“Dream Worlds” Part II of II by Rosalind H. Williams Pp Fashion History and Culture

 We’ve already thought about the Dandy as trend-setter and tastemaker in 1800’s London, however, let’s also think about him who gave fashion of today several key elements, including  Arrogant posturing of “Power Dressing”  A template for avant-gardism, which was used by later sub-cultures, including the Bloomsbury Group (artistic dressing that Valerie Steele talked about in the video), Russian Constructivists, Italian Futurists, cross-dressing lesbians in clubs in the Weimar Republic, flapper girls and post-war subcultures centered around underground music and drug cultures, (Christopher Breward in Fashion. Oxford UP: 2003, pp )  The high ‘camp’ of the runway. See Susan Sontag’s “A Note on Camp” for a definition of what ‘camp’ is.  A dominate ideal body form to which elite aspire.  The birth of cool style, seen many times since. Now, let’s name an example of each of the above that you can trace back to the Dandy’s influence. It can be anyone….

 In the next half of the chapter, we’ll see a complex and tragic hero, named des Esseintes, in the French novel A Rebours (“Against the Grain,” 1884), which tells of his agonizing attempt to salvage the elitist ideals of the Dandy in an age of mass consumption.  When we read about the “Natural Look,” “the Marlboro Man” or even the “Patagonia Way,” consider how similar “outsider” identities help create a fashion style that the mainstream then adopts – and then commodifies to profit from.

 Okay, so this whole story of this guy probably sounds a little random and strange. However, there are a few important things to think about and try to remember for later in the class.  First, remember when he was going to travel to London, but instead decided to travel with his imagination. Remember what the first reading said about the profound importance of the space of the imagination in the modern fashion world.  Second, pay attention to this idea of ennui. That is a combination of boredom and angst and hopelessness that characterized the French concern of the turn of the century, 128. Can you give an example of ennui in modern fashion advertising?

 Corinne Day’s photography of Kate Moss, which the media referred to as “Heroin Chic” after a great controversy ensued captures this idea of ennui in a contemporary setting.

 Ennui: “a chronic sense of vacuity, frustration, aimlessness and futility…the routine of the court demonstrates how a system of consumption can develop its own imperatives, which bear little relation to the attainment of individual happiness or even pleasure, 30.” Also the ideas of envy, vanity and even guilt are closely related to ennui.  While this helped insulate Louis XIV from the ominous political events leading to the French Revolution, what is important is how this informs the ultimate, end-goal of consuming fashion and the end-point of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Recall how Wilson in A Note on Glamour talked about fashion’s ultimate “pointlessness”? How does the idea of ennui change how you think about the “point” of fashion?

 Consider the ‘existential’ vacuum des Esseintes finds himself in:  Knows no one who is his social equal  His religious faith is full of doubt thanks to logic and reason (remember this is post Enlightenment)  The Bourgeoisie is gosh and status obsessed  And the old aristocracy is “a rotten corpse”  So he is tragic and heroic in his resistance against a mass market that it to him “unauthentic.” The democratization of luxury consumption is very bad, to him, and will create “moral suffering and social hatred,” 132. Are there present day groups or people who resist mass culture in a similar way? Name such a non-conformist that comes to mind.

 So des Esseintes creates an “Ark” in which he will ride above the rising flood waters of debased mass consumption, and, instead of buying material goods from the market, will engage in a self- centered “trade” of memories and sensations using his imagination.  He is living the “hyper reality” (that term from the first reading where only imagery exist, “traces of traces,” ect.) where his imagination is so real that his dreams become the real in his mind. *He does buy material things, but only to simulate the imagination. What material things do you buy to stimulate your imagination? Think about fashion products you’ve bought; have you bought any of them in part to enjoy in your imagination. Explain. Enter into the Dream World of consumption….

 The irony of des Esseintest project is that “in a reverse way his mode of consumption is just as dependent on the mass market, just as devoid of individual integrity as that of the butchers’ wives,” 137. And his project is a failure because he cannot effectively use his dream world to criticize another dream world, 145. Have you ever bought a fashion product because you wanted it for its own merits, use, etc., OR because you wanted the status it afforded you more than anything else?

 So the constant search not for absolute “value” or highest price, but in rarity, we see one of the most basic principles of luxury goods emerge: scarcity, 138.  And so the elitist consumer “never finds a resting place,” and hence the fundamental pointlessness to consuming fahsion… This might be a little awkward to think about, but do you ever feel that fashion can be rather pointless?

 We see that in the end the condition of both des Esseintes and Brummell was what could be described as madness, 148.  We also see Marxist theory re-emerge here if we think about des Esssintes’ project as “commodity fetishism,” and see for the first time the term “phantasmagoric illusion” to also describe the process of delusion.  phantasmagoria |fan ˌ tazm ə ˈ gôrē ə |, noun. A sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream: what happened next was a phantasmagoria of horror and mystery. DERIVATIVES phantasmagoric |-gôrik|adjective, phantasmagorical |gôrik ə l|adjective ORIGIN early 19th cent. (originally the name of a London exhibition (1802) of optical illusions produced chiefly by magic lantern): probably from French fantasmagorie, from fantasme ‘phantasm’ + a fanciful suffix.  And we also see that the elitist is just as delusional as the lower mass classes.

 Baudelaire saw Dandyism devolve into Decadence, 150. Can you think of a present day example of Dandyism turning into Decadence? What does this mean for your example in material, cultural and spiritual terms? Who is your “futile king of a futile world,” 151? I think of Princess Diana, Louis XIV or Michael Jackson.

 To conclude, by 1890s France was in a pickle: summing up A Rebours one book reviewer remarked, “after such a book it only remains for the author to choose between the muzzle of a pistol or the foot of the Cross,” 151. Or, you can go insane.

 However, there was a third option: the social and cultural promise of art, specifically the Decorative Arts movement, to “reform” the design of everyday objects so that they “would be useful without being utilitarian, socially experssive without being conformist, (and) practical without being philistine,” (a person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them: [ as modifier ] : a philistine government) 153. Can you name a work of art that has held a similar social and cultural “reformative” quality? I might think of Mr. Nasher’s many public art pieces at North Park Center to elevate the space above the strictly mercantile to a spiritually-sacred space of visual excellence. The Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston or Renzo Piano’s Kansai Airport in Osaka also come to mind as transformative in nature. {Photos following slide.}

From left, North Park Center, Rothko Chapel, Bottom, Kansai Int’l Airport, Osaka, Japan; terminal by Renzo Piano