ABSTRACTS

Caroline Evans (University of the Arts, London)

The Mathematics of Fashion: Jean Patou's 'Américanisme'

My paper will be a case study of the design, marketing and promotional strategies in the 1920s of the Paris-based couturier Jean Patou, who drew on what his contemporaries perceived to be modern, American business methods, as opposed to traditional French couture protocols. Focusing on Patou’s innovations in the relatively new phenomenon of the fashion show, I will argue that Patou translated what one journalist called ‘the mathematics of fashion’ into visual seduction on the catwalk, by visualizing modern business methods in the staging and scenography of his shows. 

Patou’s fashion shows bridged commerce and culture.  Similarly, my approach bridges economic and design history.  It requires me to look equally at the rationalization of the body in the workplace (the organization of the couture house) and in visual culture (the fashion show).  Business and labour historians working on the rationalisation of the body have ignored its cultural production, while cultural historians have largely focused on consumption and identity at the expense of production and economics.  I will challenge this separation and theorise production and consumption as two parts of a single, indivisible process in which each has some characteristics of the other.  Production extends beyond how a commodity is made to how it is rationalised as an aesthetic and a taste; and consumption involves the cultural production of meaning.  In Patou’s fashion shows and marketing, which differentiated so clearly between the American woman and the French woman, yet tied each inextricably to the power of the dollar in the mid-1920s, the production and consumption of cultural meaning proved to be at once ideological and economic.  

Vike Martina Plock (Exeter University)

"Not Marching in Steps after Leaders": Virginia Woolf, Uniforms and Fascism

Virginia Woolf is best known as the author of such experimental modernist novels as To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931). However, in the 1930s Woolf’s interest in literary experimentation was paralleled by a sustained engagement with contemporary cultural politics. In this decade Woolf began to observe—with concern—the rise of fascist institutions and organisations in England and abroad. Taking its cue from Woolf’s remarks on military uniforms in her 1938 political pamphlet Three Guineas (1938), this paper shows how her anti-fascist stance was tied to an interest in clothes and uniforms. Woolf, I will argue, was aware that clothes were effective instruments in structurally organizing individuals by creating strong group identities. In Three Guineas, for instance, remarks on male uniforms as emblems of power evidence Woolf’s awareness of sartorial practices in the organisation of social hierarchies. Through a detailed analysis of Three Guineas as well as of her prose writing of the 1930s, I will show how Woolf tried to understand and examine the emergence of fascism by exploring the role of clothes and uniforms in the development of social hierarchies within and outside of patriarchal relationships. 

Nicole Robertson (Northumbria University)

Uniformity in the office: clothing and professional identity, 1920-39

It has been argued that one of the key developments that crystallised both female aspirations and male apprehensions about sex roles during the First World War was the female adoption of uniforms.  The clothing worn by women in the interwar years has also been the subject of academic discussion highlighting how the ‘modern’ fashions worn by certain women presented highly evocative images marking this as a period (for certain groups of women at least) of female emancipation.  It is this theme of the importance of clothing and identity that will be the focus of this paper.  The interwar years witnessed dramatic changes in work and workplaces in Britain.  For some groups of women opportunities within the workforce marked this as a period of change and independence.  The focus of this paper is on those engaged in office work.  The paper will explore ideas relating to the uniform of a successful career woman and what facilities were available to allow clerical workers to pay for such clothing.  This was a period of significant change in methods of clothing manufacture and one that witnessed the expansion of department stores and multiple chain stores enabling the spread of ready-to-wear fashion.  An examination will be made of how significant these changes were and how they were presented and marketed to office workers.  This paper will explore these themes by considering the importance of clothing to the professional identity of clerical workers.

Laura Ugolini (Wolverhampton University)

War-stained: British Combatants and Uniforms, 1914-18

The key contribution of military uniforms in transforming more or less keen civilians into soldiers is widely acknowledged in the First World War literature, as is their significance in marking an individual’s rank, regimental affiliation and service record. As was widely acknowledged, it was difficult for recruits to feel like ‘real’ soldiers until kitted out in a proper uniform. However, the transformation of civilians into soldiers did not always end when men put on khaki uniforms. In fact, it could and did continue in the course of individuals’ war service, as both the uniform and servicemen’s identities shifted as war went on.

Indeed, it is the aim of this paper to examine the role of the uniform in marking one such further transformation: that of a more or less raw recruit into a combatant with experience of front line duty, even if not necessarily of battle. Using combatants’ diaries, letters and later autobiographical writings, the paper will explore the meanings attached to battle-stained uniforms during the First World War. It will consider whether wearing a dirty, muddy or ragged uniform was understood as the shedding of a further layer of civilian identity, and will question whether front line experience served to overthrow the strong association of cleanliness with health, status and even moral superiority.

 The willingness of so many men to replace civilian garments with a uniform at the outbreak of war may have been perceived as a mark of patriotic manliness, but – this paper will question – was a worn, shabby and mud-stained uniform perceived as symbolic of an even greater degree of manly heroism?