Reading past dress fashions: Tradition towards modernity Priyanka Virajini Medagedara Karunaratne, Ph.D in Integrated Design, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Design and Product Development Department of Textile and Clothing Technology Faculty of Engineering University of Moratuwa Abstract Fashion plays with time. It is the celebrated ‘tigers leap’ into the past in which the essence and relationship between fashion and modernity is identified. Fashion also represents the traditions which society followed. Traditions of a society reveal how things have changed. This paper studies past dress fashions described in poetic literature and recorded in several visual formats during the 16TH century Kotte period with a view to identifying salient dress features that have been assimilated by tradition and also seeks to investigate how it moved towards modernity with hybridization of several dress details and components In comparison to world dress fashions The study reveals that the Kotte period marked the culmination of an emerging novel fashion movement towards modernity. In addition to a deliberate attempt at design, the form and the structures were changed and organized by internal explicit design units such as pleating, knotting, folding, frilling, and tucking which made up a rich set of possible combinations. Data for this research was gathered from historical literary records, texts, and pictorial records from the two ivory caskets at present in the Munich Treasury, Germany, wood carvings from Rambawa Aludeniya temple, Gampola and two cloth paintings presently at the National Museum, Colombo. The qualitative research method was adopted for the study and a systematic sequence of observational studies was carried out to gather, sort and analyze data in a systematic manner. The research methods with procedure adopted, the research design, observation and procedure of data analysis have been included. Key Words : Tradition, Modernity, Past Dress fashion, Hybridization, Narrative of the past 1. Introduction ‘Tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are widely used as polar opposites in a linear theory of social change. This theory can be applied to examine the fashion language of dress in any social context. In Sri Lanka it was in the Kotte period that both traditional and the modernity form the basis of ideologies of the wearers (both royalty and the nobles) as a movement in the royal 1 male dress code. According to tradition the royal male dress was composed of an unstitched loose lower dress which formed a clinging draped cloth. The relationship between the two terms ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ do not necessarily involve displacement, conflict or exclusiveness. Modernity does not necessarily weaken tradition. The term modern impulse may be to think in terms of present day technology with its space exploration and nuclear power. But the common sense of the word ‘modern’ encompasses the whole era since the 18th century when inventions like the steam engine and the spinning jenny provided the initial technical basis for the industrialization of society. Accordingly the word ‘modern’ also evokes especially the deconstruction of inherited privilege and the declaration of equal rights of citizenship. The term ‘modern’ has a long history, one which has been investigated by Hans Robert Jauss. The word ‘modern’ in its Latin form “modernus” was used for the first time in the late 5th century in order to distinguish the present, which had become officially Christian, from the Roman and Pagan past with varying content, the term ‘modern’ again and again expresses the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new. It is understood that the concept of tradition is of utmost importance in every society. Tradition is subject to change from time to time with internal and external cultural, economic and political forces. Accordingly to Dissanayake (Dissanayake ,2005, p.15) the traditional notion of tradition stresses the idea of handing down of ideas, objects, practices, assumptions and values from generation to generation and at the same time tradition also implies reception by an active public, alert to both the imperatives of the past as well as the present. Tradition allows constructing a narrative of the past, the present and future on the basis of a certain present dealing with a certain past. Moreover the concept of tradition seeks to enforce certain values and assumptions and modes of behavior. It is also regarded as a transcendental phenomenon and seen to be endowed with certain timeless qualities. The writings of Walter Benjamin (Benjamin, 1982, p.18) have underlined the importance of understanding tradition not as an ontological question but rather one of political endeavor. Moreover Eliot’s statement (Eliot, 1975) is much discussed; he said that ‘tradition is not only 2 solely, or even primarily, the maintenance of certain dogmatic beliefs; these beliefs have come to take their living in the course of the formation of tradition. What I mean by tradition involves all those habitual actions, habits and customs, from the most strange which represents the blood kinship of the same people living in the same place’. Eliot has emphasized the importance of inheriting a tradition by conscious effort. He says that it cannot be inherited passively and that one has to obtain it by great labor. The German philosopher Hans George Gadamer’s approach to tradition arises from his notion of hermeneutics as a dialogical conversation. The idea of a linguistically shaped and tradition – influenced community is at the heart of his thinking. For him tradition, language, and interpretation are vitally interlinked. Like Eliot but from a different theoretical angle, Gadamer establishes the importance of the notion of tradition as involving a process of creative assimilation. (Gadamer 1975 cited in Dissanayake 2005) Coomaraswamy’s work is pivotally concerned with the idea of tradition. For him tradition exercised a timeless and normative influence. He was of the opinion that tradition grew out of deep understandings of the nature of spirituality and its impact on human beings, whereas modernity signified a kind of amnesia of spiritual understanding and truth. He expressed that tradition creates and maintains a community of artists, patrons of the arts and consumers of art who are guided by the same impulses and norms. 1.1 Objective and Significance of the Study The objective of the paper is to investigate in what ways the dress fashions of the past followed traditions of society and how it moved towards modernity with hybridization of several dress details and components. The significance of the paper is identified as in comparison to the world dress fashions the Kotte period marked the culmination of an emerging novel fashion movement towards modernity with unique features rooted in Sri Lankan fashion culture. The performance of the dress fashion was visualized totally congruously within the documentary reality of the dress. It 3 is possible to read the earlier dress fashions and dressing etiquettes of Sri Lanka during a period that intensified Sri Lankan Indo Portuguese exchanges which depends a lot on uncovering some of the various impulses that energized dress traditions. 1.2 Approach 1.2.1 Identification of Categories and Traditional Styles of Dresses There are four dress categories of the period identified. They are; • The Royalty • The Elite • The Performing Artists • The Common people. However the dresses of the royalty show strong visual evidences that could be considered learning towards modern dresses in comparison with world dress trends. Fig.1 Fig.2 Udaaludeniya- Gampola, Wood carving Gadaladeniya- Gampola mural painting in the dome 4 Fig.3 Fig.4 Fig.5 Fig.6 Gadaladeniya-mural painting Cloth painting Reg.no 85.133.1 in the dome at the Colombo National Museum Figure 1 Shows the king’s lower dress carved at the Aludeniya “Rambawa” wooden door jamb. The lower dress is unique in form because it had a circular shaped dress feature. In fact the feature was depicted in a more pronounced manner during the sixteenth century king’s dress. Even though this was mainly worn by the kings, elite of the court also seem to have adopted the feature in a different way. Pictorial evidences show that the feature evolved gradually throughout history with subtle adjustments in forming the shape of it. Figure 2 Shows the picture of a king from the dome of the Gadaladeniya temple. His lower dress seems very simple and confined by a waist band. In the front a fold seems to have a pointed edge. Figure 3 The lower dress shows a side fold which has a pointed edge. The fold on the left side of the waist developed in its size to a much greater extent during the last phase of the sixteenth century, evident in the dress of King Wimaladharmasooriya 1(1591-1604) Figure 4 The picture found in a cloth painting at the Colombo museum shows a developed form of a lower dress having a pointed fold attached to the waist. 5 Figure 5 The king’s lower dress is arranged by one piece of cloth wrapped around to give prominence to the designed hem line and a border. The fold around the waist would be thick and tucked at the left end of the waist. Figure 6 Shows the same waist band tucked at the right end of the waist and served as a pleated fall arranged much longer than the former, which falls to the middle of the lower dress. There is a border around the hem of the dress. This is remarkable because it gives insight to the weaving industry in the country. During the Vijayanagar period (1336-1565 AD) the Kotte kingdom had close ties with the former in many ways. Codrington (Codrington, 1917, p.103) states that Sri Lanka paid taxes to the Vijayanagar king.