
A RATIONAL ARGUMENT: THE BEAUTY OF KNOWING YOUR OWN MIND
Are your clothes rational? Have you really thought them through? This spring the V&A will unveil two contrasting exhibitions with at least one thing in common – they prompt us to consider our choice in clothes. From the ‘artistic fashions’ of the V&A’s The Cult of Beauty to the work of visionary Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, these are shows that touch or focus on garments that are the result of careful consideration; clothes that express a point of view.
Artistic or aesthetic clothing (one term evolved from the other over the course of several decades) had an apparently simple purpose – the sartorial re-enactment of the glorious days of old. The paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood aimed to recapture the sincerity of art in the days before Raphael’s grand and mannered paintings. The sumptuous silk gowns worn by models Lizzie Siddal and Jane Morris were heavy with artistic symbolism but the Pre-Raphaelite approach was more than a mere painterly style and the clothes moved beyond the canvas sparking a fashion among a small group of aesthetes and intellectuals for loose, flowing fashions.
Wearers such as actress Ellen Terry rejected conventional, ‘architectural’ clothes underpinned by a scaffolding of corsets, bustles and ‘dress improvers’ and adopted gowns that had clean lines and minimum of ornament. The change was for the sake of beauty – and if these clothes adhered to the ideals of ‘rational dress’ that was, to begin with, just a happy coincidence. Artists’ models were too languorous – or too doped on laudanum – to mount a campaign against the excesses of fashion, but there were others prepared to come out against conventional clothing on an intellectual basis.
Image: Veronica Veronese, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872. Above image: Venus Verticordia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868, Private Collection
‘The Healthy and Artistic Dress Union’ spanned the ideological gap between the aesthetic and rational factions and published their ideas in the journal Aglaia. Women were encouraged 'to dress without the corset' by Union members, some of whom were active in the suffrage movement. Their sentiments show concern for women in all stations. One article entitled ‘To Dress Well -An Apology for the Dress ’points out the wide impact of fashion; “A fashionable gown... vulgarises the poor girl who stitches it, the rich one who wears it, and the poorer one who longs for it”.
Those who campaigned for a sensible approach to female dress were widely lampooned in the press, Amelia Bloomer’s bifurcated ensembles caused hilarity as did Lady Harberton’s ‘rational cycling outfits’ but word was spreading. In 1884 the International Health Exhibition opened and four million people were introduced to the concept of ‘sanitary’ clothing including Dr. Jaeger’s woollen underclothes. High profile support for the abolition of the corset came from Oscar Wilde; “From the 16th century to our own day there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted on girls, and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an unreasonable and monstrous Fashion,” he thundered. And although his disdain for restrictive fashion was couched in aesthetic terms it also had health based motivations – and possibly personal ones too. Wilde’s two half-sisters died on the same night in a dress related disaster. Historian Eamonn Mulligan recounts that “In 1871 when Emily was 24 and Mary was 22 the two girls attended a ball. At the end of the evening the host took one of the girls for a last dance around the floor. As they waltzed past an open fireplace, her crinoline dress caught fire. Her sister came to her assistance and her dress also caught fire. The host wrapped his coat around them and rolled them down the steps in front of the house into the snow. But, alas, it was too late for both young girls died”. The girls were born to one of Wilde’s father’s mistresses and lived in Ireland so were not part of his actual household, nevertheless he must have learned of their fate.
For Wilde, beauty and rationality could be satisfied by adhering to one principle – practicality, “The word practical is nearly always the last refuge of the uncivilised... But beauty is essentially organic; that is, it comes, not from without, but from within, not from any added prettiness, but from the perfection of its own being; and that consequently, as the body is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly clothes it must be beautiful… an ugly thing is merely a thing that is badly made, or a thing that does not serve its purpose... There is a divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no more”.
Unfortunately this rousing rhetoric boiled down to one rather prescriptive ‘practical’ idea: “all the most ungainly and uncomfortable articles of dress that fashion has ever in her folly prescribed... owed their origin to the same error, the error of not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only, that all garments should be hung.”
Like the Pre-Raphaelites, Wilde advocated a Grecian form of dress, that “exquisite play of light and line that one gets from rich and rippling folds.” When his detractors observed that loose drapes might be a little chilly, Wilde retorted, “Mr. Huyshe makes the old criticism that Greek dress is unsuited to our climate… I will say, to begin with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend on the number of garments worn, but on the material of which they are made… over a substratum of pure wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the modern German system, some modification of Greek costume is perfectly applicable to our climate, our country and our century… from a continuation of the Greek principles of beauty with the German principles of health will come, I feel certain, the costume of the future.” Such a well expressed idea, but it will not have escaped your notice that here in the 21st century we are not universally clad in togas and long johns – however graceful and healthy they might be.
Image courtesy of Mark Dutka
Which raises the question, where are today’s rational clothes? Many designers make rich, beautiful fabrics the focus of their collections. Italian designer Daniela Gregis’ clothes would have delighted 19th century aesthetes, as our portrait by Marko Dutka proves, but for 20-year-old model Alex practicality means jeans and a leather jacket. If by ‘rational’ we mean an intelligent response to circumstances, environment and experience perhaps the net spreads wider these days.
Wilde was right when he objected to corsets – those organ shifting straitjackets that define the madness of fashion – but in his argument he makes a surprising omission for a notorious dandy. Practicality, grace, even comfort are not the only factors we consider when we dress and one definition of beauty does not fit all. What about display, desire and individuality?
The second exhibition opening at the V&A this spring is a site specific installation of the work of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto; the ‘designer’s designer’ and ‘Poet of Black’. Echoing of the sentiments of the Rational Clothing Movement, Yamamoto’s challenging designs have questioned the need to reveal and exaggerate the female form. Instead they present the possibilities of folding, draping and manipulating textiles. The men (this is the first Yamamoto exhibition to include menswear) and women who wear his designs are making a statement against mainstream fashion – their ‘thoughtfulness’ emphasised by sober colours and deconstructed silhouettes, but "intellectual fashion’ doesn’t have a monopoly on rationality either.
The giggling girls in Swansea city centre queuing to get into ‘Oceana’ on a freezing night tugging mini skirts over bare, mottled ‘corned beef’ legs might appear to be less rational than the serious woman at an exhibition opening in Cork Street resplendent in Issey Miyake pleats but when you consider their aims and expectations both are acting logically and according to their own set of aesthetic principles. Even the ‘WAG’, a figure demonised or adored depending on which newspaper you read, demonstrates clarity of purpose that is highly rational. Though her fake nails and tight clothes prevent most forms of paid labour in a strange tribute to the ‘enforced leisure’ imposed on corseted Victorian women, her high-maintenance routines and specialised knowledge of hair extensions, false lashes and tans can hardly be dismissed as unthinking.
As we admire the contrasting clothes on show in these exhibitions we can conclude that the battle for rational dress has been won for most women. It no longer takes the form of sensuous Liberty silk gowns (although it could if you wanted it too) just as it no longer reflects the fantasies of a select group of Victorian men. Every fashion decision a woman makes for herself, whether it is Lady Gaga’s meat dress or Kate Middleton’s modest engagement outfit, is rational if it serves her own purpose. Every clothing choice that makes her feel good about herself is ‘aesthetic’. (It would be sisterly of us to remember that when we are next tempted to dismiss another women’s outfit as vulgar or ridiculous.) What we can celebrate this spring is the fact that it is no longer in the power of any man, or artistic movement, to define how women in the West should dress – and that makes perfect sense to me.
This article was taken from p38-41, issue 39: Localisation
Beth Smith, The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, 2 April-17 July, Yohji Yamamoto, 12 March–10 July 2011, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Tate Britain's new major exhibition, The Rossetti's, charts the romance and radicalism of the Rossetti generation – Dante Gabriel, Christina and Elizabeth (neé Siddal) – showcasing their revolutionary approach to life, love and art. Moving through and beyond the Pre-Raphaelite years, the exhibition features over 150 paintings and drawings as well as photography, design, poetry and more.
Find out more: www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/the-rossettis