Cultures, Identities, Histories

2

Cultures, Identities, Histories:

Fashioning a Cultural

Approach to Dress

Christopher Breward

The first serious use to which research in historical dress was applied in British
academia during the post-war period lay in the area of art historical studies.
The careful dating of surviving clothing and its representation in paintings
was seen as a useful tool in processes of authentication and general connois-
seurship. The emphasis on the creation of linear chronologies and stylistic
progressions that art historical directions dictated at the time has to some
extent influenced the nature of much fashion history writing since. Various
approaches have subsequently been adopted following the self-conscious
establishment of a school of new art historical thinking in the late 1970s, in
which social and political contexts were prioritized over older concerns of
authorship and appreciation or connoisseurial value. The arising debates
undoubtedly challenged those assumptions that had underpinned the serious
study of fashion in the first place. Indeed many of the defining aspects of
new art historical approaches, which drew on ideas from Marxism, feminism,
psychoanalysis and structuralism or semiotics, encouraged a fresh prominence
for debates incorporating problems of social identity, the body, gender and
appearance or representation. These are issues that lie at the centre of any
definition of fashion itself, though it might be argued that their effect has
been to nudge concentration away from the artefact towards an emphasis
on social meaning.^1 Rees and Borzello (1986), in their introductory text on
the new art history, use instructive examples of the resulting paradigm
shift which had broad implications for the study of fashion history. In their

1. Palmer, Alexandra, “New Directions: Fashion History Studies and Research”,Fashion
   Theory, Vol. 1.3, 1997.