Dress as Metaphor British Female Fashion and Social Change in the 20th Century. Katarzyna Kociolek
by women occupying prominent social and political roles. While the Qualification of Women Act of 1918 recognised age as a sole criterion for allowing women their voting rights, the women who topped the British political scene in the 20th century were predominantly over 40. Emmeline Pankhurst was 45 when she founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, Ellen Wilkinson was aged 52 when appointed Minister of Education in 1945, Margaret Thatcher was 54 when elected the Prime Minister in 1979, while Betty Boothroyd was 63 on becoming the Speaker of the House of Commons. Because unlike fashion, politics seems to favour maturity to the extent that the media never fail to report on the age of those who enter politics early in their lives, female public figures could be viewed as sartorially negotiating conflicting ideals of female identity, metaphorically bringing together youthfulness of fashionable femininity and level-headed maturity of what Vogue labelled “Ageless Style”. In view of the above, the purpose of the current study is to at least partially answer the following questions regarding the use of fashion in public space: how do fashion and clothes communicate women’s identities; what ideals of femininity are communicated through female clothes, and which feminine traits in the 20th century were metaphorically expressed by specific items of clothing.
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2 THE METAPHORS WE LIVE IN – DRESS AS A METAPHOR
2.1 Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Fashion
There exist two main approaches to the study of meanings in fashion. Firstly, the study of fashion has its roots in arts history, whose branch ‘iconology’ interprets visual metaphors used in the fine arts (described later in this chapter based on the work by Anne Hollander). Secondly, theories of fashion are embedded in the linguistic discipline of semiotics, the approach that was initiated by Roland Barthes and continued by Umberto Eco. So far these two approaches have not overlapped, although they seem to share a common denominator – the concept of a metaphor as central to the production and reception of meanings through fashion. As noted by María J. Ortiz, following the confirmation of a hypothesis that “metaphors can be expressed visually” and that “metaphor is a valid unit of analysis of a non-verbal corpus” (1579), I intend to re-examine the conceptualisation of female fashion by theorists of fashion. By applying elements of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, I trace visual manifestation of primary metaphors in female fashion in selected periods in the 20th century, demonstrating how changing fashions reflected changing cultural and social values and femininity ideals. In the present analysis of fashion I refer to Grady’s Primary Metaphor Theory (1997), which establishes the concept of primary metaphors as “characterized by their universality and by their being based on sensory-motor experiences” (Ortiz 1579). They are the starting point for a fashion analysis; and based on photographs, adverts and cartoons I demonstrate that primary metaphors are present in items of clothing and that fashion, as Ortiz puts it, also “metaphorically conceptualises notions like evil, importance, control, union or confusion” (Ortiz 1579). Since Kövecses (2005) lists both cartoons and advertisements among non-linguistic realisations of metaphors, the primary sources that I examine fall into two major categories: monomodal and multimodal metaphors, with photographs representing the latter while cartoons, which combine image and written text, the former category. Wartime posters and advertisements from the two journals that I examine: Votes for Women and Spare Rib, frequently fall into either of the categories depending on their format.
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is rapidly making its way into such diverse academic fields as political sciences, nursing, the visual arts, or archaeology. In fact, it seems that archaeology with its study of material metaphors ←43 | 44→comes closest to the use of CMT in relation to sartorial practices, as archelogy like fashion history and theory boasts a long tradition of studying identity through artefacts. For example, Rob Wiseman from University College London in his article entitled “Social Distance in Hunter-Gather Settlement Sites: A Conceptual Metaphor in Material Culture” applies CMT in his archaeological analysis, observing, that applying theories of embedded cognition to material culture and examining “material metaphors” (130) contributes to the expansion of the CMT propagated by such scholars as among others Charles Forceville. While Wiseman deploys CMT to explain settlement patterns, much of the paper is devoted to the discussion of the relationship between spatial and social relations. Citing examples of verbal metaphors which equate physical proximity between community members with their level of emotional attachment to one another, the author notes that settlement arrangements metaphorically reflected psychological distance between group members. Another archaeology scholar Joanna Brück from University College Dublin examines “material metaphors” in her study of Bronze Age burial sites. In her article “Material metaphors. The relational construction of identity in Early Bronze Age burials in Ireland and Britain” (2004), Brück notes that burial goods and gifts, contrary to commonly held opinions were not a simple reflection of the buried person’s identity, but should rather be treated as metaphorical comments on relations that the deceased person had with the gift givers, “the objects placed in the grave allowed the mourners to comment metaphorically on the links between the dead and the living, as well as on the changes experienced by a community torn asunder by death” (311). Concluding her analysis with a statement that burial objects “constituted part of the person” and that “the boundaries of the self did not coincide neatly with the limits of the physical body, but incorporated elements ‘outside’ of it” (325), Brück seems to view these artefacts as a special case of a metaphor.
Based on Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptualisation of metaphors and the metaphor paradigm, A is B repeatedly used in their seminal work on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, entitled Metaphors We Live By (1980), one may venture a statement that the same model as in for example “LOVE IS A JOURNEY” operates in the realm of fashion. While fashion has been frequently lauded as a tool for constructing and communicating identities (as it is demonstrated in Chapter 1), the exact mechanism through which this is possible has remained largely unexplored. Although some cognitivists have already examined metaphors in non-verbal expression (Metaphor and Thought, ed. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr, CUP, Cambridge, 2008) for example John M. Kennedy in art, Alan Cienki and Cornelia Müller in gesture and thought (2008), or Lawrence M. Zbikowski in music, so far fashion, despite being a vital element of visual culture and visual ←44 | 45→communication, has been left out. Yet, it seems that Conceptual Metaphor Theory when combined with communication theories and visual culture theories seem to shed some more light on the signification process, which occurs in and through fashion.
Linguistic corpora examined by Lakoff and Johnson demonstrates that verbal metaphors reflect “physical and cultural experience” (19) and that spatialization tends to form the core of a metaphorical expression as is the case with the concept of “high status” (18). In fact, according Lakoff and Johnson, “experiential basis” explains the existence of such metaphors like MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN, RATIONAL IS UP, EMOTIONAL IS DOWN. Further in the text, I intend to examine to what extent these metaphors are also present in the visual code of fashion, which according to some scholars (e.g. Malcolm Barnard) is a form of a language. In other words, I attempt to answer the question to what extent garments and clothing are a visual realisation of these metaphors. For example, a top hat as worn in the past by respectable gentlemen seems to be a visual realisation of several metaphors such as STATUS IS UP, CONTROL IS UP, GOOD IS UP, as spatial relations are translated (rendered metaphorically, or mapped onto) the form of a hat, whose proportions stress its height (also evident in the name). Tailored garments on the other hand imply control, for they visually reflect the concept of causation and the metaphor described by Lakoff and Johnson as THE OBJECT COMES OUT OF THE SUBSTANCE. A tailored garment is the object that comes into being through DIRECT MANIPULATION (73) and can be viewed as a container for that material (fabric). One may argue, therefore, that the wearing of a tailored suit as opposed to wearing untailored clothing doubly connotes the notion