Le Monde`s discours de mode: creating the

083-
Le Monde’s discours de mode:
creating
the créateurs
AGNÈS ROCAMORA*
’Fashion is not art. Fashion is frivolous and
unimportant.&dquo;
’The great designers [like Balenciaga] really let the cloth speak - in the
same way that Morris Louis lets the paint speaks
’In general, the aesthetics of fashion do not admit the spiritual,
2
metaphysical or contemplative modes.&dquo;
These quotes come from two papers which appeared in the journal Fashion
Theory: the first two from Sung Bok Kim’s ’Is Fashion Art?’, the other from
Robert Radford’s ’Dangerous Liaison: Art, Fashion and Individualism’. While
Bok Kim’s paper is an attempt to show that fashion is art and that ’like any
other artistic endeavor, is a worthy component of the aesthetic domain’,4
Radford argues that fashion and art must be distinguished and that ’there is a
general danger’, as the title of the paper also makes it clear, ’of category
slippage’, which ’threatens to bankrupt art of its long-hoarded asset of the
status attached to its cultural weight of seriousness’, a seriousness stained by
fashion’s ‘frivolity’.55
This debate - which could be dubbed ’is fashion high culture or low
culture?’ - illustrates the role of discourses on fashion as sites where
different versions of fashion are constructed, diverse meanings and values
* Address for correspondence: Department of
Sociology,
Goldsmiths
College, University
London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW; e-mail: [email protected]
1
M. Boodro, quoted in S. Bok Kim , ’Is Fashion Art?’, Fashion Theory, 2 (1), (1998),
2
3
R. Martin, quoted in S. Bok Kim, op. cit., 57.
R. Radford, ’Dangerous Liaisons: Art, Fashion and Individualism’, Fashion
(1998),155.
4
5
S. Bok Kim, op. cit., 58.
R. Radford, op. cit., 153, 160.
of
54.
Theory,
2
(2),
84
attributed to it, and ultimately where different notions of culture are
conveyed through the conceptual distinctions made between high and low
cultural forms. These are discourses involved in the creation of the
’immaterial contents’6 of fashion, its symbolic forms. Bourdieu calls such
processes ’symbolic production’, that is, ’the production of the value of the
work or, which amounts to the same thing, of belief in the value of the
work’.’ Artworks, the French sociologist argues, are produced not by their
direct creators only but also by ’institutions of consecration’.’ which through
their discourses on cultural objects contribute to the creation of their symbolic
value whilst at the same time participating in the creation of the creator.
Thus ’a rigorous science of art’, Bourdieu notes, must ’take into account
everything which helps to constitute the work as such, not least the
discourses of direct or disguised celebration which are among the social
conditions of production of the work of art qua object of belief’.9 A variety of
institutions - magazines, academic journals, museums, education Bourdieu also notes, participate in this process of symbolic production, a
production which is also that of the ’universe of belief’ attached to cultural
artefacts.1’ They are ’institutions of diffusion or consecration’, 11 whose role is
to institute reality: ’Le discours de mode, la publicite ou la critique litt6raire’,
Bourdieu and Delsaut argue, drawing on Austin’s idea of performative
utterances,12 are a particular case of the ’discours de c6l6bration’, and ’toutes
ces formes de discours ont en commun de d6crire et de prescrire a la fois, de
prescrire sous 1’apparence de d6crire, d’6noncer des prescriptions qui
prennent la forme de la description.’’3
The present paper is concerned with such a discourse - the discourse of
institutions of consecration or ’specialists in symbolic production’’4 - as it
takes place in the French newspaper Le Monde’s articles on high fashion
shows in 1996. Commenting on these, I show that the symbolic value of
fashion Le Monde produces is informed by the belief in fashion as high
culture. This belief is ’part of the full reality&dquo;’ of fashion. As Bourdieu and
Delsaut note, ’Ie discours de mode’ is a ’langage technique qui, lorsqu’il est
utilis6 ~ l’usage du dehors, par les journalistes, devient un pur discours
6
M. Boselli, ’Pitti Immagine’s Role in the Creation of a Culture for the Textile and Clothing
Industry’, in G. Malossi (ed.), The Style Engine (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1998), 21.
7
P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 37.
8
Ibid.,
9
Ibid.,
10
11
Ibid.,
33.
1
35.
15.
Ibid.,
133.
See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1975).
P. Bourdieu and Y. Delsaut, ’Le Couturier et sa griffe: contribution à une théorie de la magie’,
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (1975), 7-36 (25).
14
M. Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1994), 10.
15
Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 36.
12
13
85
contribuant a l’imposition de legitimite’,’6 which in Le Monde
the legitimacy of the fashion designers as creators of a high art
destined for the contemplative gaze of aesthetes.
d’apparat
means
Le Cr6ateur
Monde, designers are constructed as artists whose creations belong to
the field of high art. The high fashion dress is likened to works of art such as
poems - the newspaper talks about ’la poesie de John Galliano’ - or
paintings - ’ses [Galliano’s] robes surgi[ssent] d’un tableau de Winterhalter’
(23 January), while ’L’Anversois Dries Van Noten brosse avec les couleurs
d’un orientaliste’ (9 July). High fashion is part of the same world as that of
the painters Boldini and Domergue (29 January). Dresses are like ’croquis’
(29 January), ’r6cit[s]’ (13 March), ’des collections d’auteur’ (25 March). They
are the ’fictions color6es’ (13 March) of cr6ateurs, the French term for
In Le
designers.
Bourdieu and Delsaut note, conveys the notion of charisma,
son propre fondement’.&dquo; The créateur is the individual
’toujours
in charge of ‘1’acte de &dquo;cr6ation&dquo;’, which operates ’une sorte de promotion
ontologique’ of the objects s/he produces, leading to the transcending of their
materiality, what Bourdieu and Delsaut also call their ’transsubstantiation’.18
Objects attain a condition well beyond that of material artefacts to reach the
position of superior creations with a high symbolic value, the result of
an ’alchimie sociale’, part of which is the discourse of journalists, who are
’objectivement charg6s de faire valoir les op6rations de faire valoir des
&dquo;créateurs&dquo;’,19 and hence contribute to ’la conception d’une inspiration &dquo;divine&dquo;
de l’artiste’,20 which from the Renaissance on imposes itself in discourses on
art. A whole ’travail de cons6cration’ takes place which makes of the fashion
designer a sort of ’cr6ateur suppl6ant, sorte de vicaire du g6nie’.&dquo; For in
French, as in English, Le Cr6ateur also refers to God, the supreme being with
the gift of creation, a status Le Monde attributes, for example, to Italian
designers, the ’nouveaux dieux des stylistes’ (2 May). The fashion créateur is
a gifted individual, an artist whose dresses are promoted to the rank of high
art, as with Saint Laurent, in whose collection is to be found ’une 6mouvante
robe Degas’ (16 March).
The parallels Le Monde draws between high fashion and the work of, for
instance, Winterhalter, Degas or Domergue, as well as the ideas of ’po6sie’,
Cr6ateur,
as
a lui-m6me
16
17
18
19
20
21
Bourdieu and Delsaut, op. cit., 27.
Ibid.,
19.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid. 24
M. Freitag, ’Le Concept moderne de l’art’, Prétentaine, 6
Bourdieu and Delsaut, op. cit., 28, 19.
(December 1996),
47-56
(48).
86
’auteur’ or ’croquis’, help inscribe fashion in the field of high culture. Fashion is
made understandable through high art references. Such references, Bourdieu
writes, ’bring the work into an interminable circuit of inter-legitimation’ and
’serve to enhance’ it.22 They ’lend dignity’ to the object depicted, here high
fashion, in a play of analogies, ’which creates the enchantment of artistic
contemplation. [...] Analogy, functioning as a circular mode of thought,
makes it possible to tour the whole area of art and luxury without ever
leaving it’. 23 These analogies, Bourdieu also notes, contribute to the legitimation
of cultural objects as high culture. And it is because the field of fashion is a
dominated field in the hierarchy of culture that its members, Bourdieu and
Delsaut argue, draw on high cultural references, which allows them to
legitimize it as a noble culture: ’les references aux arts nobles et 16gitimes,
peintures, sculpture, litt6rature, qui fournissent la plupart de ses m6taphores
ennoblissantes à la description des v6tements et nombre de ses themes à
1’6vocation de la vie aristocratique qu’ils sont cens6s symboliser, sont autant
d’hommages que I’ &dquo;art mineur&dquo; rend aux arts majeurs’,24 in the case of Le
Monde painting and literature but also theatre, as I will discuss.
Thus in the French newspaper, the designers are not just dress makers,
but poets, painters, ’dessinateur[s]’ (29 January) whose ’dessins expriment
tour a tour les plaisirs illumin6s et les angoisses du monde’ (4 May).
Designers of high fashion ’portent a travers leurs collections une vision du
monde’ (29 Feb.), ’un recit du prochain sibcle dont la mode se r6serve les
droits d’auteurs’ (13 March). John Galliano ’parcourt le monde et les sibcles’
(16 March), Armani’s collection is a ’chronique visionnaire des nouveaux
temps modernes’ (6 July) and ’~ ce monde qui s’enlise, Thierry Mugler en
oppose un autre, 1’horizon illimité de ses fantasmes et des ses roves’ (22
March).
Designers are created as artists whose activity is not part of the routine of
everyday life, but rather transcends it; they offer ’the world’ a vision, a
power which allows them to distinguish themselves from mere ouvriers,
dress makers. For the work of the artist - a concept born out of the split of
the notion of artisan into those of artiste and ouvrier25 - is &dquo;’cr6ateur&dquo; et
&dquo;inspir6&dquo;’, as opposed to the work of the ouvrier, ’simplement &dquo;productif&dquo; et
&dquo;reproductif&dquo;’.26 High fashion designers are individual subjects whose
position, as in modernist art, is simultaneously that of a universalist
subject. 21 In the person of the creator individuality and universality are
22
P. Bourdieu, Distinction:
1996),
53.
23
24
25
26
A Social
Critique of
the
Judgement of
Taste
(London: Routledge,
Ibid.
P. Bourdieu et Y. Delsaut, op. cit., 16.
M. Freitag, op. cit., 50.
Ibid., 48.
See, for instance M. Freitag, op. cit. and J.M. Schaeffer, ’Conduites esthétiques
artistiques’, Prétentaine, 6 (December 1996), 57-74.
27
et formes
87
integrated, combined in the work of art whose truth, if expressive
artist’s spiritual quest, requires universal assent and is significant
of the
to all.
Thus, Lee Young Hee’s collection, for instance, Le Monde notes, ’r6concilie
les 8tres et les choses’ (13 July). Issey Miyake is praised for his ability ’A
redonner un langage universel a la Mode’ (12 March), a language which, as
with Lacroix, conveys ’les plaisirs’ and ’les angoisses’ (4 May) of the world
but also, as during Richard Voinnet’s show ‘1’ennui du monde’ (22 March) or
at Walter Van Beirendonck’s show ’r6veill[e] chez chacun les r6ves et les
peurs de 1’enfance, les contes cruels d’une humanite ou chacun est un loup
pour l’autre’ (29 January). High fashion in Le Monde has reached a spiritual
state. Like the art of modernity Gablik discusses, it has become ’an
independent world of pure creation which [has] its own essentially spiritual
essence’.28
High fashion designers
elevated, for example in the case
are the universal artists of modernity,
of Colonna, Westwood or Fred Sathal, to
the rank of ’auteur’ (8 October), who express not only themselves but the
sensibilities of the world - as Gablik observes, the modernist artist ’saw
himself as a kind of priest who divined the interior soul, or spirit’. 29 Thus
Saint Laurent ’r6ussit a communiquer, avec ses robes, 1’esprit d’une 6poque’
(26 January), ’les r6ves d’un monde perdu’ (19 March), like Paco Rabanne, he
recreates Tage d’or du monde’ (26 January) while the January collections of
Alaia, Gaultier and Mugler ’offrent a travers leurs collections une vision
du monde’ (29 January). During their October show, ’un esprit se d6gage’
(19 October), and Miyake distinguishes himself ’en c6l6brant le calme’ (19
as
October).
Le Monde’s fashion cr6ateurs are freed from the material exigencies of
everyday life. The designer is positioned in a superior space in which, no
longer ’homo faber’ but ’homo significans’,3° he or she is devoted to ’1’exaltation
de 1’esprit’ (18 January) and the expression of humanity’s emotions. The
fashion work of art becomes eternal and universal, and the aesthetic practice
of high fashion is abstracted from the contingencies of the ordinary. It is, as
Bourdieu writes of the pure aesthetic, ’rooted in an ethic, or rather, an ethos
of elective distance from the necessities of the natural world’.&dquo;
This elective distance also manifests itself in the magical power of high
fashion designers. For in Le Monde, the activity of the cr6ateur is likened to
that of a magician, whose supernatural powers bring magic to the ordinary
world: Christian Lacroix, for example, the French newspaper notes,
’s’affirme comme un illusionniste. Le voici cr6ateur de songes, d’apparitions
surgies d’un bal fantasque, ou Domergue et Boldini croquent dans l’ombre
28
S. Gablik, Has Modernism Failed?
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1986),
29 Ibid.
30
31
V. Burgin, The End of Art Theory
P. Bourdieu, Distinction, 5.
(London: Macmillan, 1986),
153.
21.
88
.
les f6es de la nuit’ (29 January). During his show, Bertrand Maréchal ’dévoile
les sortil6ges’ (13 March) and Mugler’s ’coup de fouet magique’ turns his
models into ’les oiseaux d’une nuit magique’ (22 March). Galliano’s
collection is ’pleine d’apparitions et de songes’ (19 March) while ’Bertrand
Marechal libere toute la magie de ces robes’ (19 October).
Because they are magicians, designers can detach themselves from the
public and rise above it. As Benjamin writes, the magician ’maintains the
natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very
slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his
authority. ’32 A distance is established between ordinary people and fashion
designers/magicians whose magical power allows them to evolve in a space
removed from everyday life and ‘freed from urgency’. 13 The magician, Benjamin
also observes, like the painter - and, it could be added, like Le Monde’s high
fashion artist - ’maintains in his work a natural distance from reality’;34
high fashion, the French newspaper notes, ’fait disparaitre [la r6alit6l de son
champ’ (12 March) - a distance necessary to aesthetic detachment.35 I return
to this idea below.
As Mauss puts it, ’n’est pas magicien qui veut: il y a des qualit6s dont la
possession distingue le magicien du commun des hommes,’36 qualities Le
Monde lends the high fashion designers: they can create magical apparitions
and, through their savoir-faire and m6tier, notions I discuss in the next
section, turn clothes into the emanation of the creators’ spirit and the
representatives of inner-worldly concerns. The creative act transports the
designer, like the magician described by Mauss, ’hors de 1’humanite’,
towards a realm of devotion to spiritual life wherein ’il a la faculte d’6voquer
en realite plus de choses que les autres n’en peuvent rêver’.37 Of magicians,
Mauss also notes, ’ce qui leur donne des vertus magiques, ce n’est pas tant
leur caractbre physique que l’attitude prise par la societe a 1’6gard de tout
leur genre’,38 an attitude which, Bourdieu would argue,39 is the product of all
the operations of symbolic production which create the persona of the
creators as supernatural beings and their creations as sublime objects
invested with the aura attributed to the creators; as Mauss notes, with magic
’la partie est au tout comme l’image est a la chose representee’.4° The clothes
32
W. Benjamin, ’The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1992), 227.
33
P. Bourdieu, Distinction, 54.
34 Ibid.
Reproduction’,
in W.
Benjamin,
35 Ibid.,
34.
36
37
M. Mauss,
Ibid., 26.
20.
Ibid.,
38
39
Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: PUF, 1995), 19.
See for instance, P. Bourdieu, ’Haute Couture and Haute Culture’, in P. Bourdieu, Sociology in
(London: Sage, 1995).
Question
40
M. Mauss, op. cit. 4.
89
on
show
extensions of the creators,
they are a tribute to their extramade and consecrated by journalists, ’the
Bourdieu puts it, ’of the system of production of sacred goods’.41
are
ordinary position,
agents’,
as
position
a
Un m6tier
In Le Monde,
creating a collection is depicted as an act of high precision and
high specialization. The activity of the designer is as accurate and impressive as
the work of
surgeon. ’Le travail sur un v6tement’, the French newspaper
un acte de haute chirurgie’ (22 January) and, to master it,
the creator must acquire the ’savoir-faire’ (22 January) specific to his or her
m6tier, these being two notions central to Le Monde’s discourse on high
fashion.
Metier, according to Le Petit Larousse, means ’savoir faire, habilet6 technique
r6sultant de 1’experience, d’une longue pratique’ (1995). The notion implies
the ideas of hard work, precise knowledge, respect, tradition and mastery. It
is also the work of craftsmen whose activity, as Sewell notes, is situated at
’the intersection of the domain of manual effort or labor with the domain of
art or intelligence’.42 Thus backstage, during the shows, ’les fers sont branch6s
en permanence. L’oeil sur le pli qui louche, le decollete a arrondir, la
manche tailleur a r6gler, on repasse, on picote, on roulotte, on dompte la
gabardine &dquo;nerveuse et s6che&dquo;, on caresse au fer la mousseline ou le cr8pe et
sa capricieuse tendance ~ &dquo;fondre&dquo;’ (22 January). Fabrics, if once wild and
unruly - they can be nervous, dry and even capricious - are mastered by ’the
hand’ (22 January) of designers, who again, like the magicians Mauss talks
about, have a ’pouvoir general sur les choses’ 4’ not least because of the
’habilet6 de mains’44 which characterizes them. Fabrics are controlled ’tamed’ - and given shape. From natural wildness, they are turned, like the
raw material of sculptures, into art forms which magically transcend their
texture, that of the fabric they are made of, to attain a natural existence, as
will be further explained. A high fashion dress, Le Monde also notes, ’doit
6tre travaill6e comme une aquarelle. Chaque geste compte. On ne peut ni
effacer, ni revenir dessus. Il faut modeler tr6s vite. Sinon elle s6che et se
fane’ (29 January). To avoid this, technique must be mastered so that Tame
d’un m6tier’ (29 January), ’la legitimite premi6re d’un m6tier’ (25 March),
can be respected.
Thus in the French newspaper, not only is high fashion a high art, but it is
also a m6tier informed by the artful and intelligent mastery of traditional
a
writes, ’6quivaut a
41
Bourdieu, ’Haute Couture and Haute Culture’,
42
W.H. Sewell,
quoted
in P. Bourdieu and L.
Polity Press, 1996), 220 n3.
(Cambridge:
43
44
M. Mauss, op. cit., 26.
Ibid., 24.
138.
Wacqant,
An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociology
90
knowledge, a knowledge that can only be acquired with experience. And
this is why, though John Galliano is, according to Le Monde, very good in his
position as designer for Givenchy, he is not good enough, since ’une
complicite avec les ateliers ne se cree pas en un jour’ (23 January). Unlike
Armani, Galliano is not ’un homme de m6tier’ (6 July). Tradition, as in the
words of the modernist poet T. S. Eliot, ’cannot be inherited, and if you want
it you must obtain it with great labour’.45
Thus designers must assimilate high fashion’s know-how before they can
achieve the full realization of their art and surpass the more humble position
of craftsman. The cr6ateurs in Le Monde are both the craftsmen with their
m6tier and a tradition to keep alive and the artist-authors who convey
’sublimated artisanal traditions’.46 Walter Van Beirendonck, for example, is
described as being ’d’abord 1’artisan d’un monde meilleur, plut6t qu’un froid
concepteur du meilleur des mondes’ (29 January).
High fashion designers belong to modern art as defined by Lyotard, where
’the essence of art is thought to be the expression of individual genius aided
by the skills of an artisanal elite’.47 The French newspaper, through the use
of the analogy of the m6tier and the notion of tradition it evokes, inscribes
high fashion in modernity, ’the historical tendency of an art practice towards
complete self-referential autonomy, to be achieved by scrupulous attention
to all that is specific to that practice: its own tradition and materialism, its
own difference from other art practices’.&dquo; Like modernist art, high fashion,
the French newspaper is saying, has its own tradition, its own rules which
can only be taught and assimilated through extensive experience in the
world of high fashion. This world, as Willis notes, ’like high art and classical
music, [...] has its own autonomous, elite tradition which explains itself
according to the creative innovations of individual &dquo;great men&dquo;’.49
In this autonomous world, the object of fashion - the dress - is as if
magically fabricated by the cr6ateurs and their ’mode d’auteur’ (8 January). It
emanates from them, almost tel quel - Le Monde quotes a head seamstress
backstage who says that ’une robe r6ussie ne doit pas donner la sensation
d’avoir ete touch6e’ (22 January) - to occupy the near immaterial position of
a unique work of art and transcend the everyday material world. The
collections acquire a ’superior existence’ through a Kantian ’refusal of any
sort of involvement, any &dquo;vulgar&dquo; surrender’50 to the everyday material
45
T. S.
Eliot, ’Tradition and the Individual Talent’,
(London: Fontana, 1973),
Poetry
46
M. Freitag, op. cit., 50.
47
in
J. Scully (ed.), Modern Poets
on
Modern
61.
J. F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence
Turnaround, 1992), 15.
48
V. Burgin, op. cit., 30.
49
P. Willis, Common Culture (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1996),
50
P. Bourdieu, Distinction, 35.
1982-1985
84.
(London:
91
world; the creations of the designers
are depicted as immaterial objects
whose substance has transcended its own matter, such as Saint Laurent’s
dresses, whose colours are ’soirs d’Orient Express paillet6s de lumibre,
comme des notes d’amour’ (13 July) or Ungaro’s ’souffles de pantalons A
porter dans un palais v6nitien’ (13 July) and Lanvin’s ’robes 6vaporees
couleur de lune et d’opale’ (19 October). With Saint Laurent, Le Monde also
notes, ’on a l’impression que les robes ont ete souffl6es plut6t que coup6es,
cousues, filles du secret et de 1’amour’ (26 January) while at Adeline Andr6’s
show ’les robes sont tellement fines qu’elles semblent pretes a s’6vanouir si
l’on souffle dessus’ (29 January).
Thus the fashion artist, who is a magician too, is able, through his knowhow, to abstract clothes from their very condition - manmade products in
fabric - to give them, as though in the hands of the ultimate Creoteur, God,
the gift of life: with Saint Laurent, for instance, a skirt is ’naturellement
mouvante’ (26 January), ’la mousseline respire dans le mouvement’ (26
January), whilst Lapidus’s dresses are like ’papillons aux ailes bleudtres et
glac6es’ (29 January). A high fashion dress, Le Monde also stresses, as
mentioned earlier, must be worked on very carefully, ’sinon elle s6che et se
fane’ (29 January), while another report mentions a collection whose colours
consist of ’une incroyable palette d’orange, de turquoise, de vert absinthe,
vifs artificiels m6lang6s a des tons sourds, champignon, orge, bois de rose,
&dquo;ciel de pluie&dquo; ou rose et fumee’ (16 March).
The high fashion designer, like the artist as created by the discourse on art
which became dominant with the Renaissance, ’participe d6sormais
explicitement de la puissance cr6atrice qui était jusque-IA r6serv6e a Dieu’.51
And in the same way that the designers transcend their human position,
fashion objects in Le Monde surpass their status as artefacts thanks to what
Bourdieu calls ’the transmuting power that the artist exercises’.52 They
transcend the condition of artificial things to arise out of the natural order of
the world which they epitomize - Armani’s dresses, the French newspaper
writes, ’retrouvent naturellement leur aura’ (6 July). They are as if unique,
untamed by mechanical reproduction, only approached by the magical hand
of the cr6ateur. They possess the ’one element’ of the work of art as defined
by Benjamin, that is, ’its unique existence at the place where it happens to
be’.53 This uniqueness and originality contributes to the creation of the aura
of the fashion object as work of art, an aura which is ’the unique phenomenon
of a distance, however close it may be’,54 and further accentuated by the
likening of the fashion show to a stage play. For in the French newspaper,
51
52
53
54
M. Freitag, op. cit., 48.
P. Bourdieu, ’Who Created the Creators’, in P.
W. Benjamin, op. cit., 214.
Ibid., 216.
Bourdieu, Sociology in Question,
147.
92
the fashion show is not simply a showing of clothes. It is the cultural event
of the encounter with high culture, an artistic manifestation like, for
example, theatre.
Inaugurating the shows, Le Monde writes, ’A 16 heures on r6glait encore
la derni6re repetition. A 17, le rideau s’est lev6 dans une salle du stade
hanqais transforme en petit theatre de la mode a l’occasion d’une
retrospective melo des 616gances parisiennes’ (23 January). At Lacroix’s
show, ’la lumi6re, la couleur, le tombe d’une 6toffe, semblent dicter des r6les
a ses mannequins’ (4 May). Saint Laurent ’[a] mis en scene la mode comme
un spectacle’ (8 October). ’Pr6f6rant des pr6sentations plus intimistes’, the
paper notes, ’les cr6ateurs de mode ont recr66 les decors et les atmosphbres
d’une ville ou font escale de jolies 6trangbres d6sax6es, sur les traces de
Nathalie Barney ou de Zelda Fitzgerald’ (19 October). The high fashion
works of art are displayed on a theatre stage, a ’th6dtre de la mode’ (23
March) like IRCAM [Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/
Musique], which ’se transforme en royaume fantastique offert a toutes les
metamorphoses d’un tissu’ for Tsumura’s show of ’fictions color6es’ (13
March). At Galliano’s show, the stage is peopled with ’[de] belles désaxées
apparues comme des mirages dans le d6sert [...]I Elles deviennent les
h6roines de cette chevauch6e fantastique’ (23 January), while Mar6chal
’vaporise des gouttes de faux diamants, comme un parfum, mani6re de
r6server a ses princesses invent6es le luxe d’un role: ensemble tunique
incognito de crepe et velours noir pour vraie-fausse shahbanou en fugue,
fourreau de satin rose comme un drap cousu dans lequel elle cachera ses
rubis’ (13 March). High fashion belongs to the extra-ordinary world of the
fictional representation, whose main characters are supernatural beings out
of a fairy tale, as with Beirendonck’s show, which features ’les h6ros du
prochain pays des merveilles’ (29 January) or Saint Laurent’s, during which
’[des] silhouettes f6eriques’ (5 August) appear on the catwalk. Galliano’s
models are ’comme sorti[es] d’un conte’ (23 January) and at Saint Laurent’s,
’sur les podiums, les mannequins jouent les divines’ (19 March). During the
shows, Le Monde writes, ’les cr6ateurs racontent leurs propres fascinations’
(25 March, my emphasis).
The fashion show is directed by the fashion designer as theatre director,
the ’auteur’ and ’metteur en sc6ne’ of the fashion play. Lacroix, for instance,
Is’61oignant de 1’anecdote et des citations qui le figent, [...] met en scene
dans ses robes des sensations plus que des images’ (4 May). In Le Monde, the
fashion representation, like the theatrical representation Debray talks about,
is a space for ’Ie maintien des distances donneuses de sens’.55 They are the
distances maintained by the aura of the magical creations set in the fictional
55
R.
Debray, ’Pourquoi
(Paris: Gallimard, 1996),
le
5.
Spectacle?’,
in La
Querelle
du
spectacle,
Les Cahiers de
médiologie,
1
93
stories which unfold on the fashion stage, the stories of the ’imaginaire’ (26
January) of the cr6ateurs, of their inner world, their ’fantasmes’ (22 March)
and their ’roves’ (19 March), narrated in ’fictions color6es’ (13 March). High
fashion designers are like those artists who, in the romantic tradition of art,
as Burgin puts it, &dquo;’express themselves&dquo; by means of beautiful shapes and
colors , 1 16 which Le Monde celebrates. Thus the French newspaper praises
Saint Laurent’s dresses, which are ’de toutes les couleurs, les violets, les
boutons d’or, les bleus Ispahan’ (26 January), or Mar6chal’s, which consist of
’un crepe violet, des oranges, des rouges’ (19 October) and Lacroix’s, whose
creations are ’un tourbillon de lumi6re et de couleurs saisies en plein vol,
ros6es de tulle, orchid6es de soie, 6lectris6es par les notes acides des
turquoise, vert Chartreuse, orange flamme, donnant à ces robes de lune
1’eclat d’un cr6puscule en Technicolor’ (29 January), a palette varied enough
to render accurately the complexity of the creators’ mind and allow them to
fulfil their role as ’dessinateur[sl’ (29 January), painters (23 January) or
’aquarelliste[s]’ (16 March), who can ’mettre en formes et en couleurs le
passage du prochain si6cle’ (10 October).
Fashion aesthetes
Thus in Le Monde, the high fashion dress is likened to a work of art, the
genius creation of the fashion author. It is also addressed to the soul, an
object to be consumed spiritually by the readers as aesthetes, and set apart
from bodily enjoyment, above material consumption. The paper discusses
clothes in lengthy -metaphors that extract them from their position of
potential objects of physical consumption, trivial commodities aimed at the
satisfaction of the senses and the pleasing of those emotions which in the
Kantian tradition belong to an inferior realm. 57 In Le Monde, high fashion
clothes as products to be physically consumed, embodied, are not the
concern of the journalists. Here, the high fashion dress transcends its
position of object to be worn in a material life to become a sublime object of
contemplation, aimed only at the gaze of the fashion consumer turned
aesthete. Fashion becomes an opportunity for ’problematizing the intellectual
conduct&dquo;’ of the individual who contemplates the clothes on show. It is, as
with the work of art Hunter discusses, ’a convenient site for individuals to
begin to relate to themselves as subjects of aesthetic experience’,59 a type of
experience where bodies are denied any central role or sensual presence.
They are made silent, taken over by the activities of the mind, that of the
reasoning aesthete rather than the sensuous consumer. Thus, whilst Eric
56
V.
Burgin, op. cit., 157.
See, for instance, P. Bourdieu, Distinction, 6, 85, 485-500.
58
I. Hunter, ’Aesthetics and Cultural Studies’, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Reicher (eds),
Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992), 349.
57
59
351.
Ibid.,
94
Bergbre’s collection is ’pour jeunes esthbtes a la recherche d’un nouveau
style fran~ais’ (9 July), Issey Miyake ’pose les questions qui touchent aux
couleurs de la vie’ (12 March). Paco Rabanne, the French
agrandir 1’espace de son propre imaginaire [...] il
a le m6rite d’offrir avec ces robes de vie ult6rieure un peu d’invisible’ (26
January); during Saint Laurent’s show ’quelque chose de doux et de profond
se d6gage’ (19 March) and the collection of the young designer Lilija Pustovit
‘offre des tuniques et robes diaphanes, enfil6es l’une sur 1’autre comme les
notes d’une musique m6ditative’ (2 May).
Le Monde constructs high fashion as an unreachable and quasi immaterial
object distant from the observer, and consisting of superior feelings, as in the
collection of Isabelle Ballu which, the French newspaper notes, ’6voque le
spleen des enfants du si6cle’ (22 March). The word ’spleen’ is strongly
evocative of Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris and ’Spleen et ld6al’ from Les
Fleurs du Mal, while the expression ’enfants du si6cle’ recalls Musset’s La
Confession d’un enfant du siècle. Both authors are staples of French school
curricula, and through reference to their work the designer’s creations are
likened to the lyric poetry of French Romanticism, and the cr6ateurs created
as artists concerned with expressing the depth and violence of their
sentiments, captured in the clothes on show.
Thus meditation, spleen and feelings as intense as ’tourments’ (4 May) are
inspired by the shows, which, as depicted by Le Monde, detach themselves
from the praxis of life to attain a superior spiritual and emotional order,
creating, as with the elite art of modernity, a ’crystallization of a distinctive
sphere of experience, i.e. the aesthetic’.6° The engagement with high fashion
is likened to a pure aesthetic experience which, as such, is positioned in a
space removed from the ’vulgar’ world of material experiences, a space
where practical ends, as Bourdieu notes of the aesthetic disposition,61 have
been bracketed off. Detached from the constraints of material concerns, high
fashion enters the space of aesthetic autonomy as a ’free space within
society’,62 where it becomes a ’pure art by excellence’,63 and thus similar to
high theatre, whose ’transcendance’, in the words of Daniel Bougnoux,
’n’humilie pas mais procure, selon le mot d’Artaud, une &dquo;sublime a6ration&dquo;.
Le spectateur n’est pas 6cras6 dans une flaque de passivite mais lui aussi
s’active (question de grain dans l’observation: le corps sans doute ne bouge
pas mais 1’esprit? Que sait-on des mouvements des effects, des cyclones sous
les crânes?).’64 True to a modernist approach to art, the French commentator
gestes,
aux
newspaper writes, ’semble
60
61
62
63
P.
P.
Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996),
Bourdieu, Distinction, 54.
Ibid.,
11.
See, for instance, P. Bourdieu, Distinction,
64
D.
Bougnoux, ’Bis,
ou
l’action
19.
spectacle’,
Médiologie, 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 16.
23.
in La
Querelle du spectacle,
Les Cahiers de
95
emphasizes the ’transcendence’, the ’sublime’ and the spiritual involved in
reception of the theatre play, a play which is addressed to a thoughtful
the
audience, which of
course is how Le Monde views its own readers, with
their distant and intellectual appreciation of the high art of fashion. The
theatre of fashion is turned into an opportunity for a spiritual experience
that transcends the material body. As Bougnoux says, ’Ie corps sans doute ne
bouge pas mais 1’esprit?’ And as with the theatre he describes, during the
contemplation of the fashion presented at the shows, ’par la vue et par l’ouie
le monde m’affecte sans me toucher directement, je garde les coudees
franches, je peux m’abstraire de la chaine physique et surplomber la m6l6e
sensible, engager mes passions sans me compromettre’.65 Such a depiction is
reminiscent of Kant’s aesthete, for whom, Bourdieu notes, ’disinterestedness
[is] the sole guarantor of the specifically aesthetic quality of contemplation’;66
only a ’pure gaze’ can be applied to art, the same ’pure gaze’ that Le Monde
applies to the fashion product as work of art, a creation evocative of feelings
and emotions, as with Yamamoto’s ’6mouvantes esquisses de soie noire’ (19
October) or Fred Sathal’s and Jean Colonna’s collections, which speak of
’leurs peurs d’enfant dans le monde des adultes, ici, un blanc an6mique, Ih,
dans le noir d’une rue sans joie, t6moins d’une generation no present [sic]
qui, entre spleen et r6ves de beaute, cherche une issue de secours. Sous les
voiles, la d6chirure’ (19 October).
In Le Monde, the fashion aesthetes are those who rise above ’la chaine
physique’ and ’la m6l6e sensible’. They can detach themselves from their
material body, which, superseded by the mind, does not physically
experience fashion. As Bourdieu writes, in the field of high art, artworks are
considered ’pure’, ’abstract’ and ’esoteric’.
’pure’ because they demand of the receiver a specifically
disposition in accordance with the principles of their
production. They are ’abstract’ because they call for a multiplicity of
specific approaches, in contrast with the undifferentiated art of primitive
societies, which is unified within an immediately accessible spectacle
involving music, dance, theatre and song. They are ’esoteric’ for all the
above reasons and because their complex structure continually implies
tacit reference to the entire history of previous structures, and is
accessible only to those who possess practical or theoretical mastery of a
They
are
aesthetic
refined code, of successive codes, and of the code of these codes.&dquo;
Monde, they are the codes of high culture, informed by high cultural
references and the play of analogies which, as discussed earlier, lend the
objects depicted their dignity and high cultural values. And ’in accordance
In Le
65
66
67
Ibid., 17.
P. Bourdieu, Distinction, 3.
P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993),
120.
96
with the principles’ of creation of fashion, the readers are expected to use
their specific ’aesthetic disposition’ to apprehend high fashion, which is not
’immediately accessible’. In the French newspaper, the fashion dress is a
work of art, and it must be treated as such. It is made to be looked at,
contemplated, experienced spiritually and detached from bodily enjoyment.
Thus the high fashion-work of art is ’pure’, ’abstract’ and ’esoteric’,
qualities Le Monde conveys through an equally abstract language. A screen
is placed between the readers and fashion as symbolically produced by the
French newspaper, which, as with the screen Bourdieu talks about in the
chapter ’Haute Couture and Haute Culture’,68 covers the object discussed, the
high fashion dress, with an invisible envelope. This envelope renders high
fashion unrecognizable as a product to be physically consumed. It contributes
to the belief in this product as a work of art to be spiritually appropriated,
hence contributing to the full efficacy of the ’alchimie symbolique’,69 which
makes of the designer a charismatic creator of sublime creations akin to
nourritures intellectuelles. The object of fashion is not recognizable as a
material product to be appropriated by bodies; rather it is believed to be a
work of art addressed solely to the aesthete’s pure gaze for the satisfaction of
his/her mind.
Thus in Le Monde little information is given about what the clothes
actually look like, beyond the profusion of colours mentioned earlier. Rather,
ideas, feelings, impressions about the objects contemplated are expressed,
through metaphors which suggest the clothes on show more than they
describe them, as when Le Monde, for instance, writes that in Lacroix’s
collection ’les couleurs bouillonnent dans 1’alambic des roves’ (13 July) or
that Helmut Lang’s show was a ’d6fil6-culte au bord du rien’ consisting of
’petits pulls collants pour araign6es de studio’ and of ’brillances fondues
dans les t6n6bres d’une ville sans joie’ (16 March). ’Les manteaux d’ombre
de Yohji Yamamoto ont cr66 1’6v6nement’ (25 March), the French newspaper
also notes, while ’Lee Young Hee a offert un defile aux couleurs de la nature
et des temples bouddhiques, matins calmes de soie et de ramie’ (13 July).
Clothes, as discussed earlier, are constructed as immaterial objects; they
have transcended their material condition to become pure sentiments, the
spiritual emanation of their creators, natural things coming out of a natural
order. And this, Le Monde is implying, is as difficult to express and describe
as rendering one’s deep and complex feelings. Only a set of convoluted
metaphors seems adequate to recreate the magic contemplated, as if no
words were precise enough to render the emotions it stirs, as if language was
powerless to convey to the readers the experience of the extraordinary
68
69
P. Bourdieu, ’Haute Couture and Haute Culture’, 138.
P. Bourdieu and Y. Delsaut, op. cit., 19.
97
encounter with the
high
art of fashion. When talking about high fashion
seems to be saying ’words fail me’. The
shows, the French newspaper
obscure
language Le Monde uses is only a logical continuation, a literary or
literal translation of the obscurity and complexity of the objects
observed, of their intensity.
As with the modernist criticism Burgin discusses, the French newspaper’s
discourse ’shows a critic in confrontation, or communion, with an artwork’.
The modernist critic ’by force of a special ’sensibility&dquo;’, expresses ’his or her
thoughts or feelings about the work, and a judgement of the value of the
work, to an audience assumed to be the same audience as for the artwork
under review. In the common sense view the artwork has itself originated in
the thoughts and feelings of the artist [...]I and is itself an attempt to
communicate to this same audience. ’70 Thus taking on the voice of modernist
criticism, Le Monde notes that:
maybe
[...] la haute couture a ceci d’unique qu’avec elle tout est nuance, qu’~
force de technique l’image s’efface pour laisser place au r6ve. Comme
dans 1’art du sucre, la magie se feconde au millim6tre et au gramme. Chez
Lacroix [...] ainsi qu’en pdtisserie, la tendance est aux ar6mes de couleur,
a 1’art de la succulence, IA ou le dessert comme la robe est une jouissance
(29 January).
And like the modernist ’critics’
Burgin mentions, fashion journalism ’characteristically
’objects’ in a language which draws equally upon
and
geometry
gastronomy in recommending them, from palette to palate, to
the fine taste of a discriminating consumer’.&dquo; The fashion show becomes a
place where observers can, as in a museum, exercise their ’fine tastes’ in the
contemplation of the creations of fashion artists like Tsumura during whose
presentation ’au-dela des formes parfois improbables, une intention, une
6nergie se d6gage, 6voquant les jeux futuristes de Fortunato Depero’ (13 March).
Christian Lacroix’s show, Le Monde also writes, ’fut un moment de grace [...]
Au premier passage, on est comme poss6d6 par une apparition’ (13 July).
Fine taste, a pure taste, and discrimination are recurring terms in modernist
seizes its
discourses of aesthetic engagement and on aesthetic engagement with high
art. 72 They are notions which inform the construction of the idea of artists as
superior beings, separated from the material world and preoccupied with the
refinement of their art, itself destined to the delicate taste of the
contemplative aesthete. And as with the art for art’s sake world of modernity,
high fashion in Le Monde is created as an autonomous world devoted to the
sublime. In this world high fashion clothes, like the works of art Frow
70
71
72
V.
Burgin, op. cit., 142.
Ibid., 25.
See, for instance, P. Bourdieu, Distinction; Gablik, op. cit.
98
mentions,’3 have become ’self-purposive’: they are not bound to the external
world, rather they are ’founded in freedom and internal necessity only’.
As Bourdieu and Delsaut note, ’c’est en produisant la raret6 du producteur
que le champ de production symbolique produit la raret6 du produit’; the
aura of high fashion is created through the creation of ’Ie pouvoir magique
du créateur’.74 In this paper I have sought to show how Le Monde participates
in this operation of ’transsubstantiation’75 of both creators and creations.
’At the end of his essay on magic’, Bourdieu writes, ’Marcel Mauss asks
himself, &dquo;where is the equivalent in our society?&dquo; I would like to show that
the equivalent is to be looked for in Elle or Le Monde. ’76 Bourdieu does not
actually comment on fashion in these publications, but this paper will, I
hope, have contributed to confirming his hypothesis and answering the
question asked by Mauss. For the power of the creators to work, and for their
creations to charm the public, for their magic to be effective, belief in this
magic must be created through operations of symbolic production such as
that taking place in Le Monde.
73
74
75
76
J. Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),
P. Bourdieu and Y. Delsaut, op. cit., 21.
Ibid.,
P.
28.
Bourdieu, ’Haute Couture and Haute Culture’,
133.
18.