Mallarm� & The Fashion Magazine

by Alex Goldman

This week�s selection by Furbank and Cain focuses on Stephane Mallarme: a poet who started a decorative and informative publication titled La Derniere mode in 1874, Paris. La Derniere mode is considered one of the earliest fashion magazines in history. It debuted during the beginning of the Third Republic. German reparations had been paid off, the Franco-Prussian war was over, but France was still politically and economically unstable.

La Derni�re Mode was a limited edition fashion magazine/art project created by 19th century poet St�phane Mallarm�.

While Furbank discusses La Derniere mode as a publication, Cain talks about La Derniere mode as a reflection of the dawn of the Third Republic, and how it fit into the society of the day. Cain characterizes this new Third Republic as having �laws of governance but no constitution, until its demise in 1940, but its whole existence was always ghostly. Similarly, in 1874 France had no capital; the government sat in Versailles, but Paris, punished for its Communard activities, had no special place. Like the Thermidor revolution, this was the revenge of the provinces on Paris� (212). La Derniere mode appealed not to the provinces, but to the Parisian upper-class, and continued to reaffirm Paris as the art and culture capital of France.

In mid-19^th century France, there was tension between the middle class and the upper class, which translated directly to tension between the peasants in the provinces and the urban Parisians. Cain explains that while the Parisians were the landowners that had the monetary wealth, the people in the provinces were considered these unruly masses, and although they had land, they despised and feared the dominance of Paris. The rise of department stores preceded La Derniere mode in the 1860s, and transformed the act of shopping into as much of an outing for the wealthy as going to, as Cain exemplifies, the Louvre. Bear in mind, that during this time the middle classes were still buying raw textiles and making their clothes with sewing machines (a new invention at the time) at the home, and had no use for department stores or magazines that talked about the newest and latest styles.

Mallarm�, b. 1842- d.1898

Furbank emphasizes that as a poet, people thought that Mallarme was crazy. He edited, designed and wrote everything in La Derniere mode �under a variety of pseudonyms,� named Madame de Ponty, Miss Satin, and Ix. (5). Mallarme�s �Madame de Ponty� persona, for example, discusses fashion as materialism: �A fashionable woman does not suffer financial pressures, because Fashion has, precisely, full power to defeat them�.The �bon ton� of Fashion, which forbids it to propose anything aesthetically or morally disgraceful�� (10). �Her� ideology about fashion appealed only to a Bourgeoise audience, and makes strong assumptions about the relationship between fashion and economic status. It is interesting that the Furbank writes of Mallarme�s pseudonym characters as though they have their own mutually exclusive opinions and personalities. Madame de Pont and Miss Satin, �represent two different traditions in magazines themselves, both of which Mallarme inherits. As well as the fashion magazine properly speaking there was another kind of publication, aiming at helping the bourgeoisie overcome the pitfalls which might await them in their social ascent� (214).

Furbank and Cain note that there were other philosophers and theorists writing about fashion during Mallarme�s time, such as Baudilaire and Gautier. Baudilaire saw fashion as a logical evolution. He believed that women used fashion to separate themselves from nature, and in his opinion, fashion and nature exist in two completely separate, non-intersecting spheres. Mallarme on the other hand believed that there was no separation between nature and art, or nature and fashion as an extension of art. �Again, one of the favourite tropes or principles of Madame de Ponty, as of Ix, is that the monde (world) in the �high-life� sense (i.e. the scene of worldliness and fashion) is synonymous with the monde or world in the everyday sense (i.e. meaning everything that there is); and this is closely related to a further trope, that �Nature� is a false concept, �Nature� and the man-made are not to be distinguished� (9).

St�phane Mallarm�, Le Hasard, 1881

Furbank writes however that Mallarme possessed qualities distinguishing him form these other fashion theorists. Mallarme made himself both a fashion designer and a �parody of �several different kinds of fashion journalists, and this opened up to him possibilities not available to a mere critic or theorist, like Gautier or Baudelaire� (10). La Derniere mode served as Mallarme�s outlet for philosophizing and theorizing about fashion, and sharing his vision about fashion that extends beyond the clothing. For example, Furbank and Cain describe the layout of each issue of La Derniere Mode on pg. 13, explaining that each included sections dealing with �fashion and its nature and principles,� food, interior decoration, a poem, a short story, a lifestyle section dealing with books, theatres, and travel, a �column of correspondence with subscribers,� and an advertising section (13). Mallarme showed that all of these categories correlate to a fashion of the time, and he would influence and direct the Bourgeoisie�s opinions on which foods, destinations, books, shows, etc. were fashionable by writing them as so in La Derniere mode.

Printemps publication, 1874 and and La Derni�re Mode, 1874

Critics of Mallarme include Jean-Pierre Lecercle and Roger Dragonetti, who wrote about La Derniere mode over 100 years after it debuted. Author Roger Dragonetti (1992) Claims that La Derniere mode didn�t even exist at all except as a ��piece of private publication for the eyes of a group of friends, who were bound by a vow of secrecy about it. It was not merely, under one aspect, a fantasy about and take-off of a real fashion-journal (which indeed it was; it was wholly a fantasy or �phantom�)� (11). There is evidence that the publication was indeed real, but Dragonetti, in his critique, is convinced that Mallarme was creating too much of a parody to have actually been interested in Fashion (12). This suggests that Dragonetti believes that those who were or are truly interested in Fashion take it with the utmost seriousness.

The illustrator Edmond Morin, Le Monde Illustr� (Mars 1885) - Original en Couleur

Excerpt from La Derni�re Mode, 1874

During Mallarme�s time, life in Paris essentially was a fashion show, a display, to see and be seen. Especially at the theater, which Mallarme �rightly devoted a large part of La Derniere mode to� (215). In the mid-1870s, there was a genre of theatre called �Pieces a femme,� which was like an early fashion show, where both the �spectators become spectated; everything is spectacle� (216). La Derniere mode had fantasy-like qualities that made it appear to be out of touch with reality, while it actually served as a brilliantly devised social commentary, mixing all that was in fashion with the politics of the era.

Anonymous, Inauguration du Palais Garnier en 1875

One of Cain�s final points is that in La Derniere Mode, Mallarme translates France�s political and economic instability and uncertainty at the end of the Second Empire �into the field of fashion� (219). In fact, the Fashion industry in Paris from the mid-late 1800s, up until post World War II, was a significant contributor to the upswing of the French economy. (214). Disasters of the Franco-Prussian war put a freeze on dressmaking in Paris. This shows how politics affected fashion. During this time, women began to wear men�s clothes out of necessity due to the lack of women�s clothing available, and people were convinced that this was the demise of France. Cain makes a final suggestion that in a country as eager to achieve secularism as France, it is no wonder that fashion had become women�s object of �worship.� (221).

To summarize, Furbank and Cain discuss how revolutionary a publication La Derniere mode was. Mallarme designed, edited, and wrote it under pseudonyms that each had individual, smart opinions about life and fashion in the haute society of 1870s France. He did not reveal that these �writers� were all him, and no one at the time had a clue. All the while that this Bourgeoisie publication was geared toward steering the fashion and life decisions of the upper class, it reflected the revival of France after the Franaco-Prussian war and the idea that Fahsion would be a key player in rebuilding France�s economy.

See more on La Derniere Mode here

See the chronological history of the fashion magazine here

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Fashion as Law

by Diana Vassar

The fashion magazine has become something of a fashion rule book but there are times that fashion reaches across all people, acting as an aesthetic law.

Importantly a law is something to which all must answer. The law is the highest system for all people. As a system of "good taste" and Western aesthetics, fashion sometimes acts as a law for all. However within particular cultures or subcultures fashion is really a system of rules, smaller codes than law that only exist within the system. A rule means nothing outside the subculture.

Agnes Brooks Young, �Fashion Has Its Laws�

Agnes Brooks Young (1898-1974) was an author of both novels and literature on fashion and costuming. She was born and raised in Cleveland, where she graduated from Cleveland School of Art before continuing education at The School of Arts and Design at Columbia University in New York City and later at l�Ecole Francais in Paris. In her post-graduate years she returned to Cleveland and became the costume director at the Cleveland Play House. During her tenure as a professor at Case Western Reserve (1930-1932) and a few years following, she published her work on fashion,Stage Costuming and Recurring Cycles of Fashion, 1760-1937. The essay, �Fashion Has Its Laws,� is an excerpt from Recurring Cycles of Fashion, 1760-1937, published in 1937.

It is important to review the historical context of Young�s book, considering that fashion is often directly correlated to social history. After reading the excerpt, I was particularly struck by the difference between 1895 and 1910 in Young�s sketches of style silhouettes. I researched the historical events during this time period in hopes to shed light on the apparent drastic change in fashion.

1895-1910: America experienced the largest wave of European immigration. 1890 marked the beginning of Progressivism and issues resulting from modernization (muckraking, environmentalism, and social justice). In 1908, Ford introduced the Model T and the assembly, thus beginning the second wave of industry. Products were mass-produced and people began culminating large amounts of �stuff,� including clothes. Closets began to grow. With new accessibility to variety comes a �craving for novelty�.

The title of this excerpt from Agnes Brooks Young�s book, Recurring Cycles of Fashion, 1760-1937, explicitly states the excerpt�s premise: �Fashion Has Its Laws.� According to Young, fashion is and must always be changing; however, contrary to �universally accepted beliefs,� these changes are not fickle and spontaneous. In other words, fashion is not �lawless,� but rather a process of slow and continuous modifications on a central type.

Young begins her argument, that fashion has laws, by refuting the counter-argument, that fashion is lawless. She contends that studies supporting fashion�s lawlessness are at fault because they focus primarily on the outliers of fashion, the most elaborate costumes worn by a select few, and neglect to recognize the trends, the typical fashions worn by most. Comparable to the economic market, fashion has trends and often works in cycles. These trends are more revealing than selected individual items since these individual items are very often exceptions to the �rule�. By studying the typical annual fashions between 1760 and 1937, Young identified the trends and discovered that these trends were widely indicated by the contour of European and American women�s skirts.

The central types of skirts fit into three categories: back-fullness, tubular, and bell-shaped. Young found that each category dominated for a total of approximately thirty non-consecutive years across the 178-year period and therefore concludes that fashion trends are not only continuous but also cyclical. Over the course of time, small changes in garments add up to produce larger changes. As seen in Ulrich Lehmann�s essay, �Benjamin and the Revolution of Fashion in Modernity,� the fashion product contains a history in each of its pieces and in each of its folds. It is only natural then for the culmination of changes to reveal a final return to a previous dominant style.

Variations visible today

If fashion has laws, then the real question is: who dictates these laws? By definition, a law is a �rule of conduct imposed by an authority.� According to Young, the fashion laws are determined by the world and its acceptance of the styles displayed by the �fashion dictators in Paris.� These �fashion dictators,� or Paris designers, do not wield enough power to determine what will be fashionable � that power lies in the hands of the people. If the world does not accept what these designers propose, then the propositions become outliers to the trend and are eventually forgotten.

While intellectuals before her time neglected to recognize the popular trends, Young seems to focus too much on the center and, as a result, neglects the branches of fashion that stem from the norm. This creates a strong argument, but an argument nonetheless that is clearly more relevant to the 1930s than it is today. Put in context today, her argument is not withstanding. The art of fashion has grown immensely throughout history � most obviously in the fact that women no longer wear only skirts. I am not a fashion expert, but I cannot imagine it to be possible to centralize �the� fashion trend into one central vein given the endless number of styles throughout the world today.

Notable Trend forecaster, Li Edelkoort

French trend agency Promostyle

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Modern French Power

by Tribbie Nassikas

While there are many explanations for the concept of modern, it can be regarded as the historic era from the birth of the industrial revolution to the pinnacle of mass production uniformity, from the 1860's-1960's, making our current era post-modern or contemporary

While clothing increased with mass production, fashion remained an elite endeavor through the 1920's. Urbanization also gave people more visibility of one another and more civilized society. After WWII however fashion became more commonly understood do in part to Vogue and other magazines, see below in a photo by Henry Clarke on the right for Vogue UK.

Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capital of the 19th Century

Writing in the 1920's, Benjamin (1892 � 1940) begins by examining the phenomenon of the arcade, glass-covered passages through blocks of houses devoted to the sale of luxury goods. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the boom in the textile industry and the emergence of iron construction as the new, artificial architectural material gave rise to the existence of arcades. Benjamin notices how French utopian philosopher Charles Fourier then took this idea of the arcade (which originally served social ends), modifying it to serve as a dwelling place, calling it a phalanstery. Fourier�s phalansteries became his idea of a utopian society, where inside these buildings lives a self-contained community working together for mutual benefit. To Benjamin, Fourier�s utopia highly resembles the workings of a machine coming from the new technological advancements made possible by iron.

The passages were once major commercial spaces as seen on the left, mainly because they offered covered areas from the weather and tile flooring, not available on the streets of Paris until later. Then as shopping conditions improved throughout Paris the arcades fell out of use as seen on the right. However the arcades still attract tourists and window shoppers which exemplify the commodity worship Benjamin described.

Paris renovated and protected many arcades in response to Benjamin's research.

With the boom in iron construction, nineteenth century Paris saw an alienation of man from his home, as described in the poetry of Baudelaire. With the passageways of the arcades, poets� metaphorical diction like �passage� and �threshold� became one-dimensional, essentially losing their meaning and power to connote a variety of possibilities. With the modernization of the city, during which World Expositions became magical places where commodities were designated with a mystical value and the private citizen�s home was shattered by the art nouveau movement that brought interior decoration to the exterior, Benjamin realized a common trend.

The expositions of Paris took place between 1855-1900 and included classical arts, machines and photography. Photographer Nadar below was addressed by Benjamin as a player in modern life.

The entire city was transformed for the expositions, similar to efforts seen by the Olympic host cities today. The expositions required people walk through the city. This is also a basic aspect of modern life that put fashion on display. Baudelaire wrote about the flaneur, the man about town, a dandy and voyeur who took pleasure in his own dress and that of others. The first ever fashion shows were called parades and to this day we view fashion by watching walkers down a sidewalk like runway while viewers sit back as if at a cafe.

Ulrich Lehmann, �Benjamin and the Revolution of Fashion in Modernity

Lehman focuses on the satorial aspect of fashion or distinguished style which rises with modernity and urban life.

In Ulrich Lehamn�s essay �Benjamin and the Revolution of Fashion in Modernity,� Lehamn analyzes and clarifies Walter Benjamin�s essay �Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,� in which Benjamin attempts to discover modernity�s political, poetical, and philosophical potential from the visual and literary fragments of Paris in the 1800s, the century that gives birth to modernity as well as fashion.

Benjamin uses the metaphor of the fold of a mother�s skirt, which was found in Benjamin�s earliest notes and discussed in Lehamn�s essay. Through the metaphor of the fold, Benjamin states that the fabric is made up of woven memories, which might be hard to see at first due to the folds in the skirt. But since the skirt is contemporary and the memories within it are history, there is a constant realization of the past within the present. Fashion is the explosive that obliterates historicism (the theory that natural laws govern history), giving way to a new political concept of history � one that is materialist.

Memory is part of the understanding of clothing and fashion, not only personal value but cultural reminiscence though revivals. The Gatsby inspired look above by Proenza Schouler.

With this historic materialist mindset to look back at the nineteenth century in Paris, Benjamin is able to conclude that fashion, with its ever-changing, ephemeral character, embodies modern culture, which is all about the nouveau. Like the birth of arcades, the utopian ideas of Fourier, the novelties presented at World Expositions, and the architectural advancements made possible by iron, what is new is constantly being replaced by something newer, which becomes the very essence of fashion. For Benjamin, therefore, fashion is �a symbol of modernity�s potential for not merely stylistic but fundamental change� (Barnard, 430). But, as Haussmann�s efforts to create an urbanistic ideal essentially became a work of destruction and brought forth the burning of Paris at the close of the nineteenth century, Benjamin warns that there is always an end foreshadowed when utopian ideas are dreamed up. While dreaming, they are realized, and while realized, their eventual demise is previewed since utopias aim to replace what presently exists to attain a higher ideal. ?

Gilles Lipovetsky, �A Century of Fashion�

In Gilles Lipovetsky�s essay, �A Century of Fashion,� Lipovetsky declares that modern fashion lasted one century, from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s (when gaps, challenges, and anti-fashions began). Although fashion constitutes on the principle of individuality, Lipovetsky�s hundred years of fashion unified and standardized due to the establishment of the bipolar system of modern fashion in France, with haute couture at one end, and industrial clothing manufacturing at the other.

Worth created the label.

To prove his theory, Lipovetsky describes the beginning of the fashion system in the early nineteenth century. Industrial clothing manufacturing came first, in the 1820s, then, from 1857 to 1858, Charles-Frederic Worth set up the first haute couture fashion house, a highly innovative concept due to his making of samples to present to clients and his use of fashion models to display the clothes. Quite soon after, many more fashion houses sprang up following Worth�s example. Soon, the luxury industry represented by these fashion houses played a major role in French economy, occupying one-third of France�s export sales.

Christian Dior haute couture in 1954 left and YSL for Dior haute couture in 1959 right. Below Dior haute couture in the 1960's. Importantly haute couture pieces were often purchased by major stores like Bergdorff who then dismantled them and re-created copies. This practice stopped by the late sixties as top designers slowly introduced more and more ready to wear at affordable price points and licensing laws increased.

The mid 20th century introduction of the mass produced pattern gave everyone a feeling of access to top fashion.

From 1908 to 1910, organized fashion shows were formed, with two seasonal collections, fall/winter and spring/summer. By making it a biennial affair, haute couture regularized rapidity and randomness of change of fashion. Fashion not only became centralized, but democratized as well. Chanel, for example, made clothing of simplified elegance, making it easier to imitate, which causing the gap between dress styles to inevitably narrow. The rise in sportswear for women also added to the narrowing. Instead of gathers and frills, restrained, clean lines were favored in response to the lightness and energy associated with sports. With the differences between classes blurring, Lipovetsky sees a society of democratic equality, establishing universal centralized standards and the beginning of the first phase of modern societies.

Chanel connected to the increase of leisure for women by simplifying modern female forms and using jersey.

The democratization of fashion has meant a generalization of the desire for fashion, as demonstrated by the audience in Bryant Park below.

France and specifically Paris is still considered to be the capital of the fashion world. French couture is regulated by an industry governing body, the F�d�ration fran�aise de la couture, du pr�t-�-porter des couturiers et des cr�ateurs de mode created in 1973, which itself consists of the Chambre Syndicale de la mode masculine (men's fashion), the Chambre syndicale du pr�t-�-porter des couturiers et des cr�ateurs de mode (ready-to-wear) and the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture (high fashion), the latter having been created in 1868. The Federation also has a fashion school, the Ecole de la chambre syndicale de la couture parisienne (created in 1928).

The fashion and cosmetics industries consistently use Paris as a backdrop, perhaps seen best in the famous Miss Dior commercial by Sophia Coppola.

Watch the making of the commercial here

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