32 The Language of Fashion
triangle of motivations (protection, modesty, ornamentation) in which it
had been locked, and reached the status of message, an element in a
semiological system: in this sense, and in spite of his strict obedience
to analysis, Flügel makes clothing much more into communication than
expression.
Like Flügel, Kiener begins by discussing the old motivations
(protection, modesty, ornamentation), from which, rather eclectically, he
retains certain elements. But his main point is to posit clothing as the
expression of the body,^5 from which he gleans the body’s successive
modes of being; and this inclines him to organize the main parts of
his book following a purely anatomical schema:^6 head, trunk, pelvis,
legs, etc., and then to consider, for each of these parts, all the diverse
‘motives’ for which men have covered themselves; his attempt is a
bit like the great description of the French language by Damourette
and Pichon: it has the same encyclopaedic aims, the same qualities
(an abundance of data, finely detailed analyses), and the same faults
(disorder beneath a semblance of order, continual confusion between
synchrony and diachrony).
It is this ‘naturalist’ postulate that leaves Kiener lagging behind in
relation to Flügel. Certainly his material is substantial, gleaned from a
wide variety of sources (myths, history, folklore, sayings, legends, jokes,
dreams, anecdotes), all presented in a rather pell-mell fashion but in
such a way that the analysis is constantly threatened with confusion and
with banality, since everything is considered as a ‘detail’ whilst nothing is
regarded as exemplary. But above all it is the principle of interpretation
that is disappointing. Kiener is aiming towards a ‘psychology’ (but does
not state which one). unfortunately, as Kiener gradually links the body
and clothing, the psychology evaporates, as if in a conjuring trick. one
may wish to contest the Freudian psychology that Flügel uses, but it
does have the merit of being sufficiently structured so as to set up a
fruitful working hypothesis. But by constantly drawing clothing back
into a kind of ‘natural meaning’ emanating from the body, Kiener is,
despite himself, forced into stating truisms; the majority of his analyses
are veritable tautologies in which the body is the body rather like the
way in which ancient graphology used to suggest that limp handwriting
was indicative of a limp personality. To say for example that a short item
of clothing is chosen because it is practical is of very little interest unless
you then submit the notion of practical to a historical and ideological