CONTENTS
Authors vii
List of illustrations xi
Introduction, Shoshana-Rose Marzel, Bezalel Academy of
Arts and Design Jerusalem, Israel 1
PART ONE NATIONHOOD 17
1 Secular Fashion in Israel, Oz Almog, University of
Haifa, Israel 19
2 Sartorial Boundaries on the Chinese Frontier, Antonia
Finnane, University of Melbourne, Australia 37
PART TWO RELIGION 53
3 Rabbinical Dress in Italy, Asher Salah, Bezalel Arts and
Design Academy Jerusalem, Israel 55
4 Zoomorphic Brooches in Roman Britain: Decoration or
Religious Ideology?, Lindsay Allason-Jones, Newcastle
University, UK 69
5 How Muslim Women Dress in Israel, Oz Almog, University
of Haifa, Israel 87
PART THREE IDENTITY 109
6 Ideology, Fashion and the Darlys’ “Macaroni” Prints, Peter
McNeil, University of Technology Sydney, Australia 111
7 Feminist Ideologies in Postmodern Japanese Fashion: Rei
Kawakubo Meets Marie Antoinette in Downtown Tokyo,
Ory Bartal, Bezalel Arts and Design Academy Jerusalem, Israel 137
8 Military Dress as an Ideological Marker in Roman
Palestine, Guy D. Stiebel, Tel Aviv University, Israel 153
PART FOUR POLITICS 169
9 Fashion and Feminism, Henriette Dahan-Kalev, Ben
Gurion University, Israel and Shoshana-Rose Marzel,
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, Israel 171
10 Fashion Politics and Practice: Indian Cottons and
Consumer Innovation in Tokugawa Japan and Early
Modern England, c. 1600–1800, Beverly Lemire, University
of Alberta, Canada 189
11 Breastfeeding, Ideology and Clothing in nineteenth-
Century France, Gal Ventura, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Israel 211
12 Dress as Political Ideology in Rabelais and Voltaire
Utopias, Shoshana-Rose Marzel, Bezalel Academy of Arts
and Design Jerusalem, Israel 231
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Finanne
Figure 2.1 Unidentified artist (active early 15th century). Eighteen Songs of a
Nomad Flute: The Story of Lady Wenji, Episode 5: Encampment by a Stream.39
Allason-Jones
Figure 4.1 Examples of zoomorphic brooches from Roman Britain. 71
Figure 4.2 Distribution of zoomorphic brooches in Britain. 73
Figure 4.3 A Distribution of horse brooches; B Distrubution of horse-and-rider
brooches. 74
Figure 4.4 A Distribution of cockerel brooches; B Distribution of duck
brooches. 77
Figure 4.5 Distribution of the other animal brooches in Roman Britain. 78
McNeil
Figure 6.1 “Fig. 1 is a head in stone; Fig. 3 a weapon, Fig. 4 a non-descript
carving; and Fig. 5 a mask in wood with real hair; all are from the South-sea
Islands.” 114
Figure 6.2 Fan, French, 1790–6, printed paper, by Den Gamle, Denmark, 27L,
224:39. 117
Figure 6.3 Title page, Darly’s Comic-Prints of Characters, Caricatures.
Macaronies. Dedicated to D. Garrick. Esq. 125
Figure 6.4 “Cupid’s Tower” (March 1776) and “Bunker’s Hill or America’s Head
Dress.” Darly’s Comic Prints, 1776. 129
Stiebel
Figure 8.1 Sica and sheath, En Gedi (Courtesy of Gideon Hadas. 156
Figure 8.2 Wooden phallus pendant, Camp F at Masada. 161
Lemire
Figure 10.1 “Perspective Picture of Famous Places of Japan: Nakanocho
in Shin-Yoshiwara,” Toyhuaru Utagawa, c. 1775. People enjoying the pleasure
district of Tokyo on Nakanocho Boulevard at night. FP 2-JPD, no. 1701. 193
Figure 10.2 “A View of Nakazu,” Toyaharu Utagawa, c. 1772–3. Pedestrians
crossing a bridge. FP 2-JPD, no. 1935. 195
Figure 10.3 There was an immediate visual impact from this printed garment.
Caraco and petticoat, printed cotton made on the Coromandel Coast, India, c.
1770–80. T.229&A-1927. 198
Figure 10.4 Indian printed cotton on coarse fabric, eighteenth century. This
printed textile was designed for the lower end of the European fashion market. 201
Ventura
Figure 11.1 Four main breastfeeding garments (G.V.). 212
Figure 11.2 James Gillray, The Fashionable Mamma or The Convenience of
Modern Dress, 1796, etching, hand colored. London, Wellcome Institute and
Library for the History of Medicine. Wellcome Library, London. 214
Figure 11.3 Edgar Degas, Aux cours en province, c. 1869, oil on canvas,
36.5 x 55.9 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 218
Figure 11.4 Paul César Helleu, Le Sein, c. 1897, drypoint on paper, 57 x 41
cm. Private collection. 223
Figure 11.5 Édouard Debat-Ponsan, Avant le Bal, 1886, oil on canvas,
87 x 65.5 cm. Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts. © 2013. White Images/Scala,
Florence. 224
INTRODUCTION
During the French Revolution, one of the questions the revolutionaries struggled with was the new clothes of the new French citizen. In 10 Floréal an II (April 29, 1794) the newspaper La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique published an article entitled “Considérations sur les avantages de changer le costume françois.” Here’s an extract of its content:
Clothing presents physical and political considerations worthy of a reasonable republican’s attention … Dressed in more sensible clothing than our own, men would become healthier, stronger, swifter, better able to defend liberty; women would give the state healthier children. A national costume would fulfill functions truly deserving of a free man’s consideration, such as constantly proclaiming and recalling la patrie, and distinguishing French citizens from nationals of countries still stigmatized by the chains of servitude. It would make it easy to signal the age and public functions of citizens, without tampering with the sacred foundations of equality.1
As shown by this example, the concept that ideologies are expressed through what people wear is not a new one. However, although the relationship between ideas and their materialization in dress is an important issue in fashion research, paradoxically it is one of the least-researched themes. This book bridges this marked gap. To make the most of ideas, we stretched to ideologies; then, to demonstrate that the way people dress in order to promote ideologies is as old a notion as human culture, we included chapters that span a long duration of time, from the ancient world to the present; and last, in order to show that every (important) aspect of the relationships between ideology and clothing transcends location and time, we did not limit ourselves to the West, but integrated in each section chapters from a wide geographical and historical range.
Fashion vs. clothing
Clothing, dress, and fashion are not interchangeable terms. According to Joanne Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, the term “dress” refers to “an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body.”2 Joanne Entwistle defines dress as “an activity of clothing the body with an aesthetic element” while “[t]he term ‘fashion’ carries with it the more specific meaning of a system of dress that is found in Western modernity.”3 According to Barnard, “fashion is thus defined as modern, western, meaningful and communicative bodily adornments, or dress. It is also explained as a profoundly cultural phenomenon.”4 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the term fashion as “the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time.”5 Thus, according to Marilyn Revell DeLong,
Fashion involves change, novelty, and the context of time, place, and wearer. Blumer (1969) describes fashion influence as a process of “collective selection” whereby the formation of taste derives from a group of people responding collectively to the Zeitgeist or “spirit of the times.” The simultaneous introduction and display of many new styles, the selections made by the innovative consumer, and the notion of the expression of the spirit of the times provide impetus for fashion.
To conclude so far, it may be said that fashion is the ability as well as the obligation to change one’s dress style in accordance with the new collective one, even when clothes are still wearable. Already from these, fashion is spirit, while clothing, dress, garment, adornments, and so on are its material components. But there is more to fashion.