FASHION & POETRY

Personified as a goddess in poetry throughout the centuries, Fashion reveals itself in clothes never worn before, halfway between hedonistic worship and pure aesthetic representation.

There is a subtle streak of ignorance in perceiving fashion as a superficial egocentric affectation, as a flash of useless amplification of one’s self in streams of taffeta, silk ribbons and golden tinsel with occasional multicolored sparkles. And yet, the stigmatized vacuity of
that plasma embedded in pink globules that flows in the veins of psychology is nothing but the clothing equivalent of that splendidly human impulse to tell one’s story, even if only to underline the narcissistic enjoyment of being looked at.

If the advent of a uniforming clothing under the cloak of an easy, unconsidered and above all more social than personal choice, fashion over the centuries has held the title of phenomenon, in its truest sense, that is, an event, a truth so central to history that it cannot be ignored and, indeed, to become an object of study, the bane and delight of creatives and thinkers who have never neglected that very famous detail that makes the difference.

The Vermeerian pearl has become the catalyst for a new way of using light in painting, Bernini’s draperies or the lightness of the Veiled Christ’s shroud have recalibrated the ideal of sculptural perfection, while on printed paper, a dress was used as a medical record of a personality through chromatism, from the absolute and unresolved melancholy of Bovary blue to Anna Karenina’s black dress which, from the beginning of the narrative, foreshadows its tragic ending. Moving beyond quotationism and
costume philology (which would open splendid parentheses on Charles Baudelaire’s wardrobe, well-stocked with nappa gloves in various shades of pink, on Proust’s love for Poiret’s caftans, or on D’Annunzio’s obsession with aesthetics even in the extreme act, which pushes one of his Virgins of the Rocks to attempt suicide by gulping down perfumes), we end up in a true cult of fashion, conceived by numerous panthetic poets who sanctify its
presence in human existence, or, at the very least, recognize in it a superior power capable of bending the will, of tempting simplicity, of corrupting meekness with opulence.

In fact, the practice of personifying fashion as a divinity is not foreign to literature. First of all, fashion and poetry share a good percentage of terminology: “lines”, “statements”, “story”, “voice”, “style”. These semantic elements express the "artisanal" quality of both arts, which are a complex of plots and weaves interwoven by the tailor/poet. “Dress is to fashion what language is to poetry” as Cinthia Kunh and Cindy Carlson state in Styling Texts: Dress and Fashion in Literature (New York: Cambria Press, 2007).

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer

Anna Karenina Portrait of Madame X, John Singer Sargent — Portrait of Madame X, John Singer Sargent

Il dialogo della Moda e della Morte, Giacomo Leopardi Painting Leçons de peinture et de musique by Gustave Bettinger

Il dialogo della Moda e della Morte, Giacomo Leopardi Painting via Pinterest

Henry Robert from Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock"

But the reason why literature adds a new value to fashion is the recourse, more or less frequent, to personification. In his poetical work Il Giorno (1973), Giuseppe Parini writes a dedication to the Goddess of Fashion; Giacomo Leopardi instead, imagines a dialogue in prose between Fashion and his macabre sister Death in his Operette Morali (1824).

The personified representation of Fashion is therefore the visual and concrete expression of a linguistic system, increasing its communicative value and making it the spokesperson of a
given epoch. These qualities are masterfully described in the works of three great artists: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1717), Dialogo della Moda e della Morte (1824) by
Giacomo Leopardi and Le Palais de la Mode (1850) by Theodore de Banville.

In Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, the vestimentary and fashionable element ascends to become the backbone to the whole narrative structure, and serves as a code to decrypt the intense heritage of historical, political and economic references.

A work to be defined as “gallant”, according to the Johnsonian definitions of the term, The Rape of the Lock can be summarized in single, but exhaustive, definition:

“A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is made great, the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock – heroic!”

Belinda herself and her dressing table corner are transformed into a cassock scene of self-veneration:

“And now, unveil'd, the toilet stands display'd,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, rob'd in white, the nymph intent adores
With head uncover'd, the cosmetic pow'rs.
A heav'nly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling, begins the sacred rites of pride.
Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here
The various off'rings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transform'd to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux”.

Fashion is more nihilistic, superb and philosophical according to Giacomo Leopardi, who puts it in conversation with death in his Operette Morali (1824). In his defeatist and melancholic tone, Leopardi diverges from the luminous tones of eighteenth-century writing,
and the approach to fashion themes between him and Pope is drastic. The primary characteristic of this gap is the language used by poets: if Pope relies on the sonority of poetry, Leopardi, despite being an excellent poet, chooses the prosaic form of dialogue,
more direct and raw. Even the ideological base on which the works rest is strongly opposed: Pope aimed at a socio – political critique, Leopardi to an anthropological analysis. The primary purpose of the poet was in fact to bring together the fallibility of two strange sisters: on the one hand, Fashion, which dominates the choices of living men, on the other, Death, which shows humanity’s intrinsic fragility. With a highly philosophical content, Leopardi engages in an analysis of taste understood as mortal slavery and human transience, explaining how life goes and comes as quickly as the passing of fashions.

“Fashion. Come, for the love you bear the seven deadly sins, stop now and then, and look at me. Death. I look at you. Fashion. Don't you know me? Death. You should know that I have bad eyesight, and that I can't use glasses, because the English don't make any that are worth my while, and if they did, I wouldn't have anywhere to put them on. Fashion. I am Fashion, your sister. Death. My sister? Fashion. Yes: don't you remember that we were both born from Transience?”

L'evoluzione della specie, Elle Italia editorial 2008, Ph: Ruven Afanador

Leopardi thus asserts that Fashion and Death are generated by a single womb: that of Decay. Transience is not intrinsic to the nature of the two sisters, but in the role they play on this earth: Fashion has the function of making man understand how ephemeral and volatile the material world is, it is a memento mori covered in silk forecasting annihilation. Fashion is strenuously condemned by Leopardi inside his Operetta. His principle of Fashion, far from the Kantian definition that still explains the contemporary concept of Taste as the velleity of
common sense , approaches a more nihilistic interpretation, as Fashion is considered as the abolition of individual critical thought. With a strongly philosophical content, Leopardi engages in an analysis of taste understood as mortal slavery and human transience, explaining how life comes and goes with the same rapidity as the passing of fashions.
Leopardi thus states that Fashion and Death are generated from a single womb: that of Decay. Transience is not intrinsic to the nature of the two sisters, but to the role they play on this earth: Fashion has the function of making man understand how ephemeral and volatile the material world is, it is a memento mori covered in silk that foretells annihilation. Fashion is strenuously condemned by Leopardi in his Operetta. His principle of Fashion, far from the Kantian definition that still explains the contemporary concept of Taste as a common sense
aspiration, approaches a more nihilistic interpretation, as Fashion is considered as the abolition of individual critical thinking, which at the same time supplants its envious sister
thanks to its ability to adapt and its changing nature that thus makes it everlasting.

Among the many forgotten authors of literature, a place of honour belongs to Théodore de Banville. A “sacred monster” of the Parnassian movement, Banville was considered a model of high poetry by Charles Baudelaire, who dedicated him a poem, and Arthur Rimbaud, who often subdued his writings to the judgment of the poet he considered as “master”. Nowadays Banville’s writings are no longer published, and consequently they are damned by a lack of availability. The same critical apparatus that usually surrounds an author is almost non- existent, and Banville seems to have slipped into oblivion without there being any apparent motivation. One of his most refined and elegant writings is certainly Le Palais de la Mode (1850), a sublime poem, of an ethereal and evanescent beauty, in which Banville portrays in pink tones the palace of the Goddess of Vanity, Divine Fashion, adorned with feathers and venerated by plump Cupids. Unlike the works previously analysed, Le Palais is an absolute celebration and exaltation of fashion as a triumph of artificial beauty, anticipating the passion for fashion and costume typical of the symbolist movement that will be found in the writings of Baudelaire (Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne, 1863) and Stéphane Mallarmé (poet and founder of the fashion magazine La Dernière Mode). Banville celebrates beauty once and for all, specifically the artificial and meticulously constructed one of fashion. In the wake of Comte’s positivism, Banville has a fresh and new approach to fashion as a social phenomenon.

“A Palace, made of crystal-rock so bright, Nested in rose trees, beside the bluest stream. Within, ‘neath blazing silver chandeliers’ light vases, enamels, and glasses by Lahoche, a-gleam. From perfume burners tumble clouds of grey Where birds of a thousand painted colours play; Among the flowers, fresh as violets gay Velvety, scented couches hide themselves away. On their pale cushions, soft as a caress, A brow adorned with royal jewels rests, The sad and flawless brow of a young Goddess Whose little feet a thousand jewels press”.

An element of which there is no trace in the previous works, the numerous references to various forms of art only accentuate the idea of Fashion as an absolute aesthetic form.
Fashion, to be such, must rest on profound artistic principles and knowledge: fashion and style are therefore the result of a long and excellent cultural education for Banville, the only means that allow the individual to create his own aesthetic ideal, and in the case of fashion, to form individual vestimentary taste. What Banville has represented is therefore the perfect dandy, the perfect poet, the one who is expert in every form of beauty. Fashion is the supreme art because it can’ t exist without the support of the other arts. The only drama that springs from this poem is its having been forgotten. The importance of Banville, not only on the poetic level but also on the sociological one, was of extreme importance, as he was the spokesman of a new creative energy from which the modernity of Symbolism would be born.
As for fashion, Banville was perhaps the first to celebrate this underrated reality and elevate it to the status of an art form. For Banville, Fashion is a form of art in all respects as it does
not deviate from the individual, as does painting or writing. It is the individual. In contemplating a painting, man projects himself into another dimension, while Banville’s fashion is the externalization of individual creativity, it is the contemplation of subjective beauty, it is the celebration of identity as the supreme form of beauty and the key to Schopenhauer’s eudemonia, or the so called “doctrine of happiness”.

Although fashion is usually bound to a mere phenomenon of custom, it is actually a complex semiotic structure that expresses individual identity and traces the evolution of society. Thanks to the work of these authors, the relationship between fashion and literature is re-evaluated, reconsidered and analysed in detail. What emerges is how fashion has been used by poets to represent in an exhaustive way their conception of humanity and society, and how they have used this uncommon language to define their epoch. Although fashion is always the subject of controversy and speculation, it is undeniable that it is invaluable on an anthropological and sociological level, allowing us to understand what has influenced mankind in the days that were, and allowing us to foresee what it will desire in the days to come.