Language and Clothing 21very definition of clothing a methodological difficulty, which I would like
to try to pin down by way of a quick history of the work so far.
This history is relatively recent. of course, since the renaissance there
have been works on clothing: these either had archaeological aims (with
ancient clothing for example), or else they were inventories of clothes
governed by social conditions: these inventories are veritable lexicons,
linking vestimentary systems very tightly either to anthropological states
(sex, age, marital status) or to social ones (bourgeoisie, nobility, peasantry,
etc.), but it is clear that this sort of lexicon of clothing was possible only
in a society which was starkly hierarchical, in which fashion was part of a
real social ritual.^5 on this subject I would like to cite an important work—
Larmessin’s seventeenth-century Costumes grotesques—because it
represents an imaginary state not unlike the superlative case that is this
vestimentary lexicon. For each profession Larmessin composed a form
of dress whose elements were borrowed as if in a dream from the tools
of the relevant activity, which were then arranged into a sort of general
line or signifying gestalt (the process is not dissimilar to the paintings of
arcimboldo): it is a kind of frenetic pan-symbolism, a creation which is
both poetic and intelligible, in which the profession is represented by
its imaginary essence: calm forms for the pastry-maker, serpentine for
the apothecary, pointed for the fireworks manufacturer, rounded and
humped for the potter, etc.: in this fantasy, clothing ends up absorbing
man completely, the worker is anatomically assimilated to the respective
instruments and in the end it is an alienation which here is described
poetically: Larmessin’s workers are robots avant la lettre.
Dress history did not really begin until romanticism and then it was
undertaken by theatre specialists; it is because actors wanted to play
their roles in the clothes of the period that painters and designers began
to strive systematically towards historical accuracy in appearances
(clothing, sets, furniture and props), in short that denoted precisely by the
term ‘costume’.^6 So what was beginning to be reconstituted here was
essentially roles, and the reality being sought was a purely theatrical one:
myths such as kings, queens and lords were being openly reconstituted;
the first consequence of this was that clothing was only ever analysed
anthologically, as if it were a compilation; it was the attribute of a particular
race, selected for romantic theatre: it was as if ordinary people had never
been dressed; the second consequence, and perhaps more significant
methodologically, was that the costume designer’s attention was drawn