Abstract
The key message of this book is clothing matters. And it is not just that clothing matters for people who enjoy fashion, but that across time, space and culture; for man, woman and child, clothing and appearance is a fundamental way in which we express our identities, are judged by others and communicate semiotically. Exchanging Clothes: Habits of Being II offers a compelling insight into the way in which clothing affects and is affected by identity and social structure, from Homer’s ubiquitous renditions of male armour to Kate Chopin’s humble but erotically charged stocking. As the conclusion of the book states, ‘this volume looks at the semantic valence of dress: its ability to speak out and speak up’.
What the text fails to adequately do, however, is live up to its name, at least in the literal sense. Exchanging Clothes is the second in a four-part series of edited collections on Habits of Being; the result of 17 years of research by academics based in Italy, France, Algeria, Hungary and the United States who focus on the myriad meanings attached to clothing and accessories in literature, film and art throughout history, as well as other social, political and economic connotations of clothing. The editors of Exchanging Clothes – Cristina Giorcelli, Professor of American literature at the Roma Tre University and Paula Rabinowitz Professor in the department of English at the University of Minnesota – have carefully selected and arranged a collection of texts previously published in Italian and French journals (after translation). It is important to note that this is very much a cultural consumption reader bringing together the work of historians, literary critics, designers, cultural practitioners and even psychoanalysts at the expense of sociologists. Nevertheless approached as an interdisciplinary volume focused on literary criticism rather than empirical exploration of modern material culture, Habits of Being II is a captivating text and one in which I enjoyed very much; that is once I got past the confusion evoked by the title.
Exchanging Clothes may mislead the reader, as the volume pays scant attention to the physical practice of exchanging clothes as I would understand it. Indeed, Giorcelli concludes by saying, ‘Clothes and accessories are treated in these essays as a means of delving into, exchanging and circulating, an identity: psychic, ethnic and social, including gender identity’. The volume is not focused on exchanging clothes; the emphasis instead falls on the exchange of meaning and identity mediated through clothing, which is why I would suggest approaching this text by first reading the conclusion. Giorcelli’s ‘Coda’ provides a succinct but emotively written final word which will put the reader in the right frame of mind to tackle the wide range of submissions found within the volume’s body.
Returning to the beginning of the book, nestled between the preface and introduction are a series of quotes. Five full pages in fact, an amount which seems excessive and could easily have been edited down to better effect. Nevertheless, I can understand the editor’s intentions as, through printing a wide range of quotes from all range of sources – the Bible, George Simmel, Virginia Woolf and Vivienne Westwood to name just some, they have painted a picture of the far-reaching relevance of dress and the role it plays in all of our lives. The introduction, written by Paula Rabinowitz, provides a fast-moving overview of some of the ways in which clothing and identity has manifested itself throughout history and across cultures. Referring to the edited chapters, Rabinowitz successfully draws the reader’s attention to intertextual linkages which could otherwise be missed. Indeed, on initial reading of the volume it is difficult to conceptualise a common thread especially if like me, you take the title of the volume literally rather than metaphorically. However, as the volume shows, consumption is not all about circulating commodities, but also about consuming meaning. Each text draws attention to the semantic meaning of clothes. As literary critics, the editors know all too the power of dress in framing identity, values, social class, gender, age and cultural heritage. Chapter 1 pushes the reader straight in at the deep end with an ontological discussion on the incompleteness of subjectivity, or of identity, as if it were an attachment which completes the whole; just as we use accessories to try and ‘complete’ our outfits. Positioned from a Freudian school of thought, the chapter fulfils the editors’ wishes of opening each volume in the series with ‘an essay by a woman psychoanalyst’.
Chapter 2 is written by the Italian designer commonly known as Krizia in tribute to those accessories often overlooked for the subservient role they play – the watch, the tie and perfume. Chapter 3 is a celebration of the great literary works of Homer, Virgil, Dante and Ariosto and their fictional male heroes, forever laden in armour. Chapter 4 continues the literary trail to explore the symbolic meaning of rings in James Merrill’s poetry and autobiographical works, small circles of hope exchanged between lovers and across generations. Chapter 5 explores the history of the silk stocking. An everyday accessory for some yet laden with associations of desire, eroticism and post-war luxury, the story of one woman’s seduction by an ‘extraordinary pair of stockings’ in a short story by Kate Chopin highlights the power that the smallest of commodities can have over one’s sense of self-worth.
Chapters 6 and 7 look at travel and how clothing and accessories facilitate movement across space and culture, first with pioneering journalist Nellie Bly’s compact bag that saw her through her 1890 world tour as told by Cristina Scatamacchia, and second, with Alisia Chase’s evocative description of Audrey Hepburn’s coming of age in the 1954 film Sabrina. Chapter 8 is a short but sweet piece by practitioner Karen Reimer whose artistic embroidered works challenges the reader to contemplate language in context and its very form. Chapters 9 and 10 divert to subcultures focusing on the role of lesbian fiction in 1950 America for an otherwise marginalised group of women, to the mainstreaming of punk subculture in the wake of Elizabeth Hurley’s safety pin dress. In chapter 11, Nello Barile considers social power, fetishism and communication in the social history of the tie, and, in chapter 12, Chafika Dib-Marouf looks at ornaments, dowries and female clothing traditions in Algeria.
It was chapter 13, however, the final chapter, that I was waiting for. Katalin Medvedev profiles the practice of second-hand consumption at a Savers thrift store in Minneapolis, through an ethnography of the store, its managers, staff and customers. As a contemporary empirical piece, it does seem out of place in the volume, yet still complements the preceding submissions by showing how clothing and accessories can be reborn after being cast-off by another. The clothes featured here all have a previous tale, a prescribed biography, and even after being disposed of by their previous owners they continue to have a use value, providing pleasure to others. That is the literal meaning of exchanging clothes.
Habits of Being II: Exchanging Clothes is a key volume in the four-part series. As each text stands alone the reader can be picky with the chapters but I would recommend engaging with all thirteen texts, as together they produce a strong argument for clothing as a fundamental part of our material and social existence. If you need an argument against the frivolity of fashion, this is it.