56 The Language of Fashion
superlative gold, absolute richness—here the gemstone becomes the
very concept of price; it is worn like an idea, that of a terrific power, for
it is enough to be seen for this power to be demonstrated.
There is no doubt that, fundamentally, the gemstone was a sign of
superpower, that is of virility, and remained so for a very long time (after
all, it is only recently and under the puritan influence of Quaker clothing,
which is the origin of men’s clothing today, that men stopped wearing
gemstones). So why in our world has it been associated so constantly
with woman, with her powers and her evil spells? It is because the
husband very quickly delegated to his wife the job of showing off his own
wealth (certain sociologists use this to explain the origins of fashion): the
wife provides poetic proof of the wealth and power of the husband.
Except that, as always with human society, a simple pattern is quickly
invested with unexpected meanings, symbols and effects. Thus the
primitive showing-off of wealth has been invaded by a whole mythology
of woman: this mythology remains infernal, because woman would give
everything to own gemstones, and man would give everything to own
that very woman who wears the gemstones that she has sold herself
for; with gemstones as the link, woman gives herself up to the Devil,
the husband to the woman, who has herself become a precious, hard
stone; and we must not assume that a symbolism of this sort, which is
both prosaic, spiritual and, after all, naive, belongs only to the barbarous
periods in Western history. The whole of the Second Empire in France
(1852–71) for example was intoxicated and panic-stricken by the power
of gemstones, by this capacity to induce human Evil, which for so long
had been almost a physical property of diamond and gold: Zola’s Nana
really is the grandiose and angry cry of a society destroying itself, or one
might even say devouring itself, in two ways; woman is both a man-
eater and a diamond-eater.
Such a mythology has not completely disappeared from our times:
there are still fine jewellers, a world market in diamonds and thefts of
famous gemstones. But their infernal aspect is clearly on the decline.
First, because the mythology of woman has changed: in the novel, in
films, woman is less and less the femme fatale, no longer the destroyer
of men; she can no longer be essentialized, stopped from existing or
made into a precious and dangerous object; she has rejoined the human
race. and also gemstones, the great mythical gemstones, are barely
worn nowadays; they are of historical value only, sterilized, embalmed