IS FASHION THE PRODUCT OF MODERNISM?

Modernism can be seen as an epoch, first traced in the sixteenth century that evolved to a peak in the 1920s.[1]However, modernism is contradictory in itself and cannot be clearly defined as a complete epoch.[2]Foucault approached modernism as an attitude rather than as a period of history, a mode of relating to contemporary reality.[3]Modernism was also not conceived as a style but a loose collection of ideas. It is a term that covers a range of movements in fashion, which broadly reject the styles of the past.[4]Modernism and post-modernism are attitudes that still interplay with fashion today.   

Consumers choose fashions not only because they are aesthetically pleasing but also because they signify contemporary culture.[5]Modernity is the state of being up-to-date of the current time period.[6]Modernity is also intimately linked with the concept of change and progress.[7]Modernism was equipped with the will to forget and separate itself from the past in order to arrive at the new as a breach with what had gone before.[8]It signifies as Klotz says “conceiving the future by starting out from today and finding orientation in itself.”[9]This attitude was expressed in the fashion of the 1920s and in the lifestyle at that time. Starting with the body abstraction of the sack dress which emphasized naked arms and legs and triggered a previously unknown perception of the body, eroticism and movement. Furthermore, the three-part suit with a sack jacket developed into a gender-crossing ascetic ideal and a paradigm of modernism.[10]

Several influential trends were the result of modernism. The sack dress derived from the undershirt form. With this underwear became outerwear, the informal became formal.[11]Gabrielle Chanel realized a type of “vestimentary functionalism” with the presentation of the little black dress.[12]When combined with the growing style of modernism in the arts, Chanel’s style expressed modern an anti-decorative functionalistic design and the erotic appeal of a sporty, democratic spirit.[13] After the war, she created the Chanel suit as functional but still elegant women’s clothing. It was a response to the modern men’s suit as well as a conscious contrast to Dior’s New Look. In this respect, modernism also took up the past and tradition but always had an eye on the future with the aim of function.

Post-modernism drew its leading ideas from modernism. It is not opposed to modernism but it rejects radicalism and has revised its abstraction. The post-modern design is no longer form follows function but form produces visions.[14]In relation to modernism, post-modernism is also not an epoch but an attitude or state of mind.[15]Fashion itself is the expression of post-modernism because the past in fashion is not something that has been discarded but is a recombination of already existing ideas.[16]One of the first traces of form creates vision was the Dior New Look which disregarded the function, associated with modernism.[17]Examples such as Jean Paul-Gaultier’s golden corset top designed for Madonna in 1990 and John Galliano who adopts aesthetic concepts of basic history and reassembles them in his design, embody the post-modern attitude. 

Modernism drew the attention of changing aesthetics and meanings. Without modernism, post-modernism would not have evolved. Even though, post-modernism depicts aesthetics from history, it is the recombination that makes fashion today, an interplay between modernism and post-modernism. Fashion is not seen as pure function (excluding outdoor wear, uniform) but extracts form that follows vision. Modernity of fashion, cannot be reduced to a cycle of death and rebirth, redundancy and innovation.[18]Therefore, Fashion today is a combination of rules between modernism and post-modernism. 

[1]M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts Into Air(London: Verso, 1983), 387. 

[2]Ingrid Loschek, "When Is Fashion Design?", in When Clothes Become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems, 173–204 (Oxford: Berg, 2009) accessed October 31, 2017, doi: 10.2752/9781847883681/WHNCLOTHBECOMFASH0016.

[3]Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?”, in The Foucault Reader, ed. by P.Rabinow, 32-50  (London: Pantheon Books, 1984).

[4]"What was Modernism?" Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed November 03, 2017, https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/what-was-modernism.

[5]Ali Guy,Eileen Green and Maura Banim, Through the Wardrobe: Women’s Relationships With Their Clothes(Oxford: Berg, 2001), 6.

[6]Alan Bullok, and O. Stallybrass, The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought(New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1977), 397.

[7]Laura J., and R. Laurer, Fashion Power: The Meaning of Fashion in American Society(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 174.

[8]Loschek.

[9]Heinrich Klotz, Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert: Moderne - Postmoderne - Zweite Moderne(Munich: Beck, 1999), 22.

[10]Loschek.

[11]Ibid.

[12]Mary Davis, “Chanel, Stravinsky, and Musical Chic”, in Fashion Theory 10:4, 434, doi: 10.2752/136270406778664986.

[13]Annette Lynch and Mitchell D. Strauss, "Style: The Endless Desire for a New Look", in Changing Fashion: A Critical Introduction to Trend Analysis and Meaning, 81–102 (Oxford: Berg, 2007), accessed October 31, 2017, doi: 2752/9781847883766/CHANGFASH00010007.

[14]Loschek.

[15]Jean-François Lyotard and Marianne Karbe, Philosophie und Malerei im Zeitalter ihres Experimentierens(Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1986), 97.

[16]Loschek.

[17]Catherine Driscoll, “Chanel: The Order of Things”, in Fashion Theory 14:2, 138, accessed November 1st, doi: 10.2752/175174110X12665093381504.

[18]Ibid., 139.