History and Sociology of Clothing 7roman soldiers to throw a wool cover over their shoulders so as
to protect themselves from the rain were performing an act of pure
protection. But once material, form and usage have become not so
much embellished, but simply regimented by a defined social group
(for example, the slaves in Gallo-roman society around the second
century), the garment has joined the system, has become dress (here
the penula^15 ) without our being able to find in this shift any trace of an
aesthetic aim. It is the appropriation by society of a form, or a use,
through rules of manufacture, that creates a garment, not the variations
in its utilitarian or decorative quantum.^16 If a woman places a flower in
her hair this remains a fact of pure and simple adornment, so long as
the use (such as a bridegroom’s crown) or the positioning (such as a
flower over the ear in Gypsy dress) have not been dictated by a social
group; as soon as this happens it becomes a part of dress.
This seems to be a primary truth. however, we have seen how
studies of dress, whether historical or psychological, have never really
considered this as a system, that is as a structure whose individual
elements never have any value and which are signifiers only in as
much as they are linked by a group of collective norms. Certainly,
profiles, archetypal forms have been identified, most notably in graphic
representations. But system is completely different from gestalt; it is
essentially defined by normative links which justify, oblige, prohibit,
tolerate, in a word control the arrangement of garments on a concrete
wearer who is identified in their social and historical place: it is a value.
So it is expressly on the level of the social that dress must be described,
not in terms of aesthetic forms or psychological motivations but in terms
of institution. The historian and the sociologist are not charged with
simply studying tastes, fashions or comfort; they must list, coordinate
and explain the rules of matching and usage, of what is constrained or
prohibited, tolerated or allowed. They must establish not the ‘images’ or
the traits of social mores, but the links and the values; they must accept
this as the precondition for any attempt to establish the relation between
dress and history, because it is precisely the normative connections that
are, in the final instance, the vehicle of meaning. Dress is essentially part
of the axiological order.
Doubtless what explains the difficulties our authors have in treating
dress as a system is that it is not easy to follow the evolution of a structure
through time, the continuous succession of balances whose elements