Clothes and Fashion 59 5 Alfred Kroeber and the Great Secular Wave 83 6 J
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Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes Dress, Body, Culture Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between culture and dress which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any modification or supplement 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 analyze the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and gender issues and will include works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history, art history, literature, and folklore. ISSN: 1360-466X 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 Sex and Changing Clothes Michaele Thurgood Haynes, Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas Anne Brydon and Sandra Niesson, Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body Dani Cavallaro and Alexandra Warwick, Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body Judith Perani and Norma H. Wolff, Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa Linda B. Arthur, Religion, Dress and the Body Paul Jobling, Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography Fadwa El-Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance Thomas S. Abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empires and Exotic Uniforms Linda Welters, Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia: Beliefs about Protection and Fertility Kim K.P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon, Appearance and Power Barbara Burman, The Culture of Sewing Annette Lynch, Dress, Gender and Cultural Change Antonia Young, Women Who Become Men David Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry Brian J. McVeigh, Wearing Ideology: The Uniformity of Self-Presentation in Japan Shaun Cole, Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century Kate Ince, Orlan: Millennial Female Nicola White and Ian Griffiths, The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image Ali Guy, Eileen Green and Maura Banim, Through the Wardrobe: Women’s Relationships with their Clothes Linda B. Arthur, Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross- Cultural Perspective William J.F. Keenan, Dressed to Impress: Looking the Part Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, Body Dressing Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset Paul Hodkinson, Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture DRESS, BODY, CULTURE Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes Michael Carter Oxford • New York First published in 2003 by Berg Editorial offices: 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003–4812, USA © Michael Carter 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carter, Michael, 1944– Fashion classics from Carlyle to Barthes / Michael Carter. p. cm. – (Dress, body, culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-85973-601-7 (Cloth) – ISBN 1-85973-606-8 (Paper) 1. Fashion. 2. Clothing and dress. I. Title. II. Series. GT521 .C37 2003 391–dc21 2002154150 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85973 601 7 (Cloth) 1 85973 606 8 (Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Wellingborough, Northants. Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn. For my parents, Mary and Bob Carter Verticals Horizontals All measurements taken from 1 Width of decolletage the middle of the figure’s mouth across the shoulders 1 Mouth to middle of upper 2 Minimum diameter of corsage front edge. Depth of waist. Waist length decolletage 3 Diameter of skirt at its 2 Mouth to minimum diameter hem. Skirt width of waist. Waist height 3 Mouth to centre front of skirt. Skirt length Diagram: Kroeber’s measurements of evening dresses Contents Acknowledgements ix Preface xi 1 Thomas Carlyle and Sartor Resartus 1 2 Herbert Spencer’s Sartorial Protestantism 19 3 Thorstein Veblen’s Leisure Class 41 4 Georg Simmel: Clothes and Fashion 59 5 Alfred Kroeber and the Great Secular Wave 83 6 J. C. Flügel and the Nude Future 97 7 James Laver, the Reluctant Expert 121 8 Roland Barthes and the End of the Nineteenth Century 143 Appendix: Questionnaire Issued by J.C. Flügel in 1929 165 Bibliography 169 Index 175 Acknowledgements Thanks are due to The Power Foundation for Art and Visual Culture for sup- porting the book in its initial phase and to Peter McNeil for his bibliographic assistance. To Robin Appleton, Indigo Blue, Jenny Carter, Mary and Bob Carter, Duff and Judy in Valldoreix, Dave Frisby, Adam Gezcy, Ian MacMillan, Angela Milic, Julian Pefanis, Laura Peterson, Richard Rushton and Andy Stafford, many thanks. To Sebastian Smee, my apologies for leaving you out of the last one. Especial thanks are due to Evelyn Hofer for allowing me to use her photograph on the cover. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the many conversations I have had over the years with my colleagues Margaret Maynard and Alison Gill. Without the support of the small, but comradely, band of Australian dress scholars life would be much drabber. ix Preface Sooner or later any area of study that develops sufficient critical mass will begin to scrutinize itself. Specifically, it will become aware that its patterns of con- cerns, anxieties and intellectual dispositions, have a history. While these may not add up to a ‘discourse’, or even a ‘tradition’, there comes a moment when the normal channels of operation shed their cloak of familiarity and start to become visible. It was just such a moment of intellectual estrangement that precipitated this book. I encountered a mildly dismissive remark about Thomas Carlyle and Sartor Resartus – nothing unusual about that, the history of costume is littered with such criticisms. Mentally I nodded in agreement and continued reading. Of course, I had not read Sartor. Or rather, I had picked it up, glanced at a few pages and dropped it in fright. However, on this occasion I sat down and read it in one sitting. So much was familiar in Carlyle’s ironic observations about clothes. So many later voices could be heard in his declar- ations on our habits of dress and dressing. Either he was a glorious, but isolated, interpreter of our clothed condition or he was the first in a line of thinkers that might add up to a tradition. My conclusion, after rereading a few of the standard texts of fashion theory, was that there was such a tradition and that an apt name for it might be ‘Fashion Classics’. The only novel feature that I can claim for this book is that it is the first time that a systematic study has been made of those figures, and texts, normally regarded as central to the study of clothing and fashion. There have been a number of critical glances at the intellectual history of fashion theory, such as those of Wilson (1985), Davis (1992), Barnes and Eicher (1992). Those writings concerned exclusively with the intellectual roots of fashion and dress studies, works such as Keenan’s ground-breaking reappraisal (2001) of the significance for dress studies of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, together with the excellent study of fashion and modernity, Tigersprung by Lehmann (2000), have appeared only very recently and were too late for adequate consideration in this book. It is within this growing desire for a clearer picture of the intellectual history of the subject that I want to situate the present volume. The selection of texts in the book was made, initially, on pragmatic grounds. There were the texts that I constantly returned to for clarification and intel- lectual refreshment. Then there were the texts that others working in the field xi Preface regularly cited – authors such as Veblen, Simmel, Kroeber, Flügel and Laver. These were the ones that most commonly corresponded to the status of ‘classics’. Finally, there were the authors that subsequently were revealed to be important to those already on the list. The big discovery (for me) was the importance of Herbert Spencer. Apart from Barthes, all the writers considered here were greatly indebted to his work. For James Laver it was Flügel, and then Veblen (via Quentin Bell), who provided the intellectual impetus that sustained him after the Second World War. Barthes was a great admirer of Alfred Kroeber and John Flügel. So, from Spencer onward a deal of mutual cross-referencing is taking place in the writings of these thinkers. All that remained to complete the ‘set’ was to locate a totemic figure responsible for bringing the tradition into being – the obvious candidate here was Carlyle/Teufelsdröckh – together with a ‘terminator’. The fact that Barthes engaged with the figures in the tradition with the expressed purpose of reforming their approach to costume and fashion made him an ideal person with which to close the book. At various points it proved useful for me to deploy the label ‘Fashion Classics Tradition’ as a form of intellectual shorthand. Each time this phrase is used there is a tendency for that being named to acquire an ever greater degree of internal coherence. I want to disturb this picture by outlining what I consider to be the main features of this ‘tradition’. I should also make it clear that, with the possible exception of Spencer, the authors and texts examined in the book do not always fully match the ideal type of the tradition that I sketch below.