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Katya Mandoki, Point and Line Over the Body: Social Imaginaries Underlying the Logic of Fashion

12th

Apr. × ’10

By admin

Mandoki Bio: Mandoki is a professor of aesthetics and semiotics at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. Her research interests include: everyday aesthetics, philosophy of culture, semiotics and pragmatism, theory of design. She is President of the Mexican Association for Aesthetic Studies. She has received numerous awards for her artwork. Her most famous work is Histogram: Income distribution in Mexico, 1985: http://www.mandoki.estetica.org.mx/arte.php?g2_itemId=65

Publications: Everyday Aesthetics, Aesthetics and Games and Everyday Culture, Aesthetic Practices and Social Identities, The Aesthetic Construction of State and National Identity, Aesthetics and Communication, Prosaic Introduction to the Aesthetics of Everyday Life.

Here is a link to her academic website, including a pdf of her C.V.: http://www.mandoki.estetica.org.mx/index.php

In “Point and Line Over Body: Social Imaginaries Underlying the Logic of Fashion,” Mandoki begins by discussing how fashion lures people to it, instead of forcing people to adhere to its rules. She then situates her research in relation to the notable fashion research conducted by Barthes, Simmel and Konig, Flugel, Lipovetsky, and Morris. She appropriates Morris’ work and defends her choice: “By a pragmatic approach I intend to examine fashion precisely where other specialists have stopped: the relation of fashion and clothing to actual people, particularly women, and the ideas or beliefs that appear to guide their decisions on what to wear” (601). This is an important statement because much of the research conducted on fashion deals with its production and dissemination of fashion, rather than how fashion is incorporated into the lives of the wearers. She organizes her research under the following headings: Social Imaginaries, The Aesthetic Impact of Fashion Photography, The Three Levels of Clothing: Vernacular, Fashion, and Pret a Porter, The Law of Entropy in Fashion, Lines Upon the Body and the Barbie Syndrome, Four Modalities of Analysis, Pivots of Fashion Imaginaries: Time and Self. I’ve taken the main points from each section.

2. Social Imaginaries

Imaginaries: “…we are aware of their being imaginary, but nonetheless rendered and applied into reality. Social imaginaries can be compared to a drop of ink in a bowl of water: it does not significantly alter its composition, but radically modifies its appearance” (602).

Mandoki writes, “Transformation is the process by which a certain meaning or significance, say success or youth, is presented as corresponding to a certain dress; we then transform the signifier dress and by wearing it we become successful and young. The formula is: if S>D, then D>S (if the successful wear this dress, then wearing this dress will make me successful)…” (605). For example, if I wear Tiger’s shirt, then I’ll play golf like Tiger. This is an obvious fallacy, but are there instances when dressing a certain way contributes to the desired result?

3. The Aesthetic Impact of Fashion PhotographyThe goal of fashion photography:

“What they intend to capture and convey is a particular atmosphere, an imaginary, rather than a mere dress” (606).

Mandoki writes, “We are not so naive as to believe we can become the model or look the same merely by wearing the jacket, but imaginaries allow us to associate the feeling with the jacket by contagion. We purchase clothes associated to sensation and imaginary settings” (607). This reminds me of Stuart Hall’s negotiated version. Most women know that they can’t look like models, but they take the images that they see and apply them to their own lives. Here’s an example from stiletto culture:

4.The Three Levels of Clothing: Vernacular, Fashion, and Pret a Porter

4.1 Vernacular style: “…traditional clothing remains relatively stable through various generations…Vernacular garments are strictly codified according to gender, age, rank, regional and marital status, and ritual or religios celebrations” (Mandoki 609).

4.2 Fashion Design: The Depreciated Genre of the Artworld: “Fashion is always a breakthrough, an innovation or a sudden revival of past styles” (610).

4.3 Ready to Wear, or, Pret a Porter Clothing: “While fashion is inventive and paradigmatic, pret a porter is syntagmatic and a purely combinatory system defined by lifestyles” (613).

5. The Law of Entropy in Fashion

According to Mandoki, fashion is dead. “The main trend today is entropical and tends toward uniformity and sameness” (Mandoki 614). She uses jeans as an example of sameness, but even with jeans there are variations. It’s possible that because I look at clothing frequently and closely that I see variation in clothing, but do others not as interested in fashion see clothing as basically the same?

Mandoki believes that we follow strict rules and codes when we dress, unable to break from them. She writes, “Like some insects and reptiles, we dress to merge into our environment” (Mandoki 615). We can choose from a set list of styles (the athletic, the snob, the romantic, the eccentic, etc.) to blend in just enough. She explains that these styles are packaged for women in fashion magazines. While I agree that magazines package styles, the reader picks and chooses, blending styles and creating new ones.

6. Lines Upon the Body and the Barbie Syndrome

The Barbie Syndrome is glorifying (and expecting) the female body to be thin and young, through diet, exercise, and surgery. Mandoki writes, “Clothes do not fit the body: it is the body that has to fit the clothes” (618). This idea is apparent in the lack of quality plus-size clothing designs. Designers create clothing based in the “ideal” 5’10/ 115lb. body, and if a woman’s body doesn’t conform to this, she has very few stylish clothing choices.

…or she is forced to fit into clothing that her body must conform to: Muffin Top.

7. Four Modalities of Analysis

Proxemics: “an establishment of distances: social, cultural, economic, political, ideological, sexual” (618).

Cinetics: “the modality displaying dynamism or statism, being conservative and conformist or innovative and marginal” (618).

Tonics: “the device for emphasizing a particular anatomical aspect over others” (618).

Pulse: “the device by which clothes seem to expand radially from the body” (619).

8. Pivots of Fashion Imaginaries: Time and Self

Mandoki explains that time and space define fashion. Clothing is created for specific occasions, rather than places. Clothing signals new times (putting on clean clothes in the morning/ new day) and new places (putting on a ski jacket when leaving the lodge to ski).

Strengths:

- Mandoki writes, “[I]t is less the content or explicit denotation of clothes than the connotations generated by these images that pulls women to linger over these magazines and purchase particular items” (601). The Jimmy Choo ad below supports this statement; notice the shoe in context. What are the connotations of this image?

- Fashion has often been viewed as frivolous, especially in relation to art, but Mandoki makes a strong argument for putting fashion and art on the same level. Fashion-works are created by hand, call for contemplation, are critiqued, etc. just as artwork is. I particularly like the parallels she makes between designers and artists, such as Poiret and Picasso seen below:

Criticisms:

- Although, Mandoki sets out to explain how women choose clothing, she stops short of her goal by not including in her research the voices of actual women, which for me is a shortcoming of her work. Including ethnographic research would have added validity to her statements, and it would have begun the task of filling this gap in fashion research. More research needs to be conducted to see how women use fashion.

- Mandoki writes, “Women who feel depressed or bored with themselves like to buy clothes in order to purchase a different sense of self. We may (and must) be the same, but we can look different” (620). This statement is off the mark because it treats the human as a fixed, stable object, which I think simplifies human nature. We are, hopefully, always changing and evolving, and the outside is often a reflection of the inside, not simply a sign of depression or boredom. One of the fascinating things about clothing is that they can be used as a reflection of a change in self, not simply a superficial change, or simply dress-up. I agree that clothing, a new look, is sought after during periods of sadness (a break-up) or boredom, but that doesn’t make us completly superficial beings. We are more complex than Mandoki insinuates.

- Table 2 (p.609) draws lines defining vernacular, fashion, and pret a porter that are too rigid. Famous designers are now designing lines for Target, pret a porter isn’t always “functional,” and fashion is becoming less elite, which can be seen in the emergence of the designer bags carried around in the suburbs. Because this article was first presented in 1999 it doesn’t account for the many changes in how fashion is distributed and consumed during the past decade.

- “Clothes not only speak for themselves but they speak on our behalf, they describe us, commit and betray us” (Mandoki 616). It’s true that our clothes speak for us, and sometimes they convey ideas that we are unaware of; however, we have more control of the messages that we send through style than Mandoki believes we do.

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Barry Brummett, The Social and Commercial Structuring of Style

12th

Apr. × ’10

By admin

Brummett Bio: Brummett is the Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include: rhetorical theory and criticism, rhetoric of popular culture, theories and methods of Kenneth Burke, media criticism, and apocalyptic rhetoric.

Selected Publications: Rhetoric in Popular Culture, A Rhetoric of Style, Rhetorical Dimensions Of Popular Culture, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric, Rhetoric of Machine Aesthetics, The World and How We Describe It, Rhetorical Homologies, Landmark Essays: Kenneth Burke, Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics, Sporting Rhetorics, Reading Rhetorical Theory.

Brummett’s website with a pdf of his C.V.:

http://commstudies.utexas.edu/faculty/barry-brummett.html

Summary:

Brummett’s claim is that, “…style is at the center of how society and commerce are organized today means to reference that complex of elements rather than any simple notion of how one dresses or walks down the street” (42). His two main points: 1. style structures social organization 2. style and consumption are interdependent (Brummett 42). He writes,

This is what style does for us—it organizes our social world. It gives us a place to be and to shop, and it gives us places where we don’t belong. Style affirms who we think we are and expresses who we want to be. Much of how style does that is through commodities, for much of the social organization in the world outside the mall nevertheless began right there with a choice of which shirts to buy and where to buy them. (Brummett 43)

Style helps structure the social environment. When one wears a Cleveland Indians t-shirt and sees someone else wearing the same team name, that is a sign of solidarity; there is something in common. Similarly, when someone sees a woman who has the same bag or shoes it shows a similarity of taste. Through style, identity is created, conveyed, and develops social alliances.

Brummet claims that the creation of style is consumed. We can create a new identity or reinforce one we have created by consuming certain goods that are marketed to us through desire. While style is created and marketed by large corporations, the consumer has the ability to alter, re-create, and give new meanings to the styles sold to them. Brummett spends a considerable time explaining the forces of capitalism that work against the consumer, but I appreciate his belief that the consumer has some agency. The consumer isn’t simply a pawn of the fashion industry but, with knowledge of signs, can make their own choices and their own meanings.

Here are some of the main ideas from ch. 2:

Style & Identity

Brummett and Mandoki both discuss image as a performance. When we put on clothes, buy a car, and decorate our homes are we showing our authentic selves, or are we performing the self we want others to think we are?

Style, Identity, & The Group

Brummett writes, “We know who we are and who they are because of different aesthetics that mark our styles” (46). Essentially, style is an aesthetic display of who we are, want to be, and want to be associated with. Style is a display of values and is based on judgements. Brummett explains that in order to be included in a group our style has to be different enough to be interesting, yet similar enough to the style of others in the group.

The DKNY Cosy is a good example of how “individual” style is created in a group: http://www.dkny.com/womens/cozy_video.html

Each model has a different color cosy on that is styled differently, yet it’s essentially the same garment.

Style, Stereotypes, and Commodities

Brummett writes, “…for identity and affiliation can change with every trip to the mall” (69). The idea that we can change our identity through what we consume is based on stereotypes. “We use stereotypes to organize and classify ourselves and others, and we do the same with commodities” (60). If someone wants to be seen as preppy and stylish then they shop at J.Crew; athletic at Nike; gothic/ punk at Hot Topic. These stereotypes are often sold through the branding of a product. Brummett explains, “A brand is a unified perception of how a product works within a culture to solidify notions of value and community” (58). J.Crew has created an image through its catalogue that places clothing in a social context, showing the reader this is where you can go and who you will be like if you wear our clothing. J. Crew has even created personalities to sell their clothing, giving their sweaters, shirts, and jeans human names: the Jessie cotton dress, the Coralie cami, and the Gabby satchel. Now that clothing is described as having human characteristics and we become more attached to things, will we become less attached to people as Brummett notes? (see p.58).

Brummett makes the claim that style and commodities separate people into social groups through differences in taste. There’s a negative tone to the idea of separation; is separation always a bad thing?

Fiske writes, “…a commodity is ideology made material (Understanding 14)” (Brummett 62). What do you think of this idea?

Why drives us to consume? What to we hope to obtain by buying a new shirt, car, computer, etc? “…Stratton explains that ‘what Lacan is claiming is the each individual’s desire is, in fact, the desire to be desired by someone else’ (6)” (Brummett 65). Is this really true? Do we consume to be desired by others? The following Armani ad seems to support this notion:

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A Note About Why We Should Study Style & Fashion…

9th

Apr. × ’10

By admin

“Honestly, I could care less about discourse communities and dramatistic pentads. Just tell me how to be cool.” –Sam Evans, CMP10 Student

Why should we study style?

At a very basic level, style matters to many students because it offers “coolness,” inclusion in a group, and a chance for personal expression. In a highly image-based, aesthetic culture, appearance matters. Whether they are aware of it or not, students have a wealth of style knowledge. Every time they go shopping, browse through a magazine, turn on the television, or go online, they are exposed to style. What’s essential is to ask them to bring their knowledge to the classroom and make them aware of the images that they experience. For many students style and fashion is more accessible to them than discourse communities and Burke’s dramatistic pentad. By using topics students are interested in and applying students’ own knowledge of style to explain Burke’s pentad, students not only understand Burke’s ideas, but they will be able to see how his ideas work in their everyday lives. Students need to understand the images that are sent and received; they need to understand what they and others are communicating, especially since style has permeated all aspects of American culture and continues to expand in all parts of the world. Brummett writes, “What is key is to know how this globally spreading system of signification works and to understand our place in it. (172). With a heightened awareness of how to read, understand, and negotiate messages conveyed through style, we can teach students to take control of these signs instead of being controlled by them.

Style & English Studies

There is a vague notion of meaning attached to the clothing people wear, but there is a lack of significant, in-depth research and explanation of how this meaning is created and who is creating the meaning. Despite the marginalization of style, some scholars have devoted themselves to understanding how style functions, approaching it from many different perspectives. Barnard explains, “Tickner argues that fashion is ‘a rich and multidisciplinary subject, and a point at which history, economics, anthropology, sociology and psychology could be said to meet’ (Tickner 1977: 56). She envisages a much wider, or at least a more detailed, list of disciplines” (23). It’s interesting to note that Tickner doesn’t include English in her list; perhaps English is on her “more detailed” list, or at least it should be. In “Fashion, Representation, and Femininity,” Caroline Evans and Mina Thornton offer an explanation for this lack of inquiry:

It would seem that fashion, as a field of cultural activity, has managed to barricade itself against systematic analysis; it has put up rather a successful fight against meaning. Perhaps it would be more positive to say that fashion has always existed as a challenge to meaning where meaning is understood to involve some notion of coherence, a demonstrable consistency. This challenge is precisely what attracts those of us who believe that the practices which a culture insists are meaningless or trivial, the places where ideology has succeeded in becoming invisible, are practices in need of investigation. (48)

Evans and Thornton’s insights explain that style offers a rich site of inquiry, and also that there is a gap in style research.

English studies, with its focus on textual and rhetorical analysis, has the resources to fill this gap. In “From Plainchant to Polyphony,” Douglas Hesse explains, “English studies is centrally concerned with how texts are made, how they mean, and why they matter” (253). Some questions English studies scholars might ask are about style are:

How is style a text? How is style made? Who constructs style: the individual, the group, the designer, the style/ fashion critic, the media, corporations?

How/ why does style have meaning? When we put on clothing, when we decorate our homes, what are we saying to others about ourselves?

Why does style matter? What is the political, economic, social, and individual impact of style?

These questions can be addressed by many of English studies’ sub-disciplines. The study of style could be approached from a linguistics lens, using the extensive work of Barthes in The Fashion System. Style could be approached from a cultural studies viewpoint in the vein of Theodor Adorno, Stuart Ewen, and Elizabeth Wilson. Regardless of the theoretical approach, style is a form of communication that influences cultural production and ideology, which requires attention.

References

Barnard, Malcom. Fashion as Communication. 2nd ed. NewYork: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Brummett, Barry. A Rhetoric of Style. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print.

Evans, Caroline and Minna Thornton. “Fashion, Representation, and Femininity.” Feminist Review 38 (1991): 48-66. JSTOR. Web. 21 Sept. 2009

Evans, Samuel. “Ped. Paper.” Message to Kelly Murphy. 5 Dec. 2007. E-mail.

Hesse, Douglas. “Afterword: From Plainchant to Polyphony.” Transforming English Studies: New Voices in an Emerging Genre. Ostergaard, Lori, Jeff Ludwig, Jim Nugent, eds. West Lafayette: Parlor Press, 2009. Print. 249-253.

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Defining Clothing, Fashion & Style

9th

Apr. × ’10

By admin

Clothing, fashion, and style are often used interchangeably in style scholarship, which is part of the reason scholars (Barthes, Baudrillard, Wilson, Barnard, Ewen) have struggled to create one, unified definition of style. In Fashion as Communication Malcom Barnard discusses the difficulty defining fashion, style, and clothing: “Again, there is no stand-alone definition; each term is defined by its relations to other teams in the structure. There is no single sense of meaning that is common to all of the words used, in the same way that there is no one single feature that is shared by all the members of a family” (11). Barnard calls attention to the fact that although there are many possibilities for defining fashion, style, and clothing they are in the same “family;” they are connected by their meanings. I see clothing, fashion, and style as a hierarchy with clothing as the basic unit followed by fashion and then style.

Clothing is a garment (or garments) used to cover and protect the body; clothing is the basic unit. It is not necessarily fashion (or fashionable for that mater). It is functional and can be described in terms of use value: “it does something or can be used to do something” (Brummett 13). Clothing can protect the body from weather, shielding it from the sun, keeping it warm in cold climates. Steel toed boots are a good example of clothing that has use value. The boot is worn to protect the foot from being crushed if something heavy falls on it while working. There is little attention paid to the look or the aesthetic appeal of the boot; there are no leopard print or red, patent leather steel toed boots. If aesthetic attention was given to the design of the boot then it could be considered fashion.

Fashion consists of clothing and accessories used to adorn the body, which can be described in terms of exchange value. Brummett explains, Exchange value “…is a major, if not the major, factor in commodification, consumer purchases, the economy itself” (14). Exchange value promises that buying a cool pair of Nike Air Force Ones or a sexy pair of Christian Louboutin stilettos will make the wearer of the shoes cool or sexy. Note that these shoes do not promise the protection that steel toed boots promise, just as the steel toed boots don’t offer coolness or sexiness. Because definitions of cool and sexy change, fashion must also change, although it can be argued whether standards of cool and sexy are set by cultural change or by the fashion industry. I think of fashion as the look or trend of the moment or a moment in time. Fashion, in my mind, is more concerned with items of clothing and accessories that are in style at the moment, often likened to trends. Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is famous for saying: “Fashion fades, only style remains the same” (Brummett 4). Brummett articulates Chanel’s words in linguistic terms: “…think of style as a language and fashion as the particular utterance of that language in the moment” (4). What Chanel and Brummett explain is that fashion changes with each new trend. For example, for Spring 2009, Gucci showed a safari themed collection consisting of brown leather handbags, khaki-colored shorts and safari jackets with gold, metal hardware details; for Winter 2009, Gucci is showing dresses, leather and fur jackets, sequined tops, and skinny, liquid leggings in shades of blue, green, and black. Gucci, like every other clothing label, designs a new collection that often becomes the trend, but the style of classics like jackets, pants, dresses, and shirts remain essentially the same.

Gucci Advertisements Fall/ Spring 2009

Style is much more difficult to define than fashion primarily because of its scope. Style can be a very broad, ranging from the individual’s construction of an image or a global system of organization. Style functions on micro and macro levels. The micro level of style is concerned with the individual and how the individual present him or herself to others through material items (clothing, cars, accessories, electronics, home décor) and through grooming, gestures, movements, tone of voice, and word choice. The macro level of style functions as a system of communication and organization with social, political, and economic impact on society.

References:

Barnard, Malcom. Fashion as Communication. 2nd ed. NewYork: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Brummett, Barry. A Rhetoric of Style. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2008. Print.

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Elaine Webster, Red Shoes: Linking Fashion and Myth

9th

Mar. × ’10

By admin

Summary:

Webster beings with the question: “What is it about red shoes?” (166). She found that many women associate red shoes with dance and childhood stories and movies such as Judy Garland’s ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz. Men viewed red shoes as as symbols of lust and sex.

She uses “psychoanalytic treatments of myth and stories” to investigate the meaning and myth of red shoes (167). She examines the use of red shoes in Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Red Shoes,” Rank, Powell, and Pressburger’s film The Red Shoes, and The Wizard of Oz.

Essential Quotes:

“Myths do involve stories and stories can be lies, but not all myths are lies. Myths are fictions in that they are made (and remade) but are not ‘fictional’ in relation to truth. Myths are another way of knowing (Eliade 1991[1952]) and knowing is self-truth (Kaiser 2001). Myths are cultural phenomena, occurring everywhere and in every time, and what is more, they are living” (Webster 168).

“Red shoes seem so tempting yet so dangerous–why do we still want them?” (Webster 169).

“Red shoes are about finding your feet and going somewhere else” (Webster 170).

“Shoes are so personal, they carry us, we stand in them, we go places in them, and find our feet in them. Walking in someone else’s shoes is to know what they know. Shoes symbolize being in and with your self” (Webster 170).

“Style, fashion, and dress involve symbolic expression (McCracken 1988), and through this symbolic communication fashion is linked to myth, and to culture” (Webster 173).

“Many women when interpreting red shoes to me, spoke of desire, change, risk, and movement, always in terms of enlarging the self or becoming more one’s own self. For these women red shoes embody journeying, knowing the self, agency” (Webster 173).

“Through red shoes and their links to mythic time we access the source of vitality, and it is through the ritual of wear that their symbolic value is activated. It is our participation in the myth rather than fashion that invigorates us. We access myth through the ritual, not of fashion, but of style” (Webster 173-176).

Works Cited

Webster, Elaine. “Red Shoes: Linking Fashion and Myth.” Textile 7.2 (2009): 164-177. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 8 March 2010.

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