Occupy Aesthetics

05 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by brenna in Observations, Politics, Propaganda, Reflections

Despite the best attempts of municipal and larger governments to block coverage, it has been hard to ignore or remain ignorant of the Occupy Movement. Or ‘#Occupy’, should you prefer to use the language of Twitter in keeping with the movement’s primary method of planning, orchestration, and communication.

For those still unaware (if there is anyone), Occupy is the mostly peaceful demonstration of a large number of American citizens ranging from the young, educated, and broke to 90 year-old, retired World War II veterans, who choose to assemble in places of financial power to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the growing financial gap between rich and poor in America. The movement has spread to other countries and has been praised and demonized, supported and condemned.

What has struck me most about the movement is its aesthetics.  I am the daughter of two flower children, those 1960s teens and young adults who did not tune in, turn on, and drop out, but instead fought for political change. I was politicized early (I attended my first political rally at the ripe old age of four), and have grown up not only hearing the stories of the many marches my parents joined, but seeing photos and documentaries so that I would understand what the 1960s my parents participated in truly stood for (ie, not Woodstock alone, awesome though the music may have been). So when the first photos broke, it was hard for me not to instantly see the similarities.

Image via SFGate

Image via Travis Lin Photography

And it was not long before Occupy had its iconic moment of horror,

to join the infamous 1970 photo from Kent State.

The imagery produced by the movement itself, however — particularly its posters — borrow heavily not from the aesthetics of the last age of American protest, but from America’s ‘enemies’ during that time: the Communist regimes of the USSR, China, and North Korea.

Image by Eric Drooker

Image by Alexandra Clotfelter

Image by Dave Loewenstein

You could also argue that perhaps the protesters had seen a few too many episodes of Mad Men.

But I just don’t think that a movement organised enough to form a library for use by those residing in camps protesting corporate greed would have chosen anti-Capitalist imagery by accident.

Capitalism in and of itself is not flawed, any more than is Communism. But the belief that the Market — or the Premier, or the President — is always right most definitely is. The problem is that Capitalism and Communism are only uncorrupted so long as they stay within the hallowed white tower of Academia. This is not to say that Academia is pristine so much as to say that any theory must alter when placed in the hands of human beings, a highly unpredictable species if ever there was one. And Capitalism began to be corrupted in America in about the mid-nineteenth century, when President Lincoln gave unprecedented powers to rail and industrial corporations in order to win the war between the Union and the Confederacy. Lincoln was troubled by what the outcome of his choices would be and even wrote to the effect that he hoped things would return to what they had been before.[1] Genies are not quite so easily put back in bottles.

Capitalism was further distorted when the Fourteenth Amendment awarding the recently-emancipated slaves ‘personhood’ was used to award corporations their own ‘personhood’. The idea that a corporation could have the same rights as a person is ludicrous in the extreme. Particularly when the corporations are magically immune to the repercussions for their actions that other ‘persons’ must face. If an individual steals or murders, they must stand trial and pay the determined penalty. But when corporations do the same, you do not see groups of CEOs, their boards, or shareholders going to prison for the decisions they made as a corporation.

Whatever your personal feelings about the Occupy Movement, you must admit that it has begun a dialogue. It has drawn attention to the growing schism between rich and poor, and at long last given voice to a portion of Americans who have been silenced since the introduction of first radio, then television turned the exchange of information in the modern world from a dialogue (as could be achieved when the only medium of communication was word of mouth or print) into a one-sided dictation of what those who HAD the information decided those who did not could or should know.

But all the attention and all the dialogue will not change anything if the thousands of protesters and supporters do not begin speaking the language the politicians understand: Votes.

America is lucky in that it has direct representation. Each vote counts, as the Iowa Caucus in which Romney only won by EIGHT votes has shown.

To paraphrase Ghandi: First they ignored the movements because they were organised through Twitter and other social media (it’s not like any of those things brought thousands to Tahrir Square or anything); Then they dismissed us, and told us to take a shower and get a (non-existent) job; Then they fought us, and banned press coverage and arrested journalists so we could not see the overtly brutal tactics they used to do so; Now, we win. Whoever ‘we’ ends up being.

By voting.

[1] Gore, Al. 2007. The Assault on Reason. (New York, Penguin Press): 88.

Conspicuous Intellectualism

19 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment

by brenna in Dress History, Gender, Identity, Textile History

This is a modified version of the paper I recently presented at the Developments in Dress History conference at the University of Brighton. Where permissible I have included the images exactly as I used them in my presentation, however all of the objects and works of art are copyrighted, so internet links will be provided to those images I purchased for the conference, but which are not available for public display.

I am extremely grateful to Linda Baumgarten of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Clarissa Eseguerra of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for their assistance as well as letting me rifle their collections both in person and online for this research.

Please feel free to share your comments or questions!

♦♦♦

Conspicuous Intellectualism: Banyans and the Construction of Masculine Identity through Dress in the late Eighteenth Century (1760 – 1800)

The Savile Row tailor, Hardy Amies once said, ‘A man should look as though he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, then forgotten all about them.’[1]

The maxim itself may be ‘modern’ (Amies only died in 2003), but the attitude it expresses regarding the sartorial construction of masculinity is at least 250 years old.

When looking at the suits of middle to upper class men in Britain and France from the early to mid-eighteenth century, it is hard to believe that any man could have simply ‘forgotten’ about what he was wearing.

© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Man’s Suit, France, ca 1755 Silk cut, uncut, and voided velvet (ciselé), on satin foundation
© Los Angeles County Museum

At a time when one wore one’s wealth and status on one’s back (or displayed it on one’s wife), opulence was the norm. Fabric was more expensive than labour, thus the most elaborate velvets, silks, and wools were used in men’s attire so that anyone could see at a single glance that you were a person of money or rank, if not both.[2]

This is particularly true at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the three-piece suit – coat, waistcoat, and trousers (breeches at that time) – was still relatively new. The waistcoat and coat replaced the doublet sometime around 1666, when Charles II discarded it and hose as his own attire. The shift in sartorial preference was a propagandistic attempt by the king to prove his loyalty to England over France by rejecting what was seen as a particularly ‘French’ mode in favour of good British tailoring.[3] Cuffs for the coats were overly large, waistcoats reached nearly to the knee, and the skirts of the coats were voluminous in the amount of fabric, pleats, and buttons or other adornments employed. However, by the middle of the century, the male silhouette had begun to narrow, making such excessive uses of fabric no longer fashionable, and occasionally, even the fabrics used became simpler and less ostentatious, compensating with more expensive appliqué.

© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Man’s Suit, France, ca 1760 Coat and waistcoat: wool plain weave, full finish, with sequins and metallic-thread embroidered appliqués; breeches: wool plain weave, full finish, with silk and metallic-thread passementerie
© Los Angeles County Museum of Art

But, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century we can see a massive societal shift in attitudes, through the satire aimed at those  (usually older) men still clinging to the traditions and fashions for embellishments that had been the norm as recently as fifteen to twenty years before. The mezzotint engraving of ‘The OLD BEAU in an EXTASY’, depicts an older gentleman in absolute raptures with his own reflection as his valet laughs at him behind his back while preparing his bag wig. A closer look at the cartoon shows that the gentleman is dressed in a banyan – quite appropriate for the toilet – but beneath it we can see that the waistcoat he wears is embellished with the sort of opulent gold appliqué that is no longer in vogue anywhere but court. The caricature was published on 13 July 1773; caricatures and satire are employed to mock an aspect of, or group of people within society that is no longer needed, wanted, or approved of. The old beau is mocked for caring about his appearance, and indeed caring about it so much that his own reflection sends him into ‘an extasy’. This, quite literally, illustrates that society at large already expected men to put on their clothes with care, and then to forget all about them.

The phrase ‘Age of Enlightenment’ can be rather misleading, because it can suggest a uniform age of reason and philosophy happening simultaneously across Europe, when indeed it happened in different ways and at different times from Russia to Scotland. But the Enlightenment in Britain was unique in that it happened in the two metropolises – London and Edinburgh – through the medium of printed essays and treatises, lectures, and coffee house discussions rather than around or in university or court settings as had happened in France and the rest of Europe. This made the ideas as accessible to the middle class – even upper working class, such as Thomas Paine – as they were to the elite.[4] And for the first time in British history, politics and philosophy were being heavily and publicly debated through the medium of the printed pamphlet.[5]

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had deposed James II and ensured a safely Protestant monarchy, but an unforeseen side effect was the complete discrediting of the ideas of Divine Right and Hobbes’s Leviathan.[6] If God’s ‘chosen representative’ as monarch wasn’t, that placed the power of government even more firmly in the hands of Parliament than it had been during the Civil Wars or Cromwell’s Republic. In fact, it meant that the fate of Cromwell’s Republic had not been divine retribution for the sin of regicide, it had simply failed. Divine Right may have addressed the legitimacy of a king to rule, but it had a broader impact on society: implying that everyone was in the place that had been divinely chosen for them. If they were not in their current position due to divine will, then surely they could change it if they had the means and desire. And if they could remove a king without divine retribution, why, then, couldn’t they remove members of Parliament if they didn’t like them?

For the first time since the Renaissance, or perhaps since Ancient times, men began to question their place in the world, how that world worked, and even the concept of divinity and the rights and power of religion. Not content with mere contemplation, they began to perform experiments to find answers to these questions. Newtonian laws of nature replaced Divine Right. And the Hobbesian idea that in his natural state man was a feral beast, was replaced with the Rousseauian theory of the ‘nobel savage’, ie, that it was civilisation that corrupted man; ‘civilisation’ being the old regime and the courts they lived in. The obvious solution – to Rousseau – was to get ‘back to nature’, so as to reclaim our natural untainted state.[7]

Not for the first time, nor the last, what people read informed not only their attitudes toward their society, but also what they wore. Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther had perhaps the greatest impact on masculine attire and identity of any single novel written at the time.[8] Published in 1774, it is partially autobiographical and follows the misadventures of a young nobleman who has escaped to the country on a twofold mission: to take care of some family business and to recover from the sudden death of a dear friend. There he sits in glades reading Homer in the original Greek, communes with the yeomanry to learn and partake of their simple, ‘real’ tragedies, and falls in love with a woman already engaged to someone else. This setting serves as a contrast for the court life he runs away to to rid his mind of the beautiful Carlotta through work as an assistant to the ambassador. The court, in contrast to the idyll of the countryside, is full of gossip, intrigue, corruption, and people who care far too much about their appearance (particularly repulsive in the men). Werther triumphantly discards his ornate court attire when he is forced to resign from his post due to a petty, fabricated scandal, and is all too happy to don his plain blue frock coat again: clothing that is comfortable, well made, and easily forgotten about once it has been put on.[9]

The novel created a vogue for English country sporting attire. Elements of it were borrowed and became a part of men’s daily wear, such as the coat collar, and the frock coat and great coat being elevated from the wear of servants and the working class to permissible clothing for the gentry. All of it leading to the rise of British tailoring which still stands to this day. By the end of the century the standard uniform for male portraiture (and probably daily dress) was a navy blue frock coat, a gold- or buff-coloured waistcoat, and buff broadcloth or buckskin breeches.

©Los Angeles County Museum of Art Portrait of Richard Palmer George Romney Oil on canvas, 1787

Colours became extremely limited: black for evening dress, brown, navy, and dark green for everyday dress, with drab – as seen in the portrait of Sir Brooke Boothby by John Wright of Derby – being the most popular. [10]

During the Age of Enlightenment, middle and upper class men now had far more important things to think about than their clothes. Subtlety became the guideline.

Except in the banyan. In fact, during the forty-year transitional period under discussion, the banyan was one of the increasingly few garments where men could be flamboyant in their textile choice. The only real change in the banyan during this time period was in its increased prevalence. Throughout the eighteenth century it came in two distinct styles: kimono, or frock coat.[11] During the latter half of the century construction techniques had improved, as can be seen in the Victoria and Albert’s Coromandel Coast banyan as opposed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s.

© Victoria and Albert Museum Banyan, Coromandel Coast, 1750 – 1775 Cotton chintz, painted and dyed, lined with block-printed cotton
© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Man’s At-Home Robe (Banyan), Coromandel Coast, 1700 – 1750 Mordant-painted and resist-dyed cotton

That the banyan was one of the few ways men could use ornate fabrics is particularly evident in the Colonial Williamsburg banyan from about 1760: this banyan (with matching waistcoat) was actually constructed from fabric recycled from a woman’s sacque.[12] A remarkably similar fabric was used in the construction of a made-to-order French banyan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection, showing how acceptable such a textile was for this garment.

© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Man’s Banyan & Waistcoat, France, ca 1765 Silk, wool flannel lining

At a time of intense simplification – even constriction – on what textiles constructed an appropriately ‘masculine’ public identity, it is odd that the banyan not only survived, but thrived. The number of middle and upper class men painted in banyans for their portraits rose exponentially, and indeed the banyan was considered acceptable ‘undress’ to be worn in the mornings not only to receive visitors, but even to visit the famous coffee houses where they would discuss the latest news and philosophies with friends and acquaintances.

© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Man’s Banyan, China & The Netherlands, 1750 – 1760 Silk satin and silk plain weave (damassé)
© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Man’s At-Home Robe (Banyan), France, ca 1760 Silk satin, lined with striped plain weave silk

The banyan, being an object of conspicuous consumption which used a vast amount of the most expensive, exotic fabrics available, was also extremely ‘masculine’ as an object of what I like to think of as ‘conspicuous intellectualism’. The preference for either the most expensive or the most exotic foreign fabrics (Indian cottons, Chinese silks, or even Scottish tartans), made them as elaborate as the daily dress of the first part of the eighteenth century. Possibly more, since they were such a contrast to the plain coats and breeches that had become the new expected attire of the average middle to upper class man. But as Brandon Brame Fortune stated in the title of her 2002 article for Dress, ‘Studious Men are Always Painted in Gowns’.[13] Men of the Enlightenment had more important things to think about than their clothes, but what better way to advertise that you yourself are a thinker and ‘studious man’ than by donning the garment worn by Newton for many of his own portraits? And perhaps unconsciously, how better to cling to the old ways of wearing your status and wealth for all to see, without incurring the mockery afforded to old beaus, than by being conspicuously intellectual in a coffee house of a morning?

The practice of wearing the banyan or dressing gown in public became so prevalent that by the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, laws began to be passed banning them from the streets of Bath and a number of university towns, with other cities soon following suit.[14] Sartorial laws are generally passed to comply with society’s attitudes and expectations surrounding appearance; that enough irritation was aroused by the wearing of banyans in public to warrant the attention of governing bodies shows that it was no longer acceptable for men to be seen in a state of undress – and perhaps in such elaborate fabrics – outside of their own homes. The diminution of what was appropriate public attire indirectly had the same effect on what fabrics were acceptable for men in public.

© The University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection Professor John Robison Sir Henry Raeburn Oil on canvas, ca 1798

The banyan could still be worn to receive visitors, and was, and men continued to be painted in them – since this was now their only public forum for displaying the garment or the fabrics they were made from. And they were painted in them whether they actually owned one or not. As can be seen banyans used prodigious amounts of fabric at a time when fabric was more expensive than labour. This meant that some men, such as Nicholas Boylston, of Boston, would simply have themselves painted wearing a fictitious banyan, thus enabling them to appear intellectual and wealthier than they actually were.[15] (There are two versions of this portrait identical in every way but one: in one, the banyan is blue-green, in the version below it is brown, despite their being the ‘same’ damask fabric, leading me to believe these garments were not painted from life.)

©Boston Museum of Fine Art Nicholas Boyston John Singleton Copley Oil on canvas, ca 1769

These portraits, though, were the banyan’s last ‘heyday’ and that of exotic fabrics for men. Shortly after it became unseemly to be seen in the street in one’s dressing gown or banyan, it ceased to be acceptable to receive visitors in the garment unless you were being attended in your sickbed. The trend for the banyan in portraiture faded as well, so that by the 1820s, it was no longer acceptable for men to be seen – even painted images of them – in anything but the most ‘forgettable’ of fabrics.

Since then, any masculine attire that did not conform to the rigid ideas held by mainstream society have been relegated to minority groups, and they (or any man seen to noticeably care about his appearance) have been mocked and pilloried for their refusal to conform ever since. From the extravagant suits of the African American men who were part of the funk music culture in the 1970s, to the Mods of 1960s London youth, to the Beatniks, the Teddy Boys, and the Punks; they all have specific names, and their ‘look’ has a place in history, because it stood out as a contradiction, and a contrast to the eighteenth-century ideal that clothes should be chosen with intelligence, put on with care, and then forgotten.

It is ironic that at a time period when Western Civilisation was progressing in thought, ideas, politics, and understanding, it so severely constrained the attire of the men making that progress. During the time period of transition they had the banyan, which served to emphasise their masculinity by showing them to be thinkers and philosophes, but by the end of the Enlightenment, they didn’t even have that.

Bibliography

Baumgarten, Linda. 2002. What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America. (Williamsburg, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation).

Baumgarten, Linda. 1998. ‘Altered Historical Clothing’. Dress, Volume 25: 42 – 57.

Byrde, Penelope. 1979. The Male Image: Men’s Fahsion in Britain 1300 – 1970. (London, S. T. Batsford, Ltd.).

Chenoune, Farid. 1993. A History of Men’s Fashion. Deke Dusinberre, tr. (Paris, Flammarion).

Colley, Linda. 1992. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837. (New Haven, Yale University Press).

Fennetaux, Ariane. 2004. ‘Men in gowns: Nightgowns and the construction of masculinity in eighteenth-century England’ immediations, Volume 1: 76 – 89.

Fortune, Brandon, Brame. 2002. ‘ “Studious Men are Always Painted in Gowns” Charles Wilson Peale’s Benjamin Rush and the Question of Banyans in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Portraiture’ Dress, Vol. 29: 27 – 40.

Hume, David. 1994. David Hume: Political Essays. Knud Haakonssen, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

Lemire, Beverly. 1991. Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660 – 1800 (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

McDowell, Colin. The Man of Fashion: Peacock males and Perfect Gentlemen. (London, Thames and Hudson, Ltd.).

McGillicuddy, Louisa. 2011. ‘Economies of style in The Ides of March’ The Guardian Fashion blog, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/fashion-blog/2011/oct/28/ides-of-march-style  [28 October 2011]

Paine, Thomas. 2000. Thomas Paine: Political Writings. Bruce Kuklick, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

Ribeiro, Aileen. 2002. Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe 1715 – 1789. (New Haven & London, Yale University Press).

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2010. ‘The Fall from Nature’ The Western World. Dr John P. Farrell (ed.) (New York & London, Penguin Custom Editions): 9 – 17.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2010. ‘Morals of Nature’ The Western World. Dr John P. Farrell (ed.) (New York & London, Penguin Custom Editions): 18 – 29.

Schama, Simon. 2002. A History of Britain: Volume III. (New York, Hyperion Books).

Taylor, Lou. 2004. Establishing dress history. (Manchester & New York, Manchester University Press).

Voltaire. 1989. Voltaire: Selections. Paul Edwards, ed. (New York & London, Scribner/Macmillan Books).

[1] McGillicuddy, Louisa. The Guardian website: [28 October 2011].

[2] Baumgarten, Linda. 1998: 44.

[3] Lemire, Beverly. 1991: 10 – 11.

[4] Paine, Thomas. 2000: viii.

[5] Schama, Simon. 2000: 12 – 141.

[6] Hume, David. 1994:xi – xiii.

[7] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2010: 13 – 16; 19 – 27.

[8] Ribeiro, Aileen. 2002:212.

[9] von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 2005: 12 – 108.

[10] Ribeiro, Aileen. 2002: 212 – 218.

[11] Fortune, Brandon Brame. 2002: 28.

[12] Baumgarten, Linda. 1998: 50 – 51.

[13] Fortune, Brandon Brame. 2002: 27 – 40.

[14] Fennetaux, Ariane. 2004: 81; Ribeiro, Aileen. 2002: 178 – 180.

[15] Fortune, Brandon Brame. 2002: 28 – 32.

 

Truly FABULOUS!

10 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment

by brenna in Exhibits, Fashion, Reviews

‘Dress is at one and the same time a science, an art, a custom, a feeling.’

– Honoré de Balzac, 1799 – 1850[1]

I own a number of exhibition catalogues, most of them pertaining to fashion and textile exhibits. It is a joke among my friends that I own more books and catalogues about clothes than I own actual clothes. Catalogues are tricky things; you at once must please the academics, inform the layperson, and appeal to the person who wandered in on a whim, or the insistence of a friend or colleague, and whom you have to win over.

This is not an easy balancing act to do.

To take two catalogues from my collection, FAMSF’s Pulp Fashion, and their Balenciaga and Spain: the former appealed strongly to the person on the street and (yes, I have checked) even to the layperson. It contained full-colour photographs of the pieces as presented in the exhibit, with a (very) little bit of information. The latter pleased the academics: it opened with a facsimile of a statement in appreciation of the designer from Baroness Phillipe de Rothschild, dated 1973. Most of the photos are archival, and there are several essays with very small print. The academics loved it. Most of the laypeople, however, seemed disappointed. They wanted something to remember the exhibit by, not a reference text on Balenciaga. Of course, it is possible the two exhibits had different target audiences for their catalogues. Not all exhibit catalogues are designed to appeal to everyone.

But some of them are.

I reserved my place on the upcoming Costume Society of America behind-the-scenes event for FIDM’s FABULOUS! exhibit several weeks ago. There is to be a catalogue-signing session, and I had convinced myself that I could just wait until the event to get my copy … Then Monica Murgia tweeted that she had received hers and was in raptures. Then Two Nerdy History Girls did a review. Then the FIDM Museum Blog did a recap of the opening and began to discuss pieces from the exhibit, and, well … What’s the Carrie Fisher quote? “Instant gratification isn’t fast enough”?

So, my copy of the FABULOUS! catalogue arrived two weeks ago. I have been petting it ever since.

It is truly fabulous. 370 full-colour pages featuring the fantastic images and detailed information that patrons of the museum have come to expect from the blog (meticulously run by Rachel Harris), and previous catalogues.

The FABULOUS! exhibit is a retrospective, displaying and celebrating the last ten years of acquisitions by the museum, ranging from an early nineteenth-century gentleman’s court suit, to the multi-coloured ‘hightop’ trainers of the 1990s. The catalogue is broken down into six sections based on time period, and spans 210 years of fashion history. Each section opens with a detail photo of one of the objects, and a fold-out timeline covering the major developments and events in art, fashion, politics, and science during the time period; with a one-page essay on the facing page placing the events – and the garments, accessories, and images – within the correct context. What follows are page after page of exquisite photographs by Brian E. Sanderson, with succinct, but elucidating descriptions of each object, often including its provenance and history, by curators Kevin Jones and Christina Johnson.

I cannot find a fault. And I have tried. Even the section on Scottish textiles – I did an entire (not very good) ‘virtual exhibition’ and wrote more than one paper on tartan during my post-graduate studies – was impeccable.

It is perhaps not as informative as the Balenciaga catalogue, but I do not turn to exhibition catalogues as the ultimate reference tool when I am doing research.  I look to them for images of the garments I have been reading about; for the sort of concise context FIDM is so good at providing in its catalogues; and for the reference section.

I, myself, am rather ignorant of ‘modern’ fashion history. I studied the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth. With the help of the FIDM Museum blog – which is firmly ensconced in my GoogleReader feed – and now the FABULOUS! catalogue, I have embarked on an independent study course, of sorts, educating myself not only about twentieth century fashion history, but how to be objective about my own century.

This is extremely fitting since FIDM is first, and foremost, a school.

The museum was conceived in 1973, ‘when the Fashion Design Department insisted that students studying clothing design and construction examine garments firsthand in order to fully understand textile drape, pattern structure, and finishing techniques’.[2] The faculty were the first donors, raiding their own private collections to aid their students’ learning.[3]

It has grown by leaps and bounds and does not simply comply with, but sets a standard of excellence in exhibits, incorporation of modern technology … and catalogues.

19 November can’t come fast enough.

All images courtesy of FIDM Museum Blog

[1] Jones & Johnson. 2011: 13.

[2] Ibid: 6.

[3] Ibid: 6.

Research Ramblings, or Court vs Country, 21st-Century Style

29 Oct 2011 2 Comments

by brenna in Fashion, Reflections, Reviews

If you follow me on Twitter or have checked out my Current Projects page, you’ll know that I am preparing a paper for the Developments in Dress History Conference at the University of Brighton in December. The paper is titled ‘Conspicuous Intellectualism: Banyans and the Construction of Masculine Identity through Dress in the late Eighteenth Century’ (thank you to one of my best friends, Shobha, for giving me the main title, credit where it is due!).  And it involves quite a bit of research.

I have been reading and re-reading various essays, novels, and political and philosophical tomes written by eighteenth-century scholars attempting to get as clear a picture as possible of what the intellectual culture was and how it might have shaped an eighteenth-century, middle to upper class man’s attitudes about himself and masculinity.  This is the Age of Reason.  There is a lot of intellectual debate going on.  The printing press was no longer a new invention, it was a flourishing one; innumerable circulars and pamphlets flooded not just the metropolitan areas but the countryside as well. The landed gentry needed their news and opinion pieces when out of town as much as when they were in town casting their votes, after all.  Books were becoming more plentiful for those who could afford them (though you bought the pages and paid to have it bound yourself, so that it would match the rest of your books, of course).  The authors being read and discussed were Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, Paine, Goethe … just to name a few.

It was a tense time politically.  There was the Seven Years’ War that spread across the Continent and beyond (to be called the French and Indian War in North America). That was followed by the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. In Britain, the Union between Scotland and England into Great Britain was fairly new (1707), and not universally adored. The Union had dissolved the Scottish Parliament in favour of a “new” British Parliament, but since it remained at Westminster, it was seen by those opposed to the Union as the absorption by the English parliament of the Scottish.  That’s not to say that the Scots (those few who could vote) didn’t have representatives, but in a country that still considers Scotland and England a massive distance apart (the train ride from London to Edinburgh is about four hours, a travel time I do not find impressive), in the eighteenth century it must have been extremely unnerving to have your government packed up and moved to over 500 km away when the only mode of transport was sail, horse, or your own two feet, and you might speak Gaelic rather than English.

Not everyone opposed the Union. Many, like David Hume, saw it as an opportunity for growth and progress for Scotland. Which is what it turned out to be, but it is not easy to see what the struggles during turbulent times will bring when you are living through them. Especially when your uncertainty is compounded by the removal of the Stuart king, James II, in 1688 in favour of the safely Protestant William and Mary (Mary being James II’s daughter).

This deposition rattled more than just the Scots. It completely upended the long-held ideal of the Divine Right of kings. This Divine Right was seen to have been proved when the Cromwellian Republic, established in the wake of the Civil Wars and the beheading of Charles I by his own people, failed. The Restoration of Charles II was accordingly atonement for the sin of regicide, and the prosperity of that era (or so they thought of it) was proof they had been forgiven.

But when Charles II died childless (well, legitimately childless … ), his openly Catholic brother James II was seen as a backdoor to the blood-drinking papist despots of the Continent, and not fit to rule Protestant Britain, thank you very much. We’ll just ignore that Britain had only been truly Protestant for little more than a century, shall we? Good.

Charles II and James II were the descendants of Mary Queen of Scots. Charles II was the last king to be crowned in Scotland as well as England. For those in Scotland opposed to the deposition, the Union was just a further stripping of their identity. Particularly when it was followed  by the Clearances in the late eighteenth century.

There were multiple attempts by the Jacobites to reinstate the ‘rightful’ king: First James II (attempts from 1689 – 1690); then his son, James III (‘The Old Pretender’, attempts from 1708 – 1715); then the glorious Bonnie Prince Charlie, who failed for the last time in 1745 at the Battle of Culloden, and whose face now adorns shortbread biscuit tins the world over. How the mighty have fallen…

The Jacobite cause never truly faded, though. There are still Jacobites today, albeit very small in number, who want to depose the current monarchy and put a (believed) descendant of the Stuarts back on the throne.  Which ignores that the current monarchy are descendants of the Stuarts, they are just the product of daughters married off to Hanoverians rather than the ‘direct male’ line. The crazy is everywhere.

But in the eighteenth century the Jacobite cause was seen as a true threat. There were secret toasts held by secret clubs, the toasts made in glasses with secret signs etched into their designs, secret loyalties stitched into garters and bedcovers by the Jacobite women. The secret, potential threat.

It was an uneasy time to be in Britain.  Not least because they had deposed the ‘rightful’ king, and other than the rebellions (which were easily quelled) nothing had happened to the government itself.  It carried on with the business of running the country.  Taxes were set and collected. People went about their business. Which called the ancient, established idea of ‘rightful rule’ into question, and rattled the core belief systems of an entire nation (or two nations, to be precise).  This meant the Cromwellian Republic had simply failed, rather than being a divine punishment of some sort. It also meant that they were right to stamp out the rebellions, because the Jacobites were clearly standing in the way of Progress. Progress replaced ‘divine right’ in a way. It was seen as linear, unyielding, and right. Thus anyone who stood in its way (ie, the Jacobites, or the indigenous people of colonised nations), was mowed down accordingly in its name.

Real power was now acknowledged to be in the hands of the politicians. Now all those votes the landed gentry were casting when in London really, truly meant something.  And they began to be bargained for, debated and even bought in new ways.  Or perhaps they weren’t new, they were just more publicised thanks to all those busy presses.  Either way, a war of sorts began.  Not just between political factions, but between ‘Court’ and ‘Country’.

Court in the eighteenth century meant high society, and the king’s court, not an institution where crimes are tried.  The Court began to be seen as corrupt, superficial, fake and decayed. Who knew what was under all that make up (worn by both men and women), or those ridiculous wigs?  What diseases did they hide?  If you wanted truth, you went to the Country, where real people made their own way in life.  The people of the Country didn’t make their living on gossip or outdoing each other in appearance. They grew or reared their own food, made their own clothes… and so on.  You can see the beginnings of the Victorian morality discussions about Country innocents off to the City to make their fortunes in the factories and ending in Ruin.

Interestingly enough, it was through clothing that this debate began to be waged. Simplicity became desirable, decoration detestable. This might have had something to do with the ongoing wars with France and thus an interruption in British silk supplies, but who has time to bother with facts when you’re being philosophical in the Age of Reason? When have human beings not come up with philosophical and moral justifications for conforming to necessity? The other intriguing fact is that it would take longer for women’s fashions to simplify even though they were the most constricting, to the point of doing bodily injury. It was acceptable for women to be concerned with their appearances. Everyone knew they had weak minds (unless they were Voltaire, who believed women to be just as good as any man, only nicer). But a ‘real man’ had more important things to consider. If he did take care or wear things that were considered too decorative, or put on wigs and make up, he was a dandy, or a macaroni (Yankee Doodle Dandy, anyone?).

This became most apparent to me when I was reading Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werthur, because Aileen Ribeiro cited it as being highly influential to fashion in her Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715 – 1789 (pp 212 – 216).  I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her. But, I can see why it would have an impact. (I do not, however, recommend it to anyone looking for a good read, it is an eighteenth-century philosophical morality piece, so not for the faint hearted or the easily-annoyed.)  The main character retires to the Country to recover from the death of a friend and sort out some family affairs.  There he sits in glades and reads Homer in the original Greek and connects with the local people (the working class and yeomanry), sharing their ‘true’ sorrows, and admiring their self sufficiency.  In the highly regulated dress etiquette of the eighteenth century, and quite frankly because it was impractical, one did not wear the same clothes in the Country as one wore to Court. And Werthur’s disparaging comments on the people at Court and what they wore indicate that he has the fashionably disdainful attitude towards its artifice that should be expected of a well read, thoughtful man of his century.  It’s all very Rousseauian. There is a passage where he lifts his own plain, blue Country coat to almost reliquary status, mostly because it was what he was wearing when he first met his love interest Carlotta (who is engaged to and in love with someone else when he meets her, but he insists on falling in love with her — sorry — is helpless to fall in love with her anyway).  I told you it was all very annoying.  The other reason he holds this plain coat in such high esteem is that it is a representation of the real, uncorrupted TRUTH of the Country, etc. And Werthur is ever so happy to be rid of his Court finery when he is fired from his position in the Ambassador’s employ. I think you get the point. Not that he stops making it for another hundred pages, or so.

The thing I found most striking is that while we no longer have ‘Courts’, this attitude is still prevalent in our own society. Perhaps it is even reflected in the fact that what we call simply a pump or a high heel in American English, is referred to as a “Court shoe” in British English.  Though I’ve not done enough research there to say for certain.  It is still true, though, that to care about your clothes and appearance, or fashion in general, and especially both deems you superficial and frequently stupid. You don’t have anything better to do with your time, so you go shopping, etc. The film of The Devil Wears Prada seems to bear this out, the plain, practical but passionate young journalist gets a job at a fashion magazine so she can make rent and is corrupted by shiny, pretty clothes, finally making her way back to ‘true’ journalism at the end.

There is a sort of reverse vanity among certain people that is expressed through intentionally NOT paying too much attention to your clothes. When I was in Oregon this time last year (and admittedly, I was in Portland for less than 24 hours, so I might be doing that lovely city a disservice), I swear everyone was in hiking or all-weather gear of some sort. No doubt proving they were down-to-earth, no-nonsense sorts of people. Or maybe it was just that it is almost always raining or misting up there.  But do you have to wear Northface nylon parkas and hiking shoes? Couldn’t even just a few people wear excellently cut trenchcoats and a nice pair of Wellies or riding boots?

I knew a young woman who had a history of being actively mean to people she ‘no longer had to see everyday’ during chance meetings (if she didn’t like them), of being rather nasty to others about their clothes while being extremely sensitive about her own, and who declared that she was lucky to be so ‘low maintenance’ because it made her such a good girlfriend. Her interpretation of low maintenance being that she didn’t wear make up or spend a lot of money on clothes. There is so much wrong with that entire situation that it would make for a book, not a blogpost (all human beings are high maintenance, full stop), but the fact remained that she didn’t adjust her conduct or her attitudes, but her closet. Why did she feel the need to neglect her appearance, rather than alter the part of her that thought it was okay to bully others? How did that prove she was ‘low maintenance’? Is it that we are such a visual society? Do things like this happen in other cultures?

I have sat in coffee shops listening to friends discuss how much they have spent on their clothing, trying to outdo each other with who had the lowest price tags. Why? I am possibly prejudiced, but I assumed it was to prove that they were far to busy being deep and intellectual to bother with things like clothes. Or maybe it was just one of those senseless competitions students will enter into for no actual purpose.

I do find myself wondering as I do my research what, precisely, says that because you care about your appearance, your clothes, or just clothes in general that you must not have anything else in your head? Whether you live in the eighteenth century, or the twenty-first. Yes, there are people who go over the top when it comes to shopping and appearance. But isn’t there an equivalent at the other end of the scale? Who’s to say that the man or woman dressed to the nines in New York City doesn’t have as much of an appreciation for nature as the rugged hikers of Oregon? Who’s to say that just because a woman loves make up and clothing that she’s not a deep thinker?

The eighteenth-century Court versus Country debate, that’s who. But I think it goes deeper.

In France, if a female politician dressed in the dowdy way most American and British women in politics do (Nancy Pelosi being an exception), she wouldn’t get elected. The French attitude is that if a person doesn’t take care of themselves and make an effort to present their best self to the world, how on earth can they be trusted to take care of a country?

Is it Protestant eighteenth century, then, that gave us these attitudes? Am I being too sensitive because these are criticisms of something I love? Is it possible that those who are so dismissive of clothing are dismissive out of insecurity? They are unsure and awkward about their clothes, so they belittle those who are not like the child who derides the toy of a friend that he actually covets. Or are they genuinely unconcerned and reacting to a world that, no matter how many philosophical treaties we write or read on the subject, does still judge based on appearance? That seems to be what David Mitchell is doing in this Soapbox rant:

You can’t judge a book by its cover because appearances can be misleading. Even carefully ‘unconstructed’ ones.

Feel free to weigh in.

Fairy Tales

16 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment

by brenna in Fiction

I haven’t written any creative fiction since 2009 or shared any of my fiction publicly since 2000, when I won an award at a local young writer’s conference.  This is my first short story since then.  All rights reserved.

~

He was standing with his hands in his pockets in the archway where the castle’s portcullis would have been had it still had one when she first saw him. His posture was relaxed and casual, full of a seeming-self assurance she often craved for herself. There were holes in his jeans. His tee shirt fit well but not closely. There were imitation converse on his feet. It was not an outfit that had had much thought put into it, but it was an appearance that had been thought about enough to give the impression of not having been thought about.

She didn’t think any of this at the time. Thoughtfulness, analysis, and attempts at description and explanation would come many, many months later. After the first kiss. After the last.

No. At the time she didn’t really think anything at all. She’d been too locked in her own self doubting, unhappy, lonely, jetlagged thoughts to have any space left in her mind for anyone else. It was not until he began explaining to some of their wider-eyed fellow international students that queuing was practically a national past time in Britain that she even realised he was on the tour.

“Have you seen the movie of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” she asked. He seemed cautious and a bit surprised as he turned to look at her through dark-rimmed spectacles. She noticed his eyebrow ring then, and another piercing in his left tragus. She noted under her rising level of uncertainty that they somehow didn’t look incongruous or particularly shocking on him. But, she was too busy feeling as though she was interrupting. That this interruption was being judged to do more than simply observe his appearance.

“I’ve read the book…” he replied warily. Before, his voice had been that of a seasoned performer. Not a professional, merely the confident tones of someone accustomed to attention and delivering comedic anecdotes to mates – or even strangers, she would learn later – down at the pub.

“Oh, so have I, it’s infinitely better,” her own voice was almost apologetic now, and she hated herself ever so slightly for it. “But there’s a scene in the movie where they’re dealing with the Vogons and Arthur steps forward and says ‘I’ll handle this! I’m British. I know how to queue!’”.

She could never remember afterwards if that was the first time she heard him laugh, or even if he did. But she had clearly passed the first test, because there was the shaking of hands, and the exchange of names, courses of study, places of origin and guarded anecdotes of why they’d come so far to do postgraduate work. A rather mundane, ordinary conversation. One that had already been gone through a few dozen times with other students. One that would be repeated many times again. But this one was different. More important and thus more cautious. At least for her.

Their tour group assembled then, the international university students mixed in with the regular tourists, foreign and British alike. Their guide had that same performer’s confidence, but with a professional’s flair, a Scottish accent, and a love of quotations. “It was a plan so cunning you could –“

“Pin a tail on it and call it a weasel,” she and her new acquaintance said in unison. There was a pause, they looked at each other and it was then that she realised how absolutely wonderful his smile was. And felt a flutter that it was directed at her. The potential in the moment was almost overwhelming. She would never know how she lost it.

The rest of the tour was fairly ordinary. But even two years later she could describe it in detail. The Stone of Scone did turn out to be rather dull and unremarkable. The tour guide quipped about how happy fathers were when their daughters announced they wanted to be married in St Margaret’s chapel, “because it’s a very small church”. She was the only one on the tour who knew Charles II had been the last king to have a Scottish coronation. The great hall was now an armour display room with a magnificent wooden ceiling. The War Memorial was poignant, and particularly arresting due to the names of the recent dead in Iraq and Afghanistan being daily updated in a simple three ring binder.

He never left her side.

They walked back to the university’s main campus together. It was a way she would come to know by heart in the next year, but that day she was oblivious to how she got back. They stopped at the University Shop to get drinks. He mentioned wanting to try Irn Bru, and explained it as the Scottish national soda, to which she replied that she knew that and had been meaning to try some, but had forgotten the name what with the jetlag and her visa issues. It sounded fake to her own ears, even though every word was the absolute truth.  He picked up a paper as well in order to do the crossword, “Later, though”.

It was a beautiful and completely un-Scottish day. The sun was out and it was quite warm… for Scotland. It was probably only about 18°C (65°F). At the end of her year she would consider it almost hot, and also be thinking in metric and Celsius as though she had done it her whole life.

But that day she was thinking that the weather was nothing like what she had expected it to be. That she was glad she had worn a dress, but wished it hadn’t been a sweaterdress – even a cotton one. They sat in George Square for hours, talking about everything and nothing. A couple – friends or lovers, it was hard to tell – sat doing a joint meditation a few feet away that ended in hugging. She kicked off her shoes to feel the grass between her toes and the grass was soft and greener than she believed possible. The air was clean and clear. There was a crispness to it that kept the chill from biting and the sun from oppressing. Their sodas were sweet, but still accustomed to American tastes, she did not yet find it too sweet.

She did not yet find hope a burden. And though she would have flatly denied it – and believed herself to be telling the absolute truth as she did – she still believed in fairy tales.

That night, at a university residences-organised pub crawl, they would learn they had the same favourite comedians. She would learn about his love for music and just how much she loved his laugh. And she would wish, and wish, and hope and wish. And she would ecstatically write all her wishes and hopes down and send them back to where she had come from. Three months later she would experience that first, priceless kiss.

Two years on, almost a year after it all ended, at the end of her more exhausting days she would look back, torn by pain, loss, loneliness, and regret and wonder where she had gone wrong. Sometimes cursing the day she ever thought of going on the castle tour. Sometimes questioning whether things could have, would have been different if only she’d had the confidence, self knowledge, the certainty she now possessed. Knowing she had only won those qualities through surviving the emotional turmoil and aftermath of The End.

She’d read Lao Tzu, Emerson, Dickenson, even Douglas Adams and JRR Tolkein, and embarrassing self help books borrowed from the library so that no one would see them on her bookshelves later. She finds the most comfort in an obscure poet, Yehuda Amichai.

And she goes to sleep, and dreams of a casually confident young man, with a bewitching smile and an enchanting laugh, standing in the stone archway of a Scottish Castle, asking her her name.

“They dismantled us

Each from the other…

A pity.  We were such a good

And loving invention.

An aeroplane made from a man and wife.

Wings and everything.

We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.[1]“

[1] Excerpt from ‘A Pity. We were such a good invention.’ by Yehuda Amichai.

久しぶり

10 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment

by brenna in Reflections, Reviews, Textile History

The Clark Centre for Japanese Art and Culture is a small cluster of buildings set back from the road,  in the centre of a walnut grove outside of the small, central San Joaquin Valley farm town of Hanford.  It is very easy to miss if you don’t know to look for it. Once you find it, it is hard to believe you are in the Dairy Belt of California.

Photo by Elliot Kallen for Google Earth

It was founded in 1995, and I started going in late 2001 or 2002, after I’d started university as a Japanese language and culture major. It was at the Clark Centre, though, that I attended one of the most fascinating lectures I ever heard as a student of Japanese culture. There was a trunk show for kimono fabrics, with an accompanying talk from the man selling the textiles about the history of the kimono-making industry in Japan.  He discussed the proper way to wear the garment. He explained the history of sumptuary laws, particularly those relating to the Edo period.  It was the first time I’d ever even heard of sumptuary laws.  And there was the fabric…

I particularly remember a gorgeous, uncut bolt of fabric designed to be specially and precisely printed, in just the right amount for a single kimono, thus ensuring a unique garment.  The ingenuity required for this astounded my then-nineteen-year-old mind. It astounds my nearly twenty-nine-year-old mind, for that matter.  The bolt was a soft purple. Somewhere between lilac and lavender, with an asymmetric white and pink plum blossom pattern on it.  My mother offered to buy it for me, since custom- milled and printed silk was far beyond the budget of a university student.  Looking back nearly ten years later… I wish very much that I’d let her.

I forgot about the Clark Centre somewhere along the way. The same way I forgot my resolution to return to Osaka as soon as possible after I boarded my plane home at the end of my summer living there.

The Clark Center is a wonderfully unique museum.  I can say this for a fact, having been to a number of Asian Art museums over the years. Some of them in Asia.  It is set in a Zen garden with raked pebbles and carefully, asymmetrically placed stepping stones.  The museum space is modelled on a Japanese temple.  Indeed a temple piece depicting a dragon holding a pearl (symbolic of the Buddhist search for enlightenment) even adorns the ceiling after you enter the museum proper. You are only allowed to see it after you remove your shoes in a separate antechamber with two sets of doors that are not opened at the same time.

This serves to conserve the art pieces by regulating temperature and humidity levels, but it has a second purpose.  By imitating the practice performed at Japanese shrines, you are almost forced into a different mindset. One that prepares you to properly take in the beautiful pieces you are going to see, and which readies you for contemplation and meditation, a crucial aspect of Japanese art. The rooms of the museum — only two — are open.  There is no glass between you and the art.  But then again, you never wander through the museum alone, you are always accompanied by a docent or a curator.  This however is not as oppressive as it may seem, but instead enhances the feeling of intimacy.  The display platforms are tatami covered.  The walls are not actually rice paper, but they are the same colour.

I rediscovered the Clark Centre on Friday completely by accident.  Brainstorming about a possible CSA regional symposium paper idea — and spurred on by a conversation with Heather Vaughan, who explained that the paper could even be about collections of Eastern dress, or the influence of those styles on European/American clothes — I checked the Clark Centre website, and low and behold, not only are they hosting a two-part clothing exhibition, there was a lecture that night, from Seki Masumi on the wearing of kimono.

I have worn — and even danced in — yukata on multiple occasions. Living in Japan for an entire summer meant I experienced most of the annual matsuri. My mother purchased a yukata for me from a proper shop in San Francisco before I left, and then one of my host families actually gave me a yukata and obi, both of which I cherish and have dragged with me from place to place over the last decade. Two years before my summer abroad I had worn yukata for a performance put on by the Japanese Student Association at my university.  But I have never worn actual kimono. Even when I wore the yukata, my obi was always tied for me. For those who do not know, the obi is tied in the back, and has many, many meanings and can be extremely ornate. Or so I’d been told. I have never seen an obi tied in anything other than a butterfly bow by those walking in front of me to matsuri or during the dance recital.

Ms Seki is a master of the tea ceremony, which has very rigid rules about what can and cannot be worn. But it is one of the few areas of Japanese life where kimono is still required. She did a wonderful job of briefly explaining the history of kimono to an audience that was mostly ignorant of the garment’s traditions.  Later on, she answered questions magnificently.  There was some new information for me, though, despite all my courses and papers on Japanese culture and language.  According to Ms Seki, a graduate of San Francisco State University currently residing in Tokyo, most Japanese are actually terrified of wearing kimono in public because of all the rules regulating how it is worn: certain colours, patterns, and fabrics can only be worn during certain ceremonies and certain times of year; how you tie your obi, or your accessories, or the fabric you choose determines the level of formality which is extremely important depending on where you are going and what you are doing; cross the wrong part of the kimono in front of the other and you have dressed yourself as though you are a corpse (very, very bad luck).

There are now even academies and schools instructing people in how to wear the kimono, both because there are occasions where traditional dress is needed, and to preserve an art that is fading due to the ease, comfort and thus prevalence of western clothing. I knew from my time in Osaka that kimono were rare.  I did not know why until Friday.

Ms Seki did two demonstrations. The first, featuring curatorial assistant Virginia Soenksen as a model, was very traditional. As seen in the above photo, and in this one, which shows Ms Seki tying Virginia’s obi:

I do not have complete stage-by-stage photographs, but Virginia started out in cropped yoga pants and a tank top, and gradually, piece by piece, dressed herself (with Ms Seki explaining and demonstrating certain techniques along the way) from undershirt, to under-kimono, to kimono, to obi.

Virginia is largely responsible for the current exhibit on dress, very knowledgeable on the subjects, and took kimono-wearing classes while she was living in Japan for two years after university.

It was so much more informative to see rather than simply read the process for dressing in kimono.

The second demonstration was more “experimental”. Ms Seki’s one objection to the kimono schools was the way they bring uniformity to kimono-wearing.  Everyone is so terrified by the rules that they will not experiment and this saddens her, because everyone looks the same.  So, with her friend Sharon as a model, she dressed Sharon in a less traditional way: With the kimono more open in front to show off a silk blouse and the jewellery she had worn, pinning up the front of the kimono to reveal the beautiful burgundy lining, and adding a shawl and heels instead of the usual hapi or haori and zori.

My only criticism would be that this lecture pertained to mainland Japanese dress and how it is worn, while the current part of the exhibit is about the Ainu and the Okinawan traditional dress — two minority groups, often neglected in Japanese studies.  Surrounded by such contrasting aesthetics some sort of short explanation would have decreased confusion, and made the evening that much more educational.  However, as a demonstration of kimono and how to wear it — which is admittedly all the event professed to be — it was a fantastically informative evening. Even despite my own basic knowledge I came away feeling that I finally understood the place and the proper way of wearing the traditional garments of a society I dedicated the better part of my undergraduate career to studying.

The Clark Centre staff were indescribably helpful. Virginia, and the Head Curator, Dr Mark Andreas, were wonderfully patient and friendly.  More than willing to talk to me about the way in which kimono, like eighteenth-century European clothing, forces you into perfect posture, and comparing the aesthetics of the Ainu embroidery to the carvings done by Pacific Northwest First Nations.  They even promised a tour of the exhibit either on a Saturday when they are running curator-led tours, or a private tour by personal appointment if they have time (ie, look for an exhibit review in the coming weeks!).  I purchased the catalogue and look forward to reading it on my flight to Seattle tomorrow.

I’ve pulled my copy of the catalogue for the Museum at FIT’s exhibit, Japan Fashion Now out of the storage box in which it’s been living.  Looking through its photos is like I’m twenty years old again. Except the clothes I saw (and coveted) on kids in Harajuku that July are now on runway models and major museum mannequins.  My adolescence and early adulthood made museum-worthy. I thought I was just a misfit nerd.  Turns out I was cutting edge.  But there is more than nostalgia that has caused me to revisit these fashions and the memories they invoke.

Driving out of the walnut grove that night, I realised I had reconnected with something that I had loved with the all-consuming passion that only a sixteen- to twenty-year-old can possess, but from the perspective of someone who has reached adulthood.

I had forgotten about kimono, and that lilac fabric I’d wanted but wouldn’t ask for because it was so expensive, I’d forgotten my promise to myself to return to Japan. Somewhere along the way the dreams turned into day jobs, bills, and rent to be paid.  Then there were new countries to visit and cultures to explore.  The last fortnight seems to have been one in which I reconnected with myself, because for the second time in as many weeks… I seem to have found my way home. 唯今!

So this is what serendipity feels like…

28 Sep 2011 1 Comment

by brenna in Reflections

When I applied to my master’s programme in 2009, I can safely say that the last thing I expected to be doing a year after graduation was working part time, for minimum wage, in the small, conservative town where I had been born.  I genuinely thought that when I got on the plane to Scotland I was embarking on a new life, in the wide, cosmopolitan world of international cities, and art, and all the things one dreams of when one is 26 and still believes in fairy tales.  I never expected to even look back, let alone come back.

But life is rarely what you expect. And it hardly ever turns out the way you plan.

What I have learned this week is that sometimes, that is a very good thing.

I have a new job. It is only part time.  It does not pay much. But it does pay me enough. And it makes up for it in time. Time for reflection, for fun, for family, for writing.

I work for a local yarn dyer, as an assistant in her studio.  I empty and scrub dye pots, then refill them again. I rinse yarn and soak yarn and skein it. It is the most physically exacting job I have ever held. But it is also the happiest. My coworkers are wonderful, friendly people. My boss is kind and generous with her knowledge (though not her dye recipes, of course!).

And I spend almost every moment of my working day in direct contact with fibre and textiles. I’ve been inspired in my own experiments, and expanded my understanding of the creation of two of my favourite things on earth: fabric and colour.

Serendipity is loosely defined as a happy accident, or as an event or ability to stumble upon good fortune.

I was standing barefooted (because with all that water about and having not yet purchased Wellies, I thought it best to preserve my shoes) in the yard — in the British sense of the word — behind the warehouse, which catches the sun and dries the newly dyed wool. I was turning those which still needed to dry, and twisting the dried colourways into hanks so they could be reskeined.  The concrete beneath my feet was gritty and warm. The sun was intensely bright in the way it only can be in central California in late summer. But there was a breeze that tousled my hair.  I had a loop of brightly coloured yarn in my hands, which was warm and trully sunkissed. I twisted it, took a deep breath and there it was: a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss.

I didn’t want anything more. I didn’t want anything less.  I was standing in the sunshine, twisting beautiful, brightly coloured, warm yarn around my wrists, with a soft wind dancing through my hair and across my arms.

I am in the last place I thought I would be.  I am in the last place I wanted to be.

But it feels like home.

Savagery and Satire

05 Aug 2011 2 Comments

by brenna in Exhibits, Fashion, Reviews

SATIRE

2b. the employment, in speaking or writing, of sarcasm, irony, ridicule, etc. in exposing, denouncing, deriding, or ridiculing vice, folly, indecorum, abuses, or evils of any kind.

—     Oxford English Dictionary

“I want to be honest about the world that we live in, and sometimes my political persuasions come through my work… Let’s break down some barriers.”

—     Alexander McQueen[1]

 

When I applied for my masters programme I was very specific that I was a history of dress scholar, I did not bother with fashion.  My interests were lodged firmly in the past, and I did not have time to deal with all that superficiality and consumerism and modernity.  I dealt with muslins and the rise of the British cotton and imitation shawl industries and things that were real, in the superior and oh-so-defensive tone of someone who has newly embarked on a course of study, as the only member in her entire department doing a dissertation on dress studies can be.  Utterly and completely neglecting that today is tomorrow’s history, and that today’s socio-political issues are just as equally represented in today’s clothing, even if not described in the flowery language of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell.

I was writing my final essays, finishing my internship, and dealing with life, the universe, and everything when the news of Alexander McQueen’s suicide broke.  I felt a slight sadness that anyone would be so unhappy as to take their own life, but thought nothing more of the topic.  I’m afraid I didn’t really know who he was.  I didn’t even know it was time for the Autumn/Fall shows.  I had “serious” academic work to be getting on with, after all.

It was not until previews of the upcoming show and teaser images from the revolutionary new catalogue began to flood my Twitter feed that I sat up and took notice.  The jacket with the antelope horns on the shoulders caught my attention instantly, as did the eerie photography and aesthetics.  There was something about the garments and the atmosphere of the photos that appealed to my former wannabe-goth, thirteen year-old self.  But other than noticing that it was taking place in New York in May, and that I live in California so would not be able to attend, I simply admired the photos, thought “oh, that’s the sort of thing he did”, and went on to the next link.

But the teasers kept coming.  They became full articles, discussing the revolutionary new way in which the catalogue had been photographed (museum collections cannot be worn as a rule, but since these were all still within the House’s collection, they were placed on models who were then photoshopped to look like living mannequins); or discussing the designer himself.  Then, I purchased the catalogue, and a “well, maybe when I’m on the East Coast in July I’ll see if I have time” became “I must see this”.

I was embarrassingly late in becoming an Alexander McQueen fangirl.  I still prefer historical or technical discussions of clothes to current fashion, and I am happy to admit that I am completely out of my comfort zone.  And yet, I think that is the way McQueen himself would have preferred it.  There is something about his work that evinces an intense emotional engagement from me, and clearly I am not alone.

The exhibit is drawing record-breaking crowds.  I arrived to see it on a Monday, when The Met is normally closed, thinking the lines would be shorter. I was so, so wrong. I was surprised to discover that the normal entrance fee was doubled to $50, that Savage Beauty was the only thing you would see for that, and what’s more, I could still see the lines nearly out to the street from the side entrance.  As I had at least another 24 hours in New York, I resolved to be there before the museum opened the next day to “beat the lines” (that sound you hear is hysterical, ridiculing laughter, by the way).  The museum opened at 09:30, and I was there well before then, but the lines were already absurd.

The signs at the ticket kiosk said that the wait to see Savage Beauty was only fifteen minutes, but after climbing two flights of stairs and seeing the line, I had a rather sudden premonition that this could not be the case. . .

Nearly half an hour later I was perhaps two-thirds of the way through the line and still could not even see the entrance to the exhibit.

. . . I may have gotten bored.

I do not know how long I actually waited, but I would happily have waited longer.

The exhibit is nothing short of awe-inspiring. For McQueen, the show was the most important part of what he did; the garments of a collection could not be designed until he had a concept for the show itself.[2] The Met exhibit’s creation of atmosphere and attention to detail seems almost a recreation of the designer’s own process.  Each and every room is different, and specifically designed for the collection it showcases.  From the plain concrete walls and raw wood platforms of the “Romantic Mind” collection that displays McQueen’s earliest work – creative reconstructions of the traditional tailoring he learned while an apprentice on Savile Row – in the first room, to the opulent, gold-leaf walls lit by flickering (electric, of course) candelabra for the opening room to the “Romantic Nationalism” section – which features the sharply tailored pieces of his Widows of Culloden collection in their bright red McQueen tartan, and the soft, flowing shapes of The Girl Who Lived in the Tree with its references to British Imperial wealth – about midway through the exhibit.

Each and every mannequin’s head is covered, the only exceptions being the “Romantic Mind” room which featured headless mannequins, and the “Cabinet of Curiosities” room, where some of the bizarre and whimsical jewellery pieces or more unsual hats could not be displayed except on an uncovered bust. Each masque fits perfectly with the aesthetic of the room.  Gold, bevelled pieces for the “Romantic Nationalism” room described above, burlap sacks for the room featuring the shipwreck-themed Irere collection, and futuristic faux-metal headpieces recreating the bizarre hairstyles of the Plato’s Atlantis runway show which introduced the “armadillo” platforms for the final “Romantic Naturalism” room.

Despite the variety of the masques, this manages to create a sense of cohesion in an extremely diverse exhibit.  It also continues a tradition of McQueen’s, who would intentionally obscure the features of his models, either through make up, veils, headpieces or masques; he also rarely used “supermodels”, not wanting the overall message, or visual impact of the show to be overshadowed by the model’s own fame.[3]  He even said, when he was accused of misogyny and encouraging exploitation of women in his shows (specifically Highland Rape), “We’re not talking about models’ personal feelings here… We’re talking about mine. Models are there to showcase what I’m about, nothing else. It’s nothing to do with misogyny. It’s all about the way I’m feeling about my life.”[4]  The masques, even for featureless mannequins, are very much in keeping with this mentality because despite their uniqueness, they complete the look, and almost become “background” forcing you to look only at the clothes and the designer’s vision.

The other two elements that most impressed me were the use of video, sound effects and music, and the recreation of some of the runway shows.  I became aware of the background sound and music in the second room, which features the darkly gothic Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious collection, as well as his posthumous Angels and Demons.  The walls are covered in what look like old, tarnished mirrors with grand, gilded frames.  There is a fan for one particular outfit, which has a cape that billows dramatically as a result; but it is the sound of eerie instrumental music – sophisticated haunted house music, really – and wind as if through vast corridors which subtly reinforces the ambiance of the entire display.  The Cabinet of Curiosities features a number of videos of McQueen shows, making you pause that much longer to take each one in.

After leaving the “Romantic Exoticism” room, which is music-box like in its use of turntables and mirrors, you are faced with McQueen’s VOSS runway show in miniature.  A mirrored box where you confront your own reflection transforms into a display case for mannequins wearing dresses from the collection and an image of the white tiled, sanatorium surgical theatre it originally took place in with its own mirrored box in the middle as the background.  The lights go down on the mannequins, and the background image comes to life, becoming a video of the final moment of the runway show in which the walls of the box within the box come crashing down, shattering on impact with the floor, and revealing a nude woman whose body is completely opposite to those of the models that have just been dancing around her.  She is not tall, she is very curvaceous and of a larger size, her face is completely obscured and moths and other insects flutter about and over her.  The entire display then fades back to the mirrored box it was when you approached it, and you are once again confronted with your own reflection.

I had never before realized just how important context was for museum displays of costume.  The catalogue had featured a rather plain dress: black with a gold damask print painted on it, but in the bottom left corner the pattern had not been finished and instead drips of gold paint run down as though the painting had been halted part way through and abandoned to dry however it might.  I simply thought it was an interesting pattern effect, nothing more. But in person, within the setting, I had a completely different, deeply emotional reaction. After the first, gilded “Romantic Nationalism” room, you are taken into a room with ravaged wooden floors and walls, in the background “God Save The Queen” is played on an electric guitar, in what can only be described as an ironic way.  In conjunction with the tattered, torn, and ripped lace, leather and chiffon that makes up the other garments from the Highland Rape collection, my perceptions of this black dress with gold damask print were entirely transformed. My favourite course while doing my masters was my Jacobitism to Romanticism class which looked at the material culture of Scotland, particularly during the Jacobite uprisings, so it is perhaps the historical context that made this room so memorable to me.  Yet, the combination of sound and visuals, followed immediately by the quiet, ethereal hologram of Kate Moss is still my favourite.  It had what can only be described as a visceral impact on me and my opinions of this collection. Altering them forever.

As a visual display the exhibit is undeniably stunning.  There were several pieces where I wished there were mirrors behind stationary mannequins so that I could see the backs or fronts that were turned towards the walls, but that would have disrupted the aesthetic presentation.  My biggest complaint was with the information panels.  Not the labels for the garments, but the descriptions featured to explain each room and collection.  McQueen frequently, and sometimes violently, protested the stereotypes and labels he was given by the press.[5]  He hated being considered the “bad boy of fashion”, or having himself and his vision reduced to the “Michael Cain syndrome” as he referred to it, of the East End, Cockney boy made good.[6]  Bolton’s panels and his preface to the catalogue do not put McQueen in this box, but they create a loftier, more romantic one: a modern version of Rousseau’s Noble Savage; a misunderstood, melancholy prophet showing us all “the truth”. This seems in direct contrast to Susannah Frankel’s statement in her introduction to the catalogue that “… as a human being, he was far more complex, elusive, and indeed magical than any reductive media incarnation”.[7]

People, though, are usually far more comfortable with “reductive media incarnations” than with complexities and things that are uncomfortable, even while they flock to them. The museum needs to make the artwork accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and to introduce a strange and perhaps completely unknown designer to an ignorant public. McQueen himself even acknowledged that “… Any interest in the clothes is secondary to interest in the designer”.[8]  And this is true of all art. The public is just as fascinated by Pablo Picasso the man as they are by his art, being violently offended when Arianna Huffington dragged him off a pedestal and into gritty reality with her biography in 1989.  Tickets for biopics about Jackson Pollock or Vermeer – fictitious or not – would not sell if we did not want to see the myths writ large.  But, all the hype is nothing if you are not a good designer, craftsman or artist, and McQueen certainly was.  Whether or not fashion (said in the same condescending tone I embarrassingly used to employ) is truly art is still publicly debated, though.

In April the New York Times ran a piece on big museums “finding a place” for fashion in their exhibition schedules, which seemed to come to the conclusion that it was merely a cash cow to fund “proper” art exhibits.  In July another article ran in conjunction with the opening of the Madame Grés exhibit in Paris, asking point blank whether fashion was really art or deserving of such major museum attention. That fashion exhibits sell is clearly indicated by not only the lines in my own photos above, but the fact that the Met is open on Mondays just for the McQueen exhibit, and able to charge twice its normal admission price.  And get it. It is even staying open until midnight this weekend to try and meet the demand to see the exhibit during its last few days.  These are unprecedented measures and changes.  The Met has never been open until midnight.  Or on Mondays.

But does popularity validate that something is art?  There are arguments that say yes, and arguments that say no.

Another NYT review suggested that having the House itself financially and artistically involved in the exhibit was limiting and that if fashion wanted to be taken seriously as art, it needed to be removed from its commercial environment and “treated as art”, complete with analysis, comparison, and even criticism.  I agree with the author, Holland Cotter, that in order to treat it seriously, it must be analyzed the same way as all other ar tforms, within the proper socio-political context, and even on occasion drawing some negative conclusions, and that this cannot be done when you have the owners of the objects breathing down your neck and demanding to be made to look good. But that sort of treatment usually happens in conferences and reviews, not exhibition catalogues. However, Cotter claims this happens in other Met catalogues, which I can neither confirm nor deny, this being the only exhibit, and only catalogue I have ever had contact with.  But, in my experience it is highly unusual for museums to say “well, you know, Edward Weston is considered this amazing, early photographer… but we just can’t tell”.  They are trying to sell their product.  And in fact, according to psychology researcher Paul Bloom in his TED Talk, that is perfectly normal. We place a huge amount of importance and value on how a particular artwork is perceived by others, and that influences how much value we have for it. And well established museums and their curators will carry more weight in determining something’s importance and value, than say, well, me.

And yet, Cotter’s article does make one wonder if the reason fashion isn’t considered art isn’t due to this corporate, and arguably biased involvement in its museum display.  Would it be taken more seriously if it was removed from all of that and treated as any other form of art or craft is?  But then again, without the funding a fashion house can provide, would the Met have even been able to mount such an extraordinary exhibit?

For me, Alexander McQueen was a satirist.  He did not write poetry or prose (that I know of), but he took our taboos and forced us to look at them full on, even if they made us squirm; he took our standards of beauty, our perceptions of women, our ideas about history, our stereotypes and our conformities and blew them out of proportion, distorted them into the ridiculous and made us reconsider and think about them, even if we didn’t necessarily like what we thought or felt afterwards.  He was like Jonathan Swift, suggesting the Irish eat their babies in lieu of potatoes during famine.  He was occasionally grotesque, but satire often is, and that is its power.  There was a NYT opinion piece in April suggesting that the only real political and social change comes through satire.  Once we are made to realize something is ridiculous, we are no longer intimidated.  It can be changed.

McQueen himself seemed uncertain whether he was an artist or not.  Towards the end of his life he spoke of going back to art school, but always referred to himself as a designer.[9]  I believe he was an amazing craftsman – the skill used to create his garments attests to that – and a true artist.  Fashion, and particularly his shows “which blurred the boundary between runway show and a new kind of installation art” were simply his medium.[10]  McQueen even said, “For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channelled through me. Fashion is just the medium”.[11]  The irony that he was discussing people’s perceptions of beauty through fashion is not lost on me. Nor was it lost on him.

The exhibit is undoubtedly one of the best I have ever seen.  Anyone who cannot make it in this weekend should avail themselves of the video walkthrough on the Met’s website (next to the last, at the bottom of the page, though as a proper little acolyte, I highly recommend all the videos).  It is almost as good as being there, and there is less danger of being elbowed in the ribs (all those people in the photos above… yeah, they’re in the exhibit with you).

I regret very much that I came to appreciate this man only after he had died. But I feel that to try and place him in a box whether you are a media outlet or a museum is unfair.  He said that if we wanted to know him, we should look at his work.

I think the best homage we could give him would be to do just that.

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. 1961. Sense and Sensibility (New York, Signet Classics).

Bloom, Paul. ‘The origins of pleasure’ TED Talks. TED [27 July 2011], http://bit.ly/oMPoT4 .

Bolton, Andrew. 2011. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Cotter, Holland. ‘Designer as Dramatist, and the Tales He Left Behind’ The New York Times. The New York Times [4 May 2011], http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/arts/design/alexander-mcqueen-show-at-the-met-review.html?partner=rss&emc=rss .

Fabrikant, Geraldine. ‘Museums Are Finding Room for Couturiers’ The New York Times. The New York Times [20 April 2011],

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/fashion/21MUSEUMS.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss .

Frankel, Susannah. 2001. ‘Alexander McQueen’, Visionaries: Interviews with Fashion Designers (London, V&A Publishing).

Knox, Kristin. 2010. Alexander McQueen: Genius of a Generation (London, A & C Black).

Kristof, Nicholas D. ‘The Power of Mockery’ The New York Times. The New York Times [16 April 2011], http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/opinion/17kristof.html?_r=1 .

Pieri, Keri. ‘Because Only Kate and McQueen Matter Today: Met Exhibit Pics’ Stylecaster. Stylecaster [29 April 2011], http://www.stylecaster.com/fashion/12637/because-only-kate-mcqueen-matter-today-met-exhibit-pics#124689 .

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2010. ‘The Fall from Nature’, The Western World, Dr. John P. Farrell, ed. (New York, Penguin Publishing).

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2010. ‘Morals of Nature’, The Western World, Dr. John P. Farrell, ed. (New York, Penguin Publishing).

Wilson, Eric. ‘A Mannequin in Every Sense’, The New York Times. The New York Times [13 April 2011], http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/fashion/14ROW.html .

Winchester, Simon. 1999. The Professor and the Madman (New York, Harper Collins Publishing).

[1] Bolton: 130.

[2] Ibid: 24.

[3] Ibid: 22.

[4] Frankel: 20.

[5] Ibid: 14, 16 – 19, 20; Bolton: 17; Knox: 7.

[6] Frankel: 20.

[7] Bolton: 17.

[8] Frankel: 20.

[9] Bolton: 231.

[10] Knox: 7.

[11] Bolton: 92.

… through the bamboo grove

08 Jul 2011 2 Comments

by brenna in Finished Object, Green Issues, Knitting, Textile History, Textiles

   
 
      The winter storm
hid in the bamboo grove
      and quieted away.
                                         -  Bashō, ca 1691[1]
 

Well over two years ago, I started knitting a Stefanie Japel pattern called Orangina.  Japel named hers based on the colour — orange, which I never wear — but I liked it for the lace pattern and the subtle sexiness that an all-lace top creates.  I knew from the beginning that I wanted a longer, more blouson version than the original, and so modified the pattern to 46 cm (approx 18”) of lace work, and only 7½ cm (3”) of ribbing – the original pattern called for only 38 cm (15”) of lace, and nearly 13 cm (5”) of ribbing – and I am very happy with the result, if I do say so myself.

 

 Despite starting in May of 2009, I did not finish the garment until January 2011.  While the lace pattern was extremely tricky, the length of time it took me to finish was not necessarily because the pattern was difficult, but because moving to Scotland, getting your masters degree, and moving back takes up far more time and attention than I had anticipated.  As does “finishing” a lace piece, I discovered.  Anyone reading this who is not a knitter will not realise that when you finish knitting you do not automatically have a garment.  The fibres have been under considerable stress, so blocking has to take place.  Blocking not only washes a garment that has been in your hands getting covered in oils and dust for weeks – or in this case, years – but it also softens the fibres, which are likely to have a lot of tension after the long preparation process to turn them into yarn, then being knotted into cloth. Once softened the garments can be lain out to dry and patted, stretched and often pinned into their proper shapes.  This is especially necessary with lace, since it is one of the most likely products to twist and distort the carefully created pattern out of all recognition.  Taking the shape of the piece with it.

The blocking process was harder than I’d expected, due simply to the nature of lace fabric.  Lace is quite possibly the most recent textile-making technique to be invented. It was made, typically, by the poorest of the poor to adorn the clothing of the wealthiest, and is believed to have originated either in Italy or Dalmatia (the coastal region of what was formerly Yugoslavia) around the fourteenth century.  It spread to the rest of the world through European missionaries and colonists.[2] It is beautiful, and time-consuming to make, which is why for years it was worn only by the rich – because time-consuming usually means expensive.  It is hard to fully comprehend how much skill and effort goes into something until you make it yourself, and my own lace was knitted, not needle or bobbin lace which is much smaller, more intricate and complicated to create.

As you can see, the garment is constructed of two identical pieces which are seamed up the sides.  However, despite knitting each one exactly the same size, I discovered the hard way that when blocking you can end up drying them in two completely different sizes.  This requires you — well, me, more accurately — to then re-soak, and re-block one piece until it matches its “supposed” twin. If you don’t the garment will not hang correctly, and really, what is the point of hours and hours of work to create something you will never wear?

The other difficultly arose from the nature of the fibre I chose for the shell.  I knew I couldn’t afford silk, but I wanted the drape, and the sheen you can get from silk, without the fragility, or the damage to my wallet.  So, I went with bamboo.  Yes, there is such a thing as bamboo yarn. And it is extremely absorbent, meaning that it “grows” when you put it in water and thus lies when you lay it out for blocking.  I’m not bitter or anything.  It can also be somewhat taut and reluctant to stretch when it is wet, in contrast to when it is dry, when it will be quite soft and flexible.  Or at least that was my experience with this particular yarn.  Yarn has many, many processes, and dyes can also alter the structure of a fibre, so until I make something from a different brand of yarn, I will not know for sure if this is a property of bamboo or a property of this bamboo.

Traditionally bamboo’s place in clothing and textiles has been peripheral.  For centuries it was used to create geta or clogs, or thin strips would be woven to create zori sandals or the sugegasa conical hats seen in the photo above by Kerry Shaw.  Instead, in Japan bamboo was originally used as a construction material for ships, bridges and buildings.[3]  Other uses for bamboo included the making of tea whisks and other implements used in the practice of the tea ceremony, 茶の湯 (cha no yu), and for vases for ceremonial flower arranging known as 生け花 (ikebana).

 It is also used in traditional basketry from Kyoto, Shizuoka and other regions, an ancient art which has been translated in the modern era into sculptural modern art pieces such as those showcased at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. As a result of its innate ability to be manipulated into shapes so different from its own, bamboo came to symbolise flexibility within Japanese screen and scroll painting.[4]  Scroll paintings would have been seen only occasionally, being hung in the entryway according to the season and the thematic material of the imagery or by design when studying a particular scroll or sutra; whereas screen painting would have been seen every day, used as they were as decoration within wealthy houses of the sliding panels or folding screens that partitioned rooms in Japanese homes.  Within Japanese culture the sacred and the secular are frequently blurred, and this is particularly true in the visual arts. As a result many of the paintings had a link to Zen, Confucianist, or Taoist tales about the unity and harmony that can be found in nature.[5]  Bamboo would be an important symbol then, reminding the viewer that sometimes you have to “bend with the wind” to stay in harmony with what is going on around you.  The density of a bamboo grove can also offer protection by hiding those who do not wish to be found. Perhaps one of the most famous illustrations of such a situation is Seven Sages in a Bamboo Grove which depicts seven Taoist scholars hiding from their rabidly Confucianist  emperor’s death sentence within the safety of the bamboo grove.

Image via Asia Society

The knowledge of bamboo’s symbolic meaning permeates Japanese culture and is subtly reinforced in the bamboo vases, basketry, tools, fountains and landscape that its people encounter every day. So why was it never used as a fabric?

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an extensive collection of ancient and recent Japanese textiles, and while there are many examples of silk, cotton or even hemp fabrics, not one is made of bamboo.[6]  It may be used as a design on a printed cotton, but never as a woven fibre.  There is evidence through patents filed in the mid- to late-19th and early 20th centuries of experiments to create cloth from bamboo; but, it has only been recently, with the dawn of the “Green” movement and the trend for ecofriendly fabrics, that it has made its way into more mainstream use as a textile, and has been used as towels, pillow stuffing, sheets and baby clothes.

Bamboo qualifies as a bast fibre, like hemp or linen, which is a fibre spun from “the stalks of certain dicotyledonous plants”; the stalks are typically stripped of seeds and leaves then left to soak in water to separate the bast material from the woody fibres; after being crushed and combed the material is ready to be spun into thread or yarn.[7]  Bamboo, though is different.  It has to be soaked in a chemical solvent (different to each manufacturer and typically kept secret) in order to make it pliable enough to be turned into a fabric.  Which is why it was never used as a spun thread before: the technology did not exist.

The reasons why bamboo is considered “green” are numerable: it is grown without pesticides, fertilizer or chemicals; when harvested it is easily replaced because it grows very quickly; it does not devastate any animal habitation.[8]  It is, however, a weed, and puts other plants and crops in danger due to how quickly it grows if it is not checked.  And unfortuntately, the process to turn the cellulose within bamboo into a fabric is the same as that used to turn wood pulp into rayon: it involves a lot of chemicals – including sulphuric acid – which are far from environmentally friendly.[9]  So while the growing of bamboo is extremely good for the environment and sustainable – provided you don’t let it choke out other crops – the manufacture of the fabric is as far from it as possible.

The “green” nature of the product was merely a bonus for my own purchase of bamboo yarn.  Fibre choice is extremely important in creating any garment: the natural qualities of the fibre will determine how well the garment retains its shape and colour, whether the resulting fabric is stiff or has a luxurious drape to it.  And each garment will require a different balance of each quality. I was simply looking for something that had the drape, softness and sheen of silk while being more colourfast and less expensive.  I purchased both the cream yarn featured in this garment and a rose-coloured one that I am currently using to make a cardigan, however I am not sure how keen I would be to purchase it again.  Or at least, I would be more careful in choosing my manufacturer. There are ecofriendly ways to process bamboo, but they take more time and are – as with lace fabric – more expensive as a result.

When the ancient Chinese painters from whom the Japanese inherited their painting tradition chose bamboo as the symbol of flexibility, fabric was probably the last thing on their minds.  But a fibre that can create both the ephemeral lace of the garment I started this post with, as well as the stretchy, structured fabric of the cardigan I am currently working on without changing the weight (width) of the yarn – both garments are of fingering weight yarn – is indeed extremely flexible.  However, without a little bit more work on the part of the textile industry, it will never live up to the green promises they began making a decade ago.

Very special thanks to Kerry Shaw for his kindness in allowing the use of his beautiful photographs in this post.

Works Cited

Anonymous, ‘The TRUTH about Bamboo Fabric’ ETSIS Hats & Apparell [7 July 2011], https://etsishats.com/blog/2011/04/the-truth-about-bamboo-fabric/

Gillow, John & Sentance, Bryan. 1999. World Textiles: A Visual Guide to Traditional Techniques (London, Thames & Hudson, Ltd.).

Hass, Robert (ed.). 1994. The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, & Issa (Hopewell, The Ecco Press).

Inumaru Tadashi & Yoshida Mitsukuni (ed.). 1992. The Traditional Crafts of Japan, Volume 5: Wood and Bamboo (Tokyo, Diamond Inc.).

Jackson, Anna. 2000. Japanese Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, V&A Publications).

Lotus Organics, ‘Bamboo: Facts behind the Fiber’ Organic Clothing Blog [7 July 2011], http://organicclothing.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/09/bamboo-facts-be.html

Parker, Kendal Korach. 2003. Plum, Pine and Bamboo: Seasonal and Spiritual Paths in Japanese Art (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press).

White Apricot, ‘Bamboo Fabric – The Naked Truth’ Environmental News Network [7 July 2011], http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/32202

[1] Hass:33

[2] Gillow & Sentance: 62

[3] Inumaru & Yoshida: 6, 160 – 163.

[4] Parker: 3.

[5] Ibid: 5 – 6.

[6] Jackson: 7 -11.

[7] Gillow & Sentence: 34.

[8] Environmental News Network [7 July 2011]: http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/32202

[9] Etsis Hats & Apparell [ 7 July 2011]: https://etsishats.com/blog/2011/04/the-truth-about-bamboo-fabric/; Organic Clothing Blog [7 July 2011]: http://organicclothing.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/09/bamboo-facts-be.html

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