Æsthetics and policies of fashion: "The Crazy Twenties" and beyond (Journal 2i I Identity and interdmediality Studies, n° 23)
Æsthetics and policies of fashion: "The Crazy Twenties" and beyond
Journal 2i I Identity and interdmediality Studies, n° 23, 2021
Editors: Eunice Ribeiro and Maria do Rosário Girão dos Santos
Deadline for submissions of contributions: 15th January 2021
Taking the word ‘fashion’ in the narrow sense that articulates it with clothing — here including the set of ornaments, props and makeup that help in the theatricalization and spectacularization of a body presented beyond its more literal physical presence —, we propose in this issue of Journal 2i to start a review of a century of fashion, approaching it in an intermedial context and taking the ‘Crazy Twenties’ in Western culture as a starting point. The 1920s signed a rupture in terms of fashion, taking into account that the more 'nervous' or frantic an era is, the more chilling is the pace of its changes. With the entry into the working world and the taking over of public life, particularly in the case of women, the second decade of the 20th century begins a new visual discourse that is reflected in more uninhibited and seductive clothes, in styles in which comfort overlaps to aesthetics. The discovery of the body, resulting from the transformation of the way of life (sports, health and leisure, spas and bathing resorts), as well as the creation of industrial structures, carry the massification of fashion (the tubular form of clothing, short hair in the garçonne style, the long flappers' necklaces and the ‘all-terrain’ shoes, streamlining Charleston's steps) and give it an androgynous look.
If Paul Poiret argues that fashion is not material, but the founder of identity and the shaper of a certain cultural sphere, Elsa Schiaparelli, an admirer of surrealists, creates sweaters with ‘trompe-l’oeil’ effects, influenced by Chirico, Miró and Cocteau. Coco Chanel revolutionizes women's dress codes and, in close proximity to Picasso, Braque and Stravinsky, designs the costumes for The Rite of Spring, the starting point for the intersection of fashion, painting, ballet and cinema. Meanwhile, movie stars and it girls publicize new trends, imitated to satiety.
Kleinder machen Leute (“Clothes make people”): the German proverb, as Erik Peterson (1995) recalls, deserves to be read in an epistemological sense, since man himself is made of what he wears (the garment satisfies desires or needs for decoration, modesty or protection, according to Flügel) insofar as it is not interpretable by itself. The history of fashion, from the invention of the sewing machine driven by the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, to the publication of the first fashion magazines and costumes (Le Jardin des Modes), to the establishment of large city stores (temples or cathedrals of modern commerce, according to Zola), until the socio-professional recognition of dressmakers, stylists and designers serving elite clientele or the globalized intervention of current digital influencers, reflects differentiated concepts, paradigms, and values that dynamically draw the profile of our own humanity, our relationship with the body and our self-representation strategies. From the ‘Crazy Twenties’ until 2020, fashion has been continuously changing, alongside the Zeitgeist, the spirit of time. And even the prop. A modern ‘adornment’ obligatorily used as protection and as a precaution, has become, under the aegis of fashion, an adornment: the anti-pandemic mask.
As an aesthetic and political field, and configuring a socio-cultural and semiotic phenomenon of complex definition, with direct intervention in the clipping of singular or collective identities, fashion, spoken and speaking (Massimo Baldini), admits that we think it from multiple and diverse perspectives and in different communicative contexts. Here are some topics that we point out as possible reflective paths for the texts to be submitted to this issue of the Journal:
Some topics accepted in this issue of the magazine
- Concepts and paradigms: fashion, appearance, beauty
- Visions of the body: from Victorian puritanism to striptease; modesty and narcissism
- Nudity as clothing: nudity and stripping; the signature of the skin and the practices of tatoo and peircing; post-humanism and artificial skin (cf. Bart Hesse); masks and make-up
- Sociology of fashion: ‘fashion’ and ‘costume’ as imitation in space and imitation in time (cf. Gabriel Tarde); fashion as an influence and as discrimination; ‘Exoticism’ and ethnicity; brands, markets and digital influencers
- Fashion policies: the domestication of ‘taste’ versus fashion as an affirmation, denunciation or claim; fashion and feminism; the uniform authority
- Aesthetics, languages and fashion styles: between the local and the global; between individuation and hybridization; between tradition and avant-garde; between luxury and ready-to-wear
- Fashion in literature and other ‘arts’: fictional fashion icons; literature and the arts as a reflection and / or as inspiration
Working languages: texts proposed for publication are accepted, alternatively written in Portuguese, English, French, Spanish or Galician.