I find it rather appalling how in most places except for France and perhaps Italy, fashion is still considered the F word for anything intellectual. Dress is a topic of great interest amongst French academia because of the large contribution of apparel, textiles, luxury goods to the French economy, as well as fashion’s anthropological and cultural value. This is hardly the case elsewhere, despite the global apparel market valued at about $3 trillion, accounting for 2 per cent of the world’s GDP.
The shows I went to at last month’s Paris fashion week for men, Spring-Summer 2017, were youth-driven in style and looked to the street for inspiration. There were as many men’s designers and a few for women. Besides the usual styles of the big fashion houses like Versace and Hermes, it was a delight to watch the creativity spill off a couple of designers from Africa in venues around the city.
The london fashion week for men had also taken place just the week before, adding to a feverish coverage in European press of fashion on the ramp and off it, despite the dominant post-Brexit gloom.
But these writings on garments from the shows last month had a general oblique, distorted character. They were often hysterically in praise of a designer and almost never in criticism. The same vocabulary, it seemed, was recycled in different fashion reviews that was seldom not superficial descriptions of just the clothes.
Fashion is not frivolous. I remember reading fantastic clothes criticism by the late Kennedy Fraser of The New Yorker. There are some thoughtful pieces by laurence Benaïm in le Monde as well. But other than a few exceptions, good literary or analytical writing on fashion hardly exists. The long-term effect of this is to keep fashion looking silly while actually it is not.
What a man or woman wears on the street is a powerful medium of individual choice, societal values, and aesthetics — and it is this that I feel has defined fashion through the ages. Influenced less by high society, fashion in my opinion is defined far more by the demands of industrial production and societal needs.
Processes of social, cultural, and historical transformation are reflected in changing dress forms, such that introspecting on fashion, I think, makes for a riveting read of social history. In fact, social revolutions, political trends, and wars leave a mark on how we dress.
For example, the combination of student protests, contraceptives and second-wave feminism in the US and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s did away with gendered roles in society and also in fashion. Young women could now choose when to be mothers and also how to express themselves. They rebelled against the demure scarf and stockings, and instead brought to the world the mini skirt for the first time.
Even earlier, the fascinating post-World War II era in the UK created knickers made of military-issue silk maps and air-raid outfits. This was when British women buried their corsets and gowns, and instead began to wear garments that gave them more mobility, yet while maintaining a sense of elegance and style in the face of bombings and rationing.
In the European continent, too, clothing reflected the many ways in which the war affected countries, socially and economically.
Today, while there is a perception that Americans tend to follow fashion trends more, French girls don’t bother their heads so much. The hair is a bit dishevelled and the dress is always slightly askew and never perfect, even if the handbag is well-chosen and teamed with a perfect pair of shoes — it is indeed a cultivated art of effortless chic by the girls in a country that takes fashion very seriously.
In large part they owe their chic to King louis XIV who reigned in the 17th Century. Recognising the importance of luxury goods to the national economy, he had brought a number of artistic industries, including textiles, under the control of the royal court to make France the worldwide arbiter of style. He ensured that the highest quality fabric and materials were to be found here. This in turn attracted talented couturiers or seamsters to France.
While the engagement of fashion with history is central, an anthropological approach understands dress also within a contemporary comparative cross-cultural and transnational framework. How can we not view fashion this way when the different parts of the entire system of production, marketing, representation and wearing of clothes these days extends its reach around the worldIJ
It has been fascinating how imperialists intervened in local dress practices through trade and education in the past, and it continues to be as intriguing how even today dress is influenced by international economic and political pressures that go on to then play a role in reworking regional and national identities.
Sometimes as a culmination of factors, an individual’s dress in the public space such as workplace or in the private space of one’s home holds its own significance with connotations of clichés, appropriateness and desirability.
For instance, we can not forget Steve Jobs’s rejection of the clichéd corporate suit, and his unvarying signature look of a black turtleneck, blue jeans and New Balance sneakers. Perhaps we could speculate that Jobs used his unique dress to convey a consistency in who he was and what he enjoyed. But what we do know is that his dress was his deliberate decision that became an important aspect of Jobs’s personal brand. He took his fashion seriously.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd. She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum. miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com