I suggested in this journal^2 that, if we exclude the numerous histories of
clothes, the majority of which merely repeat each other, then works on
clothing overall are rare; and since this is a vast subject, barely explored,
and in which there is a permanent temptation towards futility, any serious
attempt or claim to synthesize clothing is eagerly seized upon. There is
no lack of such intentions in Fr. Kiener’s work.^3 But I doubt whether this
study provides anything really new for those who have read the work
by Flügel which, despite (or, perhaps, because of) its bias, is unrivalled
to this day.^4
To understand Kiener’s tentativeness we have to remind ourselves
of Flügel’s bias. Flügel located himself clearly within a psychoanalytical
perspective; he has used the lexicon of Freudian symbols to describe
human clothing as the ambiguous expression, both mask and
advertisement, of the unconscious self. Even if we reject Freudian
symbolism, his work remains doubly valuable: first, because he has
brought together the essential elements of clothing phenomena, pulling
them out of history, folklore, literature or contemporary society, in short
putting order into what everyone more or less knows (for here there is
a subtle difficulty for all work on clothing: how to give objective value
to something which seems insignificant because it is experienced
subjectively); second, because he has explicitly conceived clothing
as a value-for, that is as a form of meaning (where the signified is the
deep psyche); for the first time, clothing was now liberated from the
Chapter 3
Towards a Sociology
of Dress
1