The Contemporary Significance of ‘Pauperist’ Style

The Emergence of ‘Pauperist’ Style as Haute Couture

It was during the 1970s and early 1980s that the ‘pauperist’ style first emerged within the realm of haute couture in the works of designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo. Reversing the trickle-down trajectory characteristic of fashion change in earlier periods where new fashions were seen to originate in the upper classes before ‘trickling down’ to the lower echelons (Simmel, 1971 [1904]: 299; Veblen, 1970 [1899]: 124–30), Vivienne Westwood took her cue from working-class subcultural styles such as the Punks, whose sartorial practices were based on the recycling of secondhand clothes purchased from op shops or the re-purposing of refuse such as garbage bin liners, lavatory chains and safety pins.

In her Punk-inspired designs, Westwood made use of discarded garments and cheap, torn and worn materials. Her 1976 Seditionaries collection (in collaboration with Malcolm McLaren), for instance, featured clothes that were ripped and soiled and were intentionally ill-fitting, decorated with safety pins, swear words and other kitsch elements (Healy, 1996: 44). Similarly, in later collections she cast aside traditional sewing techniques and neat garment forms, experimenting with badly-fitting garments with extra wide, long sleeves, cowl collars that were too tight and uneven hems. Often seams were exposed and rough fabrics such as inexpensive fleecy cotton knit were used (Healy, 1996: 54; Wilcox, 2004: 54–5). Garments such as her ‘kitchen sink’ cardigan from her Punkature collection of 1982–3 were made from purple dyed dishcloth with huge rusty Vim-lid buttons, while others were patched up or falling apart, such as her matted and unravelling sweaters, creating a ragamuffin look (Wilcox, 2004: 18, 63–7).

In her Buffalo collection, 1982–3, she ventured further afield in her search for ‘pauperist’ style, referencing elements of dress by Third World women – in particular, their habit of wearing cast-off Western garments, such as bras, in ways which differed from their original purpose as underwear. The collection featured sheepskin jackets, twisted and asymmetrical cuts using tattered and fragile materials, fall-down socks and Peruvian-inspired skirts that were multi-layered, baggy, stained and ill-fitting, again reflecting an aesthetic of ‘making-do’ with whatever is at hand (Wilcox, 2004: 18, 58–61).

Kawakubo’s foray into ‘poverty’ dressing first came to international attention in 1981 when she presented her fashion designs in Paris and with the publication of her 1982–3 Comme des Garçons collection in Vogue. The featured garments were made with fabrics that appeared old and worn, sometimes with holes in unexpected places, and seemed to be poorly made, being over-sized and asymmetrical with uneven hems, visible seams, patches, and extraneous appendages such as extra arms. They were also in drab colours such as black, dark grey or white (Mitchell, 2005: 12).

Later collections exhibited similar features using materials such as coarse cotton and wool or cheap synthetic materials such as rayon, and employed techniques such as smocking, commonly used in working men’s clothing, or sashiko – a ‘poor’ technique used by rural workers and fishermen whereby worn-out indigo workclothes are stitched together with little white running stitches to form a new garment (Evans and Thornton, 1989: 161). Kawakubo’s ‘aesthetics of poverty’, as Harold Koda (1985: 8) points out, was influenced by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi – a canon of beauty which prizes the imperfect, the simple and the ephemeral, showing a respect for, and acceptance of, the effects of nature on materials.

Initially, this uptake of ‘pauperist’ style by designers such as Westwood and Kawakubo shocked the fashion world. With their frayed hems, puckered-up seams, holes, poor-quality fabrics and asymmetrical shapes, their garments were seen to pose a direct challenge to high fashion’s cult of luxury, glamour and perfection of finish. Thus, for instance, the fashion press applied such derisory epithets as ‘Hiroshima chic’, ‘Fashion’s Pearl Harbour’ and ‘Japanese bag-lady look’ to Kawakubo’s work, regarding it as an out-and-out assault on the fashion world (English, 2005: 30; Fukai, 2005: 20).

The rehabilitation of the old and the worn by these renegade designers seemed particularly perverse given that fashion is premised on the logic of built-in obsolescence. As Kaja Silverman points out, thrift shop dressing in the 1970s posed a direct challenge to fashion where the incessant search for the ‘new’ takes precedence over the preservation of the ‘old’. It did so by ‘recycl[ing] fashion’s waste, exploiting the use value that remains in discarded but often scarcely worn clothing. It [was] a visible way of acknowledging that its wearer’s identity ha[d] been shaped by decades of representational activity and that no cultural project can ever “start from zero”’ (1986: 150).

Yet, despite the apparent provocation posed by the practice of secondhand dressing to the fashion world, it came to be embraced by it. After the initial affront to fashion aficionados caused by designers such as Westwood and Kawakubo, ‘pauperist’ style has now become widely accepted both within the realm of haute couture as well as amongst the broader population. No longer is it a marginal trend which subverts established norms, as it itself has become de rigueur.

‘Pauperist’ Style Becomes Mainstream

In contemporary culture, ‘pauperist’ style has become big business. Westwood and Kawakubo are now both well-established figures within the realm of haute couture and continue to design and market their ‘poverty-inspired’ garments to an ever-expanding clientele.

Thus, for example, ‘homeless chic’ was the theme for Westwood’s 2010–11 fall/winter menswear collection, which featured models playing the role of homeless people. As described by fashion journalist Jessica Michault (2010: 10): ‘On a catwalk covered in cardboard boxes, models walked, and sometimes staggered along in a hodgepodge of outfits that looked … like they had been dug out of a Dumpster’. The models, their faces and hair stiff as if with frostbite, wore garments such as drop-crotch pants, chunky sweaters, bulky oversized jackets, wide-waist trousers held up by suspenders, and all-in-one jumpsuits, all of which contributed to a look that was ‘decidedly survivalist in style’. Westwood stated in her accompanying notes that the ‘winter of discontent’ in Britain (1978–9) was an influence for this collection but a more immediate catalyst was the social unrest arising in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008–9 in response to the imposition of harsh austerity measures in countries such as Greece as they struggled to meet their debts (Nikolaou, 2010).

Likewise, the ‘poverty aesthetic’ continues to figure prominently in recent collections by Kawakubo. Her Spring/Summer 2011 collection featured baggy, ‘ill-fitting’ garments which had been turned upside down so that the sleeves of coats trailed to the ground and jackets had clutches of other jackets dangling from their backs. Many of the outfits were asymmetrical collages of pre-existing garments such as a black jacket cut away over a striped nightgown or full-length coats collaged with evening-style dresses (Blanks, 2010).

Both Westwood and Kawakubo have extensive retail outlets through which their garments are sold. Westwood markets her fashion through several stores in England and many more worldwide, including Italy, Japan and Korea, and has launched a more affordable prêt-à-porter label – Red Label – to diffuse her designs more widely (Wilcox, 2004: 32). Kawakubo has recently established a chain of stores, known as the Dover Street Market, in London (2004), Tokyo (2012) and New York (2014), which are modelled on the ragmarkets of old. The Dover Street Market brings together a collective of like-minded artists and designers (some of whom originally sold their wares in ragmarkets) who market their creations alongside the garments produced by Kawakubo and her protégé, Junya Watanabe, in a somewhat chaotic and constantly changing display reminiscent of the ‘energy and anarchy of good markets’, as Kawakubo describes it. Each of the Dover Street Markets occupies an old building with ‘raw’ interiors using recycled materials to give it the ambience of a bazaar (Menkes, 2004: 10; Caramanica, 2014).

A new generation of designers has also emerged since the 1990s, continuing the trend of poverty dressing pioneered by Westwood and Kawakubo, including Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, Miguel Adrover, Junya Watanabe, Lamine Kouyaté and Rick Owens. ¹ Amongst these, Belgian designer Margiela is particularly notable for his extensive reclamation of discarded garments, cutting them up and reassembling them to give them a new life. Some of the wide range of items he has ‘re-purposed’ include tea dresses of the 1940s, disused gloves which have been recomposed into a woman’s top, old pairs of jeans which have been converted into skirts and a 1950s ball gown which has been transformed into a long waistcoat over a man’s singlet and faded jeans. Military socks have been re-made as jumpers while other garments from army surplus have been re-configured in various ways. Like his predecessors, he produces garments which have unfinished, frayed edges, unsewn hems and visible seams (Evans, 2003: 249–50).

Margiela avoids the glitzy catwalks and fashion parades that typify the promotion of high fashion, preferring instead to display his designs in ‘down-market’ contexts (Evans, 2003: 80–2, 92). Some of the venues he has chosen include an old Salvation Army sales depot where the audience sat surrounded by racks of used clothing for thrift shop resale, an old theatre, empty warehouses, a disused hospital, a carpark, a disused metro station and an empty supermarket – venues traditionally associated with ragpickers. His models, on occasion, have paraded through the streets wearing sandwich boards displaying images of his outfits. ²

Indicative of the growing popularity of ‘pauperist’ style is the fact that even comparatively conservative fashion designers such as Ralph Lauren – known for his elegant country-style outfits – have made forays into this area as evidenced by his 2010 Spring collection. Occurring in the context of the American recession sparked by the global financial crisis of 2008–9, this collection recalled images from the Depression-era Dust Bowl, featuring tattered denim overalls that seemed to be covered in a fine patina of dirt, faded and torn oversized jeans with blue workshirts, and nightshirts in mattress-ticking stripes (Loth, 2009: A.15). The stated intention of this collection was to celebrate the country’s ‘resilient spirit’ by invoking the ‘character of the worker, the farmer, the cowboy, the pioneer women of the prairies’. ³

‘Poverty chic’ has also been popularized through the proliferation and expansion of retail outlets selling vintage fashion. Stores such as Selfridges, Top Shop and John Lewis have expanded their vintage clothing and costume jewellery concessions, while more and more vintage boutiques have opened in London and New York, often in premises near to or in traditional secondhand markets (Muir, 2004: 20). For example, Shine Vintage and Cherry in New York are located off Orchard Street, the traditional Jewish market for cheap new and secondhand clothing on the lower East side, while the Portobello Road in London has numerous vintage stores including Absolute Vintage and One of a Kind and is expanding its margins by such stores as Rellik (Palmer, 2005: 202). Similarly, the Vienna-based company Retrofame has incorporated the trade in secondhand clothing into a vintage brand concept and invents a personality for each shirt they re-sell (Jenss, 2004: 388). Even in Milan, known for its celebration of the ‘up-to-date’, there are now increasing numbers of upmarket outlets selling ‘vintage’ fashion, such as Vintage Spirit (Britten, 2005: 12).

There has also been a ‘gentrification’ of charity shops run by organizations such as the Salvation Army and Oxfam, which now target not just those in economic need but also the fashion-savvy who are seeking out the discarded and the pre-worn for its aesthetic appeal. For example, Salvation Army charity shops have introduced targeted displays and special sections for ‘boutique’, ‘vintage’ or designer goods which are marketed as vintage or collectors’ items with a correspondingly high price (Podkalicka and Meese, 2012: 727). They have also employed the services of advertising agencies to promote these items as an environmentally sustainable and stylish option for consumption, marketing them under banners such as ‘Fashion with a Conscience – Recycle, Reuse, Reduce’.

‘Pauperist’ Style as a New Status Symbol

With the embrace of poverty chic by the fashion industry, it has been transformed from an inexpensive way of creating a personal style to a lucrative business which involves considerable cost for those who seek to fashion themselves accordingly. Far from being a sign of rebellion against middle-class respectability, it has become a new means of gaining social cachet. Whereas, in the past, superior social status was often indicated through ostentatious dress, now a ‘humbler’ sartorial style is preferred in an era marked by financial, political and environmental crises. In contrast with the conspicuous consumption that was a hallmark of the affluent at the time when Thorsten Veblen published his book The Theory of the Leisure Classes (1899), ‘poverty chic’ confers status distinction through a mode of consumption whose wastefulness is disavowed. Overtly profligate consumption is no longer considered appropriate in a context where many are suffering significant economic hardship, particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis, and where the destructive impact of capitalist excess on the environment is more evident than ever before. The escalation of refugees as a result of the wars in Afghanistan, Africa and the Middle East has also tempered the impulse for lavish display amongst the more fortunate.

The adoption of ‘pauperist’ style enables one to assuage the anxieties provoked by these crises by providing a vicarious form of identification with the dispossessed. As we have seen, a number of recent collections of poverty chic, including Vivienne Westwood’s 2010 Fall/Winter collection and Ralph Lauren’s 2010 Spring collection, have indirectly alluded to these events while, at the same time, seeking to mitigate the anxieties provoked by them by displacing them onto another era – in the case of Westwood to the ‘winter of discontent’ in Britain during which there were widespread strikes by public sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises, following the ongoing pay caps of the government to control inflation, while Lauren references the squalor of the Depression in the dustbowl of the USA.

In a similar displacement of contemporary anxieties, Junya Watanabe in his Fall 2013 menswear collection invokes the image of the refugee but at the same time locates it in the past. Thus, in place of the asylum seeker from regions of current-day conflict such as the Middle East, Afghanistan or Africa, we have the figure of the Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe strutting down the catwalk in patched baggy coat and trousers accompanied by klezmer music (Blanks, 2013).

Current-day environmental problems figure largely as a theme in a number of Westwood’s recent collections. For instance, in her Spring/Summer 2010 collection entitled Planet Gaia in reference to the notion of a self-regulating planet, the models paraded down the catwalk in outfits to which were attached environmental slogans such as ‘Act fast, slow down, stop climate change’ (Phelps, 2009). The outfits themselves, many of which consisted of swathes of crumpled and stained material which appeared to be wrapped loosely around the body in a make-shift manner teamed with slashed stockings emblazoned with flames, evoked images of victims of natural disasters.

In all of these cases, the threat posed by the dark underside of capitalist materialism is allayed by symbolically appropriating and aestheticizing it. Pauperist style references the ‘repressed’, but in a manner which renders it ‘harmless’ by stripping it of its disturbing elements. Through its conversion into an aesthetic style, poverty becomes less confronting to the more affluent. Arguing in a similar vein, Karen Halnon contends that the impersonation of the poor by the more privileged serves to mitigate their fears at becoming this ‘Other’. As she writes: ‘In Poor Chic, control involves becoming what elicits fear, what haunts, but in its opposite: poverty becomes wealth, despair becomes fun. The well-to-do person controls by obscuring the reality of vagabondage in self stylizing word and in deed’ (2002: 508). ⁴ In this way the spectre of the destructive consequences of capitalist consumerism is kept at bay by converting the social inequalities and waste it produces into stylized commodities.

Kevin Heatherington (2004) speaks of the disturbing nature of capitalist waste in his article ‘Secondhandedness: Consumption, Disposal and Absent Presence’, arguing that it is never something that can be completely disposed of, but continues to haunt us as an absent present. As he points out: ‘[t]he absent can have just as much of an effect upon relations as recognisable forms of presence can have. Social relations are performed not only around what is there but sometimes also around the presence of what is not’ (2004: 159). While waste is often treated as the endpoint in the process of consumption, this ignores its dynamic and performative role within consumption and the ways in which that which has been turned into rubbish has the ability to return. In the case of ‘pauperist’ style, the disconcerting nature of the discarded is exorcised, by reclaiming it as something of beauty. The consumer of poverty chic displaces her/his anxieties by transforming the object that is the source of her/his guilt or fear into a new form of ‘glamour’.

The type of consumption engaged in by wearers of poverty chic can be seen as one of calculated ‘de-control’ of the emotions in which individuals seek to vicariously experience lifestyles other than their own in a self-reflexive and aestheticized mode, transgressing established hierarchies of taste. As Mike Featherstone (2007: 24–7, 84) characterizes it, individuals strategically open themselves up to a wide range of stimuli without, however, totally surrendering themselves to them, enjoying the thrill of the controlled suspension of constraints. In their foray into ‘foreign’ territory, individuals ‘play’ with identities other than their own in an ironic and detached manner, calculating the risks involved in the temporary abandonment of restraint. Rather than fully assimilating the alternative identities with which they experiment, they adopt them as temporary guises, which can be discarded at will.

The consumption of ‘pauperist’ style does not involve a full-scale assimilation of, or identification with, the lifestyle being referenced, but rather signals a fleeting and temporary attachment to it. As such, it is primarily of an aesthetic rather than of an ethical nature, being based more on the assumption of a particular ‘look’ than on a deep immersion in, or empathy with, the lifestyle it represents. In this respect, it provides a marked contrast to those who deliberately renounce the trappings of wealth and adopt simple dress in solidarity with the poor as exemplified by figures such as Gandhi or monks who lead an ascetic lifestyle. Wearers of shabby chic enjoy the ‘frisson’ of temporarily delving into the lower-class realm of the discarded and dilapidated without ultimately putting at risk their middle-class status.

‘Pauperist’ style enables the wearer to assume the look of poverty, but in such a way that they are not mistaken for being poor. Even those at the lower end of the scale are careful to distinguish their adoption of ‘poverty chic’ from those who wear secondhand clothing out of economic necessity. As a recent article on distressed jeans as high fashion comments: ‘wearing the moth-eaten look requires precision styling to avoid looking like a vagrant’ (Tucker-Evans, 2014: 18). This can be achieved in various ways, including teaming the ‘shabby’ garment with other more glamorous accessories such as elegant shoes or handbags or by the meticulous way in which the ‘worn’ look is created. In many cases, fabrics are treated to simulate the look of having been pre-worn rather than actually being secondhand, as exemplified by designer label distressed jeans whose signs of wear and tear are produced by a labour-intensive process. ⁵

Already in the appropriation of elements of Punk dress by Vivienne Westwood, this simulation of signs of poverty was evident, as they were distanced from their original context. Thus, for example, many of the tears and other signs of wear in the garments designed by Westwood, while appearing ‘genuine’, were carefully engineered (Wilcox, 2004: 12). In some cases, material was deliberately distressed to give it a patina of age while apparently accidental tears were in fact carefully positioned and finished to prevent further fraying, as in her Let it Rock jacket (Wilcox, 2004: 39).

This aesthetic construction of ‘pauperist’ style was even more evident in the Punk-inspired fashions of Zandra Rhodes where deliberately created ‘rips’ and ‘tears’ were transformed into decorative features studded with rhinestones and joined by small gold safety pins threaded with glass beads (Healy, 1996: 45). The surface decorations, which would have been very time-consuming to produce, involved a high level of craftsmanship to avoid severely damaging the cloth. Likewise, the slashes were quite manicured and the process to create them complicated. As Rhodes (quoted in Healy, 1996: 45) commented: ‘It proved quite difficult to make a “beautiful tear” look like a tear. When the stitched edging was put on, it totally lost its shape. So, many different types of holes were cut and tried.’ To stop the tears contorting the overall shape of the blouse and skirt, safety pins, strategically positioned, were used to structurally support them. The exclusivity of the highly crafted nature of these garments was underlined by the inclusion of a designer label, which mentioned that the garment had been produced by hand in the Rhodes studio.

Similarly, the designs of Rei Kawakubo elevate the humble and the flawed to the status of art. As with Westwood and Rhodes, her ‘aesthetics of poverty’ has been carefully staged through the judicious manipulation of cloth to produce the desired effects. In keeping with this, Kawakubo has designed garments made from fabrics with deliberately created flaws. As she explains: ‘I like it when something is off, not perfect. Hand weaving is the best way to achieve this. Since this isn’t always possible, we loosen a screw of the machine here and there so they can’t do exactly what they’re supposed to do’ (quoted in Koda, 1985: 8). In other instances, materials are distressed by shrinking, stretching, overdyeing or bleaching them, or by washing them and leaving them out in the sun to dry in a crumpled heap over several days to give them a patina of age and wear. As Evans (2003: 258) puts it: ‘There is no real history imbued in these clothes, just a simulated mark or trace of the past’.

Even when pre-worn clothes are actually used by designers of poverty chic, the ways in which they are disassembled and recomposed into a complex pastiche of contrasting elements clearly signals their distance from secondhand dressing out of economic necessity. Margiela, for instance, meticulously dissects and reconstructs the garments he salvages, often bringing the inside to the outside, putting the pieces back together in a different form (e.g. a 1950s ball gown which is cut down the front and worn open as a long waistcoat or a man’s check jacket pastiched with a white rectangular tent dress). This process, which highlights their method of assemblage, is often referred to as ‘deconstructionism’ and is a hallmark of much pauperist style by haute couturiers (Gill, 1998: 25–36).

Likewise, African-born, Paris-based fashion designer Lamine Kouyaté repurposes previously owned clothes obtained from flea markets, charity shops and low-end department stores, transforming sweaters into scarves, T-shirts into a dress and panty hose into a stretch top, through complex processes of cutting, removing and re-stitching seams. The addition of silk-screened motifs or slogans on the backs, sleeves and fronts of his recycled clothing, including the company’s slogan ‘Funkin’ Fashion’, also serves to distinguish them from secondhand dressing by the poor (Rovine, 2005: 216).

Thus, the old and the discarded, whether real or simulated, has become a new form of status symbol, which at the same time disavows itself through an apparent empathy with the poor. Whereas once, signs of wear and tear devalued a garment and were indicative of poverty, now it is precisely these qualities that have become a mark of distinction. The ‘new’ and ‘up-to-date’ has increasingly been displaced by that which has a patina of age as a key indicator of prestige.

‘Patina’ was once an important signal of social status until its eclipse in the 18th century, as Grant McCracken points out (1990: 31–43). As a physical quality acquired by valued objects over a long period of time, it served as proof of a family’s longevity and the durability of its noble status. Patina was not something that could be easily counterfeited and, as such, it lent itself to the symbolic function of distinguishing inherited wealth from the nouveau riche. The presence of patina on a family heirloom indicated that it had been in the possession of the family for several generations and that the family was no newcomer to its present social standing.

As the old system of landed wealth declined during the course of the 18th century, being ‘up-to-date’ rather than being the inheritor of a noble lineage became the key sign of prestige. The system of fashion, which superseded that of patina, was fundamentally in opposition to it since it promoted ‘newness’ rather than ‘longevity’ as the primary indicator of status.

However, in a curious twist, the two have converged in contemporary culture with the emergence of ‘poverty chic’, where the ‘old’ has now become fashionable. In this new context, patina is no longer symbolic of the longevity of lineage but is now a mark of distinction for those capable of appreciating the old and worn as aesthetic. Rather than being allied with valued objects that have been handed down from one generation to the next, the status accruing to patina is now associated with discarded items whose value has been ‘re-discovered’ or with articles that simulate the look of the old. Where the adoption of the secondhand is disassociated from economic necessity and is given a new aesthetic value, its status is elevated.

The capacity to convert the discarded into something of value depends on the authority of those who do the re-evaluation. As Michael Thompson argues in his book Rubbish Theory, there is nothing intrinsic in the object itself which determines whether it is regarded as a worthless piece of tat or as a valuable antique. It is only those who already have a certain social standing who are able to confer value on something that has previously been considered ‘rubbish’. ‘Innovation and creativity in the designation of objects as valuable or valueless’, as Thompson writes, ‘is not freely available to all members of our society. For those near the bottom there is really no region of flexibility; for those near the top there may be a wide range of manipulative freedom’ (1979: 8).

Thus, for instance, whereas for a member of the working class to exhibit signs of poverty in their dress would serve as a confirmation of their lowly status, when adopted by the middle classes they are regarded as a mark of cultural sophistication, confirming them in their privileged position as cultivated consumers with an open-minded receptiveness to lifestyles different from their own. While the lower classes seek to expunge evidence of shabbiness in their dress in order to escape the stigma of poverty, for the middle-class wearer of ‘pauperist’ style such signs become a means of signalling one’s social superiority.

It is clear from this that the consumption of ‘poverty chic’ is a practice that can only be engaged in by those who have a relatively secure sense of their social position. As Angela Carter (1983: 65) has pointed out, ‘poverty chic’ is a style favoured by those who can afford to play at looking poor. While working-class girls seek to escape their humdrum existence by emulating the styles of celebrities such as Princess Di or, more recently, Kate Middleton, the middle classes can enjoy the luxury of ‘slumming it’ without jeopardizing their social standing in the process.

‘Patina’ also has appeal in the contemporary context insofar as it carries with it the ‘aura’ (to use Benjamin’s term, 1979b [1936]: 223) of a previous life. The signs of age, which once served to symbolize a venerated heritage, are now seen to imbue a garment with a uniqueness and character that distinguishes it from the bland perfection of machine-produced clothing. Whereas perfection of finish was once highly prized by haute couture, as it was indicative of the meticulous skill and craftsmanship of the maker of the garments, in an era where such technical finesse can now be achieved by machine it no longer carries the same weight. On the contrary, it is the ‘flawed’ and the ‘imperfect’ that are now sought after as a mark of distinction. Just as the fingerprint accidentally left in the handmade pot imbues the object with a personalized character (Benjamin, 1979a [1936]: 92), so the signs of wear and tear in ‘poverty chic’ endow it with a singularity that is lacking in the machine-produced garment.

As we have seen, the achievement of the ‘look’ of shabbiness is often the product of a labour-intensive process, which requires a high degree of skill that cannot be reproduced by the machine. Even where machines are used, as in the case of the holey sweaters designed by Kawakubo, they have been tampered with so as to produce flaws. Paradoxically, then, whereas imperfections were once maligned as evidence of carelessness or lack of skill, now they are prized as signs of hand craftsmanship that bear the mark of their maker (Evans, 2003: 261–2).

Similarly, the prior life of the garment or fabric is no longer disguised through repairs and/or removal of stains and wrinkles but, on the contrary, is highlighted. In some cases, the past history of a garment is emphasized by the inclusion of a label in which this is detailed. Thus, for example, the clothing company Retrofame, which sells preselected used clothing such as promotional T-shirts, track suits and army clothing imported from an American wholesaler, attaches to each of its garments a price ticket which shows a photo and fingerprint of an unknown person who is given a name and occupation as the purported former owner of the garment. A brief statement ascribed to this person gives some details about his personal attitude to Retrofame or about the history of the garment and the context in which it was bought or worn. Although these ‘former owners’ are in fact fabricated, being constructed from a database of photos, fingerprints and invented personal statements, the fake history assigned to each garment serves the purpose of giving them a ‘unique’ identity (Jenss, 2004: 396–7).

Likewise, fashion designer Margiela attaches labels to his garments which detail their past history and highlight the fact that they have been made by hand from used clothing, objects and accessories (Healy, 1996: 68). In the case of designer Lamine Kouyaté, the original labels in the collars of used shirts and the waistbands of pants in his reconfigured garments are preserved, as well as the marks of their previous use such as tears, discolouration and frayed edges (Rovine, 2005: 221).

Thus, in a context where the ‘new’ has become commonplace, the ‘old’ is now invested with a new status, symbolizing that which has had a previous history as opposed to the ‘superficial’ and ‘ephemeral’ appeal of the new. Marked by the passage of time, these garments are imbued with ‘memories’ of the past, serving as a counterweight to the ever-increasing pace of fashion change. As the cycles of fashion change become shorter and shorter, so the need to ‘reclaim’ that which has been discarded becomes greater. The more frenetic the pace of fashion change, the more we seek out the ‘outmoded’. Our insatiable urge for novelty is accompanied by an equally pressing desire for recuperation. As Evans comments:

The cult of the past, in which objects are imbued with a fragile sense of loss, might perhaps be construed as a response to the rapid onslaught of change and of technological novelty that this carefully hand-crafted type of fashion rejects. Thus the loss that is evoked is the loss of fixedness and stability in the recent past, qualities which are supposedly the enemies of fashion with its emphasis on perpetual renewal. (2003: 257–8)

Furthermore, even where actual secondhand garments are recycled, their life span is often severely limited as they are still subject to the vagaries of fashion. ‘Pauperist’ style is not indiscriminate in the garments it recycles from the past, and that which it seeks to recuperate is very much subject to what is considered modish at the time. In contrast with the eclectic grab bag of items once available at the ragmarkets in the past, the secondhand garments marketed today to the fashion savvy are carefully pre-selected by storeowners in accordance with their ‘trendiness’. Gone are the days when customers were left to rummage through the racks in a random manner. Now vintage clothes are carefully sorted and displayed according to those colours and styles that are in fashion (Muir, 2004: 20). In those instances where merchandise is still displayed in an apparently ‘chaotic’ manner, this has generally been carefully engineered to give the customer the impression of a ragmarket where they make their own discovery (see Palmer, 2005: 203). Even the more down-market outlets such as Oxfam shops launch new collections every few months and try to respond to consumer trends (Sunday Business Post, 2008).

Furthermore, the deliberately unfinished nature of poverty-inspired garments designed by high end fashion designers such as Margiela and Westwood, and the poor quality of some of the fabrics of which they are composed, means that they are virtually unwearable or at most have a very limited life span. Their place is more in the art museum or on the catwalk than on the street. Thus, although ‘pauperist’ style may at first glance appear to highlight the economy of waste on which consumer capitalism is based through its championing of the old and the worn, the ephemeral nature of many of its garments and their lack of functionality can be seen as participating in this same process.

Paradoxically, then, for all its apparent concern with the destructive consequences of unfettered materialism, ‘pauperist’ style is itself a wasteful form of consumption, only differing from the conspicuous consumption of former times insofar as it endeavours to disguise its profligacy. While it seeks to allay the anxieties provoked by current-day financial, political and environmental crises, these continue to haunt us. As Jacques Derrida has argued in Specters of Marx, the ghost and money are inseparable in capitalist logic. ‘Haunting belongs to the structure of every hegemony’ (Derrida, 2012 [1993]: 46). As such, the spectre ‘is always a revenant. One cannot control its comings and goings because it begins by coming back’ (Derrida, 2012 [1993]: 11; emphasis in original). What is considered to be ‘obscene’ in its etymological sense of being ‘off-scene’ or ‘unseen’ continues to make its presence felt.

Through its conversion of the dross of capitalist excess into chic, ‘pauperist’ style provides only a temporary reprieve. By demonstrating that even the derelict can be aestheticized, it mitigates the disturbing nature of that which it appropriates, thus offering a non-threatening way of vicariously identifying with the dispossessed while leaving social inequalities intact. Through its uptake of that which has been associated with the proletarian, pauperist style symbolically overcomes the gap between the upper and lower classes, while in reality these hierarchies persist. Although it gestures towards the erasure of class distinctions, its transformation of poverty into a new form of glamour results in a reaffirmation of these inequalities. In contrast with the thrift shop customers of the 1960s and ’70 s who, through the recycling of discarded clothes, sought to create their own style in an inexpensive manner not dictated by the cycles of fashion, different imperatives underlie the contemporary adoption of secondhand style. Now the look of secondhandedness has become an expensive fashion, which is carefully confected. Rather than being an affront to middle-class respectability, poverty chic has become a new form of status distinction that disavows its extravagance.