fashion industry

The transition to the Middle Ages, or the Medieval era, occurred when information—including fashion changes—became better spread by trade and travel. Royal courts exchanged information (and spies) on what rivals were doing and wearing. Monarchs and court favorites were studied for their fashion innovations, in a manner quite similar to the recent media scrutiny of Hilary Clinton’s South Sea pearls during her confirmation hearing. The upper classes dressed to impress and their inferiors scrambled to imitate them when they could. Class status was preserved when better dress could be denied to those of lower class status, giving rise to sumptuary laws for clothing and textiles that only begged to be broken.

The nobility considered themselves the arbiters of fashion, while increasingly finding themselves threatened by the growing merchant and middle classes. Almost as soon as nobles ventured out of their castles in the latest fashions, wealthy merchants’ sons were spurred to copy their dress. Imitators included those in the affluent middle class whose goal was upward social mobility. Even transvestism now had a place in creating mobility between the sexes. Isn’t it fascinating to realize that these patterns of social mimicry became prevalent in the Medieval era, long before the time of Jay Gatsby?

p.s. Although I may be wrapped up in the past right now, I’m still mindful of what day today is. January 20, 2009. Inauguration Day. Have you been following the spate of stories and articles in the media about how the fashion industry is looking to Michelle Obama for salvation? C’mon, get a grip! Instead of looking to one woman, however wonderful and stylish she may be, why doesn’t the fashion business look to what really is the problem? Wretched designs, that’s what! Lose those baby dolls and shrunken scale jackets. We’ll all spend money again if there’s actually something to buy out there!

These hosiery ads take a slightly different approach. Here, the modish subject is still involved with a mischievous small animal, but now she is engaged in braving the elements. What does this say about the product being advertised? Yes, their stockings are reliable; they’ll hold up in the most difficult of conditions! Selling intimate apparel in early twentieth century America required practical social imperatives. In a time when stockings had to be moved from luxury to necessary goods, consumers needed to be convinced. 1921 is still a long way from the time of Victoria’s Secret.

But the story of women’s liberation could never have happened without the development of undergarments, including stockings, which allowed the wearer more physical freedom. The 1920s woman is the start of the march towards the feminine cigarette slogan coined in the 1970s: “you’ve come a long way, baby.” Fashion as a social force is the subject of an excellent study, An intimate affair: women, lingerie, and sexuality. And the turn away from the McCallum Company’s type of fashion merchandising to newer imperatives is best documented in Fashion brands: branding style from Armani to Zara.

“Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them...there is nothing.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

One weekend this summer, I bought a paperback copy of an amusing book in our collection, The Fashion Conspiracy by Nicholas Coleridge. Published in 1988, the book is still relevant today in the portraits it draws of fashion wealth, 80s excess, and the striking contrasts between high-end designer showrooms and Asian sweatshops. Coleridge, a British journalist and novelist, uses a form of the then-developing creative nonfiction to make his profiles and encounters more interesting. I find him a bit too credulous as a reporter, however; he recounts the story of Oscar de la Renta as the inventor of the “fashion victim” term without any demur, and repeats similar questionable anecdotes as a matter of course.

Having just finished the book, I’ve found that his title stretches the point a little. An avid reader of murder mysteries, I like to think of myself as an expert on conspiracy theories. Coleridge’s thesis really denotes a nudge and wink conspiracy, in which market players all work together to make the couture garment an amazing piece of expensive sleight-of-hand. If you want to read about someone ready and willing to link fashion with terrorism, look at this interview with Bret Easton Ellis.

My last posting could have been subtitled “Do we own fashion or does it own us?” While I frequently dwell on fashion as a social force, it’s good to remember that fashion is also a huge industry. When I was young and employed for a year at the Fashion Institute of Technology Library, I remember thinking that I’d love to see something that might reveal the business workings of the fashion industry as a whole.

Such a publication came out in 2007. Providing case studies from the clothing trade and the fashion design syndicate, Veronica Manlow’s Designing clothes: culture and organization of the fashion industry, is precisely the sort of book I’d wished I had access to years ago.

p.s. American politics are intruding onto the runways! Donatella Versace was quoted as saying that her fall men’s collection had been inspired by Barak Obama. For a glimpse of the future, check out the Fall 2008 Milan Fashion Week.