Blumer, 1969). In some circumstances, it is important for people in the fashion industry to forecast social and cultural movements in the world. By predicting what will happen in the future, it can put fashion houses in a better position for their work. However, I find this only to be true to the designer their self, take Hussein Chalayan for example, fashion in his view is not only about clothing, but also about the ideal attitudes, poses and etiquette that exist in culture. “Every culture has rules on the attitude
Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University
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we should adopt in particular situations. The way we open a present is culturally determined, but so is how we sit and stand” (Chalayan, 2002). Chalayan is one the most the most innovative designers today, his fascination with bodily form and identity is a frontrunner in his more conceptual designs. Chalayan often turns the spotlight on dimensions of today’s culture, dimensions that lie right beneath the surface of fashion and daily life. One example of this is Veils (spring/summer 1998), in which Chalayan brings the ambiguity of the ‘feminine’ gaze into sharp focus. The infamous show started off with a woman veiled head to toe, with each sequential model a layer of clothing is removed, by the end, all that remained was a naked women. Chalayan says; “the paradox of Islam is that it has women wearing veils to eliminate their beauty and appeal”.
Figure 1 Hussein Chalayan spring/summer 1998 Veils
But, in contrast to this, although certain fashion houses are inspired by culture, their reference to that might be inaccurate. To expand, Galliano's debut Haute Couture collection for Dior in 1997 was inspired by, in his words, Maasai culture from East Africa, which I don’t doubt, but I also believe he was inspired by a Dinka tribe which was also from east Africa. Therefore, I think it is right to agree that fashion can be ethnically inspired, if not by just one type of culture, but a few and they mix those together to create their own ensemble.
Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University
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Figure 2 Valerie Steele Show, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, 2000. In the centre is the male corset form the Dinka Culture in East Africa and to the left is John Galliano’s ensemble.
Yet, while it may seem that fashion is embedded in our culture, it is not an independent variable. One problem to this is that certain explanations have a tendency to over-simplify fashion and only focus on the styles that seem to relate to social change that is happening. In response to this they neglect the ones which don’t. Valerie Steele suggests that “fashion has an internal dynamic of its own that is only very gradually and loosely affected by social change within the wide culture,” she goes on to say, “fashion is not a power unto itself, but the principal dynamic of fashion is an internal one…Roots of change in fashion precede the great event – be it the French Revolution or the First World Ward” (1985). Events such as wars might contribute to an understanding of how and why certain styles get adopted on a wide scale but they do not explain how such styles originated. Fashion does not have a direct response to the times, it is always situated within a culture in one way or another. Chalayan has another example of interpreting what is happening in the world and how he factors that into fashion. A later expanded version of one of his previous shows, Chalayan’s ground breaking collection After Words (FW 2000) featured a plain, white stage with asymmetrical planes flanked on three sides and contained 50’s style furniture that the models adapted as clothing and wore off stage. The idea of this show was based on having to evacuate your home during war time. I think this expressed a political reality that articulates relationships between the garment and the cultural narrative.
Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University
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Figure 3 Hussein Chalayan, after words fall/winter 2000
Therefore, it is true to say that stylistic innovation has not always existed, and is by no means universal today (Entwistle, 1988). But the development of medieval and Renaissance court society, the expansion of trade over the globe, the arrival of new social classes, great historical events, and the rise of the city life have all played a part in the growth of a system of fashion that is influenced upon continual change within our culture. To put this into context, I think it is essential for me to mention that ‘fashion’ is no longer what it used to be, we no longer have everything ruled from Paris with one Couture House setting the trend, but instead we have multiple style tribes from all around the world (Steele, 2012). While some designers may still remain true to their identity, in the last thirty years the fashion industry has crashed, now more ‘liberated’ it is engrossed in profitability, quality is now second nature and the rise of fast fashion is impartial for luxury tycoons. If you look at, for example, a traditional caftan, this is recognised as a symbol of state, power, religion, rank, marriage, gender, even the time it is worn, but one thing that remains is that it doesn’t come in different variations, everything about it is set and nothing is up to individual choice. The point I’m making about this is that you didn’t decide what you wanted to wear or how you wanted it to look, you had to wear what was appropriate to you, and if you didn’t the penalty could be death, which is very different to today’s culture. Valerie Steele in 1999 had an exhibition called China Chic: east meets west, the introductory scene to her exhibition was an authentic dragon robe, worn my ruling class Chinese men and women in their family. The second robe next to it was addressed by a Chinese-American designer Vivienne Tam where she had taken the iconography of the imperial dragon, lifted it and put it on a new dress in a different material that you could just choose to wear. This is a good example of how designers use the fundamental tradition of certain culture, take from it what they find influential and create their own collection or ensemble which then completely mislays the authenticity of it.
Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University
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Figure 4 Valerie Steele, China Chic at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, 1999.
But, while it may seem traditional for one culture to wear what is ‘appropriate’ to their social hierarchy, in 10th century Japan, the court of Hai-kuo used an important term of praise known as ‘imam Akashi’, meaning up to date, because in their culture god forbid you were wearing something that was ‘last season’. Contraire to this, Japanese peasants in the countryside would wear clothes similar to what their ancestors wore. And so it is clear for me to suggest that what type of fashion exists in one area within the same culture, does not exists for another. This type of attitude was also typical in Europe, if you look towards the Renaissance and the rise of capitalism and urbanism, soon people of all classes started to wear the latest modern fashion, a time where Shakespeare said; “the fashion wears out more apparel than the man” (1623. 3:3 6). One of the most evident impacts culture had on fashion was power. In the late 15 th century when Spain was in power, everybody wore Spanish fashion, black, even enemies of Spain wore black because that’s what was in fashion. And, as soon as Spain faded in power and France rose, everyone wore French fashion. The domination of fashion was, in some ways, a conscious scheme to those in power, occupying the minds of the aristocrats and distracting them from their political conspiracies; Jean-Baptiste Colbert once declared that “Fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain” (1665). This type of attitude towards fashion followed through right up until the 19 th Century when Paris was a dominant mediator in women’s fashion and men’s fashion was led by London. Gradually, as more and more young people were in the progress of travelling across Europe, they started to reject the classic fashion system and become part of a new fashion vocabulary. Fashion designers picked this up from the street and filtered it down into the mass market. This demonstrates that “exoticism lives at home too” (Steele, 2012), not just for fashion designers, for the mass manufacturers too, which introduced disposable youth fashion.
Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University
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Figure 5 the way it was: punks, 1983. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Featu
This leads to my next question; what are the levels of causal inspiration in fashion? You could have the more obvious; movies, music and icons and then you have great, historical events, and inbetween those you have the individuals. Individual consumers, as well as individual designers and trend setters, influence fashion and can now be considered a cultural, as well as a social pressure, that have become an effect for dress in everyday life. Take a formal situation for example, this tends to involve ‘rules’ such as black tie and an evening dress stipulation. This type of fashion is better known as ‘world fashion’, in such circumstances the dress code in turn conveys information about the situation it is in and is universally accepted by consumers today. In more detail, job interviews, business events and formal evening events demand clear boundaries for the type of dress code. Other types involve men and women who choose to cross dress, in doing so they become the risk of being excluded from the situation in hand. Therefore, I think that codes of dress have a cultural impact on fashion, which shape and dominate the body. Nevertheless, despite many theories on fashion and the cultural impact, it is not easy for me to distinguish if or how culture does in fact impact on fashion and the body, or, if the body puts fashion and the cultural impact it has into context. It is also problematic for me as I have been researching for my essay with the intention of discussing how culture impacts on fashion, while doing so it has come to my attention that there are different levels of culture that impact on fashion and I have now crossed limitations within my research which I could go on and explore in more detail. Though, I do feel that I have given, as I have intended to do so, a brief overview of how I think culture impacts on fashion. Firstly, I will start by saying that I think fashion designers are influenced by what is happening around them and respond to this by creating a collection that does not directly counterfeit culture, but shows their subjective opinion based on what is happening. I will also go on to say that, although it may seem like individual fashion designers are influenced by culture, I think they again are not directly influenced, but instead use several different aspects of a few different cultures that could be associated, creating something that might appear to be one type of culture. But, when considering the wider picture of the fashion industry, I think it is accurate to say that culture does then impact Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University
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on fashion. In more detail, when France rose in power and politics were closely linked with fashion, practically all high fashion from then on was linked with Paris, the period between WW1 and WW2 was better known as ‘the golden age of French fashion’. But, after WW2 the reputation of Paris as the global centralization of fashion crumbled, a new youth style emerged and by the 20 th century there was no longer a divide between high society and the working class. This attitude towards fashion followed suit and by the 90’s it was no longer a done thing to follow fashion slavishly, evidencing that fashion is no longer what it once was. Bibliography •
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De Montfort University
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Image Reference •
Figure 1: Anonymous (1998) Veils Spring/Summer 1998 [Online Image] www.dazeddigital.com
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Figure 2: Design Indaba (2012) Valerie Steele on cultural influences in fashion design [Online image] http://www.designindaba.com/videos/conference-talks/valerie-steele-culturalinfluences-fashion-design
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Figure 3: Hussein Chalayan (2000) After Words Fall/Winter 2000 [Online Image] www.chalayan.com
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Figure 4: Design Indaba (2012) Valerie Steele on cultural influences in fashion design [Online image] http://www.designindaba.com/videos/conference-talks/valerie-steele-culturalinfluences-fashion-design
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Figure 5: Nil Jorgensen (1983) The way it was: punks [Online image] http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/20/youth-subcultures-where-have-theygone
Megan Rose Blakemore
De Montfort University