Body Dressing - Copia

8/18/2019 Body Dressing - Copia

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Dress, Gender and the Public Display of Skin

Body

Dressing

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Dress, Body, CultureSeries Editor Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota

Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between culture anddress which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any modification orsupplement to the body. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series highlights the dialogue

between identity and dress, cosmetics, coiffure, and body alterations as manifested in practices as varied as plastic surgery, tattooing, and ritual scarification. The series aims,in particular, to analy e the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and genderissues and will include works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history, art history,literature, and folklore.

ISS!" 1#$%&'$$(

Previously published titles in the Series

Helen Bradley Foster , “New Raiments of Self”: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South

Claudine Griggs , S he: Changing Se! and Changing ClothesMichaele Thurgood Haynes , "ressing #p "ebutantes: Pageantry and $lit% in &e!as

Anne Brydon and Sandra Niesson , Consuming 'ashion: Adorning the &ransnational (odyDani Ca allaro and Ale!andra "ar#ic$ , 'ashioning the 'rame: (oundaries) "ress

and the (odyJudith %erani and Nor&a H. "ol'' , Cloth) "ress and Art Patronage in Africa(inda B. Arthur , Religion) "ress and the (ody%aul Jo)ling , 'ashion Spreads: *ord and +mage in 'ashion PhotographyFad#a El*Guindi, ,eil: -odesty) Privacy and ResistanceTho&as S. A)ler , .interland *arriors and -ilitary "ress: /uropean /mpires and /!otic

#niforms(inda "elters, 'ol0 "ress in /urope and Anatolia: (eliefs about Protection and 'ertility+i& +.%. Johnson and Sharron J. (ennon , Appearance and Power Bar)ara Bur&an , &he Culture of Sewing Annette (ynch , "ress) $ender and Cultural ChangeAntonia oung , *omen *ho (ecome -enDa id Muggleton , +nside Subculture: &he Postmodern -eaning of StyleNicola "hite , Reconstructing +talian 'ashion: America and the "evelopment of the

+talian 'ashion +ndustryBrian J. Mc-eigh , *earing +deology: &he #niformity of Self1Presentation in 2apanShaun Cole , "on *e Now 3ur $ay Apparel: $ay -en4s "ress in the &wentieth Century+ate nce , 3rlan: -illennial 'emaleNicola "hite and an Gri''iths , &he 'ashion (usiness: &heory) Practice) +mageAli Guy, Eileen Green and Maura Bani& , &hrough the *ardrobe: *omen4s

Relationships with their Clothes(inda B. Arthur , #ndressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a

CrossCultural Perspective)*ESS, B+) , - /T *E


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Dress, Gender and the Public Display of Skin

Body Dressing

/dited by

2oanne /ntwistle and /li%abeth *ilson

3!ford 5 New 6or0 0irst published in %%1 byBergEditorial offices"12% -owley *oad, +3ford, +(' 144, 5

6#6 Broadway, Third 0loor, !ew ork, ! 1%%%#&'61 , S7

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Dress, Gender and the Public Display of Skin)ress !eeds" *eflections on the -lothed Body,

Selfhood and -onsumption 1#

7ate Soper

The )ressed Body ##

2oanne /ntwistle

Shop&9indow )ummiesA 0ashion, the Body, and

Emergent Socialities 2;

Paul Sweetmaninding 7ppearances" Style, Truth and SubCectivity


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%art Three/ Conte&1orary Case Studies

)esire and )read" 7le3ander cFueen and the

-ontemporary 0emme 0atale %1Caroline /vans

0ashioning the Fueer Self 12

Ruth .olliday

)ress, ?ender and the :ublic )isplay of Skin ##

2oanne (9 /icher nde! 2#

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Introduction

Introduction: Body Dressing

4oanne Entwistle and Eli abeth 9ilson

In the last fifteen years the study of fashion and dress has been transformed.Interdisciplinarity has gained ground across the humanities and social sciencesand scholars have approached fashion and dress from a number of perspectivesthat have challenged the marginal place of fashion within traditional academicscholarship. 9ithin philosophy and sociology, for e3ample, fashion has long

been largely neglected or been considered as a frivolous endeavour not worthyof serious analysis.In the same period there has been an e3plosion of interest in the body within a

number of disciplines and it would seem that this should have provided theincentive to analy e fashion and dress more closely. Gowever, academic interestin the body has not generally focused attention on fashion and dress. The need toaddress fashion from the point of view of its relationship to the body is thereforeone of the aims of this book as is, we hope, demonstrating the value of such an

engagement. (ody "ressing aims also to capture some of the vitality of currentresearch in the area. 0urther, it illustrates how the study of fashion and dress has become detached from its location within costume history and anthropologyrespectively, to flourish within social history, philosophy, sociology, social

psychology and cultural studies. The links between and across these discipline boundaries then become clear.

In Britain, costume history originally emerged as a subset of art history,evolving from the dating of paintingsH it was garment based and strongly

empirical. 9ork on nineteenth& and twentieth& century fashion consisted largelyof descriptive works on haute couture, although efforts were made by somehistorians to include a social and critical dimension. Serious disciplines, such as

philosophy and sociology, neglected fashion and dress, unless to consider themfrom a moralistic point of view. +ne of the most influential, Thorstein eblen,whose &heory of the eisure Class was published in 16;;, was still being Duotedas an authority on dress in the 1;$%s and 1;


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less clear in the realm of clothing than it is with spoken language. *ecogni ingthis problem, 0red )avis =1;; > argues that dress is more like music than

speech, suggestive and ambiguous rather than bound by the precise grammaticalrules /urie tried to apply.

Semiology is better able to deal with sign systems, linguistic andnonlinguistic, but it too is problematic when applied to fashion and dress.Barthes@ =1;62> attempt to understand fashion discourse within fashion

Cournalism illustrates how, in order to work, semiotics has to narrow its focusconsiderably. Barthes himself recogni es this in his study of the Jfashionsystem@. Ge notes how dress in everyday life is far more comple3 and messy

than fashion discourse as laid out within the maga ine and this is precisely thereason for his choice of the latter" it is, he says, the Jmethodological purity@ of fashion writing that makes it so accessible to analyse as opposed to theheterogeneity of everyday dress practice. In appropriating language to the realmof clothing both /urie and Barthes =along with other semioticians such asGebdige and Eco> approach fashionKdress as an abstract symbolic system. In thisway, these structuralist approaches tend to be reductive, failing to take intoaccount the many comple3 social dimensions of fashion as it is practiced ineveryday

life.7 further development in the Jculturalisation@ of the social sciences was a

growing interest in the study of the body in the last fifteen to twenty years. et between these two growing areas of interdisciplinary work fashionK dress andthe body there has been relatively little cross fertili ation. This is especiallystrange given the obvious relationship between them. It is also a strikingomission given current fashion trends" while 9estern dress has become moreandrogynous and more casual, there has been an increased emphasis on thedecoration of the body itself. :ractices such as tattooing and piercing, onceconfined to marginal and deviant sections of society, have become widespreadand there has been an ever increasing emphasis on fitness, the care of the bodyand beauty culture. 7 growing literature is emerging on these practices but thereis a real absence of research on the more mundane and ordinary practices of dress and body decoration that have still be to e3amined. -onventions in the

dress of, for e3ample, professional figure skating and ballroom dancing=subcultures whose fashions have been little studied if at all> have shifted so thatmore and more of the body, particularly the bodies of women participants, have

been revealed. 7lso, as 4oanne Eicher points out in this book, celebrity eventssuch as the annual Gollywood +scar ceremony reDuire female stars to bear ever more daring e3panses of flesh.

et despite a steady stream of books on fashion and dress, as well as a morerecent surge of interest in the body, there are few e3amples of research on

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fashionKdress which deal directly with the body =although see Entwistle %%%H?aines and Ger og 1;;%H 9ilson 1;; >. 0or the most part, fashion theorists have

failed to give due recognition to the way in which dress is a fleshy practiceinvolving the body. In other words, they disembody fashion and in doing so failto consider the way in which fashion and dress are not merely te3tual or discursive but embodied practices. The dominance of linguistic e3planations of fashion and dress has therefore led to rather narrow accounts, which neglect the

place and significance of the body.In fact, in the process of adding to, embellishing, covering or adorning, the

body is shaped by culture and rendered meaningful. 9ith its changing styles and

constant innovation fashion is always reinventing the body, finding new ways of concealing and revealing body parts and thus new ways of making the bodyvisible and interesting to look at. In addition, dress and fashion mark out

particular kinds of bodies, drawing distinctions in terms of class and status,gender, age, sub&cultural affiliations that would otherwise not be so visible or significant. In this way, fashion can tell us a lot about the body in culture throwing light on the ways in which bodies are made meaningful to us, as wellas lending insight into the way in which the body enters into the realm of aesthetics.

(ody "ressing addresses this relationship between fashionKdress and the body,suggesting new ways of thinking about this relationship and addressing theabsence of scholarly work bridging the two. It draws on scholarship in a widerange of disciplines =sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, history, social

psychology> in order to e3plore ways of understanding fashion and dress whichacknowledge how they operate on the body. In this respect, the book demonstrates the diversity of approaches to fashion and dress and how, in recentyears, this area has been liberated from traditional disciplinary domains.

The chapters in this book attend to the social and cultural conte3t of dress,which were largely neglected by semioticians such as Barthes, and from avariety of perspectives to e3amine the way in which dress is integral to our relationship with the body. 9ith the e3ception of 4oanne Eicher, the authors dealwith fashion, i.e. 9estern dress. Gowever, what is interesting about thiscollection is that the fashionable dress they analyse is not haute couture. Gere

again, the book illustrates an important shift in scholarship on fashion, which, aswe noted earlier, traditionally addressed haute couture almost e3clusively. +nly-aroline Evans@ chapter on 7le3ander cFueen@s collections deals with couturedress. She however, does not attempt to privilege him as genius creator butinterprets the representations of the feminine in his shows. ost of the chaptersthus deal with fashion from the perspective of daily practice rather than as a

privileged artist practice. This is clear, for e3ample, in *uth Golliday@s chapter

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Introduction

on the way in which dress forms part of the routine e3perience of the self and body in everyday life.

It would do a disservice to the diversity of the perspectives presented here tosuggest that the authors all share a similar theoretical andKor methodologicalapproach. +n the contrary, the papers presented in this book present a variety of

perspectives and are suggestive of many different approaches to the study of fashionKdress. Indeed, they do not all share the same basic obCective" some of theauthors are concerned to address absences or failings within their own subCectsareas and develop new ways of thinking about fashion and dress. +thers aremore concerned to illuminate particular practices, either historically or within

contemporary culture.:art +ne, JTheoretical 7pproaches@ groups together those authors concerned

to address either the various problems with current theoretical work in the areaandKor suggest new theoretical or methodological approaches. Thus, this sectionillustrates the very diverse nature of approaches within the field" the authorswork within, and sometimes across, various disciplines sociology, culturalstudies, philosophy and social psychology. 5ate Soper@s chapter e3amines therelative neglect or repression of a philosophy of dress within the 9esterntradition. She suggests that perhaps Jrepression@ is more apt than Jneglect@, sinceit might owe something to the :latonist emphasis on abstraction and theJprioritisation of the mental, the rational and the spiritual over the corporeal, thematerial, and the sensual@. This tradition, which tended to define human identity

by reference to mind rather than body, does amount to a repression of the body,anticipating the binary division fostered by -hristianity between the Jnobility@ of mind and spirit by contrast with the bodily Jlow@. 4oanne Entwistle@s chapter also

begins by acknowledging the absence of the body in studies of fashion and dressand indeed, the absence of dress in the current e3plosion of research on the body.She e3plores the various theoretical traditions within social theory, particularly

post&structuralism and phenomenology, that can be drawn on to understand theway in which dress works on the body in a given conte3t. She argues that dressis best understood as a Jsituated bodily practice@. In a similar vein, :aulSweetman@s paper addresses the neglect of the corporeal in his discussion of classic and recent sociological and subcultural studies of dress, and focuses in

particular on the work of affesoli and Bourdieu. Ge is critical of their work, aswell as other scholarly research on fashion, which has neglected the phenomenological aspects of dress the way in which dress is embodied.Studies of fashion have, he argues, treated the body as Jsimply a manneDuin or shop&window dummy it is the clothing, rather than the wearing of it, that isregarded as significant@.

Susan 5aiser@s concern is to find a framework for understanding therelationship between style, truth and subCectivity. This linkage is one that is

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pertinent within everyday life, where we want to Je3press ourselves@ and readothers@ dress as e3pressive of their identity, and is also important within

academic literature which attempts to tease out the way in which dress isconnected to, and e3pressive of some Jtrue@ identity. 5aiser poses the idea of Jminding appearances@ as one theoretical way of linking these three things identity, truth and our appearance or style. Similarly, Efrat TseNlon attempts toresolve another central problem within thinking of dress and in theories of fashion, namely how to understand gender difference in dress withoutessentiali ing it. ?ender is probably the most crucial feature of dress, the aspectof identity most clearly and consistently articulated by clothes, and in this

chapter TseNlon proposes the idea of masDuerade as a way to understand thegendering of the body through dress.

The idea of masDuerade is taken up in -hristoph Geyl@s chapter, although hisemphasis is not so much theoretical as concerned to understand the practices of masking and how they impacted upon the behaviour of the wearer. Gis chapter e3plores a variety of masks in non&masDuerade conte3ts in the seventeenthcentury as punishments and later, in the eighteenth century as accessories wornin the daytime. The wearing of such masks in public illustrates the ways inwhich outer bodily accoutrements are related both to the wearer@s own body andsense of self in public and to the social conte3t itself so as to effect patterns of

behaviour in public. Geyl@s chapter opens :art Two, JGistorical -ase Studies@which e3plores specific practices of dress within the 9est. 7ll these case studiestrace the various ways in which practices of dress have marked, managed or displayed the body in particular ways. *onnie irkin e3amines the costumed

body in the English *enaissance through the concept of a Jprism@ whereideologies, practices and the aesthetics of contemporary culture could converge.In contrast to costume historians who analy e dress but ignore or diminish theimportance of the body, irkin@s idea of the Jcostumed body@ acts to unifydressKbody and how both are tied to performances of the self.

The remaining two chapters in this section tease out some of the ways inwhich dress forms part of our understanding of the gendered body. )rawing on arange of historical documents, especially those produced by the tailoringindustry, -hris Breward e3amines how concerns about Jmanliness@ at the turn of

the nineteenth century are stitched into the Jvery seams and tucks of the modernman@s wardrobe@. Ge e3amines the relationship between tailoring practice anddiscourse and the male body as a site for e3ploring the sartorial shift in men@srelationship to dress at this time. 7s his e3amples show, the male body was

perceived in this conte3t as active, vigorous, even erotic, but also increasinglycommodified in ways which had the potential to threaten its masculinity. Thefinal historical chapter by Gilary *adner, which also deals with therepresentation of gender, moving us further into the twentieth century to e3plore

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Introduction

the new feminine body as represented in 1;$%s maga ine and photographicrepresentation. *adner e3amines how the female body depicted in these

representations defies a singular reading. Instead, they illustrate both a potentially democratic shift towards new forms of representing woman asautonomous but in ways which define this Jnew woman@ in terms of a style of

body that is adolescent, reDuiring a rigorous regime of diet and e3ercise for themodern adult woman to maintain.

:art Three, J-ontemporary -ase Studies@ e3amines three very differentcontemporary practices around fashion, dress and the body. -aroline Evans@chapter e3plores the meanings of the feminine in 7le3ander cFueen@s

collections in the early 1;;%s. /ike *adner, Evans is keen to eschew simplisticreadings of cFueen@s work, many of which have condemned it asmisogynistic. She by contrast, argues that his Jtheatre of cruelty@ constructs acontemporary femme fatale whose appearance is one of aggressive and powerfulse3uality rather than victim. Golliday and Eicher@s chapters deal with issues of gender and se3uality at work in practices of dress. Golliday e3amines how dressforms the basis of identity construction, drawing on empirical data collected inthe form of video diaries. She is concerned to e3plore how the idea of Jcomfort@,often used by her respondents, is used to e3plain and Custify particular ways of dressing and presenting the self. Eicher likewise uses visual data, drawn fromtwo very different cultural conte3ts the dress of Euro&7mericans and that of the 5alabari people of !igeria to illustrate how dress and the e3posure of fleshis gendered. In both conte3ts, gender difference is marked out by how muchflesh men and women show, particularly at formal occasions such as weddingsand ceremonies, with women e3posing more flesh than men in both e3amples.Both chapters illustrate the way in which gender and se3uality are not self&evidently given properties but ones in which dress plays a significant role.

-ollectively, these papers represent the Jwork in progress@ of evolvingdisciplines. !aturally, they do not and cannot deal with all aspects of fashion anddress. !or do they deal with the changing face of the physical performance thatis embodied dress, although Evans@ study of cFueen does indicate the way inwhich fashion has, at one level, become an aspect of popular culture, and atanother appro3imates to performance art.

9e hope that these chapters will be fruitful in suggesting further avenues for the development of studies of dress in relation to the body. There is much further work that could be e3plored, for e3ample, non&9estern dress within Jglobal@culture and how it is increasingly appropriated by western fashion. 5imonos andsaris now travel the globe as Jfashion@ whereas they were once seen asJtraditional@, competing with Ceans as part of daily dress in many 9esternwardrobes, indeed, are sometimes now worn over Ceans. +ther research couldinvestigate speciali ed forms of dress in sports, dance and music video.


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0urther research could e3amine the relationship between te3tiles and the body"for e3ample, developments in the manufacture of te3tiles that may in the future

=and in some cases already do in the present> change the relationship between body and garment. 4ust as lycra since the 1;6%s has improved the fit of clothesand made new types of clothing possible, so now new Jintelligent@ fibres thatrespond to changing temperatures have begun to appear. Tights that massage andmoisturi e the legs can be purchased in maCor department stores and we haveother fabrics which work to keep us warm when it@s cold and cool when it@s hot.-hanging social situations also create new forms of dress for different bodies,from the shields and headgear of the riot police to the face paint of the eco

warriors. 9e should also not neglect the very divergent attitudes to the body andits display demonstrated by 9estern dress which reveals the body, on the onehand, and the veil =a term that stands for a number of different garments and

practices> worn by some women which intends to obscure it on the other. Thusthere is a real sense in which the chapters in this book represent less a definitiveword on the subCect than contributions to an ongoing dialogue. 9e hope they areuseful and constructive and look forward to future conversations.

References

Barnard, . =1;;$>, 'ashion as Communication, /ondon" *outledge.Barthes, *. =1;62>, &he 'ashion System, /ondon" -ape.Baudrillard, 4. =1;61>, 'or a Criti;ue of the Political /conomy of the Sign, St /ouis, +"

Telos.-ohen, :. =1;;< L1;< M>, JSubcultural -onflict and 9orking&-lass -ommunity@, in 5.?elder and S. Thornton =eds>, &he Subcultures Reader , /ondon" *outledge. -raik, 4.=1;;#>, &he 'ace of 'ashion , /ondon" *outledge.)avis, 0. =1;; >, 'ashion) Culture and +dentity, -hicago" -hicago niversity :ress.Eco, . =1;, &ravels in .yper Reality.Eco, . =1;, A &heory of Semiotics, Bloomington" Indiana niversity :ress.Entwistle, 4. = %%%>,&he 'ashioned (ody: theori%ing fashion and dress in modern

society, -ambridge" :olity.0lOgel, 4.-. =1;#%>, &he Psychology of Clothes, /ondon" The Gogarth :ress.

?aines, 4. and Ger og, -. =eds> =1;;%>, 'abrications: Costume and the 'emale (ody ,/ondon" *outledge.

Gebdige, ). =1;, Subculture: &he -eaning of Style, /ondon" ethuen./urie, 7. =1;61>, &he anguage of Clothes, !ew ork" *andom Gouse.

c*obbie, 7. =1;6;>, " ;; 116.Simmel, ?. =1;, J0ashion@, in ). /evine, !. =ed.>, 3n +ndividuality and Social 'orms,

/ondon" niversity of -hicago :ress.

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This 1age intentionally le't )lan$

Part One

Theoretical Approaches


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Dress Needs

This 1age intentionally le't )lan$

Dress Needs:Refections on the

Clothed Body,Sel hood

and Consu!ption 5ate Soper

Thomas -arlyle =1666" 1 > opens his work, Sartor Resartus) by remarking that

9e have disDuisitions on the Social -ontract, on the Standard of Taste, on theigration of the Gerring . . . :hilosophies of /anguage, of Gistory, of :ottery, of

7pparitions, of Into3icating /iDuors . . . . The whole life of humanity has beenelucidated" scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and :ossessions not acellular, vascular, muscular Tissue but has been probed, dissected, distilled desiccatedand scientifically decomposed . . . Gow then comes it that the grand Tissue of allTissues, the only real Tissue, should have been Duite overlooked the vestural Tissue,namely, or woollen or other clothH which an@s Soul wears as its outmost wrappageand overallH wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole0aculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its beingA

In other words, how come we have no :hilosophy of -lothesAThe Duestion, of course, is not intended very seriously, and the voluminous

J:hilosophy of -lothes@ offered by the fictional :rofessor TeufelsdrQckh, whoselife and career form the subCect matter of Sartor Resartus is, in fact, the vehiclefor -arlyle@s idiosyncratic engagement with the speculative ?erman philosophy

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of the day. et the point about the relative absence of philosophical engagementwith dress could well be taken more seriously. 0or when we consider the role of clothing and bodily adornment in the lives of human beings, and how comple3our attitudes to dress are, its seems remarkable how little philosophers =asopposed to sociologists, cultural historians or anthropologists> have had to sayabout the Jclothed body@.


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There are, of course, some Dualifications to be made here. In the first place, philosophy does, like other modes of discursive reasoning, draw Duite

e3tensively on clothing simile and metaphor in its references to veils andembroideries, folds and pleated arguments, on the one hand, bare facts and nakedgivens, on the other. There are also some disputes notably those associatedwith the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century which very consciouslyinvoke the clothing metaphor. -onsider, for e3ample, the terms in which ary9ollstonecraft and Edmund Burke e3press their differences over Enlightenmenthumanism. 9hile 9ollstonecraft complains against the Jgorgeous drapery@ inwhich Burke has Jenwrapped his tyrannic principles@ =9ollstonecraft 1;6;" 2>,

Burke himself charges 9ollstonecraft with seeking to denude society of all theJdecent drapery of human life@. Is all this, he asks, to be rudely torn awayA 7reJall the super&added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of moral imagination,which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover thedefects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our ownestimation, to be e3ploded as ridiculous, absurd, and antiDuated fashionA@ =Burke1;$1" ;%H cf.1;>. To defend the idea of a commonly shared human nature isindeed, according to Burke, to strip us of all the protective clothing of customwithout which we reduce to the level of beast, an animal literally withoutclothing.

9e are referred to clothing, then, in the rhetoric of philosophical e3changesHand there are also occasions when items of clothing get caught up in

philosophical debates. +ne e3ample, well known to -ontinental philosophers, isthe long&running preoccupation, sparked by Geidegger in his essay on JThe+rigin of the 9ork of 7rt@ =Geidegger 1;, and latterly given anew lease of life by )errida in his &he &ruth in Painting , with a pair =or is it, as)errida Dueries, merely a coupleA> of old boots in a painting by an ?ogh=)errida 1;6


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to relate this neglect ultimately to the :latonist emphasis in the 9estern philosophical tradition that is, to its abstraction and prioritisation of the mental,

the rational and the spiritual over the corporeal, the material, and the sensual,and the related tendency to define what is distinctive to human being in terms of the possession of mind or soul rather than by reference to embodied e3istence. Inthe words of !iet sche@s challenge to this tradition, Jphilosophy says away withthe body, this wretched idRe fi3e of the senses, infected with all the faults of logic that e3ist, refuted, even impossible, although it be impudent enough to poseas if it were real@. =!iet sche 1;. !or is it any accident that thistype of critiDue of the philosophical distrust of the flesh has been subseDuently

deepened and elaborated in the feminist attack on philosophy@s repudiation of the body as the intellectual form of its repudiation of the feminine. 0or when philosophy said Jaway with the body@ it always also, in effect, said Jaway withthe female@. In this sense, the philosophical disengagement from the sartorial can

be viewed as the most readily disregarded Joutmost wrappage@ =to invoke-arlyle@s phrase> of a stance that has typically been at once both anti&corporealand androcentric.

This is a stance which also lends itself to a more general cultural process of gender stereotyping and masculine disassociation in 9estern culture, accordingto which it is women who are the vainer se3 and the more concerned with whatthey wear while men are largely indifferent to Duestions of attire. et showinessin dress is Duite compatible with, even a mark of, manliness in certain conte3ts

such as the military paradeH 1 and as irginia 9oolf =1;; > pointed out some timeago in her &hree $uineas, male attitudes to dress have been Cust as concernedand, if anything, even more complicated than those of women and especially

on the part of those in the academy and other areas of public life. 9hereas dressfor women, she claims =1;; " 1, is a comparatively simple matter, havingonly two functions additional to covering the body those of creating beauty for the eye and attracting the admiration of the male se3H for men themselves it isaltogether more significant"

your dress in its immense elaboration has obviously another function. It not onlycovers nakedness, gratifies vanity, and creates pleasure for the eye, but serves to

advertise the social, professional, or intellectual standing of the wearer. If you wille3cuse the humble illustration, your LmaleM dress fulfils the same function as the ticketsin a grocer@s shop. But here instead of saying JThis is margarineH this pure butterH thisis the finest butter in the market,@ it says, JThis man is a clever man he is aster of 7rtsH this man is a very clever man he is )octor of /ettersH this man is a most clever man he is ember of the +rder of erit.@7nd she goes on to point out that a woman Jwho advertised her motherhood

by a tuft of horsehair on the left shoulder would scarcely be considered a veryvenerable obCect@ =9oolf 1;; " 1. 9e might want to claim, in fact, that if there are, or have been, significant differences between the se3es in respect of

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for clothing as warmth and protection. )ress, /ear seems to imply, is bothessential to survival in certain climes and conditions, or while undertaking

certain activitiesH but also wholly Junneeded@, e3cept as decoration or mode of e3pression but therefore also, in another sense, entirely essential =cf. 0lugel1;2%, -hap.1>. 7nd maybe, therefore, also Jnatural@ too, despite what /ear saysA7t any rate, since some form of decoration of the body and its use as signifier has been a feature of human societies from earliest times, we are not talking hereof a need that is any more obviously Jcultural@ in status than that for clothing as

protection. !or it would seem, are we talking of a need that is Jcultural@ or Jnon&natural@ in the sense of being entirely e3clusive to human beings, at least not if

we allow some analogy of function here with that of fur and feather, which alsoserve other animals both as protection and as display.

7ll the same, if clothing may, indeed, be said to satisfy needs that are Jnatural@in the sense of being held in common with other creatures, we should recogni ethat it also serves needs of a more strictly aesthetic and semiotic kind which aree3clusive to human beings. In -hristian mythology, we acDuire our clothes inlosing our Jnatural@ innocence and coming into knowledge of good and evil.-lothes are in this sense definitively cultural obCects closely bound up with asense of shame, and their primary purpose is to conceal the organs of thosefunctions =se3ual intercourse, lactation, e3cretion> which have been deemed todegrade us by tying us too closely to a bestial nature. -lothes, in short, serve usas a cardinal marker of the divide between ourselves and the rest of the animalworld. By this I do not mean that the donning of clothes is essential to beinghuman, which it obviously is not. -lothes wearing does not present itself as a

possible candidate for defining humanity in the way that language or tool use or the capacity to laugh have been thought to do. The point, rather, is that clotheshave been very e3tensively used to assert the cultural status of human beings, to

police the border between humans and animals, to deny or cover over our animality and thereby preserve a seemly distance from the beast. 9here other animals go about unclad, or clad only in the garments bestowed on them by their human owners or protectors, only in privacy or in very e3ceptional socialcircumstances are human beings found without at least some garments, if onlythe fig leaf eDuivalent.

:ondering in his second -editation on how to overcome his doubts about thee3istence of the so&called e3ternal world, )escartes takes the e3ample of a pieceof wa3" how does he acDuire his knowledge that the molten wa3 is the same asthe wa3 solidified despite the multiple changes it undergoesA )escartes arguesthat he would be disposed to conclude that this knowledge were acDuiredthrough the act of sight and not by intuition of the mind, were it not, as he puts it,

for the analogous instance of human beings passing in the street below, as observedfrom a window. In this case I do not fail to say that I see the men themselves, Cust as Isee the wa3H and yet what do I see from the window beyond hats and cloaks that might

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cover artificial machines, whose motions might be determined by springsA But I Cudgethat there are human beings from these appearances, and thus I comprehend by the

faculty of Cudgement alone which is in the mind, what I believed I saw with my eyes.

Being clothed, )escartes presumes, is the mark of a distinctively human form of

consciousness, of being a Jperson@ =)escartes, 1; '" ; #>. # +ne is notsuggesting here that )escartes thinks a person to be a person must be clothed. Itis true that he mistakenly implies that the hats and cloaks form an irremovablesurface to their human wearers analogously to the way in which its surfaceappearances are an inseparable feature of the wa3. 7ll the same, it seems fair tosuppose that had his window looked onto a nudist camp )escartes would stillhave posed essentially the same Duestion as to how he knew these naked bodieswere not the surface appearance of automata. The point is not that clothing isessential to being a person, but only that, once clothed, the presumption of

personhood is overriding and that in picking out hatted and coated entities asthe appropriate beings for his Cudgement, )escartes had already in effectacknowledged their human status.

-lothing, then, signals a human wearer, and in doing so is tied into our conceptions of dignity, personhood and bodily integrity. But the linkage iscomple3 and overdetermined since it reflects both the instrumental interest inclothing as bodily protection, and our sense of self as seen by others, and thislatter may take a variety of forms, ranging from e3treme diffidence anddiscretion, on the one hand, to blatant self&assertion and ostentation, on the other.Some of this comple3ity is registered in the distinction which *ousseau draws inhis "iscourse on +ne;uality =1;H or it is to signal the wearer@sidentification with a particular cliDue or constituencyH or it is with an eye to the

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se3ual attraction we want to e3ert. =The designer, ivienne 9estwood, may here be right in her suggestion that fashion in dress is about eventually being naked.

9e dress at least in part in order to entice others into wanting us undressed.-arlyle@s :rofessor TeufelsdrQckh offers a comparable insight" JThe beginning of all 9isdom,@ he remarks, J is to look fi3edly on clothes . . . until they becometransparent@ =1666" '2>>.

But in its less e3trovert and se3ually directed mode, vanity or amour propre indress, is about not being noticed or not being noticed as someone demandingattention, se3ual or otherwise. If the first step to this kind of self&effacement isnot to go naked, the second is to adhere to the ramifying and comple3 dress

codes which obtain in one@s culture. It is in this sense as mberto Ecosuggested in a talk to a 1;. 5ant is thinking more in terms of

physiognomy here, and does not actually say much about how clothing figures in

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this. +n the one hand it might be argued that his position is Duite consistent withdismissing dress as either pure instrument =of warmth, etc.> or else mere

ornament distracting from the Jtrue@ beauty of the human being. But it is also, Ithink, consistent with his position, and maybe is even an implication of it, thatinsofar as we view the clothing as chosen by or voluntarily donned by a personin the normal course of life, we are committed to viewing it as something morethan either mere instrumental source of protection, on the one hand, or as purelyaesthetic addendum, on the other. 9e are committed, that is, to regarding it asaesthetic inde3 or e3pression of the moral self, and would have to Cudge thee3tent of its Jseemliness@ or Jbeauty@ accordingly. -lothing, we might say, from

such a 5antian perspective is Jbeautiful@ only when it is not designed to besimply beautiful, only insofar as it is the phenomenal and almostunconsciously chosen effect of the ends of personhood.

It is arguably some such 5antian commitment which underlies the view that tocare too much for one@s clothing, or to display too much consciousness of it, is toreveal a failure of moral worth. 5ant is Custly critici ed for the historicalabstraction and culture&bound assumptions he makes about what it is to beJhuman@H but he does, I think, also point to a relatively persistent rationale of our

sense that clothes do not or ought not to matter very much. $ To put it more parado3ically, he implies that clothes do have an aesthetic importance for us, butit lies precisely in conveying the sense that they are not mere adornment butJseemly@ signs of our rationality. -onversely, to delight in someone as mereJdoll@ or clothes&horse is precisely as the common parlance implies to treathim or her as aesthetici ed obCects rather than as fully human persons.

But if this is right, and our clothes do have this type of connection to a

distinctively human sense of dignity and moral personhood, then by the sametoken they can also be used to mark out differing degrees of access to it, toundermine or deny it altogether. In the emphasis on the need for clothing as

personal self&e3pression, we should not overlook the recourse to regulations ondress and the wearing of uniform as a means of e3cluding, oppressing andcondemning. !or should we forget the e3tent to which restrictions on humandress are used to distinguish and police social and se3ual hierarchies. Thee3tensive sumptuary laws on dress and other modes of consumption, which

persisted until the nineteenth century, were e3pressly designed to preserve asupposedly natural and divinely ordained difference of class and rank, and to

prevent upward mobility =Bell 1;


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human dignity and autonomy is closely bound up with the wearing of clothesand the choice of what one wears, it is also precisely because of this that one,

very insidious, way of e3ercising power over others is by means of control over their mode of dress.

!owhere is this more cruelly e3emplified than in the denial of clothingaltogether. To take away a person@s clothing is to put him or her Jout on theheath@, to snatch away the clutched straw of human dignity. 7s all prison campguards and torturers have always been well aware, to force strip the victim is toinitiate the process of dehumanisation, to signal contempt for personal identity

by playing with or mocking at the aspiration to preserve it. The power of

denuding the other in these conte3ts is also the power to depersonalise theother@s clothing or adornment" to treat it as mere use&value without ulterior significance" as so much anonymous stuff for others to use, gold and silver to bemelted down. Behind the horror of the holocaust images of piled&up clothing and

Cewellery is the sense of a world from which all personali ing sentiment has beendeliberately eliminated or, worse, preserved, but only in an involuted mode inwhich it is made an obCect of derision. This is the world within which the torturer knows so well how to move about. +ne of the most abhorrent narratives in !eilBelton@s recent book on Gelen Bamber, the founder of the edical 0oundationfor the -are of the ictims of Torture, is that of the pain inflicted on the -hilean,/uis unos, whose tormentors under :inochet took his clothes and wore themthemselves while they were torturing him. 7s unos himself put it, speaking toBamber on a 1#' bus in !orth /ondon"

It@s as though they want you to feel you are torturing yourselfH something that you@vehonoured and bought and worn, your leather Cacket, your Ceans, your shirtH they aresuggesting to you that they have completely removed your personality, and it reverseseverything, takes a personality and destroys everything a person loves, like playingmusic while torturing. =Belton 1;;;" $>These are e3treme and abnormal conte3ts from whose atrocities most of us are

mercifully spared. But the Dualities of clothing reflected here its protective roleas a Jbandage@ or Jdressing@ against the pain of involuntary e3posure of nudity=Scarry, 1;62, pp. 61 >H its figuring of the humanH its linkage in a specialintimacy with its owner all these have other repercussions of a kind which aremore generally e3perienced. Even as it signifies our cultural status and raises usabove other animality, clothing can also bear melancholic witness to themortality and subCection to biological process which we share with the rest of nature. uch of our clothing and bodily adornment will outlast us, sometimes bymany years, thus escaping the relatively speedy post mortem decomposition of our fleshly selvesH and it is arguably this combination of pro3imity with theorganic body and alterity from it that is responsible for the poignancy of lost or no longer needed clothing. The pathos or morbid Duality of garments bereaved of their owners has freDuently been commented on in cultural works, and was a

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reference point for several of the e3hibits at the recently staged Gayward ?allerye3hibition, J7ddressing the -entury" 1%% ears of 7rt and 0ashion@. /un@aa

enoh@s spectral dresses chart the history of changing modes of dress by meansof a ghostly fashion parade. Emily Bates@ disturbing "epilator dress is itself woven from hairH and ona Gatoum@s .air Nec0lace also plays on a similar ambiguity between adornment and relic.

TO VIEW THIS FIGURE PLEASE REFER TO THEPRINTED EDITION

Figure 1.1 Lun *a Menoh Spring and Summer Collections !!"# $$% (1998)Lun *a Menoh. © Lun *a Menoh. Photo: Relah Eckstein.

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finger a hard, material obCect, with which man adorns the body that is fated to meltaway beneath it, when it passes on to another flesh that can wear it for yet a little while.

9ith the eyes of his Tienappel ancestress, penetrating, prophetic eyes, he ga ed at thisfamiliar part of his body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he woulddie. = ann 1;$%" 16 1;>.

-lothing or Cewellery, then, in being destined to become a residue of the living person, can also figure as memento mori.

9hat seems, in virtue of our mortality, to be foregrounded about clothing is itsseparable and even alien Duality. 9e are struck by the anomaly of our condition

as biological creatures who live our lives so Junnaturally@ bedecked. But if it isthe uncannily artificial Duality of clothing and adornment that posthumouslyasserts itself and causes a tremor of angst, this is no more than the antithesis wewould e3pect to the intimacy of the connection in life between the human bodyand its garb. Indeed, so close is this intimacy that we may well wonder Duitewhere to draw the line between nature and artifice. It is this Duestion which iswittily raised by several of agritte@s paintings, or by Elsa Schiaparelli@s and

eret +ppenheims@s glove&hands or :ierre -ardin@s shoe&feet" what e3actly

counts as clothing where does the body end and the accoutrement or decoration beginA Is there, indeed, a way in which garments, as we say, Jbecome@ thewearerA meaning by this, of course, not that they literally mutate into their owners, but that they e3press, or assume, or even form an emanation of their

personality.TO VIEW THIS FIGURE PLEASE REFER TO THE

PRINTED EDITION

Figure 1.0 Pierre ,ar&in. &en's shoes (ith toes (198'). "ro n leather 11 2#.+ 29.# c . Museu o the Fashion 3nstitute o /echnolog!4e 5ork. 6i t o Richar& Martin. Photo: 3r7ing $olero.

:roust captures something of this Duandary in a satirical passage in Recherchedu &emps Perdu where the item of adornment in this case the monocle is

presented as metonymic of the wearer.

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The arDuis de 0orestell@s monocle was minute and rimless, and, by enforcing anincessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it was incrusted like a

superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there was ine3plicable and its substanceunimaginable, it gave to his face a melancholy refinement, and led women to supposehim capable of suffering terribly when in love. But that of . de Saint&-andR girdled,like Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which composeditself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while his thrusting red nose andswollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their grimaces to rise to the level of the steadyflame of wit that sparkled in the polished disc, and saw itself preferred to the mostravishing eyes in the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it setdreaming of artificial charms and a refinement of sensual blissH and then, behind him,

. de :alancy, who with his huge carp@s head and goggling eyes moved slowly up anddown the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking his great mandibles at every momentas though in search of his orientation, had the air of carrying upon his person only anaccidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of hisaDuarium . . . . =:roust 1;$$" 12 #>. <


Figure 1.# Elsa $chia%arelli Pair of Gloves (1908). "lack sue&e re& snakeskincor&ing. Phila&el%hia Museu o -rt. 6i t o Elsa $chia%arelli. Photo:L!nn Rosenthal (1998).

In this rather astonishing confounding of the biological eye and its glassyaccountrement, it is as if we have an analogue for the superficial and vacuous

being of the monocle wearers themselves a being which has no deeper level of

e3istence than the artificial tropes and conventions through which it makes itssocial appearance.Indeed, even as the passage charts the idiosyncratic modes wherein the

monocle wearers have Jbecome@ their monocle =or their monocle has become a part of them . . .>, it portrays them also as mere followers of fashion who havecollectively lent themselves to a passing vogue in eye&wear. It thus points to theeDuivocations of fashion itself =to turn now briefly to this, in conclusion . . .>since fashion seems to deny personal distinction even as it promises to secure it.

)ressing in fashion is in this respect Duite distinct from using one@s clothing as aform of individual e3pression. +ne can be very concerned, for what might be

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called J5antian@ reasons, with what one wears without caring a fig&leaf aboutwhat is in fashion or whether one@s clothing conforms to that.

0ashion certainly offers the individual some novelty, the escape fromrepetition and the cyclical mode of being. But it does so only in a rather ironicaland self&subverting mode. +scar 9ilde famously described high fashion as Jaform of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every si3months@. In Eli abeth 9ilson@s more nuanced account" Ja new fashion startsfrom reCection of the old and often an eager embracing of what was previouslyconsidered uglyH it therefore subtly undercuts its own assertion that the latestthing is somehow the final solution to the problem of how to look@. =9ilson

1;62" ;>. The parado3 of fashion, moreover, is that it presents itself as a meansof self&reali ation, but only on condition you submit to the dictate of acollectivity you have neither willed nor authored.

In this respect its ontology is what Sartre =in his Criti;ue of "ialectical Reason> terms Jserial@" a series =as opposed to a Jgroup@> being comprised of a plurality of isolations and lacking any concerted proCect of social transformation=Sartre 1;


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Figure 1.+ Meret %%enhei Pro)ect for Parkett No* + (198+). 6oat sue&e ithsilk screen han& stitche& one o an e&ition o + h. 2 c . © -,$

(1998). Pri7ate collection Matthias "elt; Frank urt a Main 6er an!.itself, which flourishes on constantly renewed ways of providing essentiallyhomogeneous forms of consumption rather than on promoting genuinedifference and eccentricity. oreover, as profits have come to deriveincreasingly from Duick turnover and style innovation rather than from sheer volume production, this market dynamic has become ever more insistent in our

lives. 6 In this respect, clothing fashion is e3emplary of the way in whichconsumerist culture plays on =and enables huge profits to be gained from> thean3ieties about individuation and self&e3pression it both stimulates andcondemns. It provides

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Figure 1.' Philosophy in the Boudouir 19''. Magritte. 6ouache # '+ c .

Pri7ate ,ollection.a way of accommodating the contradictory inCunction that the individual should

both stand out from the crowd and merge with it. It promises a certainJdistinction@ while sparing the person from the social stigma of really e3ceptionalor nonconformist behaviour.

ar3, as is known, viewed the establishment of the capitalist mode of production and its generali ed system of e3change&relations as having a double&edged impact on individual needs and forms of self&reali ation = ar3 1;. =7lthough, as he alsoemphasi ed, this was a potentiality for selfreali ation that could never bereali ed so long as it was confined within the contradictory structure of capitalistrelations of ownership, e3change and distribution>.

/ooked at from the perspective of this double but unresolved dynamic of capitalist commodification, we might see the seriality of fashion as both


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compensating, if only in a very partial and ultimately unsatisfactory way, for theloss of more traditional forms of self&e3tension and collective belongingH but

also, and conversely, as offering a mode of consumption which gratifies, if againonly very partially, the urge to escape from any fi3ed and presupposed e3istenceand sense of self. Some of the seduction of high&street fashion, one might say,lies precisely in its combination of social seriality and personal alienation" in thefact that one can Coin in a kind of collective proCect, but entirely anonymouslyand without any commitment to its continuity. 0ashion attracts, parado3ically,even perversely, because it seems to solve the problem of how to belong withouthaving to belong without any real personal investment or self&e3posure.

But if it would be a mistake to deny or overlook the seduction of this form of alterity, it would also be a mistake to deny the displaced, compensatory andsuperficial aspects of market&driven fashion consumptionH and also very wrongto condone a form of affluent gratification so dependent on deprivation ande3ploitation of the poorer areas of the globe.

There will always be a human need for clothing both as a protection againstthe elements and as self&display. But fashion&following, although interesting inwhat it reveals about the resistance to fi3ed conceptions of selfhood, and thecomple3ity of modern forms of narcissism and amour propre, would seem tooffer to Jnaked subCectivity@ only a very inadeDuate and threadbare mode of self&e3tension.

In this sense, like so many other aspects of modern consumption, it invites usto think about how we might secure innovation and a non&cyclical mode of e3istence without social and ecological e3ploitationH and thus to consider whatalternative sources of self&reali ation and collective belonging might substitutefor those currently so reliant upon the acDuisition of new style commodities.

Notes

1. Bell has noted the Jeminent place@ of war in the sartorial history of men, andcalls attention to the role of military dress in arousing se3ual admiration =1;.. -learly there are precursors in earlier feminist argument to de Beauvoir@s

argument in &he Second Se!, but I would nonetheless treat this as the founding te3t of feminist philosophy in virtue of its sustained analysis of the relationship between theJsecondary@ status of women and the philosophical ideali ation of a supposedlyintrinsically masculine, and mentalistic, power of transcendence. It is no accident that&he Second Se!is the first philosophical work to deal at length with embodiment,reproduction, narcissism and vanity. 7ny e3tended bibliography of post de Beauvoireanfeminist critiDues of the philosophical treatment of the body would be inappropriate inthis conte3t, but some of the more influential discussion is to be found in the work of

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oniDue 9ittig, /uce Irigaray, Eli abeth ?rot , Susan Bordo, ichelle le )oeuf, *osiBraidotti and 4udith Butler.

#. -ertainly the Cudgement is analogous, but clothes are not analogous to thesurfaceof the wa3 since they are, of course, removable.'. In a footnote on the distinction, *ousseau writes, J Amour propremust not be

confused with amour de soi H for they differ both in themselves and in their effects. Amour de soi is a natural feeling which leads every animal to look to its own preservation, and which guided in man by reason and modified by compassion, createshumanity and virtue. Amour propre is a purely relative and factitious feeling, which arisesin the state of society, leads each individual to make more of himself than of any other,causes all mutual damage men inflict one on another, and is the real source of the senseof honourU@ =p. $$>.

2. -f. Barthes 1;6#H /urie 1;; .$. In concluding her maCor work on clothes and art =1;;#" p. '2%>,

Gollanderwrites, JSerious people, aspirers to unworldliness, devotees of the importanceof thingsnot&seen, are particularly unhappy with the idea of clothes and especially withthe phenomenon of fashion the thing =. . .> that makes clothing resist any universalideali ation of use or aspect.@

.6. Between 1;, &he 'ashion System, trans. 9ard, . and Goward, *., !ew ork, Gilland 9ang.

Bell, F. =1;, 3n .uman 'inery , rev. edn., /ondon, Gogarth.Belton,! =1;;;>, &he $ood istener: .elen (amber) a ife Against Cruelty) /ondon"

9eidenfeld and !icolson.Breward, -. =1;;2>, &he Culture of 'ashion: a new .istory of 'ashionable "ress)

anchester and !ew ork, anchester niversity :ress.Bullough, B. and ./. =1;;#>, Cross "ressing) Se! and $ender) :hiladelphia" niversity

of :ennsylvania.Burke, E. =1;$1>, Reflections on the Revolution in 'rance, /ondon, )oubleday.-arlyle, T. =1666>, Sartor Resartus) /ondon, -hapman and Gall.-avallaro, ). and 9arwick, 7. =1;;6>, 'ashioning the 'rame: (oundaries) "ress and the

(ody) +3ford, Berg.)errida, 4. =1;6, &he &ruth in Painting)-hicago, -hicago niversity.

)escartes, *. =1; '>, A "iscourse on -ethod etc9) /ondon, )ent.)ickens, -. =1;$2>, $reat /!pectations) .armondsworth) :enguin English /ibrary.

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Eco, . =1;, JSocial /ife as Sign System@ in *obey, ). =ed.>, Structuralism) an +ntroduction) +3ford, +3ford niversity.

Evans, 9.-. and Thornton, . =1;6;>, *omen and 'ashion: a new loo0) /ondon, FuartetBooks.0inkelstein, 4. =1;;1>, &he 'ashioned Self) -ambridge, :olity.0lugel, 4.-. =1;2%>, &he Psychology of Clothes) /ondon, Gogarth.?arber, . =1;; >, ,ested +nterests: Cross1"ressing and Cultural An!iety) /ondon,

:enguin Books./aver, 4. =1;$$>, "ress nd ed., /ondon, 4ohn urray.Geidegger, . =1;,JThe +rigin of the 9ork of 7rt@ in Poetry) anguage) &hought)

trans. Gofstadter, 7., !ew ork, Garper *ow.Gollander, 7. =1;;#>, Seeing &hrough Clothes) Berkeley and /os 7ngeles, niversity of

-alifornia.5ant, I. =1;2 >, Criti;ue of Pure 2udgement) trans. 4ames -reed eredith, +3ford,

-larendon./urie, 7. =1;; >, &he anguage of Clothes, revised edn., /ondon, Bloomsbury.

ann, T. =1;$%>, &he -agic -ountain , Garmondsworth, :enguin odern -lassic. ar3,5. =1;, $rundrisse) Garmondsworth, :enguin.

c)owell, -. =1;;2>, &he iterary Companion to 'ashion) /ondon, Sinclair andStevenson.

!iet sche, 0. =1;, 3n .uman Needs , Brighton, Garvester.9ilson, E. =1;62>, Adorned in "reams: 'ashion and -odernity) /ondon, irago.9ollstonecraft, . =1;6;>, J indication of the *ights of an, in a /etter to the *ight

Gonourable Edmund Burke@, ol. 2, nd edn. of Todd, 4. and Butler, . =eds>, &he*or0s of -ary *ollstonecraft) !ew ork, !ew ork niversity.

9oolf, . =1;; >, &hree $uineas) /ondon, 9orld@s -lassics.

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The Dressed Body 4oanne Entwistle

Introduction

JThere is an obvious and prominent fact about human beings,@ notes Turner =1;62" 1> at the start of &he (ody and Society) Jthey have bodies and they are

bodies.@ Gowever, what Turner omits in his analysis is another obvious and prominent fact" that human bodies are dressed bodies. )ress is a basic fact of social life and this, according to anthropologists, is true of all human culturesthat we know about" all cultures Jdress@ the body in some way, be it through

clothing, tattooing, cosmetics or other forms of body painting =:olhemus 1;66,:olhemus and :roctor 1;. -onventions of dress transform flesh intosomething recogni able and meaningful to a culture and are also the means bywhich bodies are made Jdecent@, appropriate and acceptable within specificconte3ts. )ress does not simply merely serve to protect our modesty and doesnot simply reflect a natural body or, for that matter, a given identityH itembellishes the body, the materials commonly used adding a whole array of meanings to the body that would otherwise not be there. 9hile the social world

normally demands that we appear dressed, what constitutes Jdress@ varies fromculture to culture and also within a culture since what is considered appropriatedress will vary according to the situation or occasion. The few mere scraps of fabric that make up a bikini are enough to ensure the female body is Jdecent@ on

beaches in the 9est but would be entirely inappropriate in the boardroom.Bodies which do not conform, bodies which flout the conventions of their culture and go without the appropriate clothes are subversive of the most basicsocial codes and risk e3clusion, scorn or ridicule. The Jstreaker@ who strips off

and runs across a cricket pitch or soccer stadium draws attention to theseconventions in the act of breaking them" indeed, female streaking is defined as aJpublic order offence@ while the Jflasher@ by comparison, can be punished for Jindecent e3posure@. 7s these e3amples illustrate, dress is fundamental to microsocial order and the e3posure of naked flesh is, potentially at least, disruptive of that order. Indeed, nakedness in those e3ceptional situations where it is deemedappropriate, has to be carefully managed =nude bathing in the 5 and other 9estern countries is regulated and restrictedH doctors must pay close attention to

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ethical codes of practice and so on>. So fundamental is dress to the social presentation of the body and the social order that it governs even our ways of

seeing the naked body. 7ccording to Gollander =1;;#> dress is crucial to our understanding of the body to the e3tent that our ways of seeing and representingthe naked body are dominated by conventions of dress. 7s she =1;;#" 3iii>argues,

art proves that nakedness is not universally e3perienced and perceived any more thanclothes are. 7t any time, the unadorned self has more kinship with its own usualdressed aspect than it has with any undressed human selves in other times and other

places.

Gollander points to the ways in which depictions of the nude in art andsculpture correspond to the dominant fashions of the day. Thus the nude is never naked but Jclothed@ by contemporary conventions of dress. !aked or semi&naked

bodies that break with cultural conventions, especially conventions of gender,are potentially subversive and treated with horror or derision. -ompetitivefemale body builders, such as those documented in the 1;6' semi&documentary

film Pumping +ron ++: &he *omen, are freDuently seen as Jmonstrous@ =5uhn1;66" 1$, see also Schul e 1;;%, and St. artin and ?avey 1;;$>.

Gowever, while dress cannot be understood without reference to the body andwhile body has always and everywhere to be dressed, there has been a surprisinglack of concrete analysis of the relationship between them. In this chapter, I wantto flesh out a study of the dressed body which attempts to bridge the gap thate3ists between theories of the body, which often overlook dress and theories of fashion and dress, which too freDuently leave out the body. I want to suggestsome of the connections that can be made between the various theorists in theserelated areas, suggesting how one might do a study of the dressed body. In doingso, I sketch out a theoretical framework which takes as its starting point the ideathat dress is an embodied practice, a situated bodily practice which is embeddedwithin the social world and fundamental to micro social order =Entwistle %%%a> 99hile emphasi ing the social nature of dress, this framework also asserts theidea that individualsK subCects are active in their engagement with the social andthat dress is thus actively produced through routine practices directed towardsthe body. In order to capture this sense of dress as both socially structured andembodied and practical, I will draw on a wide range of theoretical resources.

The main discussion will focus on the uses and limitations both thestructuralistKpost&structuralist approaches since these has been influential inrecent years in the sociological study of the body. In particular, the work of ary)ouglas =1;


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on dress and fashion, but, as with mainstream sociology, it too has also tendednot to e3amine dress =as noted above, Turner does not discuss dress in his

account of bodily order>. oreover, the literature on fashion and dress, comingout of history, cultural studies and other fields, has paid little attention to the

body, focusing instead on the communicative aspects of adornment =oftenadopting the rather abstract, and disembodied linguistic model from Saussure>and e3amining the spectacular, creative and e3pressive aspects of dress, rather than the mundane and routine part it plays in reproducing social order =Barthes1;62, Gebdige 1;


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Situ!ting t e Dressed "od# in t e Soci!$ Wor$d

)ress lies at the margins of the body and marks the boundary between self andother, individual and society. This boundary is intimate and personal since our dress forms the visible envelope of the self and, as )avis argues, serves as avisual metaphor for identityH it is also social since our dress is structured bysocial forces and subCect to social and moral pressures. If, as ary )ouglas=1;


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of dress and necessitate the wearing of a suit, while more Jcreative@ professionswill set few restrictions on the body and dress.

auss =1; has likewise discussed the way in which the physical body isshaped by culture when he elaborates on mundane JtechniDues of the body@ andthese have some potential for understanding the situated nature of the dressed

body. The techniDues he outlines are not Jnatural@ but the product of particular ways of being in the body which are embedded within culture and his e3amplesalso point to the ways in which these are gendered. 9ays of walking, moving,making a fist, and so on, are different for men and women because, in themaking of Jmasculine@ and Jfeminine@, culture inscribes the bodies of men and

women with different physical capacities. auss@s JtechniDues of the body@ hasobvious application to dress and the way in which dress modifies the body,embellishing it and inflecting it with meanings which, in the first instance, aregendered. 7lthough he says little about dress, he does note how women learn towalk in high heels which would be difficult and uncomfortable for men who aregenerally unaccustomed to such shoes. Illustrative of this particular techniDue inher e3aggeration of it is arilyn onroe@s sashaying gait in Some i0e +t .ot which was apparently the product of high heels cut diagonally at each side.These lopsided shoes enabled her to generate the wiggle that constituted part of her performance as the se3ually provocative Sugar -ane.

7lthough they don@t acknowledge auss@s work, Gaug =1;6 provide ampleevidence of the ways in which femininity is reproduced through varioustechniDues, bodily and sartorial. They argue that the female body and its ways of

being and adorning are the product of particular discourses of the body which areinherently gendered. These discourses are e3plored through the work of 0oucaultand I want to suggest some of the ways in which his concept of discourse, withits emphasis on the body, could be utili ed for analysis of the situated nature of the body.

In "iscipline and Punish 0oucault =1; and c!ay=1;; > argue that 0oucault ignores the issue of gender, they also point out thathis theoretical concepts can provide feminists with a framework for

understanding the ways in which the body is acted on by powerKknowledge.Indeed, 0oucault@s notion of discourse can enable the analysis of fashion as adiscursive domain which sets significant parameters around the body and its

presentation. 0ashion =defined here as a system of continual changing styles>which sets out an array of competing discourses on image and is the dominantsystem governing dress in the 9est has been linked to the operations of power,initially marking out class divisions, but more recently playing a crucial role in

policing the boundaries of se3ual difference.

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7lthough utili ed by 9ilson =1;; >, 0oucault@s work on the body has not beenusefully employed in the analysis of fashion as a te3tual site for the construction

of the body although it would seem that it would have some application.0ashion, particularly as it is laid out in the fashion maga ine, is Jobsessed withgender@ =9ilson 1;62" 11 and constantly shifts the boundary between thegenders. This preoccupation with gender starts with babies and is played outthrough the life cycle so that styles of dress at significant moments are veryclearly gendered =weddings and other formal occasions are the most obviouse3amples>. Such styles enable the repetitious production of gender, even whengender appears to break down as with androgynous fashion, and are aided in part

by the repetition of gendered styles of bodily posture routinely reproduced infashion maga ines. 9hile these styles of being reproduce gender as a body style,they are also open to subversion through e3aggeration and parody, as Butler =1;;%, 1;;#> has forcefully suggested, although some of the most e3aggerated

performances, such as drag, could be said to reinforce rather than undermineconventions of gender =?amman and akinen 1;;'>.

In addition, 0oucault@s insights into the ways in which bodies are subCect to power and are discursively constituted can be utili ed to show how institutionaland discursive practices of dress act upon the body, marking it and rendering itmeaningful and productive. 0or e3ample, styles of dress are regularly employedin the workplace as part of institutional and corporate strategies of management.This is e3plored by 0reeman =1;;#> who draws on 0oucault@s notion of power,

particularly his idea about the panoptican, to consider how dress is used in one particular conte3t, a data&processing corporation, "ata Air) as a strategy of corporate discipline and control over the female workforce. In this corporation astrict dress code insisted that the predominantly female workers dress Jsmartly@in order to proCect a Jmodern@ and Jprofessional@ image of the corporation. If their dress does not meet this standard they are subCect to disciplinary techniDues

by their managers and could even be sent home to change their clothes. Theenforcement of this dress code is facilitated by the open&plan office which keepthe women under constant surveillance from the ga e of managers.

Such practices are familiar to many offices, although the mechanisms for enforcing dress codes vary enormously. :articular discourses of dress, such as

Jsmart@ or Jprofessional@ dress, and particular strategies of dress, such as theimposition of uniforms and dress codes at work, are utili ed by corporations toe3ercise control over the bodies of the workers within. This is true of men@sdress for work as much as it is of women@s. The male suit is perhaps the mostformally coded dress for men today, e3erting itself with considerable force over the bodies of men in a wide range of occupational settings. /ooser codes of

bodily presentation are often set over the bodies of Jprofessionals@ who, rather than be told what to wear, are e3pected to have internali ed the codes of the

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profession. 0or e3ample, the discourse of power dressing, which I have analysedelsewhere =Entwistle 1;;, sets out clear codes of dressing for

success but its adoption by professionals is largely dependent upon them havinginternali ed a particular notion of themselves as Jenterprising@ subCects. Thediscourse on power dressing called upon career women to think about and actupon their bodies in particular ways as part of an overall JproCect of the self@=?iddens 1;;1> in order to ma3imi e one@s chances of career success. The rulesof such dressing as delineated in dress manuals and maga ine articles set out astrategy of dressing for work which relies on technical knowledge of dress andits Jeffects@ =the term Jwardrobe engineering@, devised by the most famous

e3ponent of power dressing, 4ohn T. olloy =1;6%> captures this technical andinstrumental concern>.

7s I have demonstrated, 0oucault@s framework is Duite useful for analysingthe discursive aspects of dress. In particular, his notion of discourse is a goodstarting point for analysing the relations between discourses on dress and gender as they are constituted in fashion te3ts and organi ational strategies of management and are suggestive of particular forms of discipline of the body.Gowever, there are problems with 0oucault@s notion of discourse as well as

problems stemming from his conceptuali ation of the body and of power, in particular his failure to acknowledge embodiment and agency. These problemsstem from 0oucault@s post&structuralist philosophy and these I now want tosummari e in order to suggest how his theoretical perspective, while useful insome respects, particularly for te3tual analysis, is problematic for a study of dress as a situated bodily practice. In other words, his theoretical concepts do notstretch to the analysis of dress as an embodied practice.

0oucault@s account of the socially processed body and provides for analysis of the way in which the body is talked about and acted on but it does not provide anaccount of dress as it is lived, e3perienced and embodied by individuals. 0or e3ample, the e3istence of the corset in the nineteenth century and the discoursesabout the supposed morality of wearing one =the terms Jloose@ and Jstraightlaced@used to describe a woman refer to the wearing of a corset and illustrate, if metaphorically, the link between this article of clothing and morality> tell us littleor nothing about how ictorian women e3perienced the corset, how tightly they

chose to lace it, and what bodily sensations it produced. Gowever, it would seemthat by investing importance in the body, dress opens up the potential for womento use this for their own purposes and e3perience pleasures that are perhaps theJreverse@ of dominant ones. Gowever, as *ama anoglu =1;;#> argues, while thenotion of reverse discourse is potentially very useful to feminists, it is notdeveloped fully in 0oucault@s analysis. So while the corset is seen by somefeminists =*oberts 1; has

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argued in relation to female tight lacers that these women were not passive or masochistic victims of patriarchy, but socially and se3ually assertive. 5un le@s

suggestion is that women more than men have used their se3uality to climb thesocial ladder and that tight lacers e3perienced se3ual pleasures from the tightlylaced corset which went against the dominant norm of the ictorian woman asase3ual. If his analysis is accepted, these particular ictorian women could besaid to illustrate the ways in which power, once invested in the female body,results in Jthe responding claims and affirmations, those of one@s own bodyagainst power. . . of pleasure against the moral norms of se3uality, marriage,decency . . .@ =0oucault 1;6%" 2$>. In other words, illustrative of Jreverse

[email protected], this issue lies dormant in 0oucault@s own analysis, partly because

0oucault@s particular form of post&structuralism is not sensitive to practice.Instead it presumes effects, at the level of individual practice, from the e3istenceof discourse alone. Ge thus Jreads@ te3ts as if they were practice rather than a

possible structuring influence on practice that might, or might not, beimplemented. In assuming that discourse automatically has social effects,0oucault@s method, as Turner =1;62" 1 notes, Jreduce=s> the individual agentto a socialised parrot which must speakKperform in a determinate manner inaccordance with the rules of language@. In failing to produce any account of howdiscourses get taken up in practice, 0oucault also fails to give an adeDuatee3planation as to how resistance to discourse is possible. oreover, his analysislacks sensitivity to the body as the environment of the self and tends to assume anotion of the Jpassive body@ thereby failing to e3plain how individuals may actin an autonomous fashion. If bodies are produced and manipulated by power,then this would seem to contradict 0oucault@s concern to see power as forcerelations which are never simply oppressive. Such an account might lead to thediscussion of fashion and dress as merely constraining social forces and thusneglect the way individuals can be active in their selective choices from fashiondiscourse in their everyday e3perience of dress.

The e3treme anti&humanism of 0oucault@s work, most notably in "isciplineand Punish, is Duestioned by c!ay =1;; > because it does not allow for notions of subCectivity and e3perience and she proposes that his later work on

Jtechnologies of the self@ offers a more useful theoretical framework. Gowever,as she herself later acknowledges = c!ay 1;;;> 0oucault@s notion of subCectivity as developed in his Jtechnologies of self@ is disconnected from hisearlier work on the body and is thus, strangely disembodied. In terms of

producing an account of embodiment and of agency, c!ay suggests thatBourdieu@s notion of the habitus and the fieldare more productive. If the dressed

body is to be understood as always situated in culture and as an embodiedactivity located within specific temporal and spatial relations then these concepts

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from Bourdieu offer much potential. I will discuss Bourdieu@s work in moredetail below.

0urther problems arise from 0oucault@s rather ambivalent notion of the body"on the one hand, his bio&politics would appear to construct the body as aconcrete, material entity, manipulated by institutions and practicesH on the other hand, his focus on discourse seems to produce a notion of the body which has nomateriality outside of the representation. Such a vacillation is problematic sincethe Duestion of what constitutes a body is one that cannot be avoided does the

body have a materiality outside of language and representationA The body cannot be at one and the same time both a material obCect outside of language and a

solely linguistic construction. This refusal to develop an ontology of the bodyfits with 0oucault@s general refusal of all essence, as Turner =1;62> notes.Gowever, Terence Turner =1;;$" # goes as far as to suggest that 0oucault@s

body is more contradictory and problematic in terms of his own claim to critiDueessences" it is Ja featureless tabula rasa awaiting the animating disciplines of discourse . . . an a priori individual unity disarmingly reminiscent of its arch&rival, the transcendental subCect@. If, as it seems, 0oucault errs on the side of the

body as a discursive construct this would appear to undermine his aim to produce a Jhistory of bodies@ and the invesments and operations of power onthem. 9hat is most material and most vital about a body if not its flesh and

bonesA 9hat is power doing if not operating on, controlling or dominating thematerial bodyA

Gowever, if the body has its own physical reality outside or beyond discourse,how can we theori e this e3perienceA Gow can one begin to understand thee3perience of choosing and wearing clothes that forms so significant a part of our e3perience of our bodyKselfA 9ith these issues in mind, -sordas =1;;#,1;;$> details the way forward for what he calls a Jparadigm of embodiment@which he poses as an alternative to the Jparadigm of the body@ that characteri esthe structuralist approach. This methodological shift JreDuires that the body beunderstood as the e3istential ground of culture not an obCect that is good tothink withU but as a subCect that is necessary to beU@ =1;;#" 1#2>. The body, in

phenomenological terms, is the environment of the self and therefore somethingacted upon as part of the e3perience of selfhood. This is in contrast to the

semiotic model which considers the body as a symbolic and discursive obCectworked on by culture. -sordas@s e3press aim is therefore to counter&balance theJstrong representational bias@ of the semioticKte3tual paradigm found in workssuch as that of )errida =1;, )ouglas =1;


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the human body@ =-sordas 1;;$" $>. Thus, the phenomenological concern withembodiment starts from a different premise to structuralist and poststructuralist

accounts of the social world, positioning the body as Jthe e3istential ground of culture and self@ =-sordas 1;;#>. Ge argues for a study of embodiment thatdraws on the phenomenology of erleau&:onty =1; as well asBourdieu@s =1;6;> Jtheory of practice@. Gis paradigm of embodiment thus marksa methodological shift away from a concern with te3ts to a concern with bodilye!perience and social practice. 7ccording to -sordas, both Bourdieu =1;6;,1;;'> and erleau&:onty =1; shift the concern away from the body asan inert obCect to an idea of the body as implicated in everyday perception and

practices. 7 similar distinction is drawn by -rossley =1;;2a, 1;;2b, 1;;$> whoargues that the Jsociology of the body@ is concerned with Jwhat is done to the

body@, while Jcarnal sociology@ e3amines Jwhat the body does@ =1;;2b" '#>. Getoo identifies this latter tradition with the work of erleau&:onty but looks alsoto ?offman whose account of microsocial interactions positions the body as thecentral vehicle of the Jself@. In the following section, I want to detail thetheoretical and methodological assumptions underlying a Jparadigm of embodiment@, drawing on the work of erleau:onty, and suggest how

phenomenology might enable a study of dress as situated practice. I want also tosuggest how the work of Bourdieu and ?offman may be applied to the study of the dressed body and how their insights bridge the gap between structuralist and

phenomenological concepts. In both their work, the body is a socially constitutedobCect, determined by social structures, and also the site of social and personalidentity.

Dress !nd E%&odi%ent

erleau&:onty =1; places the body at the centre of his analysis of perception, arguing that the world comes to us via perceptive awareness, i.e.from the place of our body in the world. erleau&:onty stresses the simple factthat the mind is situated in the body and comes to know the world through whathe calls Jcorporeal or postural schema@" in other words we grasp e3ternal space,relationships between obCects and our relationship to them through our position

in, and movement through, the world. Thus the aim of his work on perception, ashe =1;


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body forms our Jpoint of view on the world@ =1;. In other words, our body is not Cust the

place from which we come to e3perience the world, but it is through our bodiesthat we come to see and be seen in the world. The body forms the envelope of our being in the world and our selfhood comes from this location in our bodyand our e3perience of this. In terms of dress, approaching it from a

phenomenological framework means acknowledging the way in which dressworks on the body which in turn works on and mediates the e3perience of self.Eco =1;6$> captures this very well when he describes wearing Ceans which arestill too tight after losing some weight. Ge =1;6$" 1; '> describes how the

Ceans feel on his body, how they pinch and how they restrict his movement, howthey make him aware of the lower half of his bodyH indeed, how they come toconstitute an Jepidermic self&awareness@ which he had not felt before"

7s a result, I lived in the knowledge that I had Ceans on, whereas normally we liveforgetting that we@re wearing undershorts or trousers. I lived for my Ceans and as aresult I assumed an e3terior behaviour of one who wears Ceans. In any case, I assumeda demeanour . . . !ot only did the garment impose a demeanour on meH by focusing myattention on demeanour it obliged me to live towards the e3terior world.

If for the most part, we don@t e3perience our Ceans =or any other item of clothingfor that matter> in this way then this hints at our Jnormal@ e3perience of dress andits relationship to the bodyH namely that it becomes an e3tension of the body

which is like a second skin. )ressed uncomfortably, on the other hand, we maydevelop the Jepidermic self&awareness@ Eco refers to since the garmentKs impingeupon our e3perience of the body and make us aware of the Jedges@, the limitsand boundaries of our body. This bodyKdress awareness is gendered" as TseNlon=1;;


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and, ultimately, power, a phenomenological analysis of space such as thatoffered by erleau&:onty, considers how we grasp e3ternal space via our bodily

situation or Jcorporeal or postural schema@ =1;. 0or erleau&:onty,

bodyKsubCects are always subCects in space but our e3perience of it comes fromour movement around the world and our grasping of obCects in that spacethrough perceptual awareness. Space is grasped actively by individuals throughtheir embodied encounter with it. +f course, space is a crucial aspect of our e3perience of the dressed body since when we get dressed we do so with implicitunderstanding of the rules and norms of particular social spaces. 7 formal dinner,

a Cob interview, a shopping e3pedition, a walk in the park, to name a fewsituations, demand different styles of dress and reDuire us to be more or lessaware of our

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