Fashion, fabricate, artifice, make-up: all these terms have a double valence. Each term in noun form denotes a prosthetic application of something foreign atop something natural (usually a human body) with the intention of concealing or enhancing the natural item beneath. Each term in verb form, though, carries a connotation of constitution and creation: a sense of literal “becoming,” or even investiture. In some way, these terms gesture towards the ephemeral, frivolous, and the temporary AND towards a sense of ontological making.
Scholars in anthropology, sociology, psychology, art history, and material history have all taken fashion seriously. Literary critics, though, have paid scant attention to clothes, despite novelists’ deep, vivid, and abiding interest in their characters’ dress. Literary scholars have been much more concerned with the noun forms of words related to fashion – the concern with falsity and authenticity – than the verb forms.
This panel seeks to analyze the ways in which fashion operates in literature, with a particular interest in the concept of “fashion” as a verb. Paper topics might include, but are not limited to: fashion as a Foucauldian technology of self; the pro-consumerist “girl-power” movement as a reaction to second-wave feminism; self-fashioning in the biography and autobiography; theories and criticism of text and fashion (Barthes, Rancière, etc.); comparative study of illustrations and the written word; notions of visualizing the ineffable, etc.. Interdisciplinary work is invited.
The convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.
Please send 500 word abstracts as MSWord attachments by September 30, 2010, to Heath Sledge and Helen Dunn at confabstracts@gmail.com. Inquiries may also be sent to this address.
Allow me a quick detour into the world of popular culture. As a major cultural vehicle through which most of the world is acquainted with fashion, I do think the recent “Sex and the City” film deserves a moment of attention — if only for all the controversy the film has caused. Space limitations prohibit me from addressing all the stereo-typing and cries of racism the film has elicited. And that’s not even to consider the anti-feminism undercurrent present in both of the films. And then there’s the simple issue of bad cinema… (See this and this for two very well-written – if scathing – reviews of SATC 2).
What interests me at the moment however is the fashion. If Carrie Bradshaw was once a couture darling, in “Sex and the City 2” she is “Barbie goes to Dubai” — a grotesque caricature of American tourism and commodification. Not to imply that the Carrie of the early days of the HBO series wasn’t a consumer – of course she was – it’s just that the imaginative edge and actual appreciation of couture vanished as she donned a mocking “J’adore Dior” t-shirt to parade through an exotic spice market. Becoming a style icon may have been the inevitable result of the series context of New York City – a city forever wed to glamour and high fashion – but it seems that the ladies are now the silliest of chameleons, who change clothes so many times in a day, just for the sake of changing.
So, readers, any thoughts on the sickeningly sweet eye candy (which might ultimately blind us) that “Sex and the City” has become?
“I had heard from my London connections—Michael Benthall and Bobby Helpmann—that the one person to do the clothes was a Doris Langley Moore.She had a Museum of Costume.* John had written me about someone else but I told him about Doris—FLASH—he changed without any argument. I met her. She was a charmer and had a lot of all sorts of petticoats and underwear. She had been brought up in Africa, and this was a very lucky thing for me that we had her. She said that the materials we used must be able to stand sweaty heat—and not muss too easily and not show dirt and not show whether they were wet or dry. So our first meeting with her and Huston and me. He was fascinated by the underwear. I tried on every variety of split-pants, of chemise—and I was terrified that he was going to have me wear nothing but an envelope chemise in the picture.”
(From Hepburn, Katharine. Me : Stories of My Life, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991., 250)
* “The Fashion Museum collection was started by Doris Langley Moore, a collector, costume designer and author. She gave her collection to the city of Bath in 1963, and Bath City Council used it to found the Museum of Costume. The collection is now three times its original size and the museum changed its name to the Fashion Museum in 2007.” (Museum of Costume, Bath website)
A long standing fan of director / writer John Waters, I am delighted that the Pope of Trash is appearing with greater frequency in periodicals these days due to his new book Role Models. I’m going to brush aside the content of the book (though it looks awesome!) to concentrate on the style of Mr. Waters and his aesthetic philosophy. In his Flavorwire list of advice for “functional freaks” he dispensed some wonderful fashion advice:
“You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop — the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents — that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative — wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry — stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-life attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.”
I love this whole thing. Every sentence. Every suggestion. (Well, I might question “ill-fitting is always stylish.” Though a great fan of belting things too big for me, I strongly believe that tailoring to fit your body makes everything look good. We’ll let that one pass, John.) The suggestion of wearing band-aids as jewelry reminded me of rather trashy D-actress Bai Ling, a regular fashion victim/goddess of Go Fug Yourself. In addition to favoring dresses that reveal her nipples, Bai also regularly sports what the Go Fug Yourself ladies refer to as her “Band-Aids of Truth” that have various nonsensical phrases scrawled on them with permanent marker:
"The Hit Song" on the left, "China Girl" on the right. What? Exactly.
They’re delightful in their ridiculous whimsy, non? I think John would approve of her nipple and band-aid antics.
I myself have been experimenting with turning clothes inside-out, upside-down, and backwards. I love to reveal the normally hidden construction of garments — stitches are so cool looking, why would you hide them?! I also like the connection to the fashion sustainability movement. By the simple act of pinning or rotating a skirt, one can create a fresh “new” skirt without spending a dime and without discarding a perfectly functional garment. For her recently completed Uniform Project sustainable fashion experiment, Sheena Matheiken wore her one dress (same style, 7 copies for laundering) in infinite permutations by alternating creative and colorful accessories. She collaborated with her designer friend to create the staple dress “so it can be worn both ways, front and back, and also as an open tunic.” I don’t believe it can be worn upside-down, but it’s a pretty good start:
I very much enjoy John’s suggestion to raid thrift stores for costumes. While I don’t generally seek out Halloween costumes like Mink Stole, I absolutely raid the prom / bridesmaids section of Goodwills. Like costumes they have generally been worn only once, and I firmly believe one can never be too fancy (and therefore one can never have too many fancy frocks). I literally wear some of these prom dresses as nightgowns and I recommend it. Um, I also realize that I totally have a homemade blue gingham dress that I am positive was made for a high school production of either Oklahoma! or The Wizard of Oz. Jealous much?
<Ahem.>
Back to John. On his own style icons: “Rufus Wainwright always has a look. Joan Kennedy always looks startling. Kate Moss has never looked bad in her life. And the Jackass boys. If ever there was a gang of boys I could hang out and get fashion lessons from, it’s them. And, oh! Kitty Carlisle Hart.”
Rufus Wainwright & Johnny Knoxville of Jackass, fashion icons?
When asked about his preference for the Three Stooges over Charlie Chaplin in a recent Salon interview, Waters said,
“They’re more fun, and they have a better fashion sense. I hate people who wear top hats, they look like assholes, but Moe with his bangs? He inspired the shoe-bomber fashion. The shoe bomber looked exactly like him. Imagine if you got on the plane, and he sat down next to you with Moe Howard’s haircut and shoes with big fuses sticking out of them and dynamite. Trying to light the match and it wouldn’t go off.”
I respectfully disagree with this one. While I do think people in top hats can look like bourgeois assholes, Chaplin wore a bowler which was a democratizing sartorial symbol that blurred class lines, and which looks fantastic in my opinion. And while I can get behind a lot of questionable fashion, I’m not really feeling the Moe / shoe bomber haircut, hilarious as it may be. Call me fickle.
Moe Howard and shoe bomber Richard Reid, questionable fashion inspiration and typical John Waters non-sequitur comparison.
Waters is an avid contemporary art lover. “Good contemporary art makes people angry,” he has said, and “the art I like is always what at first makes me angry” (he sites the messy Cy Twombly and Mike Kelley as favorites). I think he’d agree an element of outrage is true of good cutting edge fashion, too. In his NY Magazine interview from November 19, 2006 he said, “My whole look is ‘disaster at the dry cleaner.’ Usually it’s Japanese.” For his plein air interview for NYPL in Bryant Park last night he wore slim, short Comme des Garçons tuxedo slacks, a black Junya Watanabe jacket with a bold blue black and grey geometric pattern, pointy orange Paul Smith shoes and socks, and GAP boxers — which was pretty much what he said he was wearing for the NY Mag interview 4 years ago. Even if you don’t care for his style, the man has consistency, and though I’m originally a vintage purist, I’ve grown to appreciate — nay, love — fashion that infuriates and confounds. I’d add Netherlandish Viktor & Rolf to his Japanese designers who consistently deconstruct and shock. Waters loves that he can wear a costly designer shirt to Baltimore a bar and have people pity him that he can’t afford a shirt without oil stains and tears, and he always has difficulty explaining to his dry cleaners to leave untouched his uneven hems and holes. Though he can afford to pay retail, he recommends you stain and rip your own clothes for the same look. This dovetails with Waters’ distinctly anti-snob , anti “high” culture philosophy, I think.
Junya Watanabe S2007, Viktor & Rolf S2010RTW, Comme des Garcons F2007
As genuinely enthusiastic as I am about John’s fashion advice, I suspect most find it humorous more than words to actually live by. This is confirmed by the well documented numbers of actors who have literally cried when they’ve been introduced to their wardrobes for Waters’ movies.
So I’ll leave you with John Waters’ most deliciously smarmy trademark, his Little Richard-stolen mustache (which, he claimed, is the reason he doesn’t want to have an open casket funeral– he doesn’t trust anyone else to draw it on just right):
Conference Call for Papers: “Gender, Material Culture, and Cultural Diplomacy” October 7-9, 2010 University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
The interdisciplinary conference offers a forum to analyze, document, and exhibit intersecting imageries, functions, and representations of material culture and its connection to cultural diplomacy in Africa. It interrogates the production, circulation, consumption, and appropriation of material objects and artefacts, such as beads, pottery, and cloth, and their multiple and gendered meanings in changing social, economic and political contexts. Cloth, for instance, from cotton production, ethical consumption and fair trade exigencies, fashion, and cultural diplomacy bears multiple resonances and symbolic meanings in identity politics, power and social relations, trade, and economic exchanges. As a fetishized and iconic symbol of identity, a medium of cultural diplomacy, a commodity in the global economy, a symbolic object of exchange, memory and ritual, and a museum artefact, cloth conveys symbolic, mercantile meanings and social functions, which are both stable and remarkably fluid in different, often conflicting, socio- cultural, political, and economic spheres.
This conference invites a critical and reflexive engagement with material culture and cultural diplomacy—the symbolic, functional, instrumental, and transactional use of material objects as symbols of protest, resistance, negotiation, identity, memory, power, and agency. It will address a series of interrelated questions such as: What are the roles of various actors— artisans, feminists, activists, artists, scholars, producers, and traders—in constructing, deconstructing, appropriating, embodying, and visualizing material culture? To what extent do the production and circulation of material objects signify, reify, or transform social relations, identities, labour relations, and social hierarchies? What tensions and convergences do such material objects mobilize as a medium of cultural diplomacy, peace building, political protest and feminist praxis, economic production, consumption, and trade? We invite papers and proposals with a theoretical focus on material culture embodied in cloth, pottery, or beads in Africa. Comparative analytics and performative methodologies are welcomed. Artists, artisans and activists are strongly encouraged to participate.
Note that the conference will include a curated event and exhibition titled “Embodiment and Visualization of Material Culture Across Time and Space.”
Abstract Due: before June 30, 2010. Notification of Acceptance: July 15, 2010. Deadline for full paper submission: September 15, 2010.
Please submit a 300 word abstract and short bio to: marieme.lo@utoronto.ca. Selected papers will be published.
Six weeks ago, I wrote about the textile design history and global textile arts focus in my basic textiles course. Several readers expressed interest in my sources for information on the wide array of topics I cover, so today I will share a few of them.
On the subject of oriental hand-knotted carpets, I like to show an episode of a 1975 BBC television series called Tribal Eye with Sir David Attenborough. Episode five, “Woven Gardens,” focuses on the nomadic Qashqai tribe of Iran and carpet-making methods and traditions.
For many years this film was only available on 16mm film, and more than one institution I have taught at had their copy of the film copied onto vhs tape or dvd to be more compatible with typical classroom technology. Today, the 51-minute film is available for download from several sites. Currently, you can watch the film in its entirety at Magic of Light, Mystery of Shadows, the blog of textile artist M. Joan Lintault.
For an excellent overview of all (and I do mean all) major textile techniques in one text, I recommend 5,000 Years of Textiles (Five Thousand Years of Textiles) by Jennifer Harris. I have the 1993 hardcover edition, which is very good, in terms of depth of subject material, and quality and quantity of illustrations. The 2004 edition is available in paperback for around US $20. Next time around, I would choose to require this title in addition to my basic textiles text. It would have made my work this semester so much easier.
Are there any particular eras, regions, or techniques you would like to learn more about? Leave a message in the comments and I will be sure to share with you more of my favorite resources.
“FIRST LOOK 2010″ June 4 – 25 Fashion on Main at the Universities Center at Dallas [Denton, TX]
Fashion design students at the University of North Texas will display their award-winning creations including menswear, sportswear, eveningwear and more. The students featured in the exhibition were named winners of UNT’s ArtWear 2010, an annual juried exhibition of work by fashion design seniors at UNT.
“THE ART OF FASHION: EXPERIMENTAL TEXTILES BY DR. KINOR JIANG” Through July 16 UC Davis Design Museum [Davis, CA]
This exhibit presents the innovative textiles of Dr. Kinor Jiang, professor of textiles at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in collaboration with talented designers drawing on and paying homage to their rich traditions of cultural and artistic heritage. Focusing on applications in fashion design and abstract aesthetic forms, the archive of experimental textiles includes metalized and etched metallic fabrics created from technologies of physical and chemical treatments.
“QUILTS UNDER A MICROSCOPE” Through August 1 The International Quilt Study Center & Museum [Lincoln, NE]
This exhibit will present a group of quilts that will divulge some of the secrets of their past and help us determine the best to way to safeguard them for the future. Quilts and other heirloom textiles are important artifacts that can represent the history of a person, a family, a community, or a country. Unfortunately, there are many agents, both natural and human-made, that can slowly (or quickly!) destroy these pieces of our history.
With the Memorial Day weekend behind us, summertime weather is conceivably within our grasp. For many of us, summer (and indeed Memorial Day) means more leisure time and travel. This of course requires the appropriate attire: sportswear. Historically speaking, both sportswear and leisure travel were relatively new phenomenons, one that designer Claire McCardell contributed to immensely. Leisure and sportswear both began their ascent into popularity in the 1920s and 1930s. Claire McCardell began her rise to fame in the 1930s.
Travel & Sportswear
Travel and vacationing became more accessible to more people as the automobile grew in popularity and availability. Production of automobiles more than doubled between 1920 and 1930 (Olian 2003). Driving also became a leisure activity in and of itself, as well as a symbol of freedom and independence to women – who had learned to drive out of necessity during World War I (Olian 1990).
Wealthy New Yorkers took full advantage of the growing tourism industry and flocked south and west in the 1920 and 1930s. [1] In the 1920s, couturiers picked up on the needs of wealthy clients engaged in this new activity. “The iconography of sports and the design of sports clothing became a focus for the new modernity. Couturiers opened specialist departments, and none took this aspect of clothing more seriously than Patou, who designed for professional sports people.” (Mendes & De La Haye 1999).
St Petersburg Florida 1930s
Despite the financial difficulties of the 1930s and its impact on travel for leisure, the decade saw a host of travel innovations that helped people get to more remote locations in much quicker and luxurious or convenient ways. The Greyhound bus line was inaugurated in 1930 and the largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary, was launched in 1934. In 1938, the Queen Mary crossed the Atlantic Ocean in just over three days – a record at the time.
I’ve previously mentioned that Claire McCardell is one of my favorite designers. Along with Bonnie Cashin, Elizabeth Hawkes, Vera Maxelll and others, Claire McCardell helped to define the look of American Sportswear. “These designers established the modern dress code, letting playsuits and other activewear outfits suffice for casual clothing; allowing pants to enter the wardrobe, often as an alternative in an outfit also offering a skirt; and prizing rationalism and versatility in dress, in contradiction to dressing for an occasion or allotment of the day.” [2]
McCardell was a rising star in the 1930s, and in 1931 was appointed to the position of head designer at Townley Frocks. By the late 1930s she had become recognized for using menswear design and detailing, for mix-and-match separates, and her simple, direct design aesthetic (Mendes & De La Haye, 1999; Buxbaum, 2005). Her wool jersey separates of 1934 “could be combined in different ways to meet almost any sartorial situation on a short trip traveling light. A low-backed halter top, a covered-up top, long and short skirts, a culotte.” [3] In 1938, she designed the simple belted ‘Monastic Dress’, Harem pants, as well as gymnastic outfits (or playsuits) with her signature details.
“[McCardell] created garments without traditional, structural elements. A particularly popular one, later known as the ‘Monastic’ dress, took on form when simply belted at the waist. It was this, as well as other loosely fitted dress designs, that helped establish her as one of the initiators of the “American” look. Her garments were detailed with little brass hooks and other hardware closures, such as ‘spaghetti’ or ‘shoestring’ ties, double outline stitching, and big pockets.” (Buxbaum, 2005).
Below is a small gallery of images depicting McCardell’s sportswear designs from the 1930s and 1940s meant to be taken out of a suitcase and worn on sunny summer days.
Lounging Pajamas (1938) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1949. Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. No. C.I.49.37.2a, b.
Sundress (1945) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1956. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009. No.2009.300.230.
Wool and Cotton Ensemble (1946) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1956. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; No. 2009.300.231a–c.
Playsuit (1948) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Gift of Claire McCardell, 1949. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute. No. C.I.49.37.20a, b.
Wool enseble (1949) by Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Claire McCardell, 1956. No. 2009.300.236a, b
Shoes (1953) by Claire McCardell made by Capezio. Gift of Ben Sommers, 1953. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; No.2009.300.3146a, b.
[1] “America By Car: Mr. Miami Beach.”American Experience PBS special.
by Amy Butler Greenfield, and 
by Simon Garfield.
by Jennifer Harris. I have the 1993 hardcover edition, which is very good, in terms of depth of subject material, and quality and quantity of illustrations. The 2004 edition is available in paperback for around US $20. Next time around, I would choose to require this title in addition to my basic textiles text. It would have made my work this semester so much easier.
*
Prestel, 2005.
. Thames & Hudson, 1999.
. Dover Publications 1990.
