Isabelle Paresys (ed), Looks and Appearances In Western Europe From the Middle Ages until Today, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, february 2008. (only published in French)
CONTENTS
ISABELLE PARESYS
Looks and Appearances. An introduction
PART 1 : SIGNS AND CODES
Signs and Codes
1. LEONE PRIGENT
The Alsatian Woman’s Coifs, Signs of Regional Identity in the 17th and 18th Centuries
2. CLAUDIA KANOVSKI
Extensive Table Decoration as a Sign of Appearance of the Rich Bourgeoisie and the Aristocracy in Paris during the 19th Century
3. ROBERT BECK
Sunday Clothes and Strategies of Looking one’s best in French Urban Societies from the end of the 18th Century to the end of the Second Empire.
Ages of Looks
4. JEAN-PAUL BARRIERE
Widows Appareances in 19th and 20th Century France
5. FLORENCE TAMAGNE
The “blouson noir”: Sartorial Codes, Rock Subcultures and Youth Identities in France in the 1950s and 1960s
6. CORINNE MARTIN
Mobile Phone and Appearance. New Social Standards amongst Teenagers?
Professional Appearances
7. ANTOINE DESTEMBERG
University Medieval Looks, a Matter of Honor
8. BENOIST PIERRE
Does the Clothes make the Monk? Monastic Looks in times of the Catholic Reform (France, Italy)
9. CATHERINE DENYS
From the « Sergent’s Striped Clothes » to the Policeman’s Uniforms in the old Southern Low Countries during the 18th century
Learnings and Ethics
10. CAROLINE DOUDET
How the Elegance comes to Provincials : The Learning of the Codes of Appearances in Balzac during the 19th Century
11. DANIEL DUBUISSON
From Visibility to Invisibility. The Refusal to Appearances in old India and Western World
PART 2 : SPACES OF LOOKS
Exchange
12. GIL BARTHOLEYNS
Brabant in Savoy. The Textile Market and International Dress Culture around 1300
13. LEYLA BELKAÏD NERI
Crossroads and hybidizations of fashions in urban mediterranean societies
14. LIANE MOZERE
Between Manilla and Paris : the Filipino domestics Looks
Geography and Travels
15. ISABELLE PARESYS
Sartorial Appearances and Mapping Space in Western Europe during the 16th and 17th Centuries
16. ODILE PARSIS-BARUBE
The French Travellers’Discourse about Native Peoples during the first 19th Century
Paris in the Making of Appearances
17. EUGÉNIE BRIOT
Paris as arbiter of Good Taste in Perfumes : the Advent of a Capital of Perfumery
18. AGNES ROCAMORA
Fashioning Paris : La Parisienne in the Fashion Press
19. WESSIE LING
Spatial Creations : Modes of Style of Foreign Fashion Créateurs in Paris
Micro-spaces of Looks an Appearances
20. CÉLIA FLEURY ET MAÏTÉ GOUILLIART
The Interiors of the Nobility in Arras or the Taste and Art of Appearances in a Provincial City during the 18th Century
21. MANUEL CHARPY
Parisian Antique Dealers, Second-Hand Shops and Customers In the 19th Century. A Trade of Appearances Between Centre and Periphery
Abstracts by alphabetical order of authors
JEAN-PAUL BARRIERE
Widows Appareances in 19th and 20th Century France
The moment of death is connected to behaviours which aim at accepting bereavement and grief, remembering the dead and accompaning the return of the nexts of kin into the group. The survivors has to fulfil these rules, especially widows. Mourning clothes are just one of them, but of increasing importance during 19th century, in Victorian England, then in France. From the “Old Regime” aristocracy, these customs diffuse to middle and lower classes, generating a national and international market at the end of the 19th century. Based upon the strong image of the widow, dressmakers, « Maisons de noir » and catalogs sell special clothes, jewels and accessories from black to white for every moment of life and mourning, according to fashion and political or social circumstances. Declining after World War 1, except in France, this custom desappears gradually after World War 2 : mourners, even in the countryside, use now simpler black clothes. Thus, escaping these strict rules for more personal forms of mourning plays a part in women’s liberation from patriarcal family and institutions.
GIL BARTHOLEYNS
Brabant in Savoy. The Textile Market and International Dress Culture around 1300
The re-establishment of the export market for Brabant cloth in the direction of the princely courts, and especially in the direction of the County of Savoy during the first three decennia of the 14th Century, brought about a transformation of appearances in which a great number of factors played a role. In effect, the Savoyard court’s precocious and sustained wearing of Brabant cloth (that “cloth of kings”) was conditioned at once by the political synchronicity of the two States, by converging economic interests crowned by a marriage alliance, by pre-existing financial networks, by the main actors’ specific biographies and by the importation, to the place of use, of a cultural model together with its professionals – so many elements that contributed to the lasting introduction of new kinds of dress. The subject offers the opportunity of qualifying the usual diffusion model, which describes a movement radiating out from the big centres (London, Paris or pontifical centres) towards the regional courts. In many respects, the latter may well have been places of international innovation, functioning as trial markets.
Robert BECK
Sunday Clothes and Strategies of Looking one’s best in French Urban Societies from the end of the 18th Century to the end of the Second Empire.
Sunday best was a direct consequence of the fact that the religious authorities obliged churchgoers to wear clean clothes in church. Following material improvements in the popular condition at the end of Ancient Regime, Sunday best moved from the simple realm of cleanliness and decency to that of sartorial appearance. From then on, the working classes imitated the upper classes on Sunday and public holidays, a phenomenon, which continued into the 19th century. Sunday best was an integral part of a Sunday, a holiday and a day of enjoyment when the popular classes could reign in the public domain. Il also constituted an expression of egalitarianism. Following the revolutionary movements of these decades; however, this popular interaction became unbearable for the upper classes. They condemned the working classes’ excessive expenditure on Sunday clothes for social, moral and also aesthetic reasons. These views disappeared only when Sunday no longer represented a day of fun for the working classes. From then on, the upper classes accepted the worker in his Sunday best. Since the end of the 19th century, the Sunday clothes of the popular classes have displayed the acceptance of certain norms of the bourgeoisie.
LEYLA BELKAÏD NERI
Crossroads and hybidizations of fashions in urban mediterranean societies
The study of the evolution of dress codes in urban Mediterranean societies demands an understanding of the Mediterranean world as a permanent hybridization space. Identification of the exchange vectors and the borrowed elements at the origin of changes in fashion enables analysis of the complex mechanisms underlying the history of dress in the coastal and port cities of the Mediterranean, favoured crossroads for cultural influences and for stylistic, textile and technical contributions. The historical development and the structural, functional and signifiant characteristics of two archetypal elements of female clothing from the south and north of the western Mediterranean basin serve to clarify this point : our contribution focuses on the caraco, a fitted jacket that appeared in Algiers by the end of the 19th century, and on the mezzaro, a draped veil which continued to be worn in Genoa up until the beginning of the 19th century.
EUGÉNIE BRIOT
Paris as Arbiter of Good Taste in Perfumes : the Advent of a Capital of Perfumery
Throughout the XIXth century, as far as perfumes are concerned, Paris slowly builds itself a status of master of elegance and good taste. At the height of this conquering venture, two different grounds rising particularly essential stakes: the size of the market, as a first concern, and the quality of image, as a second one. On a national scale (facing the industries of the southern part of the country) as well as on an international one (facing both England and Germany), it is thus but very progressively and at the end of a multiple-caused process that Paris acquires its rank of capital of perfumery. A capital of perfumery in terms of production, a capital of perfumery in terms of creation, in the final analysis Paris builts itself an image of capital of perfumery in terms of elegance and good taste too. It is this patient enterprise of affirmation as a prescription power as fas as olfactory appearances are concerned, on the ground of experience from the past as well as on the ground of data of the century, that we will try to highlight and explain.
MANUEL CHARPY
Parisian Antique Dealers, Second-Hand Shops and Customers In the 19th Century. A Trade of Appearances Between Centre and Periphery
In the 19th century, the trade of signs and appearances constantly meets that of antique dealers and other second-hand shopkeepers. In an era which innovation constituted the motto, they paradoxically played a central role. Antique dealers offer an inexhaustible reserve of signs of the past. With their support, middle-class people decorated their interiors with many signs ennobled by the passing of time: paintings, prints, curios, pieces of furniture... The passion was as much unbound for the old, the exotic and the rustic, as for the far away, source of dreams. Indeed, for the 19th-century Parisian, leaving the French capital city for the suburbs, the provinces or oriental countries, meant travelling back in time. To fulfil this lust, antique dealers and craftsmen clogged paintings and gave new objects their patina. Furniture made in the faubourg Saint-Antoine were set up in Normandie farmhouses where Parisians came to buy them. On the city outskirts, the middle class thought of discovering rare objects in second-hand boutiques, where it satisfied its desire of chine. The quest for authenticity which was "the sacramental term of the antique dealer" (Mallarmé) lead to a flourishing peripheral industry of forgery and to a generalized delocalization.
CAROLINE DOUDET
How the Elegance comes to Provincials : The Learning of the Codes of Appearances in Balzac during the 19th Century
Balzac’s heroes, mainly Illusion Perdues’ ones, give a great importance to all that regards appearances, obviously clothes, but also way to act and to speak, places where they leave and where they go out. Appearances are controlled by strict codes, the ones of Parisian aristocracy of the Restauration. This article intends to show how two provincials, who at the beginning don’t know these codes, can manage to learn them, each one in his way, and become real elegants.
CATHERINE DENYS
From the « Sergent’s Striped Clothes » to the Policeman’s Uniforms in the old Southern Low Countries during the 18th century
Policemen’s appearance are made of more than just their uniforms. In the eighteenth century, the communal authorities in the ancient Low Countries reconsidered the distinctive signs that their police sargents should wear. Even if the aldermen kept a strong preference for dressing policemen in the town colours and for a visually identifiable police force, there is a parallel trend in favor of plain-clothes policemen as more discreet and efficient. Furthermore, police uniforms increasingly resembled those of the army, phyiscal appearance thereby contributing to a genral movement in favor of the militarisation of police forces.
ANTOINE DESTEMBERG
University Medieval Looks, a Matter of Honor
In the middle of the 13th century, Thomas Aquinus defined honor as a “social virtue” which is particularly expressed by “external signs”. In medieval society, in which it was advisable to act and appear according to one’s honour, gestures and clothing must thus testify to the status and the social rank of a person. For the academic world, which tends to establish itself as an autonomous social circle, owner of its own gestural and vestimentary codes, these codes take part in the construction of the identities of these medieval intellectuals. This culture of appearances among medieval universities finds its basis in moral and didactic literature, in particular in the treaties of discipline intended for students and masters, as well as in the statutes regulating life in colleges or within universities. Images and rituals used in universities, such as graduation ceremonies, also testify to the importance of the vestimentary component. These ritualized systems tend to visually create the social hierarchy and take part in the symbolic investment of these signs in academic appearances. Lastly, exempla make it possible to underline the role of clothing in the imagination of medieval scholars, a role disputed by Dominican authors who regularly denounce the lack of humility in academic appearances.
DANIEL DUBUISSON
From Visibility to Invisibility. The Refusal to Appearances in old India and Western World
All known societies have elaborated precise codes allowing each of their members to display their status, fortune, age and sex. To this end, they have used the most obvious or visible points of reference: in particular, clothing, finery and bodily signs. But we often forget that that these same systems of signs and the values they conveyed were, from the earliest times, subject to radical criticism by ascetics, hermits and mystics, as well as by numerous monastic movements. The present comparative study will examine the arguments that India and the Western world have conceived in order to justify their own renunciation of appearances.
CÉLIA FLEURY ET MAÏTÉ GOUILLIART
The Interiors of the Nobility in Arras or the Taste and Art of Appearances in a Provincial City during the 18th Century
What are the evidences of “the art of appearing” in the 18th century among the nobility of Arras, a French provincial capital city, marked by its outstanding burgundian legacy but also by its geographical and political proximity to Paris ? Based on inventories made after death and archives of goods seizures made during the French Revolution, the study of the interiors of the nobility houses in Arras allows us not only to assess the financial investment made for the objects and goods to be considered as “means of appearing”, but to put in comparison their private and public spaces and to have a view on their cultural, intellectual or artistic tastes and interests. The analysis will state as much on furniture as on decorative objects, most appreciated by these social elites. Are the various forms of “making a display” linked to the familial and geographical origins, to the kind and depth of ancestry and to the current social status ? Are the esthetical choices of the nobility members studied revealing the influence of the new standards from Paris of the Age of Enlightenment or at the contrary some more conservative behaviour?
CLAUDIA KANOVSKI
Extensive Table Decoration as a Sign of Appearance of the Rich Bourgeoisie and the Aristocracy in Paris during the 19th Century
During the second half of the 19th century, wealthy citizens of Paris – in many cases members of the financial bourgeoisie – and aristocrats ordered considerable amounts of silverware to furnish their private villas. These orders are very significant if interpreted within a wider context of cultural history. The article is based on the author’s dissertation which was published in 2000 (“Table silver for the bourgeoisie: production and private customers of two Parisian goldsmith companies, Christofle and Odiot, from Second Empire to Fin de siècle”). The following theses are more precisely elaborated:
- the abundant table decoration in the private living area played an important part in the demonstration of the social success of the customers
- the selection of the company with which the order was placed – be it Christofle, be it Odiot – reflects the attitude of the customers towards the industry-orientated modernity that was propagated by the Emperor, Napoleon III
- the selection of styles (Neo-Louis XIV, Neo-Louis XV, Neo-Louis XVI) can be interpreted as a sign of cultural and national identity
WESSIE LING
Spatial Creations : Modes of Style of Foreign Fashion Créateurs in Paris
Fashion designers choose over Paris for the way the capital and its fashion are perceived. They use the city as their inspiration and take up fragments of the Parisian style in order to actualise them. Their creations are in close interaction with the symbolic characterisation that identifies Paris. But what is Parisian style? How does it associate with that of the creation of fashion designers? Does style assimilation play a role in the creation of fashion designers? If so, how and to what extend? Thus, this paper explores the relationship between the symbolic force of Paris as a fashion capital and the modes of style of its créateurs. Particular focus is paid to study 20th Century foreign fashion créateurs who base in Paris by choice. This paper investigates the ‘hidden production’ (Certeau, 1984) of these créateurs, their intriguing relationship between Parisian style and their modes of style.
CORINNE MARTIN
Mobile Phone and Appearance. New Social Standards amongst Teenagers?
What are the intricacies of the social process setting up the use standards of the mobile phone in the public environment? To what extent does the object take part in self-characterization? Analysing both the evolution of the line between private and public lives and the notion of privacy involved with modernity will enable us to grasp how these new standards are produced and incorporated. As a tool for identity assertion, the mobile phone helps young teenagers become more autonomous within the family. It is a personal object integrated in corporal habits and routine and therefore it acts as a corporal extension. Customization – ring tones, logos – reveals true affection and shows the part it takes on a play mode in setting up looks and appearance.The interdisciplinary approach draws on the sociology of uses as well as the analysis of material culture from an anthropological angle. The study is based on a corpus made up of semi-directive interviews of young teenagers and their relatives as well as an analysis of the media discourse.
LIANE MOZERE
Between Manilla and Paris : the Filipino domestics Looks
This empirical research lead in Paris concerns Filipina domestic workers migrating to France. During the whole process of migration they must adopt different appearances to cope with the different situations and contexts, litterally dis-appearing if they use fake passports or visas or if they are undocumented. Once in Paris, they must make use of serendipity to face the new surroundings in order to appear as legitimate actors performing in the city. When they return to the Philippînes on their visits, they then appear as Parisians who can influence the local habits and self presentation.
ISABELLE PARESYS
Sartorial Appearances and Mapping Space in Western Europe during the 16th and 17th Centuries
The presence of different peoples’dressed figures on the maps of the great atlas of the 16th and 17th c. is striking. From two famous north European editorial enterprises of the time –Braun and Hogenberger’ Civitates Orbis Terrarum (The Cities of the World, Cologne, 1572) et Blaeu’ Atlas Novus (New Atlas, Amsterdam, 1635) – we study the relationships between these peoples’ costumed figures and the representation of the urban and geographical spaces. Their presence comes from a humanistic cartographical tradition. According to this tradition Man belongs to the space, so the figure is set in front of the map or in its side vignettes. These figures have a didactic function relating to the nations, but they are also the emblems of the geographical spaces they identify and visually distinguish by their inhabitants’clothes. In Civitates, the figures of citizens of Western Europe personify urbanity, by the way they are dressed and by their bodily postures. In the atlas, the dressed figures are also visual elements which help the west European reader to judge the sartorial difference and otherness. So they help to make him realize the geographical distance which separes him from the spaces mapped by the great atlas of the time.
ODILE PARSIS-BARUBE
The French Travellers’Discourse about Native Peoples during the first 19th Century
BENOIST PIERRE
Does the Clothes make the Monk? Monastic Looks in times of the Catholic Reform (France, Italy)
In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, the debates on the external appearance of monks were at the heart of the monastic reforms and of the creation of new religious families. The monks were looking for the closest outfit from the Christian origin or the one that best symbolized the truth of evangelic message. They were pondering over the colour, the material, the length, the thicknesses of fabric, and additionally over the differences between the religious vestments, worn by members of religious orders while in the cloister and those which were worn in choir or outside. For the monks, appearance was becoming an essential means of social recognition, identity and affirmation. By the choice of colours, cuts and materials, clothes were able to determine immediately the spiritual and theological choices of the new orders, as well as the heritages and traditions, to which the clerics were tied and that they intended to protect. All these options and disputes which can be found in religious orders’ archives, have scarcely been studied until recently in order to analyse the external appearance of monks and more particularly to grasp their foundation and their deeper cultural impacts. From the study of several large orders implicated in the catholic reform, essentially in France and Italy, this article aims to understand the changes and the significations of clerical appearance in the early modern European society.
LEONE PRIGENT
The Alsatian Woman’s Coifs, Signs of Regional Identity in the 17th and 18th Centuries
The coif was never a simple fashion accessory but constantly had particular significances. During the modern period, the women, whatever their age and their social condition, wore headgear of different forms and for various uses and occupations. In a hierarchically organized society, where the status of each individual had to be clearly identified by the clothes, the coif was both a social marker, distinguishing the noble woman from the burgher and the peasant woman, and the sign of a status indicating to the community the situation of the woman as a young girl, spouse or widow. Beyond, in a region located halfway between two nations, the coif was often seen as the attachment to an identity. The impregnation of a double cultural sensibility, both Germanic and French, strongly influenced fashion making of the Alsatian woman and her clothes a very interesting figure for the travelers and the authors of costumes’ books. The fact that the coif was the object of their feelings of curiosity and astonishment was not surprising, because more than all, the coif became the symbol of an identity before even the creation of the regional costumes in 19th century.
AGNES ROCAMORA
Fashioning Paris : La Parisienne in the Fashion Press
Based on an original analysis of the contemporary French fashion press, the present paper interrogates the ‘Paris’ of the fashion media. It analyses the discursive production of the French capital to comment on the way the fashion press has contributed to the reproduction of the Paris myth and the consecration of the city on the fashion map. In doing so it addresses a key topic in debates on French cultural life: the centralism of French culture, with the division Paris/the provinces. To look at how this division is articulated in the media and examine the process of ‘symbolic production’ of Paris, the paper focuses on the theme of ‘la Parisienne’ [the parisian woman]. This theme has been central to discourses on the French capital in literature and the visual arts, and is regularly mobilised by the contemporary French fashion media. The Parisian woman, and her frequent visualisation in the figure of a Parisian city-dweller, the Parisian passante, is presented as the apex of fashion. The incarnation of Paris, she is the model to follow. In the process, a certain discourse on fashion and the city is produced, various values are attributed to the French capital; a certain ‘Paris’ is created, which the present paper discusses.
FLORENCE TAMAGNE
The “blouson noir”: Sartorial Codes, Rock Subcultures and Youth Identities in France in the 1950s and 1960s
From the example of France in the 1950s and 1960s, I shall try here to demonstrate how the “blouson noir” (black leather jacket), associated in the medias to rock’n’roll and juvenile delinquency, could be understood either as a sign of recognition, a brand of infamy or the symbol of a youth in crisis. I shall also try to outline the geographical organisation of these “blousons noirs”: first at the European level, by pointing out international influences and modes of cultural translations; then at the national and local levels, by showing how these groups master urban space and confront each other to conquer or defend their “territories”. Finally, by taking into account variables of age, class and gender, I shall address the role played by youth subcultures in the construction of youth identities, especially regarding gender relations and self definition.
