Fashion Remains: Rethinking Ephemera in the Archive 9781350074767, 9781350074798, 9781350074774

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Exploring fashion ephemera
Self-reflexive fashion discourses
Fashion and ephemeralism
Rethinking the ephemera in the archive
The implied beholder: Reading, looking and touching
Fashion remains
1 Authorial networks
Matters of signature: From authenticity to intimacy
Authorial bodies and stories
Authorizing visible and invisible voices
Multiple authors
Aesthetic and disciplinary dialogues
Keeping and expanding authorship
Blurring fashion authorities
Authorial networks
2 Performances of time
One ephemera, multiple events
Between disappearance and permanence
The look moment
Show(ing) time, fiction and montage
The liveness of the show
Show mediatization
Allusive fragments
Performances of imagination
3 Poetic transformations
A ménage à trois
Haptic fashion images
Material animations
The sense of fabric
Point of touch
Paratexts and touching concepts
Poetic transformations
Conclusions – Fashion remains
Between material and immaterial
From inform to perform
The archive and the agency of ephemera
‘Ways of operating’ of fashion ephemera
Ambivalent knowledge
Future remains and the economy of the live
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

FASHION REMAINS

ii

FASHION REMAINS Rethinking Ephemera in the Archive Marco Pecorari

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 This edition published 2022 Copyright © Marco Pecorari, 2022 Marco Pecorari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii–xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Monica Fraile Morisson Cover image © Marco Pecorari/Dieter Suls All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN:

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CONTENTS

List of illustrations vii Prefacex Acknowledgementsxii Introduction Exploring fashion ephemera Self-reflexive fashion discourses Fashion and ephemeralism Rethinking the ephemera in the archive The implied beholder: Reading, looking and touching Fashion remains 1

Authorial networks Matters of signature: From authenticity to intimacy Authorial bodies and stories Authorizing visible and invisible voices Multiple authors Aesthetic and disciplinary dialogues Keeping and expanding authorship Blurring fashion authorities Authorial networks

2

Performances of time One ephemera, multiple events Between disappearance and permanence The look moment Show(ing) time, fiction and montage The liveness of the show Show mediatization Allusive fragments Performances of imagination

1 3 8 12 16 18 20 25 25 32 42 51 61 69 74 80 85 85 89 94 101 112 119 128 133

3

Poetic transformations A ménage à trois Haptic fashion images Material animations The sense of fabric Point of touch Paratexts and touching concepts Poetic transformations

Conclusions – Fashion remains Between material and immaterial From inform to perform The archive and the agency of ephemera ‘Ways of operating’ of fashion ephemera Ambivalent knowledge Future remains and the economy of the live

139 139 144 153 158 164 169 177 181 182 184 186 188 191 194

Notes198 Select Bibliography 221 Index236

vi

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation, front Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation, back Jeanne Lanvin invoice for Madame La Contesse de Forton (1935). Courtesy of Diktats Premet, correspondence of the Couture House (1931). Courtesy of Diktats Paul Iribe, Les Robes de Paul Poiret racontés par Paul Iribe, published by Paul Poiret, 1908, cover. Courtesy of Diktats Paul Iribe, Les Robes de Paul Poiret racontés par Paul Iribe, published by Paul Poiret, 1908, plate 2. Courtesy of Diktats Bernhard Willhelm Retrospective Exhibition’s Section dedicated to catalogues, The Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu), 2007 Bernhard Willhelm Retrospective Exhibition’s brochure, The Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu), 2007 Ann Demeulemeester s/s ’09 press release Bernhard Willhelm, s/s ’02–’03 invitation Bernhard Willhelm, s/s ’02–’03 invitation, close-up mistake signature Maison Martin Margiela, s/s 2010 invitation, front Maison Martin Margiela, s/s 2010 invitation, back Jurgi Persoons s/s ’98 invitation Bernhard Willhelm menswear s/s ’06 catalogue Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’89 catalogue, cover Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’89 catalogue, pages 5–6 Dries Van Noten, s/s ’93 press release, biography Dirk Van Saene a/w ’03–’04 invitation Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’92–’93 catalogue Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’91–’92 catalogue Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’92 press release image Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’92–’93, press image Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’91 invitation Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’90 invitation, cover Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’90 invitation, pages 6–7 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’91–’92 press folder image, front Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’91–’92 press folder image, back Bernhard Willhelm: Het Totaal Rappel, exhibition MoMu, 13 July– 10 February 2007, MoMu, Antwerp Bernhard Willhelm s/s ’07 catalogue, pages 10–11

2 3 5 6 8 9 13 14 27 29 30 32 33 34 35 37 38 41 43 46 47 48 49 50 52 53 56 57 59 60

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 viii

Bernhard Willhelm s/s ’07 catalogue, pages 12–13 61 Raf Simons a/w ’10–’11 invitation 62 Jurgi Persoons a/w ’98–’99 invitation 64 Paul Boudens portrait by Ronald Stoops. Copyright Paul Boudens and Ronald Stoops 65 Yamamoto Y’s line a/w ’03–’04 invitation 66 Jurgi Persoons, s/s ’98 invitation 68 Ann Demeulemeester s/s ’04 invitations for (in order from top to bottom) Madame Ninette Murk, Linda Loppa, Kaat Debo 71 Martin Margiela biography with press release biography in Maison Martin Margiela press folder s/s 1992 73 Yohji Yamamoto s/s ’09 catalogue, cover 77 Yohji Yamamoto s/s ’09 catalogue, model Kaat Debo, pages 10–11 78 Veronique Branquinho a/w ’02–’03 invitation with envelope 82 Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’97 invitation 86 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation 90 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation 91 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation 91 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’08–’09 invitation 92 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’08–’09 invitation, pages 14–15 93 Ann Demeulemeester womenswear s/s ’07 catalogue 96 Ann Demeulemeester womenswear s/s ’07 catalogue, page 5 97 Ann Demeulemeester womenswear s/s ’07 catalogue, page 7 98 ‘Disorder–Incubation–Isolation’ Raf Simons a/w ’99–’00 menswear catalogue 99 Veronique Branquinho menswear collection a/w ’04–’05 catalogue, cover 102 Veronique Branquinho menswear collection a/w ’04–’05 catalogue, page 37 103 Veronique Branquinho menswear collection a/w ’04–’05 catalogue, page 31 103 A.F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 catalogue, cover 104 A.F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 catalogue, pages 2–3 106 A.F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 catalogue, pages 10–11 108 Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, packaging 110 Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, cover 111 Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, page 3 112 Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, page 7 113 Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, pages 15–16 114 Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, pages 27–28 115 Maison Martin Margiela – press folder diapositives a/w ’92–’93 120 Maison Martin Margiela – press folder casting a/w ’92–’93 121 Jurgi Persoons s/s 2001 invitation 122 Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 2–3 123 Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 5–6 124 Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 14–15 125 Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 28–29 126 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 30–31 Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 32–33 Maison Martin Margiela menswear s/s ’09 fashion show Walter Van Beirendonck invitation a/w ’89–’90 Dries Van Noten s/s ’03 invitation Ann Demeulemeester a/w ’06–’07 invitation Maison Martin Margiela menswear a/w ’09–’10 invitation Maison Martin Margiela catalogue a/w ’00–’01 Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’05–’06 catalogue, view from above Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’05–’06 catalogue Dries Van Noten menswear s/s 2013 catalogue, pages 5–6 Dries Van Noten menswear a/w ’06–’07 catalogue, pages 10–11 Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’86–’87 catalogue Yohji Yamamoto menswear a/w ’86–’87 catalogue Yohji Yamamoto catalogue a/w ’86–’87, pages 2–3 Yohji Yamamoto catalogue a/w ’86–’87, pages 4–5 Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’87–’88 catalogue, pages 6–7 Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’94 catalogue Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’99–’00 press folder image A.F. Vandevorst s/s 2004 catalogue, cover A.F. Vandevorst s/s 2004 catalogue, pages 4–5 Dries Van Noten a/w ’92–’93 invitation Ann Huybens s/s 2001 press release Angelo Figus ‘Quore di Cane’ collection press release Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’91–’92 catalogue A.F. Vandevorst a/w ’00–’01 invitation, front A.F. Vandevorst a/w ’00–’01 invitation, back Raf Simons s/s 2003 press release Dries Van Noten a/w ’99–’00 press release, cover Dries Van Noten a/w ’99–’00 press release, pages 12–13 Maison Martin Margiela invitation s/s ’12, front Maison Martin Margiela invitation s/s ’12, back

127 128 129 130 130 134 136 140 142 143 145 146 148 149 150 151 154 155 156 158 159 162 165 167 168 170 171 174 178 179 192 193

Figs 1–2, 7–33 and 35–102 are © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

LIST OF Illustrations

ix

PREFACE

When I started the research that led to writing this book on fashion ephemera in 2008, there was no literature or attention paid towards this type of fashion paraphernalia. The only publications dedicated to ephemera in fashion were coffee-table books that mainly concentrated on the relation between fashion and graphic design. Only a very few private fashion collectors and amateurs specialized in this type of paraphernalia, and some museum librarians dedicated part of their work to collect and conserve these flimsy objects within centers of documentation that were only open to researchers and curators. In general, little value was given to these objects and the people who conserved them. Today the situation has radically changed. The discourse on fashion ephemera has attracted more and more attention from museums, the industry and media. Social media seems to have paradoxically intensified this new attraction. Not only do we see a proliferation of Instagram accounts dedicated to fashion ephemera and other fashion printed publications, but brands and museums have also started to intentionally communicate about the importance of these flimsy objects. Probably the most evident example of this popularization of fashion ephemera can be seen in the institution of the International Fashion Research Library by Elise By Olsen in 2020. This collection consists of more than fifty thousand pieces of printed fashion materials such as magazines, invitations, catalogues and other paraphernalia. Originated with the donation of the collector Steven Mark Klein, the International Fashion Research Library attracted a lot of press attention as it aims to become the “world’s most comprehensive repository of specialized fashion research and contemporary fashion publications”.1 Fashion printed matter is extremely fashionable today and this fashionability arrives at a time of an extreme digitalization of fashion and its practices. This is in fact the biggest paradox behind the current attention towards this type of ephemera. The more the industry goes digital, the more we live a nostalgic spirit towards fashion materiality and the values embedded in old communication practices. Balenciaga has recently adopted VHS and printed cards to communicate about their s/s 2022 show which was a fictional recorded show featuring iconic figures and journalists from the Nineties. This is just one of many examples of a nostalgic attention towards these past practices of communication and their scope. Ephemera like invitations or catalogues embody a current fetishism towards a materiality of media practices and, more specifically, the late 80s and 90s: a period when we have seen a large economic and creative investment in the communication of fashion as a creative industry. But to celebrate these collections of ephemera not only entails an evocation of iconic designers like Martin Margiela or Yohji Yamamoto or the work of art directors or photographers like Marc Ascoli, Nick Knight, Peter Saville; it also

means to unveil a network of unknown – but seminal – figures such as communication director Patrick Scallon or graphic designer Paul Boudens. The  nostalgia for fashion ephemera we live today is thus a combination between a normal process of recuperation that characterizes the fashion industry, an emerging attention to networks of creative collaborative work, and a testimony towards the current globalization and a scant attention towards creative investment that the fashion industry is living now. This book Fashion Remains: Rethinking the Ephemera in the Archive sits between these two moments. It contributes to an understanding of the value of these objects but, retrospectively, it opens up a potential field to question the role of fashion media documentation today. In my work, I borrowed the idea of remains from performance theorist Rebecca Schneider and her inspiring work on the role of documentation in performances and war re-enactments. The idea of remains helped me to reflect on both the status of ephemera as fashion documents but also their potential to ‘enclose’ some practices and ideologies that dominate the fashion industry. My aim was to show their transformative value in the archive and explaining their epistemic potential as remains. Still, in the writing of the book, the scope this concept expanded much further the sole idea of media relics, and it seemed to grow into new frontiers of research. To think of ‘fashion remains’ means, I believe, to open a new field of study focusing on the immense amount of discarded media practices and objects that will help us to investigate an archaeology of fashion media: a history that still needs to be written. This is not only involving the transformation of fashion mediation and new forms of ephemeralities, but also the mutating structures of the media industry, its actors and their role in making fashion through media. Furthermore, the idea of ‘fashion remains’ perfectly fits the recurrent discourse on unmaking fashion histories as it can help to shed light on other forms of documentation that escape the closed and exclusive circle of fashion, that even this book is focusing on. At a time when academics and curators have begun to explore issues of decolonization and deconstruct fashion history canons, the idea of fashion remains invites an unmaking of hierarchies of fashion historiographies and research practices, asking us to reveal what is often forgotten, overlooked and left behind. I hope this book could lead to the fashioning of other types of ephemera and new ways of theorizing about this unique type of fashion objects inside – and outside – institutionalized archives.

PREFACE

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writing of this book has been a long process that involved a large number of people and institutions to whom I am extremely thankful. The first thanks go to the Bloomsbury editorial team who have helped and supported me throughout this project. A very special thanks goes to Frances Arnold who kindly waited after my accident and facilitated the editing process during these years. A big thank you goes also to Yvonne Thouroude, Pari Thomson, Rebecca Hamilton, Deborah Maloney and the graphic design department, and Sophie Gillespie for the editing. I would also like to thank Rosie Findlay who reviewed the book and very kindly worked with the manuscript and helped me to refine some arguments. I also want to thank the reviewers of my book proposal and the reviewer of my manuscript. Your suggestions have been very useful and helped me to improve my thoughts about this topic. This book derives from my PhD research and, for this reason, I want to extend a tremendous thank you to my supervisors without whom I would have not been able to finish this project. Specifically, I would like to thank Professor Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf and Professor Caroline Evans who not only inspired me with their work but also pushed me with their support. Dr Andrea Kollnitz helped me through the entire process as the first person to review my text and, perhaps more importantly, was always unwavering in her support and friendship. I would like also to thank Professor Peter McNeil who acted as supervisor at the beginning of this research, but  who always supported me through these years. I also owe a huge thank you to Dr. Louise Wallenberg who, as the first Director of the Centre of Fashion Studies, saw potential in my research and believed in me as a PhD candidate. Thanks to Professor Klas Nyberg, the current Director of the Centre, who kindly facilitated the final steps of this research and assisted me in securing funding for my last year of writing. I would like also to extend my gratitude to Dr Ester Leslie for her comments during our doctoral final exam; Annamari Vänska, Patrik Steorn and Mikael Petterson for their reviews in the early stage of this project. And, of course, a big thank you to all the senior and junior faculty who passed through the Centre during my years. My gratitude goes also to all my colleagues: Paula, Annamari, Jacob, Patrick, Hanne, Philip, Jessica, Emma and Ulrika, Chiara, Sara. A very special thank you to Lauren, for reading my early drafts and helping me to unravel my writings during my doctoral time. This research would have never been possible if not for the generous and enduring support of The Fashion Museum of Antwerp’s (MoMu) staff, the library staff and especially the director, Kaat Debo, who gave full access to their archive and facilities. Further, without the help of the director of the library Birgit Ansom and the patience of

Luttgart Van Houtven, I would never have been able to do it. I also owe a huge thank you to the former director of the library – and my friend – Dieter Suls who not only allowed me to move freely in the archive but always supported my work. A huge thanks also to David Flamée who helped me enormously with the copyright issues. I need to extend a big thank you to all the people from other fashion museums that I studied in these years of research. Among many, I would like to personally thank Sylvie Roy, Miren Arzalluz and Laurent Cotta at the Palais Galliera Museum of Paris, Jennifer Farley at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and Karen Cannell at The F.I.T. Library. Another important thank you goes to my current colleagues at The New School Parsons Paris. While the book was not conceived in Paris, the last editing steps happened while I was working here. Thanks to Florence Leclerc-Dickler for the support with the image copyrights and support in the last step of the publication. A big thank you to all the team of the MA in Fashion Studies who have been an amazing support throughout these years. Thanks Justin Morin, Giulia Mensitieri, Emilie Hammen, Paul Jobling, Laurent Cotta, Geraldine Blanche and Nick Rees-Roberts. My gratitude goes to Monica Fraile Morisson who worked as graphic designer for this book, worked through all the restrictions and helped me to find a visual translation for my ideas. A huge thank you goes to Olivia Johnston who painstakingly edited all the archival images. A big thank you to Antoine Bucher and Nicolas Montagne of Diktats for allowing me to use images from their historical archive and, especially, Antoine, for the long discussion on ephemera. I would also like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the research group at IUAV University of Venice who always welcomed me and supported my work. Thus a big ‘grazie’ to Professor Mario Lupano, Maria Luisa Frisa, Alessandra Vaccari, Dr Elda Danese and Dr Gabriele Monti. A big thank to all the scholars and curators who invited me to present my research in these years in their institutions. A big thanks to Jose Teunissen from London College of Fashion and Arnhem Academy of Arts, Paul Jobling and Louise Purbrick from the University of Brighton, Antonella Giannone from the Weisensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin, Maria Ben Saad at Beckmans School of Design and many more. It has been a privilege to share my work with you and your feedback has been extremely valuable. The last thank you goes to all my Italian, Belgian, Italo-Swedish, Swedish and French friends. During this long journey a few people supported me closely and helped me immensely. My love will never be enough to replace what you have done for me in these years. Finally, a big thank you to the people who have been close to my family and, most importantly, to Marlène and our Ettore. Ai miei genitori, voglio dire che non esistono parole per spiegare quello che rappresentano per me ed esprimere il Rispetto, Amore e Ammirazione che ho in loro. Questo libro é dedicato a voi.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xiii

xiv

INTRODUCTION

Most significant for fashion is its ephemeral, transient and futile character […]1 Ulrich Lehmann, fashion theorist Ephemera are unpublished, flimsy, or insubstantial printed paper artefacts produced and not intended to survive beyond [their] original purpose.2 Mary-Elise Haug, art historian With Fashion there is no respect. After a show they throw away the invitations. I could cry when I see that.3 Paul Boudens, graphic designer The impetus behind this book came from a chance encounter with a category of fashion ephemera while I was wandering in the archive of the library of the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp (MoMu) in 2008.4 On one of my many walks through the archive, I discovered, alongside books and other audio-visual materials, a large number of light green, acid-free cardboard boxes containing an enormous amount of non-catalogued fashion ephemera. When opening the boxes, I found fashion invitations, fashion catalogues, press releases and ‘varia’, such as backstage passes and Christmas cards by contemporary Belgian fashion designers like Maison Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Raf Simons, Walter Van Beirendonck and other internationally renowned contemporary fashion designers like Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garcons and Versace. Going through these promotional materials, I was amazed by the sheer quantity of these objects as well as the many forms they took. Here I had the chance to look at, read and touch numerous invitations in the shape of a dish, a record or a bottle of scotch; catalogues resembling artistic books; press releases written in poetry or essay form; and other uncommon promotional materials, like sweets, t-shirts or perfumes. Amongst these ephemera, one of the objects taking a particularly intriguing form was the Maison Martin Margiela Autumn/Winter (a/w) 1998–1999 invitation (Figures 1–2). Coming in the shape of a mass-produced concert ticket, the invitation features, on the front, the name of the company offering the show (Maison Martin Margiela), the name of the ‘artists’ that will participate in the show (the photographer Mark Borthwick, the stylist Jane How and the writer Sidney Picasso), the series number of the ticket (N 03434), the place (Le Foyer de l’Arche; La Grande Arche de la Défense, 92044 Paris – La Défense), the date (Mardi le 10 Mars 1998), the hour (22H00) and the access it grants (Accès Immédiat). The light green background of the invitation features a ‘watermark’ pattern with the words ‘Maison Martin Margiela’ repeated over and over

Figure 1  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation, front. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. again in a darker shade of green. The reverse side of the invitation presents an ironic list of ‘conditions generales’ and ‘access’. Among them: ‘No glass’, ‘no drink’, ‘no camera’, and ‘no access to aliens’. In addition to this printed information, on the bottom left of the invitation, one can read a handwritten inscription ‘LL’, while the perforated edge seems to suggest that the ‘stub’ has been torn from the invitation to grant admittance. Finally, other visible signs of use, including some folding and wrinkles, hint at the afterlife of the invitation beyond the event itself. In addition to the information about the name of the designer, the location and the hour of the show, what attracted me were the invitation’s particular visual, material and textual features. This invitation seemed to be more than just a practical device giving access to the show as it triggered questions connected to the particular meanings of its multiple features in relation to fashion, its actors and their practices. Why did Maison Martin Margiela create an invitation in the style of a concert ticket? Is the particular shape of the invitation communicating something about the show and/or about Margiela’s approach to fashion? By looking at this object in the archive, I experienced the invitation-ticket as freed from its functional duty, triggering new questions about its creation and the meaning of its aesthetic features. What do the names given in the invitation suggest in terms of creative practices and authorship in fashion? And what other names are actually hidden by these names? But there was more. My encounter with 2

Fashion Remains

Figure 2  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation, back. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

the invitation in the archive triggered in me other questions connected to the trajectory of the object, the museum’s approach to it and its value as a remanence of fashion. How did this invitation end up in MoMu archive? What is the presence of this object in the archive saying about MoMu and its collecting practices? What do the wrinkles, the missing stub, and the other textual inscriptions imply about the role of this invitation in the human networks of the fashion industry, and about value creation in fashion? How does this ephemeral object in the archive speak about the ways in which scholars and curators have been interpreting the material remains of fashion? And how does this flimsy and transient invitation relate to fashion’s obsession with the ephemeral?

Exploring fashion ephemera The above questions underline the reasoning behind this book. Casting light on an overlooked category of invitation, catalogues and press releases, I here put fashion ephemera at the centre of attention in order to highlight the lack of consideration suffered by this type of communicational material in studies about fashion. My interest here resides on their epistemological properties in order to reveal how these communicational INTRODUCTION

3

ephemeral materials function as archival objects and what discourses they promulgate or occlude about fashion. Here my priority is not therefore to advance an investigation through a pure branding or marketing lens, but to concentrate on the cultural meanings that these materials may evoke in their current state of ephemera in the archive. Deriving from the Greek ephemeros, meaning ‘lasting for one day, short-lived’, the term ‘ephemera’ was originally adopted by naturalists to define a category of mayfly belonging to the Order Ephemeroptera,5 and it is today a term, used in English, to identify a category of flimsy, printed artefacts produced but not intended to survive beyond their initial purpose. As this definition suggests, ‘ephemera’ is a very inclusive, nebulous concept but is often used in library’ archives and centres of documentation to gather together a large amount of flimsy objects.6 Such a comprehensive definition characterizes also the category of ‘fashion ephemera’ which also stands on similar problems of taxonomy. In fact, when we speak of ‘fashion ephemera’ we may identify public and private, historical and contemporary ephemeral materials. Broadly speaking, this category may include fashion plates, commercial receipts, invitations, fanzines, commercial photographs, gadgets, catalogues, posters and much more (Figure 3). In other cases, fashion ephemera may also be related to flimsy materials connected to the private sphere like personal letters, diaries belonging to practitioners working in the fashion industry (e.g. fashion designers, journalists and photographers) or clients of well-known fashion brands who have retained not only conserved garments but also receipts or personal correspondences with the brands (Figure 4). Such a heterogeneity is also augmented by the dispersed use of the term by fashion amateurs, such as collectors or hobbyists, and fashion librarians, who have adopted ‘ephemera’ in order to qualify and classify volatile fashion-related objects in fashion auctions, personal blogs, historical research, exhibitions or libraries archives. What connects all these flimsy materials is their becoming ephemera through the dismissal of their value while still persisting materially, as in the case of the abovementioned Margiela’s invitation. As Paula McDowell argues, ephemera live in a paradox since they represent the short-lived and the temporarily valued, while this ephemerality is often not connected to ‘the materials per se but their perceived value’.7 Becoming and being ephemera means to be ontologically discarded and undervalued after one’s original function. Such dismissal is often connected to the apparent low economic and cultural value of these flimsy materials: an attitude that has also characterized the academic study on ephemera which, as Christopher B. Balme argues, has suffered a lack of attention from both a ‘theoretical and empirical perspective’.8 Studies on ephemera have been in fact promoted by amateurs, collectors and librarians in the main,9 and only recently has there been the institution of an academic centre10 and organization of conferences and research about these materials in the fields of art history, history, literary studies, performance studies and gender studies.11 In Intimate Ephemera, literary scholar Anna Poletti underscores the importance of saving ephemera not simply to use them as evidence of something else, but to explore their capacity to intervene in the interpretation and subversion of social, historical or cultural phenomena.12 Poletti rejects the opposition between disposability and lack of analysis, proposing to read ephemeral texts like ‘butterflies underneath the glass of academic categorisation’.13 4

Fashion Remains

Figure 3  Jeanne Lanvin invoice for Madame La Contesse de Forton (1935), copyright by Diktats. Courtesy of Diktats. INTRODUCTION

5

Figure 4  Premet, correspondence of the couture house (1931), copyright by Diktats. Courtesy

of Diktats.

6

Fashion Remains

Following this attention to the potential of ephemera, this book, first and foremost, focuses on and discusses a robust collection of little-known fashion ephemera, conserved at MoMu’s library archive, consisting of a unique assemblage of invitations, catalogues and press releases by contemporary fashion designers – such as Maison Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten and Raf Simons – emerging from the 1980s and 1990s avantgarde fashion scene in Antwerp (Belgium). Originally assembled from the donations of three fashion insiders and the museum’s founders (Linda Loppa, Gert Bruloot and Gerdi Esch), the archive represents a selection of objects that stages a first hierarchy of fashion ephemera: between those that survived their original function and those that did not. This initial selection executed by fashion insiders has been rooted in multiple perspectives: from the recognition of the disruptive, artistic and innovative work of these designers to a more personal and intimate value. Still, these archives have been the base of the construction of a public museum archive which has been constantly collected by MoMu’s staff, who continued to conserve ephemera produced for communicational purposes, focusing on Belgium’s and Antwerp’s successful designers both in terms of media attention and business endurance. Therefore, the archive draws a very peculiar picture of what Belgian and Antwerp fashion represents, containing a very specific type of ephemera, specifically edited and designed in terms of visual, material and textual content. The collection is in fact an exceptional record of the work and collaborations of graphic designers, photographers and make-up artists with fashion designers, each sharing an experimental approach, both conceptually and stylistically, to the creation of these communicational objects.14 While containing predominantly (but not exclusively) Belgian designers, this archive is, however, representative of a type of ready-to-wear fashion designer that is often defined as conceptual or avant-garde and that strongly invests in these communication practices. At the same time, this collection is also an important testimony of a network of fashion professionals that elevated Antwerp as a fashion city to the global stage and which helps to highlight the systems of relations and value creation characterizing the transformation of these fashion communicational materials into ephemera in the archive.15 Despite the uniqueness of the Antwerp fashion scene and the specific type of ephemera contained in this archive, this collection represents a perfect case to stage and propose an applied model for rethinking the role, function and value of fashion ephemera as objects of knowledge on a larger scale. Most importantly, MoMu’s fashion ephemera speaks to the importance of ‘materially’ studying fashion beyond the garment – showing a very important practice behind the creative work and publishing activities of ready-to-wear fashion houses that has been completely overlooked, and which may represent a crucial tool for understanding practices of production of value and representation within the fashion industry. Therefore, rather than writing a history of Belgian fashion ephemera by Belgian designers, my use of MoMu’s archive of ephemera is actually an attempt to put in action the epistemic potential of ephemera in order to show their specific value in thinking about fashion and to hopefully stimulate further studies on other archives and other types of fashion ephemera which are still today largely overlooked both from a historical and theoretical point of view. INTRODUCTION

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Figure 5  Paul Iribe, Les Robes de Paul Poiret racontés par Paul Iribe, published by Paul Poiret, 1908, cover. Copyright by Diktats. Courtesy of Diktats.

Self-reflexive fashion discourses My interpretation of the epistemic potential of invitations, catalogues and press releases proposes to deepen our understanding of fashion ephemera in order to reveal the multiple meanings and crucial significance that they assume in the fashion industry. Since the commercial promotion of garments started in connection with the emergence of couturiers and fashion designers,16 promotional materials like invitations, catalogues and press releases have become crucial devices not only for their functional capacity to give information about the collection but as strategical tools for artistic expression, branding strategies and media control by designers and brands.17 Produced in connection with 8

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Figure 6  Paul Iribe, Les Robes de Paul Poiret racontés par Paul Iribe, published by Paul Poiret, 1908, plate 2. Copyright by Diktats. Courtesy of Diktats. fashion collections, these ephemeral materials become clues and evocations, triggers and explanations via the use of allusive and eccentric aesthetics and languages, as in the case of the above-mentioned Maison Martin Margiela’s invitation. Coming in different shapes and with extravagant visual, textual and material features, these ephemera have often been interpreted as an attempt to camouflage brands’ commercial activities as artistic practices, elevating the agency of designers into that of artists.18 Nancy Troy, for example, discusses Paul Poiret’s famous collaborations with illustrators like Georges Lepape or Paul Iribe in the early twentieth century (Figures 5–6), and explains how these practices

INTRODUCTION

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were employed by the French couturier as marketing tools within an ‘over-arching entrepreneurial strategy directed at obfuscating its own commercial nature’.19 At the same time, these communicational devices have been understood as useful tools, used by brands, to control the reception of a collection by press and buyers. As Paul Morand explains, Coco Chanel, for example, began to leave written and detailed descriptions of her creations on the audience’ chairs at her fashion shows in order ensure that they would not misunderstand her work. This was a response to abstract descriptions of garments made by journalists, or what she defined as ‘la poésie couturière’.20 Indeed, promotional materials have multiple functions and meanings and, as Judith Clark suggests when speaking about invitations, they can be ‘about planting and betray anxieties’ into a sort of obsession, by both designers and its audiences, about ‘getting the point’.21 Such an urgency stands at the very core of the creation of these ephemeral materials and it can also be read through the words of Roland Barthes, who explains that ‘without discourse, there is not total Fashion’.22 While the French philosopher was here referring to the ways in which fashion not only exists in the shape of real clothing but also through the proliferation of images and texts in magazines, this idea of the discourse of fashion is a fruitful way to understand a sort of necessity and centrality of these communicational materials. To some extent, garments are not enough. In this sense, invitations, catalogues and other fashion paraphernalia created on the occasion of fashion collections, become more than simple functional devices, but necessary paratextual objects that help to make sense of a collection and present the ideas behind it. To speak about the idea ‘behind’ a collection is an appropriate metaphor to understand the declarative nature of these objects and their role in unveiling, decoding and translating what a collection cannot reveal at a first sight or to a not fashion-trained eye. Thus, these materials produce discourses about the collection, not simply describing it but participating in its discursive formation. In this sense, these communicational materials well suit the academic discussion on fashion media discourse that has characterized a large part of studies about fashion,23 but that have completely overlooked the role of these industry’s materials in the discursive formation of fashion. If fashion discourse – especially in relation to media – has been focusing on the performative nature of magazines, images and texts, nothing has been written on the potential of fashion ephemera and their capacity to do fashion. While this omission may originate in the difficulties of accessing invitations, catalogues and other fashion paraphernalia produced by brands due to the private nature of their circulation, it also becomes particularly egregious given the capacity of these materials to permeate even the public media discourse on fashion.24 These communicational devices are not only influencing the discourses produced by press but they are, to some extent, a first-degree interpretation of the collection aiming to render the qualities of the collection or, to use Barthes’ words, to ‘honour the poetic project which affords it its objects [the garments]’.25 Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to simply think of these ephemera as primarily fashion designer’s statements, since these ephemeral materials are always the result of negotiations between fashion designers, art directors, graphic 10

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designers, photographers, models and other actors, who mediate fashion designers’ ideas and transform these materials into spaces for celebrating, expressing, discussing and problematizing their own practices and the meaning of fashion. For example, Walter Van Beirendock’s Spring/Summer (s/s) ’90 invitation takes the form of a newspaper and contains interviews with the photographer Ronald Stoops, the make-up artist Inge Grognard and the graphic designer Anne Kurris who were all involved in the making of the communicational materials for the collection.26 The interviews not only explain the creative process but also stress the relationship with the designer and the agency of the collaborators in the making of these communicational objects. While the format of the newspaper and its materiality restates the informative nature of these ephemeral materials, the interviews provide an insight into the collaborative practice while speaking to the disciplinary dialogues behind these objects. Rather than attempts to elevate the designers as artists, the ephemera discussed in this book visually, textually and materially perform and stage creative tensions, aesthetic affinities, disciplinary relationships and commissions, which seek to institute the fashion industry as more than just an industry for selling garments. In arguing that, I am not trying to deny the commercial and celebrative purposes of these communicational objects, but I propose to not marginalize these materials to such a vision. If ephemera like the Margiela’s or Van Beirendonck’s invitations clearly stand on a promiscuous terrain between reality and fiction, they also present an under-researched discursive space – if compared, for example, to the largely studied fashion collections and fashion shows – where it is possible to explore the fashion industry’s flirtations with other creative fields. While, as mentioned above, these disciplinary dialogues have always characterized these communicational objects, it is still important to recognize how investment in the making of these objects especially flourished during the 1980s and 1990s, when the transformation and diffused circulation of the garment as image27 coincided with the proliferation of experimental methods of supporting the presentation of collections.28 In this context, these communication materials – including the ones discussed in this book – became central tools with which their makers could negotiate, construct and celebrate fashion as a creative industry, while simultaneously stating its role in contemporary visual culture. Not only did the making of these materials push to hire more or less established figures from adjacent creative fields, but the ephemera presented in this book will show how these commissions and collaborations represent crucial moments to self-institute and claim fashion as a creative industry through a hybridization of the boundaries between fashion and other cultural fields. Famous examples are Commes des Garçons’ series of the magazine Six, where artists and photographer were invited to present their own work,29 or Yamamoto’s catalogues created in collaboration with the art director Marc Ascoli, the photographer Nick Knight and the graphic designer Peter Saville.30 Discussing this latter experience, Ascoli retrospectively explains how the production of catalogues was ‘not an industry’ but rather a practice made out ‘spontaneity’.31 While the creation of communicational materials was not a new phenomenon in the fashion industry, Ascoli’s words may be interpreted as both a constant attempt to mythologize creative practices in the fashion industry and testimony to the increasing recognition and economic investment in these ephemeral INTRODUCTION

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materials within and outside the fashion system. As argued by fashion journalist Tamsin Blanchard, fashion houses have slowly become ‘mini publishing empires’32 as they produce, for their collections, a larger amount of fashion paraphernalia than garments. Indeed, these ephemeral materials record a documentary instinct within these fashion brands that reminds us the centrality of a printing culture within this industry and its recurrent tendency to produce and control knowledge about its own practices. A central contribution of this book is therefore to emphasize how these communicational ephemeral materials are vessels for the construction and articulation of self-reflexive discourses within the fashion industry. In the invitations, press releases or catalogues discussed in this book, there is a recurrent presence of multiple fashion languages and tropes. Images of a sketch, a pair of scissors, a toile, a pattern, a fabric sample, the use of a specific font – but also of fashion spaces like the fashion show, the backstage area, the atelier, the fitting room – are often used in these materials as ingredients of a ‘fashion vocabulary’ that is consciously adopted to present, discuss, celebrate but also occult fashion practices. For example, Bernhard Willhelm’s a/w ’02–’03 invitation,33 created by the Dutch graphic design duo Verhagen–Freudenthal, is an A2 piece of white paper which depicts multiple hypothetical and unreadable signatures of the designer, making a commentary on diverse aspects of fashion while still functioning as an invitation. The invitation not only gives access to the show, but also plays on its informative nature, while questioning regimes of authenticity in reproducible objects and fashion atlarge. As this example shows, the need to capture the attention of buyers or journalists, the increasing investment in communication and a sort of post-modernist vision stimulated the transformation of these promotional materials into something more than just straightforward informational branding devices or simple practices of ‘artification’. Paradoxically, the simple need to ‘discourse the garment’ has been transformed into a tendency to ‘discourse fashion’ as a self-reflexive practice that prompts the creation of more complex materials, not only asking that the viewer ‘get the point’, but also to be recognized as objects that stage a specific material and visual culture within the fashion industry.

Fashion and ephemeralism Despite the economic and creative investment in their creation, fashion communication materials like invitations, catalogues and press releases are often thrown away. While there has been a recent proliferation of a few coffee-table books presenting these ephemeral materials,34 some features on invitations in online magazines35 and the emergence of some fashion collectors focusing on the commercialization of printed fashion documents,36 the cultural scope and the content of these ephemera are still largely under-researched and their peculiar aesthetic qualities are frequently dismissed within the industry and academia. Museums and especially temporary exhibitions have been seminal to raising attention on this type of fashion objects, although their interpretation has often been relegated to evidence of other histories (Figure 7) and they have been treated as self-explanatory in fashion exhibitions37 (Figure 8). To study fashion ephemera 12

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Figure 7  Bernhard Willhelm Retrospective Exhibition’s section dedicated to catalogues, The Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu), 2007. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. INTRODUCTION

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Figure 8  Bernhard Willhelm Retrospective Exhibition’s brochure, The Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu), 2007. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. is therefore a practice of giving value to the discarded, while the ontology of these materials lives on a deflation of their value. This oxymoron has been true for ephemera studies at large,38 but it becomes exaggerated in the case of the type of fashion ephemera such as invitations, catalogues or press releases which seem to perfectly embody the culture of the ephemeral governing the fashion industry. Indeed, the fashion industry capitalizes on its own ephemerality as its rhythm requires that of a perpetual renewal. The ephemeral is vital to fashion’s proper functioning and it has been used as a parameter of definition for fashion as both concept and practice. Writers and philosophers such as Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin have theorized and identified the ephemeral as an intrinsic character of fashion and consequentially as an ultimate manifestation of artistic, sociological and consumeristic practices in modernity. As Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans stressed, these thinkers have not only shaped our understanding of modernity as ephemeral, but they have 14

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also influenced a perception of fashion as a major tool and vehicle for modern life.39 Gilles Lipovetsky perpetuated such visions, explaining that ‘no system of fashion exists without the conjunction of two logical systems: the system of ephemera and the system of aesthetic fantasy’.40 The French philosopher describes fashion as an empire of the ephemeral where the pleasure of the ephemeral becomes a condition sine qua non for fashion’s existence. ‘Fashion’, says Lipovetsky, ‘could not have existed without this reversal of the relation to historical evolution to ephemera’.41 The ephemeral is here considered as an immaterial character, product of ‘the modern cult of the ephemeral’.42 Such a definition of fashion is bound to the construction of a system of desire in France during the nineteenth century and the formation of a ‘new sensitivity to ephemera’43 that has not only structured the common understanding of fashion as an always changing practice but reflects fashion’s potential to embody modernity and its bond with the emergence of an industrial capitalistic society. In this sense, the ephemeral is both instigator and final product. The ephemeral is not only the fuel for a search for novelty and change but it must also characterize the nature of the product – being disposable and replaceable – in order to then reactivate the very capitalistic mechanism of constructing the ‘production–consumption–production’ chain. Indeed, the philosophical understanding of fashion as ephemeral coincides with a more material perspective on the mechanics of both the production and consumption of fashion. As Ulrich Lehmann proposes in his Fashion and Materialism, the temporality and transitoriness of fashion – in the mode of living, the changing style of objects as well as of words that writers such as Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire would observe around the same time as Marx’s analyses – are based profanely and materially in the transformation of the labour process, and on the activity of the worker.44 Here the ephemerality of fashion is rephrased through a materialist perspective that helps to concretize this ephemeral nature into practices. While Lehmann individualizes these tensions in the production of textile and labour, other authors have proposed to materialize these ephemeral tensions of modernity in the spaces of the city and consumption practices, or into fashion design practices and fashion images.45 In this book I propose to think of fashion ephemera as the ultimate form of materialization and immaterialization of the culture of the ephemeral in fashion. My intention is to let emerge how the ephemeral production, circulation and dispersion of these materials perfectly reflects a sort of ephemeralism regulating the fashion industry. With this term, I am not only identifying the already mentioned cult of the ephemeral in modernity. Rather, I identify a fixation, a paradigm manifested in the fashion industry towards the proprieties, the power and the potential of the ephemeral. This is manifested in the ephemera explored in this book, where the ephemeral is represented and constructed via specific textual, visual and material strategies. As explained by Christine Buci-Glucksmann in her Esthétique de l’éphémere, the ephemeral is achieved through the representation of its imaginary, through ‘the sensible manifestation of its vibration’.46 These ephemera solidify the ephemeral as an ideology governing the industry. Thus, to speak INTRODUCTION

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about an ephemeralism means to identify a dominant way of thinking and discoursing about the ephemeral in these fashion ephemera. Not only attached to the very definition of fashion as both practice and concept, the ephemeral has also become an ideology within the very industry of fashion as if its intangible meaning mechanized its tangible practices. This duality regulates multiple fashion practices – from production and consumption to representation and dissemination – and, I argue, especially haunts fashion ephemera. Fashion ephemera discussed in this book metaphorically ‘tick’ in time with the clock of fashion, not only incarnating its essence via representation but materially recording the immaterial aspects of its making. Indeed, the making of the ephemera is based on an ephemeral making as these materials are often created via short-term employment and fleeting commissions. As Blanchard provocatively suggests, the labour behind these materials – although often well paid – has a ‘short shelf-life of a few seasons’.47 Such a condition is not only materialized in the act of creating an invitation or a catalogue but, as I will show in this book, it is also promoted or criticized in the ephemera themselves which contain declarative or more allusive commentary on this aspect. Furthermore, the cult of the ephemeral is accentuated by the dispersion of the ephemera’s value that is paradoxically converted by their collectors – often buyers and journalists – into their main value. Whereas the preservation practices have been defined by Clark as a way of putting this type of fashion ephemera under ‘unusual and possibly unintended scrutiny’,48 I argue in this book that the practices of collecting invitations, catalogues or press releases not only transform these materials into ephemera but also perpetuate this culture of the ephemeral and testify to a certain need to hold onto it. The decision to keep these ephemeral objects beyond their original function may originate in various reasons, but still propagates the capacity of the ephemeral to instigate a discourse on rarity and exclusivity – to which this book may also paradoxically contribute. While, as Kevin D. Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll argue in relation to public ephemera, ‘cheapness helped ephemeral material [to] penetrate deeply into the broad populace’,49 the privately circulating fashion ephemera discussed in this book attest to a specific culture of the exceptional that not only regulates collecting practices at large but also governs the discourse within the fashion industry. While produced in multiple but limited copies, the recognition of their value and their consequent preservation by buyers and journalists is moved by a sense of affiliation and personification with the values of the ephemeral. In this sense, these ephemera become prisms from which one can look at the various facets of a culture of the ephemeral in the fashion industry, confirming the ephemera’s capacity to be pervasive within the culture in which they operate.

Rethinking the ephemera in the archive To ‘ephemeralize’ fashion means to enlarge the discourse on fashion materiality beyond the garment and urges a recognition of the potential of fashion ephemera in rethinking issues of fashion epistemology in the archive. The latter is not only the physical space in which I encountered these ephemeral materials, but it is here understood as a conceptual framework able to prompt a discussion on the role of fashion ephemera in practices of 16

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knowledge creation about fashion. Being at the centre of attention of many different fields such as critical theory, art criticism, contemporary art, curatorial studies, gender and postcolonial studies, the archive has indeed represented one of the most discussed devices of knowledge formation, control and power. To describe this attention, Cheryl Simon has coined the term ‘archival turn’ referring to a series of studies – influenced by philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida – which have focused on archives, documents and archival practices in order to deconstruct dominant institutional practices of control and power in society (from imperial colonization to systems of arts) or problematize historiographical narratives and hierarchies.50 The fashion of the archive and its constituents is increasingly emerging in fashion studies as well, although it is important to remember that archival work is not a new practice in this field. Indeed, archives of dresses and object-based studies have been central in writings about dress and fashion history, while many scholars have indirectly touched upon the potential of the archive by stressing the relation between fashion and history51 and the properties of history as a repository of creativity for fashion designers.52 Nevertheless, very few studies have explicitly focused on the politics and the epistemological properties of the fashion archive, the role and functioning of its documents.53 To some extent, the archive of fashion has not been fully questioned nor its transformative capacities explored in relation to epistemological practices. It is in this strand of research that I place my interpretation of fashion ephemera, in order to firstly recognize a transformation of these ephemeral objects in the archive. As Michel de Certeau argues in his The Writing of History, the introduction of everyday objects in the archive is not the result of a natural process but of ‘concerted actions’ that presuppose the recognition of a transformation of these objects. As the philosopher suggests, when we work with everyday objects, the issue is ‘not only one of bringing these immense dormant sectors of documentation to life, of giving voice to silence’ but to change ‘something which had its own definitive status and role into something else which functions differently’.54 Similarly, this study of fashion ephemera grew from a need to recognize how ephemera in the archive metaphorically become ‘something else’. Once placed in the archive, they not only pass from flimsy objects into valuable museum artefacts, but they also transform their mode of functioning as archival objects. According to de Certeau, the creation of knowledge about everyday culture passes, on the one hand, through the usage of everyday objects as historical documents, and on the other hand, by the recognition of their transformation into archival objects. While fashion historians and curators have begun to satisfy the former usage of ephemera,55 my attempt here has been to focus on the latter perspective and recategorize a selection of fashion ephemera according to three strands of epistemic potential – authorship, time and materiality – which also provides the structure for the three main chapters of this book. While I do recognize the different functions of invitations, catalogues and press releases, my decision to rethink and recategorize these ephemera beyond their original function stands on the importance of stressing the transformation of these ephemera in the archive, the necessity to pay attention to other functionalities of these ephemera besides the promotional, and, most importantly, the existence of a common epistemic pattern amongst them. At the INTRODUCTION

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same time, acknowledging all these epistemic functions in the archive is not to say that these epistemic capacities are created by the particular circumstances of the archive, nor is it to suggest that, prior to entering the archive, they did not contain such potential. Rather, the archive operates as a space in which these epistemic qualities are highlighted. My recategorization of fashion ephemera also allows one to escape and overcome the institutional definition of these materials that, through the use of fashion designers as an ordering principle in the archive, may simplify their complex and multiform epistemological character. What is found in MoMu’s archive entails, to use the words of cultural anthropologist and theorist Ann L. Stoler, ‘epistemic anxieties’56 based on forms of governance and control of discourses about Antwerp fashion and its actors. For example, the ephemera that I encountered in the archive present an unknown field of study for fashion but they also confirm discursive patterns about authorship and hierarchies of power within the fashion industry. If Arlette Farge reminds us the importance of recognizing the material flavour of findings in the archive,57 Stoler – following Michel Foucault’s work – urges the recognition of a ‘pulse of the archive’ as a ‘condensed site of epistemological and political anxiety’.58 While MoMu’s and other fashion archives may differ from the governmental and imperial archives discussed by Farge and Stoler, it is still important to think of them as a result of negotiations and unspoken (or, in some cases, spoken) ideologies that not only regulate an understanding of fashion in society but also shape the very practice of archiving fashion. To rethink ephemera in the archive not only necessitates a recognition of their transformation but also a questioning of those practices and regulations that circulate in/ through these ephemera and those exclusive circles that brought these materials into the archive of the fashion museum’s library. Meanwhile, the recognition of the promotional and celebratory nature of these ephemera must alert us to the ambivalent information that they may carry. The identification of ephemera’s capacity to enter the archive must not only remind us about what Arijun Appadurai would define as their ‘social life’.59 The mobility of ephemera should divert our interpretation of these ephemera and unchain them from their passive function as evidence of a show or a designer’s agency. To look at ephemera from the privileged perspective of the archive helps to identify in them an active form of referentiality and indexicality, showing their capacity, in the archive, to determine, trigger and problematize the ontology of those events, actors and practices that shaped their trajectory. A large number of materials in the MoMu archive metaphorically contain or rather assemble those same people and events that affected their cultural meaning and that may now be ‘resuscitated’ in the archive. Inscribed and assembled on the surface of ephemera, these traces show ephemera as very particular palimpsests, and as aggregators of events, people and discourses that this book attempts to unveil in order to fully grasp the contentious epistemic value of these materials.

The implied beholder: Reading, looking and touching This book understands fashion ephemera as more than static evidence of historical events or fashion designers’ agency but as performative objects which – through their peculiar 18

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visual, textual and material features – instigate and evoke specific discourses on fashion in the archive. Probably due to their conservation in libraries or the archives of documentation centres, fashion ephemera have in fact suffered a sort of ‘documentary approach’ that has promoted their interpretation as supportive and passive tools with which to study the history of fashion designers or fashion shows, consequentially overshadowing the epistemological potential of their peculiar aesthetic and ‘objecthood’. The art historian Michael Baxandall explains these uses when he talks about historians’ approach to documents. Baxandall argues that the historian’s attention is directed ‘primarily to the actions they document, not to the documents themselves’.60 If translated to the use of fashion ephemera in fashion studies, it is possible to understand how until today fashion scholars and curators have mostly used ephemera as informational documents and focused on the actions that ephemera document. While such an approach has represented a first step towards the recognition of the epistemological value of fashion ephemera, this documentary approach has not fostered an interpretation of the aesthetic qualities of fashion ephemera, and of the ways these qualities enable a specific knowledge about fashion, its actors and its events. In this sense, the immersion in MoMu’s archive and the possibility to touch and manipulate these ephemera at MoMu’s library has been decisive in fostering the specific epistemic potential of their material, visual and textual features. Made of different types of fabric and shapes, or containing blurry images or poetic descriptions of garments, these ephemera engage their beholder on different levels and, to some extent, ‘ask’ to be handled.61 For example, an invitation made of a particular fabric or a catalogue made in the shape of an accordion do not simply ask to be held or unfolded, but imply a human interaction. Their form and their handleability suggests their need to be interacted with as an intrinsic element of their design while the traces of uses on their surfaces evoke their ‘having being handled’. In this sense, these ephemera require an ‘implied beholder’ similarly to those paintings or sculptures which presuppose an ‘implied viewer’ entailing an involvement with the work of art, a concept extensively discussed in art history.62 Much in the same way, the particular qualities of fashion ephemera require an interaction in order to be fully understood. At the same time, it is important to remember how I, as a researcher working in the archive, am not the intended or original ‘implied beholder’. As Carolyn Steedman argues, the archive ‘gives rise to particular practices of reading’, often bringing the researcher to ‘read something that was not intended for your eyes’.63 In fact, the fashion ephemera at MoMu were not intended for my eyes, but rather for fashion insiders like journalists or buyers: an aspect that must be considered in the analysis of the epistemic potential of these ephemera. Indeed, these types of fashion ephemera rely on the expertise of ‘fashion insiders’ who are equipped with specific knowledge of fashion, and skills in recognizing various forms of communication and aesthetic language.64 Although my main purpose is not to focus on the intentions behind these materials or to study their historical reception, it is crucial to acknowledge how these ephemera rely on particular discursive mechanisms that demand a hybridized methodology respecting both the multiple and heterogeneous features and the multiple interpretations that these ephemera stimulate. While contextualizing these ephemera with secondary sources such as written or visual documentation of fashion shows or practitioner interviews, my INTRODUCTION

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interpretation focuses on visual, textual and material methods of analysis, belonging to very different disciplinary traditions. For example, methods developed in art history and visual culture have been very fruitful in order to analyse visual features such as blurry images of a garment or depictions of the designers.65 Discursive analysis of texts and literary studies have been central to fully understanding the rhetoric contained in press releases or in catalogues.66 Last but not least, object-based studies and studies on the materiality of images and texts have been crucial to fully highlight the material poetics of these ephemera.67 While such a multidisciplinary approach has indeed been a distinctive trait in fashion studies, it has been fundamental to my need to embrace – both methodologically and theoretically – the intertextuality at play in these fashion ephemera. When speaking about the analysis of fashion magazines, Paul Jobling speaks about the ‘need to decode both words and images in tandem’ in order to recognize the dialogic interaction of words and images in editorials. Drawing on the ideas of ‘anchorage’ and ‘relay’ proposed by Barthes,68 Jobling argues that image and words in fashion editorials mutually reinforce one another. In the case of the fashion ephemera discussed in this book, we should rather speak of a ménage a trois, as I further explain in Chapter 3. In fashion ephemera, design elements such as the graphic layout of an invitation, the organization of images and texts, and the font as much as the texture, the shape and the size of an invitation, a catalogue or a press release, have an effect on the way we interpret an image or a word, and can ‘activate’ meaning in the object. The word, the image and the material have thus emerged as the mutual ways in which knowledge proliferates, and is evoked, through these ephemera. This tripartite understanding of the ephemera recalls what W. J. T. Mitchell defines as ‘mixed media’.69 His idea was to critique a visual-centred approach to objects, to challenge a focus on the visual element of media rather than their materiality. Here I will propose a similar approach. All ephemera’s extravagant material, visual and textual features are not here considered as simply decorative elements but, as Jobling argues, ‘contribute to the sequential or intertextual structure of the narrative’.70 These ephemera make evident that, in fashion, materiality is, to use Barthes’ words, another ‘shifter of meaning’.71 While in the case of garments the epistemological potential of the ‘material’ may appear less ‘declarative’, the interrelation between image, text and material in ephemera highlights the intertextuality that is at play in them and their capacity to better highlight the centrality of material knowledge in fashion. The material epistemic value of fashion ephemera becomes even more important when we consider how contemporary fashion brands are now favouring the use of digital platforms over ephemeral materials as communication devices, as well as the fact that these types of communicational devices are becoming increasingly rare as a result of this digital shift.

Fashion remains But how should we activate ephemera’s functioning as objects of knowledge? While different fields informed my approach to ephemera’s visual, textual and material features, there has been a need to search for hermeneutic tools in order to display the 20

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polysemic nature of these ephemeral objects. As Michel de Certeau argues, in order to investigate the ‘ways of operating’ of phenomena, we must hybridize previous ‘methods of analysis, modelling and formalization, [which] were constructed for other objects and with other aims’.72 Similarly, the heterogeneous nature of my sources and their features led me to create an ad hoc multidisciplinary approach to these ephemera where I do not simply adopt other fields’ ways of reading a text, an image or an object but use specific hermeneutic tools to unlock the specific epistemic capacities of the object. The architectural historian Mario Lupano argues that writing about fashion requires a ‘morphing activity, an aspiration to cross academic boundaries, and a predisposition to contaminate branches of knowledge’.73 In my attempt to express the specific ways in which MoMu’s fashion ephemera enable knowledge about fashion, I recognize the importance of this morphing activity, selecting those ‘hermeneutic tools’ from disparate fields and disciplines. These hermeneutic tools consist of academic theories, novels and poetry, but also of everyday objects that resemble, and in some cases share the epistemic capacities of, ephemera. In this sense, my approach to these hermeneutic tools resonates with what Ben Highmore defined as a theorizing practice when speaking about theory in the context of everyday studies. ‘Theory’, he suggests, ‘is often a dense and abstruse form of writing, often designed to throw into crisis widely accepted and practiced beliefs’.74 Highmore continues suggesting that everyday life and practices may invite ‘a kind of theorizing that throws our most cherished theoretical values and practices into crisis’, provocatively questioning: ‘what if rigor, system and structure were antithetical and deadening to aspects of everyday life? What if “theory” was to be found elsewhere, the pages of a novel, in a suggestive passage of description in an autobiography, or in the street games of children?’75 In my attempt to catch the polysemy of fashion ephemera I share Highmore’s vision and propose interpretational tools taken from a variety of fields and cases. These were not selected randomly but were chosen according to the three epistemic categories that I identified and that are developed in the three chapters of the book. Chapter 1 ‘Authorial Networks’ focuses on the concept of authorship and shows how these types of ephemera help to problematize and challenge static ideas of authorship in fashion. To do so, I rely on auteur theory, critical theory and studies of media authorship but also on novels that have problematized the idea of the author – for example the short story ‘Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote’ by Jorge Luis Borges, which helps me to discuss the multiple authors involved in the creation but also in the affirmation of value of fashion ephemera. Chapter 2 ‘Performances of Time’, investigates the relationship between fashion ephemera and time, using theories from performance studies, cinema studies or even optical toys to show their capacity to perform and stage two kinds of time: the time of the event to which ephemera refer and from which they originate – in this case the fashion show –and their capacity to move beyond their original event and later be preserved in the archive. Chapter 3 ‘Poetic Transformations’ investigates the imaginative potential of these ephemera, focusing on their capacity to trigger knowledge about the sensory aspect of garments and contributing to their definition as poetic objects. This is achieved by an extensive use of theories on semiotics and the discursive INTRODUCTION

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nature of garments, theories on the haptic developed in art history or cinema studies and even studies on tactile knowledge. In all the chapters, my personal, multidisciplinary approach to theory recalls a children’s ‘shape sorting’ game in which the child must try to fit a circular block, for example, into a similarly shaped hole. Such an approach to theory aims to stress the understanding of theorizing as practice and the need to seek out the appropriate hermeneutic tools fitting the corresponding epistemic ‘shape’ of the ephemera – here intended in its epistemic capacity. My aim has not been to use ephemera to reflect the potential of an idea or a theory but, in an opposite way, to use theory, as Gilles Deleuze suggested, ‘as a box of tools’, as a ‘instrument’76 to reflect upon the potential of ephemera. Thus, the idea of ‘shape sorting’ is a suitable metaphor to identify a method for analysing fashion ephemera (and maybe fashion phenomena at large), for two main reasons. On the one hand, it reveals the capacity of MoMu’s ephemera to enable multiple types of knowledge connected to very disparate ideas and theoretical concerns. On the other hand, it surpasses previous studies of objects in fashion studies that have exclusively focused on their qualities or shadowed their qualities with predetermined theories.77 While my approach to ephemera draws inevitably on object-based studies due to my close attention to the material features of these objects, this book mainly focuses on the relation between objects and theory, bridging the study of objects with ideas in cultural and critical theory.78 My attempt is to figuratively immerse ephemera in theoretical discussions about fashion and vice versa, in order to look at their specific functioning while possibly stimulating a way to look at the epistemic potential of other objects in fashion studies. The aim is to propose a performative theory of fashion ephemera evoking material and immaterial knowledge about fashion, revealing hidden networks of collaborations, expressing fashion tropes and languages of representation, all while acting as metaphors for fashion itself in the manner in which they closely mirror fashion’s disposable and ephemeral essence. In this sense, this book proposes an interpretation of the material and immaterial potential of fashion ephemera, rethinking them in the archive as fashion remains. This interpretation has an intentional double entendre. Firstly, I use ‘remains’ as a noun, to suggest that fashion does not only remain in the shape of garments or accessories, but also in other material forms, like for example invitations, catalogues or press releases, which, although they are commonly discarded – yet randomly outlive other fashion items – may still better embody fashion’s ephemeral nature. Expanding from performance theorist Rebecca Schneider’s question of the remains in performance studies, this book embraces what she defines as a ‘cultural habituation’79 of understanding the ways in which a phenomenon endures. Here by adopting the idea of remains, I challenge the reduction of fashion materiality to garments, questioning hierarchies of material value in fashion and looking at these remains as valuable entries into fashion industry’s discourses. The aim is to enlarge the discussion on archiving fashion while also proposing to rethink the alternative and performative-ness of the ephemera in displacing this habit and expand the ways we perceive the remaining of fashion. The ephemera as remains represent, thanks to their performative features, a more dynamic and ‘alive’ way for fashion to 22

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remain, initiating not only an expansion of the discourse on fashion materiality but also on the means of fashion immaterialities. To some extent, these objects trouble our understanding of how fashion remains, and incarnate its essence while materially recording the immaterial aspects of its making. Enlarging the kaleidoscope of what remains of fashion, demands that we begin to include more embodied forms of permanence and other immaterial sensibilities of fashion such as gestures, walking, but also more synaesthetic elements like smell, sound and even taste, that these fashion ephemera may help to evoke speaking to the second meaning of the title of this book, fashion remains. Here ‘remains’ is not used as a noun but rather as a verb in order to stress how fashion, its actors and its immaterial practices, metaphorically remain in fashion ephemera. Due to their capacity to paradoxically both ‘live’ and ‘escape’ the ephemeral, these objects record and echo the ephemeral nature of fashion, becoming crucial devices to re-animate and experience fashion, its actors, its practices and, most importantly, its ideologies.

INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER 1

Authorial networks

If ephemera are often defined as ‘authorless’,1 fashion ephemera seem to have too many authors. From their creation to their archiving in museums, fashion ephemera enter into contact with multiple figures, who play, in very different ways, an authorial role in relation to them. In fact, the invitations, catalogues and press releases conserved at MoMu lie on a contested terrain, having the capacity to make and reveal complex authorial networks involving both their creation and their subsequent histories. Yet these ephemera have generally been identified simply by the names of the fashion designers who produce them or used as self-explanatory evidence of the fashion designers’ collaborations with graphic designers or famous photographers. Nothing has been written to explore what type of authorial discourses these ephemera create, and how they proliferate through their peculiar textual, visual and material features. Drawing on works on authorship, but also on auteur theory, critical theory, agency studies and novels discussing the role of authors and authorship, this chapter stresses how fashion ephemera are instrumental in understanding how authorship and authors are central, dynamic, complex and mutable notions in fashion. Fashion ephemera unveil many fashion actors (not only designers) and institutions which are building, through ephemera, discourses about issues of creation, creative processes, making, aesthetic encounters, power relations and the creation of value in fashion. Fashion ephemera have the capacity to generate and re-animate these discourses, manifesting how ideas of authors and authorship are strategically celebrated, problematized, denied, hidden and negotiated through the material, visual and textual features of ephemera.

Matters of signature: From authenticity to intimacy From a museological point of view, the name of the fashion designer is what assigns value to all MoMu ephemera. Typed with a specific font or even handwritten on the surface of the ephemera, the name evokes a direct relation with the fashion designer. The name serves to consecrate the value of these ephemera, although these objects are not physically created directly by him or her.2 In their ‘Le Couturier et sa Griffe: Contribution à une Théorie de la Magie’ (1975), Pierre Bourdieu and Yvette Delsaut explain this process, showing how fashion designers play a fundamental role in the creation of symbolic production in fashion by having ‘the power to define objects as rare by means of their signature’.3 Defined by Bourdieu and Delsaut as ‘transsubstantion symbolique’,4 the process of creating value in an object is here related to the immaterial

capacity of the signature to imbue value in an object such as a garment. Specifically, the French sociologists define the power of the couturier’s signature as magical, arguing that a ‘couturier transforms an everyday object into a piece of art by signing it’.5 Such a mechanism is indeed at play in fashion ephemera, which all gain significance by what Bourdieu and Delsaut see as the magical capacity of the signature to give value to everyday objects. But, while Bourdieu and Delsaut’s idea addresses the authorial impact of the name in the recognition of value in these ephemeral materials, their study fails to explain the scope of the signature and its capacity to trigger specific knowledge about fashion through a particular type of material, visual or written feature. In fact, Bourdieu is not interested in the materiality of the signed object, nor does he recognize its relevance in the affirmation of the magical power of the signature.6 In his ‘But Who Created the Creator?’ (1998), Bourdieu suggests the capacity of the signature to give value to ‘any kind of object’ (‘perfumes, shoes or even, it’s a real example, a bidet’), ‘without any change in its physical or (thinking of perfume) its chemical nature’.7 In contrast, fashion ephemera show how signatures – and the matter on which they are inscribed – not only act as symbols of value, but evoke specific meanings, relations and discourses about fashion. Indeed, there is more into a signature or a handwritten text than just a name, as evidenced by Ann Demeulemeester s/s ’09 press releases (Figure 9).8 Contrary to the common, mass-circulated typefaces typically used in press releases by fashion brands, this press release is an handwritten description of the mood of the collection written on A4 white paper, folded in two and resembling a private letter. Demeulemeester’s press release presents the collection and the fashion show through words supposedly handwritten by the designer: The collection is made of a group of characters dressed in poetic shadows enlightened by natural tones. Sophisticated, extravagant and free. The young men lead us towards the beautiful older men dressed in shadows of light. (Ann Demeulemeester menswear 2009) The handwritten text adopts an allusive language that provides no specific information about the collection’s materials, cut and colours, favouring instead a poetic interpretation of garments (‘men dress in shadows of light’). Here Ann Demeulemeester is, to some extent, replaced by her handwritten words that, combined with the poetic content of the press releases, transform the press release from an anonymous text about a collection into a personal interpretation by the designer. There is no concrete mention of the garments nor of the materials used in the collection. Both the handwritten layout of the press release and the rhetoric of the text evoke and pretend to validate the presence of the designer while constructing a discourse on the poetic and personal nature of the collection. As Jacques Derrida argues, handwriting and signatures are two of the most visible

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Figure 9  Ann Demeulemeester s/s ’09 press release. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum

Antwerp.

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indexes of a corporeal gesture as they involve the physical absence of its referent, while recreating its previous presence.9 Following the French philosopher, Sonja Neef, José Van Dijck and Eric Ketelaar explain that handwriting is traditionally regarded as an autography, as an ‘un-exchangeable, unique and authentic “signature” that claims to guarantee the presence of an individual writer’.10 Demeulemeester’s press release works through these meanings and tropes of handwriting, acting as an authentic declaration of the designer, addressed to buyers and journalists who are the recipients of these materials. These actors, in this manner, are not faced with a standard communication from the brand, but what seems like a personal statement presenting a very subjective view on the collection reinforced by the lack of specific details, the tone and the graphical shape of the text alluding to poetry. All these elements concur and seek to control, construct and perform a relationship between the addressee and the designer. But, while these designers’ authorial signs evoke the proximity of the designer, this connection is not necessarily rooted in an original act of signing by the designer and operates similarly to the use of personal inscriptions developed at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth both as both a marketing tool and a strategic instrument in copyright issues.11 According Troy, the signature-label ‘introduced an entirely different, more elusive dimension (to fashion) due to the fact that it signified a creative individual as well as a corporate entity, the identity of the former becoming inextricably linked to the latter’.12 The personification of the designer with the label is to some extent performed by the signature that, similarly to the case of Deumeleemester invitation, reinforces the object with ‘an aura of uniqueness and creative individuality’.13 However, if in the case of labels, the signature becomes a sort of external tool applied to garments to superimpose value to them, in the case of ephemera like Demeulemeester the handwriting becomes the central entity. While in garments the signature perpetuates a discourse on authenticity and originality, in the case of ephemera the authenticity seems to eclipse the concept of originality. While the concept of originality is embedded in temporality and involves a hierarchical relation between an original and its copy, the concept of authenticity stands on the affirmation of the real and its closer relation to the author. In these ephemera, the use of the signature or handwriting evokes a discourse about authenticity rather than originality as becomes particularly evident in Bernhard Willhelm a/w ’02–’03 invitation. The invitation is an A3 piece of white paper that, once unfolded, contains multiple handwritten signatures by Bernhard Willhelm as well as handwritten information about the show (Figure 10). Willhelm’s multiple signatures not only create a direct connection to the designer but also suggest the centrality of the signature to a designer, by performing Willhelm in the act of practising his signature. The multiple signatures, in combination with the reproducible nature of the invitation, show how proximity to the designer is not suggested through a reference to the original act of writing, as it would be in the case of an autograph or a signature on a contract. On the contrary, the Willhelm invitation

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Figure 10  Bernhard Willhelm, s/s ’02–’03 invitation created by the Dutch designer duo Freudenthal and Verhagen. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. Authorial networks

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Figure 11  Bernhard Willhelm, s/s ’02–’03 invitation, close-up mistake signature. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

suggests how signatures or handwriting in ephemera are used as performative to re-enact physical presence, overshadowing an attempt to claim originality but rather mocking the signature’s value in fashion. In the Willhelm invitation, there is not a search for originality but rather authenticity and this is also reinforced by the presence of crossed out names or information in the invitation (Figure 11). Here handwritten information about the show or signatures are struck through or marked over. These ‘printed mistakes’ materialize authenticity by performing the fallible nature of the human act. The mistakes do not create a historical proximity to the event of writing by Willhelm, but they evoke the idea of authentic proximity to the designer through the performance of his fallibility. In this manner, this invitation not only evokes the presence of the designer but also functions as a commentary on the authorial contradictions of the signature in fashion and reproduceable media. This capacity of the signature becomes particularly relevant in the case of the Maison Martin Margiela s/s 2010 womenswear invitation (Figures 12–13) which takes the shape of a postcard portraying the famous Japanese Mount Fuji with some cherry blossom in the foreground, and some handwritten text on the back.14 In contrast to the previous examples, there is no designer’s signature or individual rhetoric, in accordance with Maison Martin Margiela’s practice of avoiding any individual reference to the founder of the house. 30

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Thus, the Margiela invitation shows how the handwriting is not exclusively used for its capacity to recreate the presence of the designer himself in the object, but also works as an allusion to intimate relations built within the fashion industry between brands, designers, buyers or journalists. Here handwriting is not used to recall a direct action of the designer but, rather, intimacy. This immaterial potential of ephemera becomes particular evident in this Margiela invitation due to the material nature of the object on which the handwritten text is printed. By taking the shape of a postcard, the invitation creates a specific type of relationship between its beholder and the designer. As an intimate object usually exchanged between friends, the postcard becomes a material device suggesting closeness between the beholder of the object and the designer.15 While the image of Mount Fuji may refer to the idea of travel as a constant element in fashion imagery, here what is relevant is the type of object and the style of writing used in the invitation. The handwritten text, the intimate language (‘chers amis’), the informal format (including a post scriptum) and the use of the holiday postcard create an intimate relation with the receiver. This invitation produces a discourse of intimacy through an articulated register that does not rely exclusively on handwriting. This Margiela invitation shows how fashion ephemera may not only be passive indexical signs of a fictive touch by the designer but have a performative value as ‘objects of contact’. Here the signature and the handwriting in fashion ephemera – as much as the material on which they are transcribed – evoke the importance of the materiality of the handwriting and signature in the performance of the authorship of the designer and in the consequent generation of material proximity to the addressee. The fashion ephemera function as material, intimate connectors able to perform the relation of intimacy and exclusivity. While the blurring of boundaries between business and friendships has been sought since early fashion shows,16 these ephemera play a crucial role in the affirmation, construction and manifestation of this relation. As the Demeulemeester press release, and Margiela’s and Willhelm’s invitations show, this is due not only to their private channels of circulation, but also to their specific features. In this sense, ephemera becomes a central agent in the construction and nature of the social and power relations between fashion actors within what Rocamora, drawing on Bourdieu, defines as the ‘field of fashion’ – a ‘semi-structured space in which journalists, designers, buyers interact by sharing its functionality, values and principles’.17 Within Rocamora’s definition of these practices of sharing values and principles, it is important to identify the notions of ‘intimacy’ and ‘exclusivity’ as regulators of these relationships and values that fashion ephemera such as invitations, press releases and catalogues help to construct, manifest and endure. Therefore, ephemeral materials like invitations are more than ‘badge[s] of affiliation to the fashion field’,18 but, I argue, make explicit, erect, discuss and perpetuate these affiliations through their specific aesthetic nature. Through their features, these objects not only evidence, but also construct and perform, the scope of these relationships. They materially ground such an immaterial link.

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Figure 12  Maison Martin Margiela, s/s 2010 invitation, front. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Authorial bodies and stories The reflexive potential of signatures and handwriting in the previous examples highlights how fashion ephemera may become spaces in which authorial discourses proliferate so that fashion designers are often staged as central authorial figures. This is not only to say that designers and their persona are used as marketing tools but there is a practice of embodiment that is portrayed through ephemera via the presence of physical traces or marks of the designer’s body (or body parts). The archive at MoMu contains many examples of this tendency, such as a Yamamoto s/s ’96 invitation. Consisting of a black ponytail of fabric resembling the designer’s haircut, the invitation acts as a sort of material trace of the designer while, in other cases, there may be a spectacularization of the designer’s private life, as in the Jurgi Persoons s/s ’98 invitation (Figure 14). Created by the graphic designer Paul Boudens, the invitation consists of a poster portraying the designer’s eye, with heavy black make up and a bloodshot white, the result of walking into a tree by accident. As explained by the graphic designer, the idea was to bring the designer’s life into the invitation.19 The invitation-poster not only stages an element of the designer’s body; it also brings his personal story to the front. As Rebecca Arnold suggests, the use of the designer’s body is a successful promotional tool in 32

Fashion Remains

Figure 13  Maison Martin Margiela, s/s 2010 invitation, back. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

fashion, giving a label a specific identity and ‘quite literally, providing a “face” for the design house’.20 This practice is actually materialized in these fashion ephemera where there is a fusion between the business and the individual designer, who, in the case of the designers discussed in this book, is often both the creative behind and owner of the brand. Therefore, the use of their ‘face’ is not only a promotional tool, but also a tool to foreground an idea of creativity, as in the case of the Bernhard Willhelm s/s 2006 catalogue. Here we see not only a face, but also a naked body. Designed by the Dutch graphic design duo Freudenthal & Verhagen, the catalogue consists of two A1-sized posters showing photographs of a naked Bernhard spitting out small fairies dressed in the new collection (Figure 15).21 The designer is not depicted simply in order to show his physical presence as in the previous examples or to give a face to a collection or a brand. The naked body is also used to stage an idea of artistic creativity.22 By depicting the designer with the looks (that is, the outfits from the collection) coming out of his mouth, the catalogue suggests a visceral relation between the garments and the designer. The designer’s naked body is thus associated with fertility. The naked body is represented as a pregnant entity, thus creating an association between the act of creating a garment and the act of giving birth. Authorial networks

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Figure 14  Jurgi Persoons s/s ’98 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. 34

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Figure 15  Bernhard Willhelm menswear s/s ’06 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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In these examples, the body of the designer becomes a vehicle for reflections about the meanings of creation and creative processes in fashion. Rather than being a narcissistic representation of a designer or a mere branding tool, the body becomes a narrative device. As Hanna Westely explains in her The Body as Medium and Metaphor (2008), the uses of bodies in practices of self-representation are not necessarily attempts to guarantee the presence of the author or a univocal affirmation of the self.23 Rather, bodies may be used as discursive vehicles that enable discussion about authorial stances through their interrelation with the reader/spectator.24 This becomes particularly evident in Walter Van Beirendonck’s fashion ephemera, in which the figure of the designer is used to create dialogues and spell out issues about the scope of fashion design. An example of these multiple identity transformations can be seen in the Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’89 catalogue: a comic-strip book entitled ‘King Kong Kooks’ (Figures 16–17). Unlike in the Willhelm s/s ’06 catalogue, the designer is not depicted in a photograph but transformed into a comic character. The collection is presented through illustrations by the Belgian graphic artist Jan Bosschaert, with scripts by Marc Legendre and characters by Van Beirendonck. This presentation of the collection in the comic format suggests a desire to subvert the traditional function of fashion catalogues. Van Beirendonck appears under the name of ‘the Warrior’ and as the leader of a gang named ‘King Kong Kooks’ (which is also the title of the collection). The comic narrates a battle of wills between Van Beirendonck’s gang and the ‘ey ones’ who think that their authority is threatened by the King Kong Kooks. The aim of Van Beirendonck’s gang is to bring the world a new idea of fashion and to fight a grey, colourless and sad approach to fashion represented, in the comic, by an opposing group of three men depicted in normative men’s clothing. Van Beirendonck is represented as a strong and fearless figure, ready to fight any discrimination in fashion, but he is also shown as a humble and sensitive character, suffering from the kidnapping of his dog by his opponents. Here, Van Beirendonck becomes a super-hero of fashion, and his figure becomes a transformative tool to problematize the normative and authoritative imposition of gender stereotypes through fashion. In the comic, the oppositional discourses manifested in the character of the designer and his supporters mirror the aesthetic world and the discourses on identity and gender that are at the centre of the designer’s work. He is not only presented as the leader of the group but also as a body of liberation. As Kaat Debo argues, Van Beirendonck’s work constantly delivers a ‘new Walter’ through ‘a game in which he uses himself, in the form of his name or the letter “W”, as well as in the form of a naked, pink doll, complete with beards and penis’.25 As attested by Van Beirendonck’s avatar in the comic strip, the duty of his super-hero role is to create a ‘world where everyone can be himself ’. With its idealistic and celebratory nature, the comic posits the work of the designer (and fashion itself) as an emancipatory practice that is particularly apt as a tool for this liberationist narrative. This is often achieved through the use of storytelling where the designer becomes not only the narrator but also the protagonist. Well known as a promotional strategy in fashion branding26 and as technique in the creative process of fashion designers,27 storytelling can also be seen as a tool to convey poetic ideas about 36

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Figure 16  Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’89 catalogue, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 17  Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’89 catalogue, pages 5–6. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Authorial networks

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the role of the designer and fashion design. In Bernhard Willhelm’s press releases the designer often appears as a character who enters the story as a final, conclusive and resolved element. His a/w ’00–’01 press release ‘Planetenwesen II’ contains the story of a little girl, Deidre, who is getting ready to go to sleep in the guestroom of her grandmother’s house. The press release takes the reader into Deidre’s mind, describing how she feels about the things hanging in her room. At the end of the story, she thinks of the designer: By now it was 3 A.M. so there was no need to get overly active right now – there’s always tomorrow. So Deidre put on her ‘plopp plopp’ starry socks and drew her grandmother’s quilted bedspread over her head as she laid down to sleep. As she flew away to dreamland she murmured: ‘I hope Bernhard makes my dreams come true again …’ (Bernhard Willhelm, press release a/w ’00–’01) The story suggests the capacity of the room to be a space of wonder and the designer is represented as someone able to make ‘dreams come true’. Similarly to Van Beirendonck’s heroic role, Willhelm is described here as a figure able to realize dreams, representing the capacity of the fashion designer to act as problem-solver while perpetuating a stereotypical idea of the designer as a facilitator of dreams, which restates how fashion acts as an intermediary between fiction and reality. These two examples show two designers’ phantasmagorical approach to fashion while they also depict the total immersion of the designers in the narrative, and their capacity to act as avatars of discourses about the transformative capacities of fashion. In this, they recall what Michel Foucault defined as the capacity of the author to be more than just a mere subject – an ‘entity able to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society’.28 In his ‘What is an Author?’ (1969), Foucault comments on the construction of the author as disciplinary figure, moving beyond his ‘death’, proposed by Roland Barthes, and suggests that the author functions to affirm discourse. The author’s name manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture. It has no legal status, nor is it located in the fiction of the work; rather, it is located in the break that founds a certain discursive construct and its very particular mode of being.29 In a similar manner, Willhelm’s or Van Beirendonck’s presence in their ephemera can be seen not only as a form of self-celebration, but also as examples of the ways in which fashion designers convey their ideas about fashion, not only through their garments but also through performative actions executed via their bodies and figures. These discursive practices are often affirmed through the tension between fiction and reality as highlighted by those ephemera which present elements of fashion designers’ personal lives. In the Van Beirendonck comic, there are clear references to Antwerp (the city where the designer lives), to the bar ‘King Kong’ frequented by Antwerp designers and artists, to the other five designers of the ‘Antwerp Six’ and to Van Beirendonck’s dog ‘Sado’, who is transformed into a central 40

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Figure 18  Dries Van Noten, s/s ’93 press release, biography. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

character in the story and who also appears in many other of the designer’s ephemera. What is at stake is a concrete elimination of the boundaries between private life and work. Once again, this can be interpreted not only as a public and commercial use of the private sphere, but also as evidence of the specific working environment and type of business run by the fashion designers explored in this book, who literally fuse their work with their personal life. This authorial trait is expressed not only through the inclusion of private references in ephemera, but also in the biographies appearing in the oldest press releases conserved at MoMu.30 Usually written by the press office, they rarely differentiate between the life of the designer and the history of the brand. The Ann Demeulemeester a/w ’93–’94 press release contains her biography, starting with her date of birth and proceeding to her main fashion achievements, from her graduation year at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp to her last show in Paris. Another example is Dries Van Noten s/s ’93 press release (Figure 18). It begins with the designer’s date of birth and goes on to describe the history of the Van Noten family, explaining the designer’s heritage of three generations of tailors. The biography is printed on a small white A5 white paper and inserted in a small folder where a polaroid image portrays a red melting seal recalling an ancient form of communication. The press release challenges the reader to read the text as both a visual and symbolic device, conveying both a sense of heritage and past: elements sought in the atmosphere of Van Noten’s collections and shows. Authorial networks

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As art historian Keith Moxey argues, biographies may give us ‘insights into the type of self-awareness that informs the agency of a particular subjectivity’.31 Moxey alludes to the possibility of reading artists’ biographies as conscious actions of an authorial presentation, becoming instruments through which to interpret the agency of the authors. Although biographies contained in press releases are inevitably shorter and have a different tone from artists’ or fashion designers’ monographs,32 their potential is not limited to giving information about the authorial figure; rather, they may also mirror the role played by subjective and personal elements in these brands. In the case of Van Noten, the visual shape and the content of the press releases mimic the company’s constant references to tradition, as do its choice of old-fashioned paper and the conventional font (Times New Roman). While biographies tell us which events in the author’s life have been dignified with the status of significant experiences, their subjective nature also shows how these ephemera make the designer just as surely as the designer makes them. The biographies are performative in the sense that they do not simply describe the life of the designer or of the brand, but they actually define the designer as author. Yohji Yamamoto’s press release biographies, for example, make specific references to his personal taste, like food and music. For example, the Yamamoto a/w ’92–’93 press release says: Vient 1 an en Europe, en 1969, où il ne fait rien de particulier mais c’est une période durant laquelle il observe, développe son talent et sa sensibilité. En 1970 il rentre au Japon oú il rejoint sa mere, elle-même travaillant dans la haute couture. […] Travailleur acharné amateur de jazz et de peinture contemporaine, de lecture et de cuisine Japonaise.33 As this short quotation demonstrates, the biography presents a personal and private portrait of the Japanese designer, narrating his return to his mother and his passion for jazz, contemporary painting and Japanese cuisine. Written in a more narrative style than Demeulemeester’s or Van Noten’s press release, Yamamoto’s becomes a personal tale that blurs intimate memories with the history of the brand. Personal and subjective elements are constantly at play in these authorial creations and replace more day-to-day pragmatic information about the work of the designer.

Authorizing visible and invisible voices The affirmation of the designer as central figure is perpetuated by ephemera through the construction of an imaginary of the making and more specifically by means of tropes that are specific to the process of fashion design. The previous examples showed designers’ bodies and biographies, while other ephemera reveal the authorial voices of the designer in the construction of specific representations of the creative process, its tools, spaces and its actors. This is evident in the case of Dirk Van Saene’s a/w ’03– ’04 invitation which consists of an image taken in the atelier and depicting a fitting 42

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Figure 19  Dirk Van Saene a/w ’03–’04 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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(Figure 19).34 At the bottom of the image, and in sharp focus, a pencil sketch is visible, on the side of which is written ‘Dirk Van Saene Winter 2003–04 No. 32’. The sketch seems to be held by someone who is, however, out of the picture. In the background a model stands in front of a mirror, wearing an outfit resembling the one in the sketch. The mirror also reflects a seated person who looks away from the model, towards the person holding the sketch. She seems to ask for the approval of the beholder of the sketch, validating the presence of the designer while recognizing his or her decisive role. The picture not only depicts the practical activities of a fitting, but also captures the transformative nature of the design process: from the sketch to the garment. The picture is captioned at the top ‘dreams result in more dreams’, which is the name of the collection. The title of the collection ‘dreams result in more dreams’ and the rhetoric of the backstage in the image generate a series of allusions that the beholder is here asked to interpret. The depiction of the making is performed, asking us to question the ephemera in a similar manner to Bertold Brecht’s questioning photography of labour, when he asked whether a photograph of people labouring really reveals anything much about the conditions under which they labour.35 What is this image of the fitting suggesting? What idea of fashion design and creativity does it evoke? In many ways, the invitation perpetuates the myth of creation in fashion, identifying the idea of dream as a generative force. Rather than being faced by pragmatic choices of fabrics or patternmaking, the beholder is here invited to an imaginative discourse. This invitation evokes a transition from a personal dream, manifested in the twodimensional sketch, to a three-dimensional garment. The dream is here suggested as instigator of the transformative nature of the design process, while the designer, who is hypothetically supposed to be holding the sketch, is proposed as the dreamer. The invitation projects the beholder in an unseen moment, peeping into the making of the collection while still constructing a narrative of fictiveness. If the moment of the fitting appears as a real testimony of the making, the performative nature of the image still idealizes a specific idea of fashion design, obscuring other practices of labour (creative negotiations, wages, contracts, regulations, working hours). The attention to the dream educes both fashion’s surrealistic obsession with what Richard Martin defines as an ‘optical truth and its dreamed doppelganger’36 and the recurrent construction of discourses on creative labour which, as Ashley Mears suggests, projects and concretely transforms work in this capitalistic industry. In this ephemera, the dream stands on this duality both evoking and hiding. The dream is not only presented as the poetic departure for the creation of the garment, but it is constructed via the sketch, the garment, the model, the reflected image of the assistant and her gaze, and, most importantly, the invisible body of the designer who is yet very present through his invisibility. In fact, the absence of the body, combined with the text and the rhetoric of the gazes, concurs with a dream-like reality that alludes to the presence of the designer as author. The beholder is asked to imagine the creator as much as she, or he, is asked to identify with the designer. The beholder

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metaphorically leans in towards the creative process, holding the invitation, which positions him/her intimately close to the designer and his creativity. Such proximity to the creative process is accentuated by the centrality of the sketch in the image and its role as symbolic evidence of the creative traits of the designer. If the signature is an important sign the authorship of the designer, sketches and drawings play a similar role. As art historian Michael Wetzel argues in his ‘The Authority of Drawing: Hand, Authenticity and Authorship’ (2011), the drawn mark acts like handwriting as both rely on the activity of the creative hand.37 Similarly, Gloria Bianchino argues in her ‘Drawings and Memories’ (2010) that fashion sketches are ‘often related to a personal style of drawing, acting as a sort of handwriting’.38 Indeed, the sketch is often considered the designer’s first creative output in the design process and, although design processes may vary from designer to designer,39 it is still the element that most frequently embodies the idea of creativity. Another exemplary case is the Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’92–’93 catalogue, which is an ensemble of his sketches portraying the collection. Unlike other catalogues, this one presents twenty-five sketches signed by Yamamoto. Although the sketch is usually a technical tool used by designers in the process of creating a garment, the drawings in this catalogue do not contain any technical data such as information about materials or cut (Figure 20). At the bottom of the sketch are the designer’s initials, ‘YY’, which are echoed by the violet line painted behind the silhouette. The catalogue presents water-coloured illustrations mimicking real technical sketches that recall the design process and which are produced to present a more artistic view of the collection. The signed sketch does not represent the real process of creating a garment but rather conceals the voices and agencies of the people involved. Defined by Regina Lee Blaszczyk as ‘fashion intermediaries’,40 these figures are often omitted in the representation of the creative process, although they play a crucial role in the creation of the garment. Blaszczyk refers to individuals who play a role in the supply chain of mass produced fashion, but a similar omission can be seen in the case of workers in fashion design teams, who are often absorbed into the figure of the fashion designer, as in Yamamoto’s sketches. The clean and spotless signed catalogue sketches may be subversively seen as performative absences that negate the process of creating the garment and the multiple hands involved in it. These mechanisms of metaphorically hiding hands or voices and the consequent elevation of the designer’s voice in ephemera become even more evident in those ephemera that feature direct quotations by fashion designers. Often appearing in catalogues or press releases,41 quotations may assume different registers, they may be subjected to different styles and may vary from designer to designer.42 However, they often present the designer’s idea or intention for the collection, while sometimes containing selfreferential quotations about the design process, as in the case of Yamamoto’s a/w ’91–’92 catalogue.43 The latter mixes pictures of the collection with words by the designer who is credited as writer in the colophon of the catalogue. Statements by the designer are

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Figure 20  Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’92–’93 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

shown in quotation marks and next to the images as a commentary on the garments (Figure 21). Beside an image of a black draped dress, which is placed in front of a mirror in order to show its back, appear the following words: It’s fabric. Beautiful as it is, we want to handle, push it, pull it. It’s like a current, it draws us in. But I didn’t make anything, really. Not this time. (Yamamoto, catalogue a/w ’91–’92) While this quotation is further analysed in Chapter 3 in relation to the tactile properties of the dress,44 what attracts my interest here is how the rhetoric of the text exhorts the reader to identify with the designer. Rather than an allusion to the collaborative nature of fashion design, the use of the ‘we’ generates a link between the designer and the reader, who is invited to recognize Yamamoto as author. Furthermore, the use of the first person stresses Yamamoto’s role in his creations, reinforcing his authorship. In this sense, the voice of the designer solicits the reader to acknowledge his authorial role. This is amplified by the image that does not show any human presence and portrays the dress in a sort of self-contemplation in front of the mirror (Figure 21). Here, the atelier 46

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Figure 21  Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’91–’92 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

is depicted as an empty space with the black dress on a headless mannequin while, in the background, can be seen two other dresses on mannequins. The human component disappears, leaving the stage to the garment and the words of the designer. At odds with the usual frenetic space of the atelier, this representation suggests the atelier as a magical place where inanimate things come alive. In this way, the atelier is celebrated as space of magical creation. While Caroline Evans argues that the architectural spaces of early twentieth century couture houses mirrored their commercial structures,45 the representation of the atelier and design process, in these ephemera, reflects and constructs specific ideas of creativity. The authorial role of the designer – often through absence – is positioned as central in the process of creating the garment in order to affirm his or her authority as the principal figure responsible for the creation. In this manner, while these examples may lead to a negation (or denial) of the design team or the design process, they also highlight the use of a specific language to affirm the function of the designer as author. Focusing on literature, Foucault explains that the author is constructed through the affirmation of specific aspects or elements characteristic of the discipline (e.g. names of books in the case of literature) that project and designate its authority.46 Discourses about the author, suggests the Authorial networks

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Figure 22  Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’92 press release image. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

French philosopher, ‘vary according to periods and types of discourse’ and are practices ‘discerning, in the individual, a “deep” motive, a “creative” power, or a “design”’47 to designate the author as a projection of a culture. In a similar manner, fashion ephemera ‘project’ the author and represent the authorial nature of fashion through the presentation of specific elements of the design process such as the atelier, the fitting, signed sketches, or through the transition from sketches to garments. In the case of Yamamoto and Van Saene, these elements become ingredients that depict a centralized idea of authorship where the designer functions as a catalyst of the design process. Yet, the different elements of the process are also used to propose different approaches or ideas of authorship in fashion. This can be seen in the case of Maison Martin Margiela, which adopts an opposite approach to Yamamoto, but utilizes the same authorial instruments to express it. This becomes clear in the Maison’s staging of ‘behind the scenes’ in their catalogues (Figure  22), and even more evident in the presentation of sketches that the Maison included in its early press releases. In the s/s ’92 press release containing drawing of silhouettes, the sketches resemble those used in Yamamoto’s catalogue. Unlike Yamamoto’s, however, Margiela’s sketches 48

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Figure 23  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’92–’93, press image. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

are not signed watercolours. On the contrary, they are black and white photocopied sketches, annotated with handwritten explanations of the garment which mimic the sketches given from the design team to the atelier in order to execute the pieces. Consistent with the brand’s policy not to name the principal designer, no signature appears on the sketches. Unlike the earlier examples, the annotations on the sketches perform the dynamics of the creative process. The sketch here suggests and evokes the many activities of the design team, including the pattern cutters who translate the sketch into pattern pieces. In another example, the sketches are printed on the background image, which is a close up of the piece (Figure 23). Here, the agency of the model is also addressed, with her name, ‘Jennifer Levy-Lunt’, an image of her face and a small description of her work being included on the image. The voices of the multiple individuals involved in the process become evident in many Margiela ephemera where the agency of the team is performed, such in the s/s ’91 invitation (Figure 24). This invitation consists of a typed letter on headed notepaper. Using the format of an official letter, it gives the date at the top right (Paris, le 09.10.90), and conveys the information about the show centrally, with the formal greetings (‘Meilleures Salutations’) Authorial networks

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Figure 24  Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’91 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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at the bottom right. Yet, there is an unusual element too. At the bottom of the letter is not just one signature (that of the designer Martin Margiela) but ten, those of the entire team, including pattern makers, interns and the press officer. The presence of multiple signatures suggests fashion as a collective endeavour rather than the product of a single individual. While the documentary We Margiela has challenged the rhetoric of collaborative-ness developed by the Maison in its early years, it is still a crucial case exemplifying the potential of these ephemera to construct or challenge such forms of authorial appropriation. By removing or staging different hands, tools and practices, these fashion ephemera function as controlling devices through which voices become authorized or not, heard or even visible, showing ephemera’s role as performative instruments of knowledge about the different and multiple approaches to authorship in fashion design.

Multiple authors While fashion ephemera may alert our attention towards the fictive construction of discourses of creation and creativity in fashion, they also uniquely make explicit the collaborative nature of fashion. Indeed, their creation relies on collaborative work that involves many individuals, from photographers to graphic designers, from stylists to make-up artists, passing through public relations agents and printing houses. All these figures are central to the creation of these ephemera, and their contribution may be – more or less – visually retraceable in them. The most obvious example in the archive at MoMu is probably Walter Van Beirendonck’s s/s ’90 invitation (Figures 25–26), which takes the shape of a newspaper titled World Wide News Walter. On the cover of the newspaper is printed an image of the designer under the headline ‘Fashion is Dead’ (the title of the collection) and another in bold asking ‘Is Walter an Alien?’. Probably due to its unconventional nature, this invitation has been featured in magazines, books on the designer and even exhibited in the designer’s retrospective held at MoMu. In all cases, the attention has been focused on the cover, the designer’s figure and his eccentric approach to these communicational materials, restating the centrality of the fashion designer in the discourse about these ephemera. However, unfolding this newspaper in the archive revealed the possibility of overcoming such institutional discourses on the fashion designer as author. Pages 4 and 5, in fact, were dedicated to the collaborators who worked on this collection, including the making of this promotional material. In the newspaper invitation, it is possible to read three interviews with the collaborators from the s/s ’90 fashion show and invitation: the make-up artist Inge Grognard, the photographer Ronald Stoops and the graphic designer Anne Krurris. While the materiality of the newspaper reinforces the informative nature of these ephemera, the decision to include interviews with the main collaborators of the designers reflect an intention to pay tribute to the collaborative nature of fashion. All these interviews create portraits of these figures through biographies and allusive titles that define and iconize them. The first interview is with Inge Grognard and is titled ‘Inge Grognard: Who’s [sic] Face is it?’, clearly referring to her work as make-up artist. Authorial networks

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Figure 25  Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’90 invitation, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 26  Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’90 invitation, pages 6–7. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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The image below the title portrays Grognard with her eyes closed, her right hand under her chin while holding make-up brushes positioned perpendicularly to her face and pointing away from her body (Figure 26). Grognard seems to look for an inspiration with her tools of work always ready to ‘add an expression or a character to [the model’s] face’, as she declares in the interview. While retracing her career and work for Jean Paul Gaultier and other designers like Dries Van Saene and Dirk Bikkembergs, Grognard’s interview focuses on the creative side of her work explaining how she sees make up as ‘an extension of the clothes’. Below the article dedicated to Grognard, there is an interview titled ‘Beyond the Camera’ with the photographer Ronald Stoops, who is also the husband of the make-up artist. Unlike the make-up artist’s picture, Stoops is not portrayed with his camera. In the portrait, the photographer gazes to the camera while keeping his thumb on his upper lip as if he were concentrating before the making of a picture (Figure 26). The interview moves into Stoops’s work and visions of his role in fashion, where the photographer remarks on the importance of recognizing the role of fashion photographers, make-up artists or stylists in the creation of these media materials. In the interview he states, ‘people realize you cannot have good advertising-photographs and catalogues without hiring a professional team on a professional budget. Sometimes they are surprised by the dayprice I ask, but I do have to look for locations, pay the rent of the studio and invest in material’. Whereas Grognard problematizes the budget in connection with the freedom to create, Stoops not only connects the importance of ‘a professional budget’ to having ‘good-advertising-photographs and catalogues’ but he also speaks about practical issues concerning his work. This pragmatic view of his practice is reflected in his refusal to verbally answer a question about his vision of fashion. When asked, he answers: ‘Look at my photographs and you will see what I think about fashion’. Stoops claims once again the authorial mark of his work in fashion while discussing the very making of the ephemeral materials, as graphic designer Anne Kurris also stresses in her interview. The title of her article is ‘“Layout” lady’, playing on her work as a graphic designer but also on the provocative picture of Kurris in a t-shirt with a hole that leaves her breasts out. The text below the image reinforces her authorship in the creation of this newspaper-invitation by stating that Kurris ‘continues working [on Worldwide News Walter] while talking’. Similarly to Stoops, Kurris also stresses her approach to fashion. She comments on the commission, exalting the ephemerality and the ‘speed creativity and that sort of “throw away” art’ that characterizes her work as graphical editor for the magazine BAM48 and other Belgian fashion designers like Dries Van Noten. In this newspaperinvitation, each figure not only acts as a maker but as a sort of spokesperson for those disciplines that intertwine with fashion design in the construction of these materials: photography, make-up and graphic design. Through a specific visual and written discourse, this newspaper-invitation not only features their work for Van Beirendonck but it presents their role and authority in the fashion industry and specifically in the Belgian fashion scene. By going through MoMu’s ephemera, it is in fact easy to detect

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the constant presence of the names of these figures, showing the specific network of creatives gravitating around the Antwerp fashion scene.49 While the declarative nature of this example is quite exceptional amongst ephemera contained in MoMu archive, it reminds one of the central role played by these figures in the making of these ephemeral objects: something that is mainly evident through the presence of credits. As Howard S. Becker argues, the list of credits gives explicit recognition to such a finely divided set of activities, becoming not only an evidence of the work of someone but also ‘a sign of recognition of the work as a collective activity’.50 In fields such as film studies and the sociology of art, credits have been analysed as a phenomenon that undermines the idea of sole authorship in the creative industries. Credits, in this sense, not only provide evidence of the work of a particular individual, but also designate which activities and individuals are involved in the process.51 In fashion, the introduction of credits is a quite recent phenomenon and it typically appears in relation to the creation of fashion images published in print (and, more recently, digital) media such as magazines.52 As Jennifer Anyan and Philip Clarke explain, the complexity and collaborative nature of fashion images in fashion magazines used to be attributed to fashion photographers alone, while other figures, such as clothing or hair stylists for example, came to be acknowledged only towards the end of the 1980s.53 Paul Jobling contextualizes such a historical change in the need to ‘produce originallooking work and the former emulation of contemporary and past masters of the art’.54 Most of the ephemera I encountered in MoMu’s archive were produced from this period onwards and confirm this tendency as they all report credits for different activities more or less directly connected to their creation. In the case of the fashion ephemera at MoMu, credits are usually only given in catalogues and press releases, but there are some some exceptional cases among the invitations. Although this may vary from season to season and depend on the designer, written credits often name those who were involved in the creation of the show – typically a large number of individuals – as well as those involved in the creation of the object itself. In most cases, these figures overlap to a degree, participating in the creation of both the show and the ephemera. Among these actors, the graphic designer is one of the most recurrent and central figures as she, or he, is directly involved in everything, from the creation of the layouts and the organization of the images to the selection of paper and font. Nevertheless, there is no common method of crediting these activities, as the creation of invitations, press releases and catalogues are extremely different processes. While invitations and catalogues are often visually based materials involving the participation of graphic designers, and (mostly in the case of the catalogues) photographers, stylists and make-up artists, the press release is a written document that does not always involve these figures and is often created by the press office or ghost writers.55 Such differences are manifested in the credits in ephemera, which reveal how only some types of collaborators and activities are acknowledged, while others remain hidden. Credits in fashion ephemera are therefore transformed in spaces where negotiations and power relations are staged. As Becker argues, credits usually concentrate on those tasks that are ‘so traditional that we often regard them as given in the nature of the medium’.56 While this allows for a sort of lionization of certain figures in the industry,

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Figure 27  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’91–’92 press folder image, front. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

it also attests to the power relations at stake in the creation of these fashion ephemera, in which only certain figures are acknowledged. Through a close analysis of credits in the ephemera at MoMu, it is possible to detect different forms of acknowledgment, and reveal a hierarchy amongst the different contributors like in the case of Walter Van Beirendonck’s a/w ’05–’06 invitation. Taking the shape of a poster, the invitation contains a selection of still images on a black background, portraying female models wearing the collection. At the bottom of the images are the credits to Ronald Stoops (photography), Inge Grognard (make-up), Paul Boudens (graphic design), the agency Model’s Office and each model: An, Peter, Jan and Brian. While this example shows different agents involved in the creation of a catalogue, it also mirrors the different capital typically attributed to these figures in the fashion industry. In the case of fashion ephemera, the presence or absence of a name from the credits mostly testifies to the collaborator’s status in the field of fashion, or his or her relations with the fashion designer. In this sense, the presence of the name of a fashion photographer like Ronald Stoops or a graphic designer like Paul Boudens testifies not only to their collaborative nature but also to the capacity of fashion ephemera to manifest other authorial roles. Indeed, fashion ephemera are subject to a negotiation between the commissioner (the fashion designer) and the collaborators (photographers, stylists, graphic designers), involving different forms of relations that may be structured by the diverse degrees of 56

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Figure 28  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’91–’92 press folder image, back. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

authorial intervention permitted to the collaborators. As Tamsin Blanchard argues, in some cases figures like photographers or graphic designers may ‘take on a role as important, if not more important, than the fashion designers themselves’.57 While Blanchard’s quotation may be interpreted as a simple description of the role played by famous graphic designers, photographers and stylists in the creation of ephemera, it can also be seen as a statement endorsing their authorial role. These negotiations may be understood, for example, in terms of the copyright symbols that appear in many of MoMu’s ephemera. If the credits help to unravel the collaborative nature of these items, the presence of copyright symbols adds another layer to the understanding of the authorship behind them. As Mark Rose argues in his Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright, copyright is the most fundamental element in the recognition of an authorial creation, which not only secures a profit from the creation but also ‘helps to produce and affirm the very identity of the author as author’.58 Moving beyond the legal nature of copyright, it is useful to acknowledge the capacity of this written feature to be interpreted in terms of the ontology of the creation. For example, while in most of the catalogues conserved at MoMu copyright is assigned to the fashion designer, there are also examples where images may be attributed to photographers, as in the case of the Margiela womenswear a/w ’91–’92 press images (Figures 27–28). Pinned to the press release are a number of images of the collection portraying models in relaxed positions, Authorial networks

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talking or laughing together, or taking a break, probably during a pause in a fitting or show. The back of the picture bears the details of the image with a description of the garment worn by the model, the collection date and the name of the photographer, Marina Faust, who often collaborated with Margiela. Here Faust is not simply credited but is also named as the copyright holder of the images (Figure 28). Although the image is pinned to the Margiela press release, it does not necessarily recognize the Maison as owner. In this sense, the attribution of copyright to Faust not only raises issues of ownership of the image, but also of authorship and control. While in other Margiela invitations or catalogues the crediting of Faust’s work may act as a statement to delimit what is created inside and what is outside the brand, the presence of the copyright symbol problematizes the hierarchical concept of authorship in these images. If this speaks to the impossibility of the designer retaining control over the ownership of these items of ephemera, it also suggests the role played by the collaborators in their creation and the authorial tensions that ephemera contain. Copyright symbols thus allude to the working relations behind the creation of ephemera, where concepts of freedom and creative control play a crucial role. An example of this may be seen in the work of Freudenthal and Verhagen, who often hold the copyright of Bernhard Willhelm ephemera conserved at MoMu. Started in 2001, this is a collaboration in which the fashion designer gives the Dutch graphic designers and art directors total freedom. As they explain in an interview, the collaboration with Bernhard Willhelm was unique as they had the ‘total freedom to do as we [they] liked and were in control of the overall look’.59 This is evidenced in the Bernhard Willhelm s/s 2007 catalogue, which brought Willhelm’s creations into a completely different aesthetic environment. The collection was inspired by traditional Austrian children’s clothing and the fashion show was based on this aesthetic, using the soundtrack of the cartoon ‘Heidi’. In the catalogue, Freudenthal and Verhagen transported the entire collection into a completely different atmosphere, mixing the collection with computers, wires and telephones. While the collection referenced traditional Austrian folk costumes, the intervention of the Dutch designers completed altered this aesthetic.60 The result is a surrealist atmosphere that gives a new aesthetic to the collection. This new mood was not only pursued in the catalogue, but also became a central reference in the work of Bernhard Willhelm who, on the occasion of his retrospective exhibition at MoMu, decided to recreate the catalogue’s images in the exhibition (Figures 29–30–31). In this case, the catalogue not only affirms the fashion designer’s collection but also becomes a space where Willhelm’s design meets the work of the Dutch graphic designers. Freudenthal and Verhagen become crucial agents not simply because they are physically involved in the creation of the catalogue, but also because they give a new meaning to the collection. This example clearly shows the impossibility of attributing the authorship of these ephemera to a single individual, as these objects are, by nature, the result of complex authorial negotiations that must be taken into account in their interpretation. More evidently than other fashion objects, fashion ephemera materialize and stage partnerships between multiple authors, being spaces of relationships that mark, through their features, these encounters. This was clearly suggested in the exhibition Trust Me 58

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Figure 29  Bernhard Willhelm: Het Totaal Rappel, exhibition MoMu, 13 July–10 February 2007, MoMu, Antwerp. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. Authorial networks

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Figure 30  Bernhard Willhelm s/s ’07 catalogue, pages 10–11. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

at the Wapping Project in London (3 September–10 October 2010), a retrospective of the fashion-related graphic design of Paul Boudens.61 While the exhibition recalled the authorship of the graphic designer, the title Trust Me evoked issues of collaborations and aesthetic affinity in fashion. Trust Me showed how ephemera are based on something more than a straightforward working commission and operate largely on creative freedom and trust. Thus, the idea of ‘authorship’ in relation to these ephemera cannot be simplified by the identification of the fashion designer as the figure who imbues value in the objects but rather as a more inclusive and collaborative work where photographers, graphic designers and other collaborators may be considered authors as much as the fashion designer. As in the case of the Willhelm catalogue designed by Freudenthal and Verhagen, the collaborators may have carte blanche to transform these fashion catalogues into ‘their’ ephemera as well. This not only means that fashion ephemera involve multiple authors who may assume very different relations with the object, from physically creating it (graphic designer) to being claimed as authorial entities (fashion designer), but also that these ephemera function as spaces for the negotiation and encounter of different forms of authorship.

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Figure 31  Bernhard Willhelm s/s ’07 catalogue, pages 12–13. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Aesthetic and disciplinary dialogues The collaboration between Willhelm and Freudenthal/Verhagen speaks volumes about the dialogical relation between disciplines manifested through these fashion ephemera. Mainly discussed as branding or artistic collaborations,62 these liaisons have seldom been explored in depth to explain their ontology and the ways they aesthetically materialize in these ephemeral objects which, to some extent, embody the interdisciplinary nature of fashion. While, as shown above, these relationships can be detected through very pragmatic indexes like credits or copyrights, they can also assume more allusive and oblique languages, as for example in Raf Simons’ a/w ’10–’11 invitation. Created by the Antwerp-based graphic designer Tom Tosseyn, the invitation is a conventional 10 x 20 cm white card with the information about the show in black Times New Roman font. In the centre of the card is a black and yellow sticker which, at a first glance, appears to obscure the information beneath it. However, the sticker actually replicates the information on the white card, replacing the words it conceals with others in a different yellow font. Called ‘Tom Tosseyn’, this font has long, thin characters and is inspired by 1980s digital watch faces and flyers for British electro parties, as Tosseyn explains in an interview.63 In the invitation, the sticker (one of the graphic designer’s favourite visual Authorial networks

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Figure 32  Raf Simons a/w ’10–’11 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

devices) does not simply hide the information written on the card. Rather, it dialogues with it, co-constructing a narrative between the sticker and the cardboard invitation as it is evident at the top where the name of Raf Simons is constructed half by the sticker and half by the card (Figure 32). Two different fonts (‘Tom Tosseyn’ and ‘Helvetica com bold condensed’), two different colours (black/yellow and white/black) and two different materials (PVC material and Jacquard paper) form together the name of the designer and the information about the show, establishing a discourse of interdisciplinary relationships while retaining distinct authorial traits. In the case of Tosseyn-Simons, there is a superimposition of authors and a consequent materialization of two different disciplines that, despite their encounter in the invitation, remain visible as separate entities. Despite the overlapping in the invitation, Tosseyn maintains his authorship by ‘sticking it’ on a conventional fashion invitation and leaving his trace in the shape of a sticker and a font. Fashion ephemera may thus become crucial tools that reveal how photographers, stylists, models and, more evidently, graphic designers adapt to very different types of aesthetics in fashion. In his ‘Designer as Author: Reading the City of Signs’, design theorist Gerard Mermoz urges a recognition of the specificity of the work of a graphic designer – defined ‘at the levels of their graphical, semiotic, and ideological 62

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dimensions’ – in order to move beyond a utilitarian vision of this profession and to begin to acknowledge its authorial mannerisms.64 Mermoz ignores the status of superstar names and the conventional focus on specific authorial traits, and instead argues for the specificity of graphic design as a practice, which has been largely overlooked due to its functional role in other disciplines like music, theatre, film or fashion. To think through Mermoz’s search for specificity is an interesting key entry into MoMu’s archive in order to explore the possibility to discover forms of translations and disciplinary encounters in these ephemera. In this sense, the clearest examples in the ephemera at MoMu are those designed by the Antwerp-based graphic designer Paul Boudens, who has collaborated with many fashion designers collected by the museum.65 While his first invitations for Van Beirendonck were developed to suit the designer’s neon and fetish aesthetic, his invitations for Olivier Theyskens recalled the designer’s dark and melancholic atmosphere. Despite Boudens’s capacity to adapt his designs to fashion designers’ commissions, his invitations and catalogues retained his authorial imprimatur through their design features, and this graphic identity becomes evident in the ephemera at MoMu. One such example is the invitation made for the Jurgi Persoons a/w ’98–’99 collection (Figure 33). At first sight, the invitation looks like a conventional wedding invitation inserted in a normal white paper C7 size envelope, with the information about the show printed in a standard font and the logo of the designer engraved in gold. However, on unfolding the invitation, the beholder encounters a jarring splatter of blood. The blood on the invitation was Boudens’ own blood, which he inserted into the ink reservoir of a pen, and then splattered over the surface of the white paper. The resultant blood splatter was then scanned onto the invitations.66 Although this invitation has often been used as example of Boudens’ work for fashion designers in books or magazines, little attention has been given to the symbolism and value behind his aesthetics. Here the blood becomes a polysemic tool able to suggest different meanings and different authorial references. First, the presence of the blood splatter on a wedding invitation is a sinister juxtaposition that recalls the dark mood of Jurgi Persoons’s work. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the blood becomes a material manifestation of the graphic designer. By leaving his own blood, Boudens seems to claim his authorship in a way that creates a more visceral relationship between the graphic designer and the invitation than the one generated by the name of the fashion designer. The use of, and reference to, blood is a recurrent element in the work of Boudens, who often utilizes red flows or layers of red paint, recalling the colour and density of blood. These blood references appear in his self-portrait, where a hand dipped in red paint grasps his face (Figure 34), as well as in his work for various fashion designers such as the invitations painted with red vertical bands designed for Yamamoto’s Y’s line (Figure 35). The constant adoption of blood (or blood-like colours) as a visual and material feature in fashion ephemera uses a vivid but lifeless trait that seems to evoke the cruelty and inhumane conditions of working flows and schedules imposed by the fashion industry that are often denounced by Boudens in his interviews.67 The use of blood as ink is particularly marked in Persoons’s catalogues and invitations, in which Boudens uses handwriting as a fictive element that constantly plays with ideas Authorial networks

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Figure 33  Jurgi Persoons a/w ’98–’99 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 34  Paul Boudens portrait by Ronald Stoops. Copyright Paul Boudens and Ronald Stoops.

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Figure 35  Yamamoto Y’s line a/w ’03–’04 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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of terror and death through the use of specific fonts. This is particularly evident in the s/s ’98 invitation, which consisted of a poster on which a blood-ink handwritten inscription announced ‘I know what you’ll wear next summer’ (Figure 36). The blood in combination with the statement and the material form of the invitation (a poster) create an ironic game referring to the language of cinema and specifically to the film I Know What You Did Last Summer (dir. Jim Gillespie, 1997). Translated into a fashion invitation, this statement acts ironically as a ‘fashion threat’, manifesting a reflexive use of this practical device as a space to comment about fashion and its obsession with novelty and death. The blood becomes a graphic instruments and metaphors for fashion, presenting Boudens’s capacity to adopt and overlap the languages and tropes of fashion and graphic design. While perpetuating the self-reflexive nature of these fashion ephemera, these dialogical aesthetic encounters speak volume to the peculiar acts of translations that are at play in the making of these objects. By this I do not refer to a static idea of translation as a passive transcription of a fashion idea into a graphic or photographic language. Rather, I suggest a more dynamic and performative act of creation, as proposed by cultural theorists Mieke Bal and Joanne Morra. Framing translation as an important practice in the fields of theology, philosophy, literary studies and critical theory, the two scholars contextualize the visual and cultural effects of translation as an ‘intermedial act’ able to cross multiple media and disciplines. Morra and Bal discuss the terrains that are at play in different forms of translation practices, arguing for a more fluid method of understanding the ways in which knowledge is transmitted through different media and between disciplinary and creative fields. Following poststructuralist studies on the meaning of texts and authorship, Bal and Morra write about ‘intermedial translation’ as a practice of translating across media. To ‘translate across’ means ‘to work within discourses and practices of intertextuality, intersemiotics and interdisciplinarity, which can lead to movements across genres, media, bodies of knowledge and subjects. More figuratively, translating across is concerned with the marginal, the gaps, fissures and contradictions of working in the interstices between these various boundaries’.68 To think of fashion ephemera through this idea highlights the mechanisms that are at play in the process of creating these ephemera, as well as their tendency to stand inbetween, or to use Bal and Morra’s words, across a zone where disciplines (and their authors), such as fashion and graphic design, communicate and interrelate. Fashion ephemera thus gain the status of material intermediaries, due not only to their capacity to connect designers with buyers and journalists, but also to their ability to embody aesthetic and disciplinary dialogues. If Toyssen’s work for Raf Simons suggests a superimposition of authors, Boudens’s authorial traits function more as an aesthetic meld between his creative signature and that of the designers. Through their specific aesthetic features, these ephemera help to ontologically destabilize the idea of authorship in fashion and materialize its dialogues with other disciplines. For the beholder encountering features like a bloodstain, a handwritten signature or even the material imposition of a sticker, it is difficult to understand to whom these corporeal traces belong, while the nature of these features serves constantly to question their provenance. It is in this way that Authorial networks

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Figure 36  Jurgi Persoons, s/s ’98 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. 68

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these fashion ephemera do more than simply promote a designer but rather require the beholder to decipher these authorial hints or presences, directing him/her towards the gaps, or what Morra and Bal define as the ‘contradictions and fissures that occur when working between disciplinary boundaries’.69 MoMu’s ephemera are both created and exist in these crevices, permitting a more concrete encounter with the intersections between different authors and different disciplines participating in the destabilization of static ideas of authorship.

Keeping and expanding authorship To speak about the capacity of these fashion ephemera to stimulate a more dynamic understanding of authorship in fashion inevitably widens the discussion to other figures who are tangential to the creation of these ephemera, but who nevertheless play an important role in the preservation of the results of these collaborative encounters. These figures are the addressees of ephemera – often buyers and journalists – who then keep them, perhaps as mementos or keepsakes. By doing so, these figures become, in some ways, as fundamental to the existence of ephemera as their creators. While fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers or other figures may have a role in embedding these ephemera within various discourses about creativity and authorial significance, the addressees, on the other hand, permit these discourses to survive, while also playing a role in imbuing them with yet another layer of meaning. By keeping and collecting these materials, buyers, journalists and others create an aura around an invitation, a catalogue or a press release, thereby metaphorically expanding their function from practical devices into collectable objects. While studies within material culture have investigated the intention behind these collecting practices from different perspectives (e.g. economic, affective, social),70 my main focus here is to discuss the effects of these interventions on the meaning of these ephemera and their capacity to materially hint at these effects. In this sense, the attention shifts from the name of the designer to the name of the addressee. These interventions are suggested by the names of the original addressees that render these artefacts unique. As mentioned above, invitations, catalogues or press releases are reproducible objects and the presence of the name of a journalist or buyer is what makes them unique. For example, the archive at MoMu contains three Dries Van Noten a/w ’02–’03 invitations, which at first sight seem identical, but are in fact addressed to different people – Linda Loppa, Kaat Debo and Gerdi Esch. Here, the name of the addressees is what distinguishes these objects, simultaneously generating uniqueness in the three invitations. Paradoxically, the handwritten name that imbues the object with distinction is not that of the fashion designer but of the addressee. In the case of fashion ephemera, the name of the addressee suggests another possible hierarchy in the process of identification of the personal presences in these objects. Although the names of Loppa, Debo or Esch are not written by the individuals themselves but, most probably, by Van Noten’s press office, their names give these reproducible ephemera a more distinct personal value. Authorial networks

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Being personal artefacts, MoMu’s fashion ephemera become instrumental in retracing the presence and role of their former owner in the field of fashion. This is due not only to the presence of recognizable industry names but also to the specific features that evoke their different roles. For example, the archive at MoMu contains three seemingly identical Ann Demeulemeester s/s ’04 invitations, which are folded posters containing the designer’s name, the date, the location of the show and contact information for the press (Figure 37). In the middle of the text is a circle containing the seat number of the addressee, whose name is written beside the circle. While the image and the written information remain the same for each invitation, what changes is the colour of the circle, the number of the seat and the handwritten name. In the first one, the black circle contains seat number ‘F93’ next to the name ‘Madame Ninette Murk’, while on the side of the invitation, there is also a handwritten text ‘l’aritmetique/l’epitaphe, la vierge au format arguière’. The second reads ‘E1’ and ‘Madame Linda Loppa’ while the third reads ‘St’ (standing) and ‘Debo’. As noted by Entwistle and Rocamora in their study of London Fashion Week, the organization of the seating plan around the catwalk ‘maps out the power relation between players within the field’.71 They suggest that the closer the players sit to the catwalk, the higher their capital in the field. The standing position therefore indicates lower status and power. Thus, Demeulemeester invitations attest to the different positions of the addressees not only within the literal space of the show but also in the broader field of the Antwerp fashion scene. Loppa and Ninette Murk are assigned specific seats, while Debo’s invitation places her in the standing area, indicating their respective positions in the field, including their relationship to the designer. While the presence of Loppa’s, Debo’s and Murk’s names evokes a ‘having been there’ suggesting the individuals’ participation in the fashion show, the specific colour of the circle and the seat numbers demonstrate the capacity of these ephemera to re-evoke in the present the role of the addressee. While MoMu’s fashion ephemera evoke the power forces at play in Antwerp’s fashion scene in a specific time and place, they also attest to the different roles and practices of these actors. This becomes particularly evident in the case of Murk’s invitation, on the back of which Murk handwrote her show comments, rather than using a notebook or a computer. They say: ‘l’arithmétique/l’épitaphe, la vierge au format arguière’ (Figure 37). These notes not only allude to the collection, but also evocatively suggest her profession as fashion journalist and her authorial role as interpreter of the collection. The invitation recalls the moment of seeing the collection at the show and the consequent need to write down some observations. Murk’s notes act as a trace of a practice, a trace of a live response to the collection. These handwritten notes evoke the hand of the owner, the process of her thought: a practice in action, recalling the role of the journalist as intermediary between the designer and the public. As Kawamura argues, journalists and buyers are ‘gatekeepers’ who influence the definition and success of fashion designers or brands through their ability to decide what constitute aesthetic, social and cultural innovations.72 Kawamura describes the power of these arbitrary figures to suggest and create value in the field of fashion through practices which, I argue, are reaffirmed in these fashion ephemera. 70

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Figure 37  Ann Demeulemeester s/s ’04 invitations for (in order from top to bottom) Madame Ninette Murk, Linda Loppa, Kaat Debo. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. Authorial networks

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By containing different colour references, seats numbers and the presence (or absence) of notes written by the attendees on the objects, these ephemera become performative in the way they recall these practices, different roles and the hierarchical systems in which these gatekeepers participate. In the archive, the material nature, the handwritten notes become traces of an old technique of fashion journalism, the necessity of physical presence and live action that, today, due to the social media shift, may have become minor or even obsolete. Journalists’ interventions are in fact recurrent in MoMu’s archive, where it is possible to encounter catalogues with traces of a journalist’s writing on a press releases (Figure 38). These may not only be indexes of a practices and the use of the press release by a journalist, but also a reminder of the work of journalists as ghost writers and storyteller for fashion brands. New types of authorship and author traits are here exercised and evoked by the handwriting in pencil. These traces of a practice render unstable the dominant value in the ephemera: from the designer and to the journalist, whose traces become precious remains of a practice and a tendency in the fashion industry. The press release is made unique by the handwritten comments and corrections rather than by the name of the designer. In addition, fashion ephemera allow us to comprehend the pivotal role played by these professionals in giving access to these ephemera to a larger public. Although the advent of social media and online fashion platforms like SHOWStudio.com or Style.com has given a larger audience access to the exclusive spaces of the fashion show,73 these ephemera are still hidden materials that most often circulate exclusively within the industry, and their survival is still dependent on the decision to keep them by professionals. Thus, journalists, buyers and other addressees become influential figures not only in reporting the collection or in buying garments for shops or chains, but also in their role as intermediaries in preserving these objects. By conserving ephemera, these actors voluntarily or involuntarily extend their practice to that of conservation, which augments the value of these objects. While it is important to distinguish the practice of privately conserving and donating to museums as two different actions, it is relevant to reaffirm and expand the gate-keeping function of these figures, recognizing their agency in ‘modifying’ fashion ephemera. It shows how, in these objects, authorial interventions are not simply limited to their creation, but also to their functional use, their preservation and consequent recontextualization. The action of working through these ephemera, the decision to keep these objects beyond the show, collides with the transformation of an invitation, a catalogue or a press release into a piece of ephemera: the overpassing of its functional purpose. By keeping and collecting an ephemeral object such as an invitation, catalogue or press release, the addressee not only holds on the authorial power of the designer but also exercises his or her own power, redefining the materials and attaching to them a new layer of meaning. In doing so, the addressee transforms his or her authority in the field into a ‘new’ power of memory, exercising its capacity to change the value and status of these objects. In his text ‘When is the Author?’ media scholar Jonathan Gray explores this transition in relation to literary texts.74 Referring to Barthes’s idea of the text and ‘death of the author’, Gray considers a more dynamic notion of authorship, interpreting a text as a temporal entity that may involve multiple individuals who are not only involved 72

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Figure 38  Martin Margiela biography with press release biography in Maison Martin Margiela press folder s/s 1992. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. Authorial networks

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in its genesis (or writing) but who may also exercise their authority in the ever-changing meaning of a text. Using examples from literature and film, Gray does not propose to ‘kill’ the author as Barthes did, but rather to enlarge the conceptualization of the author to various individuals that have agency in the determination of the meanings of texts beyond its conception. Similarly, it is necessary to acknowledge these layers of interventions in relation to these fashion ephemera and their consequent shift of value. Passing from hand to hand, these fashion ephemera constantly change their meanings due to the multiple interventions made by the different individuals who engage with them. While these dynamics will be further expanded in the following chapter with regard to the concepts of time and the social life of objects, here I want to stress the possibility of thinking about these gatekeepers as central actors due to their crucial interventions in ephemera as keepers and collectors. As art historians John Potvin and Alla Myzelev argue, ‘what collectors enact is a potential to alter meaning’, assuming ‘the role of creator and initiator of both meaning and pleasure’.75 Similarly, by deciding to collect ephemera, a journalist, a buyer or another addressee imposes a specific meaning on them, expanding their authority as fashion insiders. The addressee transforms the object from a functional into a durable artefact, generating new meanings through the exercise of his or her power and capital in the fashion field. Thus, the presence of the name of a journalist or a fashion insider on MoMu’s ephemera not only testifies to their role and practice in the fashion industry, but also evokes their authorial intervention in fashion ephemera and highlights the peculiar mechanics of value creation that are at play within and around these fashion ephemera. In the case of fashion ephemera such as invitations, catalogues and press releases there is an extension of authorship and a related modification of the hierarchies of authorship. Fashion ephemera therefore suggest a less hierarchical process of creating value and a more dynamic structure where multiple individuals (and not only the creators) may be pivotal in the affirmation of the value of fashion objects. Indeed, the dynamics of these objects demand an inclusive idea of authorship able to reveal the multiple meanings attributed and attribute-able to these devices.

Blurring fashion authorities At the same time that they reveal the hierarchies of the field of fashion and the authorial roles of its actors, the fashion ephemera at the archive of MoMu also unveil the particular mechanics of the professional relationships that underlie the creation of value in fashion museums. A museum may acquire a dress by donation, or by purchasing it at public auction or directly from the designer, but to acquire ephemera a museum must have access to the closed networks of the fashion world.76 As shown by the presence of Loppa’s and Debo’s names on the Demeulemeester invitation, MoMu’s staff actively participate in the practices of the industry, thus facilitating the collection of ephemera by the museum and affirming their value as museum artefacts. 74

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As Gray remarks, not every reader is an author and only a few readers will be seen as authors, due to their capacity to actively and publicly influence the meaning of a text.77 He argues that only those readers who are given authority by others can exercise these authorial traits, identifying this potential in public institutions and figures such as newspapers, museums, critics, journalists or other public media.78 This becomes particularly useful in the case of the ephemera at MoMu. As mentioned before, the archive at MoMu contains ephemera belonging to Linda Loppa and Kaat Debo, but also to other figures linked to or working at the museum, such as Gerdi Esch, Geert Bruloot and the former model and current public relations agent David Flamée. Going through the archive, the encounter with these names attests to the ways in which these figures constantly oscillate between industry and museum, acting similarly to what Gray calls an ‘interpretive community’. Referring to the work of the sociologist Stanley Fish, Gray proposes this term to discuss the authority of these communities and authors of interpretation, identifying them as figures that, ‘at a given (even if fleeting) moment in time, can change texts and create for others as well as themselves’.79 In the case of fashion ephemera, the dynamics of power and authorial interpretations are characterized by a constant overlapping of roles and figures within these interpretative communities. Unlike the organization of roles in other museological fields such as fine art,80 the collection of fashion ephemera is characterized by a blurriness of authorial figures that is manifested in these ephemera. This becomes particularly evident in the case of the Antwerp fashion scene where, probably due to the small size of the city, figures are active both in the fashion industry and in the museum, manifesting the close relation between these two institutions. Linda Loppa is probably the clearest example of the scope of these authorial interventions and the transversality of these figures. Just as the authorship of the graphic designer Paul Boudens emerges throughout the analysis of different ephemera within MoMu’s archive, Loppa’s role and authorial intervention is retraceable through the presence of her name on many invitations, catalogues and press releases, and also in some other types of ephemera, such as private letters and faxes, which evidence her private relationships with various fashion designers. Particularly relevant for this discussion is Loppa’s statement on the origin of her work at MoMu and her decision to push the creation of a fashion museum in Antwerp, as she declares in the catalogue of the first exhibition of the museum Backstage: Dozens of garments in my loft apartment used to make up my own personal museum. […] Every year I also kept cartons full of invitations, posters, newspaper articles and students’ collection pieces – not as they should have been kept, since insect vermin did not share my respect for the makers of these pieces. Was that what led me to persuade the Provincial government of the importance of a fashion museum in Antwerp?81 In this statement, there are various elements at stake in the conservation of these ephemera. Loppa recalls the importance of respecting the ‘makers of these pieces’, while Authorial networks

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she also uses the term ‘personal museum’, suggesting her own authorial role as collector. If few studies have highlighted the interplay between industry and museum in relation to fashion exhibition practices,82 the case of MoMu demonstrates a promiscuity in the practices of collecting fashion, transforming ephemera into crucial artefacts that reveal these relations. These fashion ephemera evidence a particular network of relations that render them palimpsests, remarking on the passage from the industry to the private and finally to the public sphere: the museum. The fashion ephemera at MoMu show how the figures belonging to the creative community who produce Antwerp fashion coincide with what Gray defines as an ‘interpretive community’. The community is not only a creative community that put Antwerp on the international map, but it has also interpreted and institutionalized its work within a museum. In their ability to make these ephemeral and immaterial connections, the fashion ephemera at MoMu evidence the constant mesh of figures and relations, suggesting how figures belonging to the fashion industry frequently become interpreters of the scene too. Often viewed as a problematic conflict of interest within other museum contexts,83 the relationship between different players becomes fundamental in the authorization of the value of these fashion ephemera, which constantly demand a dialogue between these institutions rather than a distinct separation. It is in these blurred relations that these ephemera construct their value as museum artefacts in their circulation, conservation and consequent celebration in the museum. The capacity of ephemera to evoke such relations is staged in the Yohji Yamamoto s/s  ’09 catalogue, where the current MoMu director, Kaat Debo, appears as a model (Figures 39–40). Dedicated to the figure of the curator, the catalogue features ten curators or directors of the principal art and fashion museums in the cities where the designer had a shop of his line ‘Y’: London, Paris and Antwerp.84 While six out of ten models are art curators working for art contemporary museums, only two of the curators are fashion curators – Kaat Debo (Antwerp) and Olivier Saillard (Paris) – who work for public institutions. Furthermore, it is significant that no fashion curators from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum are included, although other British art curators are featured. In a different way, in the case of Antwerp, the curator selected is Debo and not the director or curator of other well-known contemporary art museums in the Flemish city. Although this choice may be rooted in the relationship between the Japanese designer and the staff at MoMu,85 the presence of Debo as a model hints at the multiple authorial interventions that circulate through fashion ephemera and their capacity to overlap authors and institutions. While the presence of Debo (and also Saillard) may highlight the rise of the figure of the fashion curator, it also evokes the strict links between these figures (and the museums for which they work) and the fashion industry. Here Debo’s authorial trait is not manifested as an addressee’s name, but she appears as both model and curator, performing this overlapping of roles that is so crucial to the affirmation of the value of fashion ephemera. At the same time, this catalogue epitomizes how the analysis of the ephemera at MoMu helps to penetrate ephemeral communities, 76

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Figure 39  Yohji Yamamoto s/s ’09 catalogue, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 40  Yohji Yamamoto s/s ’09 catalogue, model Kaat Debo, pages 10–11. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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revealing their mechanics and actors while also performing their roles. These fashion ephemera show the capacity of ephemera to penetrate even the fashion community and attest to MoMu’s role as a gateway between the fashion industry and the public. The Yamamoto catalogue, and all those ephemera formerly owned by MoMu’s staff, suggest how these figures do not simply blur the boundaries between the industry and the museum, but also create them. Fashion ephemera affirm the role of MoMu as a fashion authority, consequently problematizing the mechanics of value creation in fashion museums and their capacity to move between what Bourdieu defines as the ‘institutions of consecration’.86 Mentioned at the beginning of this chapter in relation to the capacity of fashion designers to imbue an artefact with value through their signatures, these institutions of consecration can be seen as governing bodies contributing to the creation of the symbolic value in an object.87 Yet, my analysis of ephemera has shown their capacity to challenge and contrast such a vision, and to manifest the constant overlapping of these ‘institutions of consecration’ that work as fashion authorities, due to their capacity to intervene in the creation of value for these artefacts. In a similar manner, Rocamora has recognized the importance of expanding Bourdieu’s vision of these institutions or authorities – or ‘members’ as Rocamora defines them88 – to the press, museums and schools among others, although in her study she focuses on one authority (press) and one field (media). The exploration of fashion ephemera shows the difficulty of separating such institutions or authorities. MoMu’s fashion ephemera reveal the various and promiscuous interactions between these institutions of consecration (from designers to museums), manifesting different traces of their agency in the creation of the value of these materials. In fashion ephemera, the authorial traits are multiple and show how the value creation for these objects can not be isolated or reduced to a unique institution of consecration (like the fashion designer) but must be interpreted through more dynamic interconnections between different authorities of fashion. As the ephemera at MoMu show, a curator may become a model, a fashion designer may be represented as a fictive maker, a graphic designer may become more important than a fashion designer and a journalist may become a private collector. Thus, in fashion ephemera we witness a constant and ambivalent transformation of roles and authorities that may generate the dissolution – or at least a superimposition – of these institutional boundaries that in other fashion objects or media may be less pronounced.

Authorial networks What I have shown in this chapter is the capacity of fashion ephemera to highlight, manifest, expand and problematize ideas of authorship in fashion. Discussing the ways in which they visually, textually and materially present entwined relations between journalists, fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers, private collectors and museum curators, this chapter has shown the impossibility of distinguishing or hierarchically defining a unique authorial trait in these ephemera. The collaborative 80

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nature of their physical creation, the discourses that proliferate in and through them, their private circulation and the porosities of the field of fashion, constitute a network of relations. These ephemera are able to reactivate these relations through specific features like a name, a signature, a handwritten text, a body, drops of blood, an interview or even the absence of one of these many elements. These fashion ephemera show how these features are not only static signs. Rather, they are active features able to create and reactivate networks in a Latourian sense. As Latour suggests, objects participate in social networks and are able to reactivate them in the archive.89 Similarly, in this chapter I showed how fashion ephemera are objects of contacts, creators of material intimacy, highlighters or silencers of authorial voices, and activators of networks of fashion professionals. The multiplicity of features in ephemera coincides with the multiple authorial meanings that may be attributed to them. To some extent, a signature appearing in fashion ephemera is never addressable to only one author, as the Veronique Branquinho a/w ’02–’03 invitation symbolically evokes. The invitation is inserted into a small white hand-folded letter closed with black wax seal stamp, portraying the initials of the designer. Within the envelope is a handwritten quotation from Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre (Figure 41). The text is written in the first person as if the protagonist Jane Eyre were writing. At the bottom of the invitation the name Veronique Branquinho is written in electronic font, under which we find the information about the show. Below the information, the name Gerdi Esch is handwritten, while on the right bottom of the invitation there is the sign ‘L8’ referring to the seat assigned to Gerdi Esch at the show. What this invitation suggests is a multitude of authorial traits, meshed into a single artefact. The personifications are various and work on different levels. Branquinho merges with Brontë and with Eyre, Brontë with Eyre, the beholder with Branquinho and so on. While the reference to the novel hints at the inspiration for Branquinho collection, the decision to ‘hand-write’ a part of Brontë’s Jane Eyre suggests an identification on the part of the designer with the novel’s author or protagonist. The handwritten text no longer evokes a singular individual, as in the above examples, but suggests multiple personae and personifications. Furthermore, the name of the addressee is written in the same handwriting as the letter, adding another layer of reference while also manifesting the collecting practice of de Muynck. Through the Brontë text, the beholder can identify with the protagonist of the novel or with the designer who handwrote the abstract, or even with the addressee, adding another layer of authorial intervention into this invitation. This last example shows how fashion ephemera may become kaleidoscopic objects that project the reader into a whirl of authorial networks. The beholder is faced with multiple authors, who seem to meet in the object. Rather than a Barthesian ‘death of the author’ in favour of the independence of the text, these fashion ephemera stimulate a multiplicity of authors similar to the novelist Jorge Luis Borges’ discussion in his ‘Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote’. In this short story, Borges reviews an imaginary book, Quixote, written as a fictional novel by a fictional writer, Pierre Menard, who rewrites sections of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Menard’s Quixote is not a translation of Cervantes’ original, but aims to rewrite it line by line, recontextualizing the tale in the French city of Nîmes Authorial networks

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Figure 41  Veronique Branquinho a/w ’02–’03 invitation with envelope. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

in the twentieth century. In his review of a fictional novel by a fictional author rewriting a fictional story by a real author, Borges comments on the meaning of authorship and appropriation. According to Borges, Menard’s Quixote aggregates authors, acting like a palimpsest ‘through which the traces – tenuous but not indecipherable – of our friend’s previous writing should be translucently visible’.90 Similarly, in Branquinho’s invitation and in many other ephemera discussed in this chapter, the distance between the fashion designer, the graphic designer, the photographer, the addressee and the beholder of the object disappears. Acting similarly to Menard’s Quixote, these fashion ephemera provoke the juxtaposition of authors and trigger new meanings for themselves. Their capacity to aggregate subjects, and to move through them in time, manifests their agency as objects able to trigger and evoke relationships through their very material, visual and written features. Referring to ‘Pierre Menard’, the philosopher Sean Burke argues that the story: is concerned with the ways in which the present authors the past. Borges here takes up temporal inversion of tradition, arguing that the latecomer is not the product of his precursors but their creators.91 By looking at the above examples through Burke’s interpretation, it is possible to see how these ephemera permit the coexistence of multiple authors while they also maintain their existence in the present. As it has been evidenced from the first example of 82

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Demeulemeester’s signatures to this last example, in ephemera the concepts of ‘author’ and ‘authorship’ are dynamic and mutable. The fashion ephemera at MoMu show how, in fashion, the idea of a single author is always challenged, not only in the material production processes of fashion but also in its symbolic forms of appropriation. As the fashion ephemera at MoMu show, the authors are multiple and entwined through the artefact. Thus, fashion ephemera do not survive the authors by killing them in a Barthesian sense, but they survive the death of the authors and allow their beholder to resuscitate them and fully understand the authorial interventions that participate in their transformation into museum artefacts. Through their immaterial and material transformations, these fashion ephemera constantly live in an unstable and changeable condition that alters their epistemic potential and their capacity to be connectors and revelatory of authorial networks. Such a capacity is indissolubly linked to their innate relation to time that is discussed in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 2

Performances of time

When we deal with fashion ephemera it is difficult to not speak about time. This is not only due to their etymological meaning but also to their passing through different events and different people’s hands, while, at the same time, being indissolubly linked to the event from which they originate. Ephemera relate to time ontologically and this is mostly due to their ‘becoming ephemera’ in time and their capacity to recall events, such as the fashion show. Being the most celebrated and central event of the fashion industry,1 the fashion show has been perceived as the materialization of the ephemeral in fashion and it has been, since its inception, surrounded by ephemera. Invitations announce it beforehand, while catalogues and press releases are created either prior to, or in some cases, concurrently with it. Thus, these ephemera develop a very peculiar relation to the fashion show. While they initially anticipate, they finally survive it becoming traces of it. As the historian Timothy Young affirms, the practice of collecting ephemera as archival documents principally occurs in connection with a past event of which an item of ephemera is a precursor (posters, notices) or an immediate record (programmes, souvenirs).2 This double relation with the event has led many scholars and curators to prioritize the interpretation of these ephemera as historical evidence, overlooking the multiple potential of fashion ephemera to instigate a peculiar experience of the show, its temporality, its sensory character, its centrality to the fashion industry and its proliferation in time. Furthermore, the strict relation with the show has also prevented the enlargement of a perspective on the transformative process that guarantees the survival of a piece of ephemera and its change of status. Drawing on performance theory, literary and event studies, I here intend to investigate these complex relations exploring two types of time and two types of relation with time developed by fashion ephemera. One type of time is related to the time of the show, or event, and the other is related to the time of ephemera as objects existing before, during and after the show. These are two entry points from which to deepen an understanding of the epistemic functioning of these ephemera, exploring the complex relation that they develop with the show, the ephemeral, time and their representability in fashion.

One ephemera, multiple events Walter Van Beirendonck’s s/s ’97 invitation takes the shape of a blue digital watch inserted in plastic packaging on which is written the date, the place of the fashion show and the name of the collection, ‘Welcome Little Stranger’ (Figure 42). Originally the

Figure 42  Walter Van Beirendonck s/s ’97 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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watch’s small screen read 8.30 p.m., the time of the Van Beirendonck show at Elysée Montmartre, Paris (France) as it can be still read on the plastic packaging. Today, in the archive, the screen is blank. The hour is no longer flashing on the small screen, but it is frozen in its material and evocative shape, transforming the invitation into a sort of a memento mori of the show. Van Beirendonck’s stopped watch functions not as a timekeeping device but rather as a time-mnemonic. The use of the watch as an invitation evokes, before the show, the necessity of ‘being in time’ for the event while, after the show, it recalls a nostalgic relic of the event. Being still framed in the plastic packaging the watch has never been used, evidencing once more its symbolic and evocative value rather than a functional usefulness. At the same time, the stillness of the watch, attached to the packaging, symbolically performs the difficulty of desacralizing and taking it apart from its original function as a fashion invitation and later evidence of the show. Nevertheless, this invitation has indeed moved beyond the show. Here the time passed becomes palpable by its very presence in the archive and, more evocatively, by the stains of use in the packaging, the erosion of the dead battery and even the blank screen. In a sense, the watch is not simply a relic of the show, but its material permanence determines its becoming ephemera. While MoMu’s invitations, catalogues and press releases contain dates, hours, images and written descriptions evidencing the existence of past shows, their physical existence in the present is a testament to their capacity to survive the event. The Van Beirendonck invitation allusively stages this ability through its particular material shape, but all ephemera in MoMu’s archive share this temporal dynamism, which is what transforms these communication devices into ephemera. This time-based quality can be seen, for example, in the presence of traces that attest to what the cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai would define as their ‘social life’. Studying practices of consumption through commodification, Appadurai suggests that objects ‘move through different hands, contexts, and uses’,3 assuming different cultural values according to the contexts in which they are found. Practices of consumption and exchange become, in this manner, moments of life in objects that are consequentially able to reveal these exchanges and ‘illuminate their social context’.4 Analogously, fashion ephemera in the archive at MoMu contain a multitude of features that disclose their social lives, revealing evanescent events that have often gone unacknowledged due to a sort of supremacy of the fashion show in the interpretation of these objects. On the contrary, MoMu’s ephemera are dynamic objects signalling, through their features, a multitude of events of different natures. Once again, the previously mentioned Demeulemeester invitation becomes a useful example (Figure 37). While its information about the show can easily direct the beholder back to the event, the complexity of its material and textual features demand a more multifaceted interpretation. Here the beholder is faced with the act of writing of the press office agent, the act of writing by Murk at the show, the implicit decision of the journalist to keep the invitation, the act of donation of the invitation as part of a private archive and the act of marking the invitation by MoMu staff with an accession number. Furthermore, the invitation speaks about these temporal transitions in less declarative ways via its material state. Its worn edges and the wrinkles of the white paper evoke the action of repeatedly Performances of time

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folding the invitation, suggesting other moments of use or consultation. Museologist Eilean Hooper-Greenhill has interpreted this type of physical trace as a way to highlight different or new events in the life of an object that may be marked via erosions, surface patina or evidence of damage, revealing new meanings in the object.5 Similarly, in the archive, all these textual and material traces in Demeulemeester’s invitation may direct the  attention of their beholder to alternative events such as the creation of a personal archive by the fashion journalist, the physical manipulation of the invitation by the journalist, the exchanges between fashion professionals and museums, or the practices of selection behind the formation of a fashion museum’s archive. In this manner, fashion ephemera like the Demeulemeester invitation may destabilize hierarchies of narrativization in the fashion archive and underline alternative events to the show. In the archive, these traces are constitutive elements of ephemera and signal their agency in multiple events. Ephemera may become instigators of events due to its affiliation with the designer, its aesthetic qualities, its mutable matter and even its capacity to permeate the transient relations and temporalities of fashion. Like in the case of Demeulemeester’s invitation, a piece of ephemera may generate events as much as its handlers (the PR staff, Murk, MoMu’s staff) generate a change in the objects’ meaning. In his The Concept of Nature the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead explains this relation between an event and an object, defining the ‘ingression of an object into the event’ as a form of mutual definition where the nature of the event is determined by the nature of the object and vice versa.6 ‘The ingression of an object into an event’, explains Whitehead, ‘is the way the character of the event shapes itself in virtue of the being of the object. Namely the event is what it is, because the object is what it is.’7 Whitehead’s words resonate when thinking of a piece of ephemera like the Demeulemeester invitation and its ‘ingression’ into the multiple events that characterized its show afterlife. Being initially used as a practical object by Ninette Murk to gain entry to the show, the invitation’s shape and apparently unvalued nature stimulated Murk to write on it and then retain the invitation as a personal memento. Conversely, MoMu’s staff recognized the invitation as valuable and obtained it for its own archive, transforming what was once a personal memento into a museum artefact by marking it. Demeulemeester’s invitation was materially shaped by the events it went through, while its particular features have inspired the event of its being collected, first by Murk and then by MoMu. Ephemera like Demeulemeester’s invitation evoke the bodily actions provoked by the matter of the piece of ephemera, manifesting both the matters and times of ephemera. The order in which these temporal marks were made is not, however, evident from the object in the archive. Rather, in these ephemera, time and events are disorganized and superimposed. In Demeulemeester’s invitation, for example, all the traces of these different events are overlapping and entwined with one another, recalling what Michel Serrès defined as the polytemporal nature of objects in their relation with time. Serrès uses the metaphor of a folded crumpled handkerchief to explain how objects or events are polychronic or multitemporal, and ‘reveal a time that is gathered together, with multiple pleats’.8 According to Serrès, to fold or to unfold a handkerchief metaphorically represents the ways in which events distant in time may be contemporaneous in the 88

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present through an object.9 In a similar manner, to literally unfold Demeulemeester’s invitation means to unpack non-linear connections between events in time that become aggregated into this piece of ephemera, which acts more like a palimpsest. In ephemera such as the Demeulemeester invitation, the coexistence of time and events helps to articulate a more nuanced understanding of the nature of these objects and consequentially opens our attention to alternative epistemic capacities. All their textual, visual and material indexes manifest a temporality, testifying the status of fashion ephemera as contingent to their transformative and mutable matter in time. The fold of the invitation, Murk’s written notes, MoMu’s accession code or paper scratches in the invitation are what actually defines the ontology of these ephemera, paradoxically more so than the ‘original’ printed features announcing the show. In this sense, the identification of some traces of their ‘social life’ helps to reveal the biographies of the ephemera at MoMu, but also rebuild their essence as ephemeral objects. Handling these fashion ephemera in MoMu’s archive both projects towards multiple and disparate events in time and reveals a network between those events. In MoMu’s fashion ephemera, as in Serrès’ polychronic handkerchief, different times and events are gathered and cohabit, manifesting how the Latourian network, evoked by these fashion ephemera, is not only connected to discourses on authorship but also – and inevitably – on events and perception of time in their social life.10 These ephemera aggregate or, to use Latour’s terminology, assemble agents into material surfaces, becoming – both methodologically and theoretically – perfect prisms to retrace the networks of agents but also a constellation of events that have transformed their condition from ephemeral communication devices into museum artefacts. Differently from garments, ephemera at MoMu highlight the temporality of these networks of value creation in fashion that, as I already begin to discuss in the previous chapter, are constantly blurring the boundaries between the industry and museum. Amongst MoMu’s ephemera it is possible to detect different networks of events that may speak about two main trajectories of these ephemera at MoMu. The first is, like in the case of the Demeulemeester invitation, a passage from discarded object into a museum object. In other and more contemporary cases, ephemera do not go through the status of personal memorabilia but become directly museum artefacts as they are sent directly from the brand to the museum. This latter trajectory may therefore suggest a different network and even contradict the essence of ephemera as discarded objects. In this case, an invitation, a catalogue or a press release have never been used, discarded or privately collected. Such a linear trajectory indeed contributes to a more restrictive epistemological action of these materials, where these ephemera are, to some extent, deprived of their utilitarian function and become even more directly chained back to the show.

Between disappearance and permanence The duality between ‘used’ or ‘not used’ ephemera instigates a reflection on collecting and archiving policies in fashion museums, while it also enhances a more profound understanding of the relation between fashion ephemera and the show. More specifically, Performances of time

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Figure 43  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

it prompts a reflection on the temporality of these ephemera and their faculty to materialize the fashion show’s disappearance while also evoking its permanence in the present. This seemingly oxymoronic condition is well illustrated by the void or nonpresence performed by the aforementioned Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation belonging to Linda Loppa, whose initials ‘LL’ are written on the bottom of the invitation (Figures 43–44). Originally the invitation came in the shape of a concert ticket, from which the stub was to be removed upon entering the show, as can be seen from an unused copy produced by Margiela and conserved in MoMu’s archive (Figure 45). In Loppa’s invitation, the missing stub is a trace of its use, which performs the disappearance of the show and its duration through its remains. Unlike a deteriorated object or a signed object, the Margiela invitation manifests the event’s disappearance through an absence: an immaterial non-presence. This potential recalls what cultural historian Carolyn Steedman, paraphrasing Jacques Derrida, suggests when looking at archival practices: when we find nothing but white space in the archive, the absence is not nothing, but the space left from what has disappeared.11 Similarly, the absent stub functions as a metonymy for both the show and its disappearance. This potential of ephemera and its relationship with the show recalls in many ways the controversial relation between performance documentation and the performance 90

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Figure 44 - Figure 45  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’98–’99 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

event.12 Drawing on the distinction between scholars who argue for the ephemerality of the performance13 and those who argue for its permanence through different media of preservation such as documents,14 this discussion is particularly relevant for understanding how MoMu’s ephemera may manifest both the disappearance of the show and its permanence in the present. In her Performance Remains (2011), Rebecca Schneider proposes the idea of ‘performance[s] of duration’ to discuss the ways archival traces perpetuate the event in the present through a constant tension between the ephemeral and the enduring.15 Criticizing the assumption that live performances only exist as ephemeral, Schneider suggests that the present-ness of the performance’s document is not simply a testimony of a past event, but also a condition of the simultaneous disappearance and the duration of the event in the present. In a similar fashion, Philip Auslander iterates this principle speaking about ‘the performativity of performance documents’ and the important to overpass the ideological relationship between performance and documentation in order to recognize documents’ potential to ‘produce an event as a performance’.16 Despite the differences between fashion shows (and their ephemera) and art performances (and their documentation),17 Schneider’s and Auslander’s ideas provide a different perspective on the role of fashion ephemera in relation to the fashion show and more specifically their capacity to influence their perception in time. Performances of time

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Figure. 46  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’08–’09 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Fashion ephemera are not just inanimate records of the show but active devices, interacting with our conception of the event, its temporality and its proliferation in time. Like Schneider’s ‘performance of duration’,18 fashion ephemera must be seen beyond their function as static historical indexes of the show but must be understood also as present and performative markers of the show. In the words of the historian Paola Marrati, a date is not ‘confined to commemorating a past event, it is always also a point of departure’.19 This quote particularly resonates in the Margiela a/w ’08–’09 invitation, which consists of a page-a-day calendar, with a bold date in red and the day and month printed in black on a white background. On the back of each page, the details of the show held at the ‘La Cartonnerie’ at 159, Rue St. Maur 75011, in Paris, are given (Figures 46–47). At first sight, the invitation is a typical calendar, but, by flipping through its pages, the beholder is stuck in a sort of one-day year. The Margiela invitation is in fact a page-a-day calendar made of 347 pages, each saying 19 January: the date of the fashion show. Here the beholder feels time stopping as if, after the event, time has frozen. This is evoked by  the repetition of the day in the calendar and by the specific number of pages that follow the first page: 346 pages, exactly the number of days left until the end of the year from 19 January. 92

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Figure. 47  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’08–’09 invitation, pages 14–15. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. Looking at this one-day calendar invitation in the archive, its features stimulate a particular relation to the show that moves beyond its informing us about the date and location of the past event. The repetition of the show’s date and the use of the calendar as a time-marker produce a material opposition to the passage of time and to the transient nature of the event. While the presence of the invitation testifies to the event’s end, the page-by-page repetition of ‘19 January’ recalls how ephemera in the archive may keep the event ‘alive’. In the Margiela invitation, the date is objectified, transformed into durable matter, in opposition to the transient nature of the fashion show. By flicking through the pages of the calendar, the beholder is both stuck in the day of the show and reminded of its resistance to time. If in its original function the invitation materialized ‘anticipation’, after the show the invitation materializes ‘ephemerality’, ‘disappearance’ and ‘duration’. The Margiela a/w ’08–’09 invitation hints at the capacity of the fashion ephemera at MoMu to function as triggers of different characteristics of the show through their particular features. Just as fashion invitations both announce and subsequently recall the show through peculiar visual, textual and material references, press releases and catalogues are also made of specific visual, written or material features recalling the fashion show and its various elements. For example, all of Ann Demeulemeester’s and Dries Van Noten’s catalogues contain catwalk pictures or images taken at the show, while Performances of time

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Raf Simon’s and Maison Martin Margiela’s press releases always begin with allusive or descriptive narrations of the fashion show. Although these ephemera are usually created to present the collection, they are filled with discourses about the fashion show that permit an investigation of its ontology as an ephemeral event. Similarly to the performance documentation discussed by Schneider and Auslander, MoMu’s invitations, catalogues and press releases reanimate the show, evoking both its temporal condition and its central role within the industry. This can be explained by another look at the Margiela one-day invitation. By making the date of the show the only date of the year, the invitation recalls its disappearance and permanence in time, and also suggests its centrality in the fashion calendar. The invitation indicates the fashion show as a unique and central moment of the fashion year, playing, as Evans argues, a ‘key role in the development of modern fashion industry’.20 From the late 1990s, the show, continues Evans, has also been transformed into ‘a form of theatricalization of social reality and of the self ’, which has also inevitably affected the creation and proliferation of fashion ephemera.21 Fashion shows are moments when collections are presented to the public but also theatres of fashion tout court, where a magnitude of ephemera are produced not only to announce but to comment on, celebrate and construct its centrality.22 Their mobility in time and peculiar features transform these ephemera in more than a simple index to a date but, as Margiela’s calendar shows, in performative objects able to construct the show and its essence. This potential interestingly recalls what art historian Richard Taws described as the performing function of ephemera when speaking about the role of visual and textual leaflets in the affirmation of the ideals of Revolutionary France. Richard Taws explains how commemorative ephemera depicting the fall of the Bastille concurred to both restate ‘the Revolution’s constitutive act’ and the dispersion of ‘the victorious spoils of Ancien-Régime symbolic practice’.23 These ephemera, argues Taws, were ‘describing fully the space occupied by the demolished but doing so in temporary materials that accentuated its transparency and provisionality rather than its irrevocable presence’.24 Such a dichotomy well suits how MoMu’s fashion ephemera behave in relation to the show. While attesting to its ephemeral nature and disappearance, Margiela’s one-day calendar invitation encapsulates this capacity due to its peculiar temporal features. Here the date is more than a static index of the existence of the event, but its inscription into a temporal disposable device, like a calendar, restates and echoes the central but ephemeral nature of the fashion show for the industry.

The look moment Fashion ephemera conserved at MoMu show us a more multifaceted relationship with the show, playing a central role in its depiction and the transmission of its temporalities. In the archive, ephemera accentuate and celebrate the ephemeral time of the show, becoming performative tools to access the event. In this sense, the most direct manifestations and reaffirmation of the fashion show are probably catwalk pictures: a specific type of image 94

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that portrays the model in the fashion show and is often used in fashion catalogues. The catwalk picture is mostly shot by freelance photographers who are positioned on a platform at the end of the catwalk and depict the model either in movement or posing at a specific moment in the show, usually at the end of the catwalk. Showing the different ‘looks’ of the collection,25 these images are often assembled in ‘look-books’,26 which present, as fashion editor Penny Martin explains, ‘the styling statement that the company wants to make’.27 The catwalk picture is often renamed as the ‘look’ and given a number so it can be identified by buyers and journalists who may want to order garments from the collection, ‘call in’ some looks or use a particular look in a photographic shoot.28 Aside from this practical function, the mechanics behind the catwalk picture enable it to capture the ephemeral traits of the show, and Ann Demeulemeester’s catalogues are a useful example of this potential. Divided into menswear and womenswear, these catalogues consist only of catwalk pictures, which function as unique photographic documents of the event. These catalogues do not contain reference numbers or codes, unlike other look books, demonstrating once again the difficulty of differentiating a catalogue from a look book.29 Unlike other catalogues, the Demeulemeester ones are only made of runway looks, with no images of the scenography or backstage. Apart from some early examples, they always show a catwalk image to the right of a blank white page. The images are shot at exactly the same spot, creating a succession of identical photographs. For example, the s/s ’07 catalogue presents fifteen images of models walking towards the end of the catwalk. Their facial expressions are serious and they look straight to camera (Figures 48–49–50). The background of each image is identical: a stone runway on which the model walks between the two rows of seats on which the public can hardly be seen. Flipping through the pages of the catalogue, the beholder sees a static view of the event in which the changes of garments and models, page after page, are the only dynamic elements. Each model is frozen in a specific moment of her walk. No chronological succession or temporal lapses are created but the look from one image to another is therefore the only variable that evokes the passage of time while it also freezes it in a specific moment of the event. Experienced through the sequential order of the catalogue’s pages, the changing looks may distil the passage of time articulated in the show materializing the parade of the models. In this manner, the catalogue evidences once more the mechanization of time in the show and the model’s walk, recalling a vision of a show as a filmstrip.30 In the Demeulemeester catalogue this sort of chronological filmic strip is evoked by the series of different looks and the contrast between the stillness of the background depicted in the picture and the dynamism of the outfits and the turning of the pages.31 The synecdochic potential of the catwalk picture reminds one of its capacity to stand in for the entire performance of the model and, in some cases, the entire show, resembling what Henri Cartier-Bresson called the ‘decisive moment’. In his book Images à la sauvette (The Decisive Moment in the English translation) (1952), Cartier-Bresson coined the term to refer to the practice of capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself. Relating to studies on the Performances of time

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Figure 48  Ann Demeulemeester womenswear s/s ’07 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

representation of time and echoing previous studies in art history and photography such as Diderot’s ‘instant’ or Laocoon’s ‘pregnant moment’,32 Cartier-Bresson aimed both to capture the ‘decisive moment’ of an action and to show its capacity to stand in for the action. According to Cartier-Bresson, photography both recognizes the significance of the event by freezing the moment in a fraction of a second and allows the viewer to recognize and organize its forms into a fragmentary image that reflects its expression.33 Similarly to Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’, the Demeulemeester catwalk pictures lead the viewer into the contemplation of multiple crucial moment of the show and the ephemeral. These images, and their similarity, re-affirm the multiple nature of the event but also its unity. In the catalogue, they both fragment the fashion show and stand for it as a unique event. Ephemerality is here portrayed as multitude of actions and times, but its disappearance is marked by a united dynamic device. The dynamism is not only given by the material permanence of the catalogue, but by the action performed in the image by the models. They are depicted in the act of walking, representing the most quintessential aspect of the show (the runway walk) and the ephemeral (the passing). Here the model is frozen in the act of walking to guarantee a sense of movement, donating consequentially a sense of temporality. Performance art theorist Matthew Reason touches on such a capacity of an image when discussing the role of promotional images in performance and theatre events. Reason explains how ‘by capturing the “decisive moment” the still photograph can be representative of the missing whole […] to sum up a moment more 96

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Figure 49  Ann Demeulemeester womenswear s/s ’07 catalogue, page 5. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

than that moment’.34 Drawing on the work of Cartier-Bresson, Reason indicates how ‘the decisive moment seeks to lead the viewer into a contemplation of movement, reading a narrative of time into the still fragment’.35 This potential to ‘sum up’ the event and its ephemeral nature is indeed an intrinsic character of catwalk pictures and their consultation in the archive enhances this property as is particularly echoed by Raf Simons’ catalogues, which often take the shape of a series of postcards of the show. For instance, his ‘Disorder-Incubation-Isolation’ a/w ’99–’00 catalogue consists of twenty-four 30x30 cm cards in a black cardboard box resembling music promotional materials. These free-floating cards contain: the three collection titles ‘Disorder’, ‘Incubation’ or ‘Isolation’ (these were inspired by the band Joy Division and also printed on three flags held by models during the show), specific images from the show and images of models taken backstage (Figure 51). Although these cards may be combined to recompose a narrative of the event, the fact that they are unbound means that they can also stand alone. Furthermore, they do not show any particular moment of the event, nor do they depict each model. Unlike Ann Demeulemeester’s catalogue, the Raf Simons catalogue makes no reference at all to the model walking. As the press release says, the idea of the collection was to problematize the speed of fashion and to stress the historical meaning of garments. To perform this contrast in the show, models walked in a procession, pausing briefly to stand for a few Performances of time

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Figure 50  Ann Demeulemeester womenswear s/s ’07 catalogue, page 7. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

seconds in a stream of white light.36 The catalogue cards do not depict the moment in which the models walked but instead show them standing as solid statues under a ray of light against a dark background. Their static, sculptural poses counter the fastness of fashion through immobility, performing the show’s aim to arrest fashion. The Raf Simons cards function as freeze-frame images that not only freeze a moment but also enclose it. Here not only the visual, but also the material nature of the card intimates a singularity and frames the event into a static unity that performs a narrative of the event. As in the case of Figure 51, the stillness of the model generates a contrast with the concept ‘Disorder’ written on the other side of the card. Here the singular card constructs a narrativization of the show, miniaturizing the event into what I propose to call the ‘look-moment’. While the ‘look’ is a term used to represent the key-image of the season,37 the term ‘look-moment’ stresses the temporal nature of this image, its capacity to freeze the event into a fragment and also perform the centrality of this decisive moment for the fashion show. To think of the catwalk picture as a ‘look-moment’ helps to fully embrace the capacity of these ephemera to embrace and reperform the contingency of the show and the investment given to the instant in the fashion industry. By fixing the decisive moment of the show, the ‘look-moment’ also freezes its constituents and its practices. The most obvious example of this can be found in the two archetypal practices of fashion modelling: the pose and the walk. As Evans shows, 98

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Figure 51  ‘Disorder–Incubation–Isolation’ Raf Simons a/w ’99–’00 menswear catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

these two actions have been central to the fashion show since its inception, when the mannequins’ constant oscillation between walking and static posing was at the heart of the show.38 Catwalk pictures today reflect this through their tendency to focus on a specific pose or modelling gesture which has the capacity to epitomize the show. This is evident in the Raf Simons and Demeulemeester catalogues, which depict two different iterations of the look-moment, showing how the pose or the walk can also embody the narrative of the show. For example, in the case of Raf Simons, the static pose of the model is a modelling technique that not only halts time but also performs the essence of the show, which is then disseminated in the catalogue. In the case of the Demeulemeester catalogue, the models are depicted in the act of walking, alluding to their incessant walking during the show, during which they neither stop nor pose. In this case, the distinction between the pose and the walk disappears, generating a sort of ‘walking pose’ typical of Demeulemeester shows. In this sense, understanding catwalk pictures as ‘look-moments’ also facilitates an interpretation of them as able to freeze and record shifting paradigms in the walking techniques of models. The possibility of encapsulating the essence of the show through the action of the model was also at the centre of the performance ‘Models at Work’ (2012), curated by Olivier Saillard, where former models walked (and posed) on a white catwalk wearing white or black fabric rather than designers’ garments.39 The performance aimed to investigate the capacity Performances of time

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of the pose, gesture and walk to deliver the embodied sensation of the garments and its memories. Saillard wanted to stress the evocative nature of the fashion pose and the walk as sensory devices. A similar capacity is evident in the Raf Simons and Demeulemester catalogues, in which models become instruments of the narrative of the event, embodying its essence and thus transforming the catwalk picture into an articulated snapshot of fashion sensibilities. The interpretation of the runway shot as a ‘look-moment’ must also be understood in relation to the practice of the photographer and, more specifically, to the exact moment in the show when the camera meets the model. As art historian Henry M. Sayre argues in his book The Object of Performance (1989), the portrait photograph is not just ‘a picture of a person, but a picture of a person on view, poised to be looked at’.40 This duality is intrinsic in the term ‘look’, which refers both to the act of appearing and to the act of looking at something. Catwalk pictures depict the model, whose purpose is to be looked at by the crowd, and especially by the camera. Thus, the creation of the ‘look-moment’ is not exclusively a performance by the model but is a joint creation with the photographer, who shoots the moment that will later stand for the entire event. In this sense, the role of runway photographers is crucial, over and above their capacity to position themselves centrally on the stage.41 All these practices determine the ‘look-moment’. In fact, the agency of the photographer is as important as the model’s, because a catwalk image creates a sense of the entire show. As Sayre argues, the presence of the camera ‘alters its objects; it is the camera that defines and requires the moment’s very staginess’.42 Sayre suggests that the idea of the pose is guaranteed not only by the people depicted but also by the camera, with its mechanical capacity to register the performative nature of the moment. This resonates with the words of Dan Lecca, an established runway photographer who shot the catwalk pictures for the Demeulemeester catalogue. As he declared in an interview, the difficulty in the catwalk picture is to ‘take the moment when it happens’ in order to avoid the moment in which models may ‘look down, close their eyes, take a funny step’.43 Thus, photography as a representational practice is central to the creation of the look-moment. Photography enables the constitution of the moment and its celebration, paradoxically performing the ephemerality and uniqueness of the show more efficiently than a film, for example. Matthew Reason explains this superiority of photography over video recording in relation to the performance event, by arguing that photography has the capacity to mimic the way our minds remember.44 Despite the diffusion of moving pictures, the still image maintains its authority in the way we perceive, imagine and remember, as we ‘tend to remember in frozen moments that represent the highlights or consummation of our memories of the fluid event’.45 Paraphrasing Reason, lookmoments in catalogues may be more memorable and imaginative than a video recording of the show, because they are straight slices of time, and not a flow. They have the ability to materialize the investment of the different actors in the temporal ephemerality of the show while also hinting at the multiple practices that are at play in the articulation of a fashion moment. In fact, the ‘look-moment’ stages a composed performance of time not only through the depiction of the most significant instants of the show, but also through 100

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the performative temporal potential of all its ingredients: from the pose to the walk, passing through the ontology of the photographic snapshot.

Show(ing) time, fiction and montage The perception of the time of the fashion show through fashion ephemera is articulated in multiple forms following the particular temporal characters of the show. As Evans explains, some contemporary fashion shows may ‘scramble time’ as they are created via a live montage of past, present and future, while, in early fashion shows, the walk and the pose both suggested a play ‘with time, speeding it up, halting and slowing it down’.46 In this sense, when we speak about the time of the show, we cannot simply refer to its duration, but must also acknowledge the time performed in the event. To clarify this, it is possible to think about the differentiation between the real temporal length of a stage play (in terms of duration) and the time performed within the plot of the play (days, months, years). Similarly, in the case of fashion shows, we can speak about the time of the show (duration) and the time in the show (time performed). This duality is reperformed in a multitude of ephemera at MoMu that play on the perception and experience of the time in the show, as in the case of Veronique Branquinho’s a/w ’04–’05 catalogue (Figures 52–53), which contains only images taken from the show. The cover depicts the red curtains which hid the stage before the beginning of the show. Starting with this image depicting a moment prior to the show, the catalogue goes on to mix up images from different moments of the show. Created in collaboration with the Belgian actor and choreographer Sam Louwyck, Branquinho’s show presented an alienating atmosphere, recreating the ‘red room’ of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, with its zigzag floor and red curtains. The show began with the entrance of Louwyck, in the role of the Twin Peaks character ‘Bob’. After a first dance, the actor repeatedly moved on and off stage, alternating calm walking entrances with more agitated appearances when he danced while gesticulating and screaming. Models wearing the Branquinho collection appeared on stage alternating with Louwyck’s dance performances. In the catalogue, these rhythmic appearances and schizophrenic dances are recreated by the overlapping of non-chronological images of Louwyck’s performance. Louwyck’s pictures are alternated with images of the models on stage. Furthermore, in some cases the pictures of Louwyck’s performance are created through the technique of photodynamism (Figure 54). Invented at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Futurist artist Anton Giulio Bragaglia, photodynamism aimed to free photography from static representation, and to show movement.47 Thus, the photodynamic picture not only marks time, but also reproduces the ‘intermovemental fractions existing in the passage between seconds’, as the film scholar Mary Ann Doane argues.48 The result is the depiction of movement in a single frame as a blurred image which, as Marta Braun explains when discussing ‘photodynamism’, alludes to movement and time as a flow, visually performing this fluidity in one single, figurative image.49 By using this technique, the images of Louwyck in the Branquinho catalogue perform the figurative and fictional Performances of time

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Figure 52  Veronique Branquinho menswear collection a/w ’04–’05 catalogue, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

gesture of the actor, rebuilding its effect in the perception of time during the fashion show. They present his vibrant gestures, re-enacting his maniac movement in the show through the entire catalogue. In the photodynamic images, the beholder does not clearly witness a ‘before and after’ effect but, rather, is catapulted into a circular movement where time is suspended rather than being chronologically fragmented or fractured. If the ‘lookmoment’ captures the fashion show’s time in a fragment, these photodynamic images of the Belgian performer stress instead the hectic time performed in the show. Furthermore, these images are not presented sequentially, but are dispersed throughout the catalogue, in a different order to that in which they were performed, creating a sense of temporal displacement in the beholder. The beholder is constantly catapulted back and forth between different moments in the event due to the discontinuous presentation of events of the show and Louwyck’s photodynamic images appearing randomly in the catalogue. This temporal discontinuity also occurs in ephemera that mesh images of the shows with other images. The technique can be used to illustrate the idea behind the collection, and in some circumstances may also allow the beholder to perceive the temporality performed in the show. A good example is the A. F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 womenswear catalogue (Figure 55).

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Figure 53 - Figure 54  Veronique Branquinho menswear collection a/w ’04–’05 catalogue, page 37, page 31. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Created by the Belgian graphic designer Marc Meulemans, the catalogue’s cover portrays the face of a blonde model with clown-like make up created by make-up artist Inge Grognard. Taken at the show, this image symbolizes the atmosphere created in the event and then projected into the catalogue. The catwalk consisted of a stage on which mirrors were positioned to create hidden spaces and shadows through which the models walked. Seated in front of this stage, the spectators could see the models appearing and disappearing as they walked randomly on and off stage rather than following a pre-determined route, appearing to the eye of the spectators in different mirrors and at different times. Referring to early twentieth century shows, Evans explains how the time in fashion shows is ‘embodied by the mannequins’ performance: their walking, posing and appearance on the catwalk’.50 As she suggests, the first fashion models dictated the time of the show through their appearance and disappearance from the catwalk while the mirrored walls of the modelling salons multiplied their image to infinity.51 In the case of the A. F. Vandevorst show, the position of the mirrors created acute angles, corridors and distorted reflections that in some cases hid and dislocated the model’s image. Thus, the audience did not witness the mechanical and multiplied movements of early fashion shows, but instead watched a more schizophrenic scene. In this sense, the models’ performance did not resemble a chronological film strip but mixed up time through simultaneous appearances and disappearances.

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Figure 55  A.F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 catalogue, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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This displaced and schizophrenic representation of time and space is recreated in the catalogue, which begins with an image of the stage printed on the right of a completely black double page (Figure 56). The image has a black background with no spatial references, suggesting a ‘no space’ and ‘no time’ dimension. On the next page the same image is mirrored on the left of the double page. While these two double pages reflect the mirror’s capacity to duplicate, they also introduce the viewer to an a-temporal and a-spatial dimension that resembles not only the use of mirrors on the stage but also their capacity to falsify time and space in the show. The idea of the mirror is used in the catalogue both as visual inspiration for the organization of the images in the catalogue, and as a conceptual metaphor to recall the expansion and splitting of time in the show. This idea is perpetuated in the subsequent pages as the book juxtaposes images from the catwalk with still life images of models wearing the collection. As in the Branquinho catalogue, the temporality of the show is represented through the overlapping of diverse images rather than through a sequential narrative. Unlike the Branquinho catalogue, the show’s images are meshed with other images that do not belong to the show but that are contiguous with its aesthetics and temporality, suggesting the temporal experience of the event through the experience of the catalogue’s pages. Particularly symbolic in the depiction of this schizophrenic idea of time is a double page where the graphic designer Meulemans positions two images resembling a Rorschach inkblot test (Figure 57). By using this technique, the catalogue recalls the element of destabilization that the show provoked while also performing the idea of duplication on which the show was based. In both the Branquinho and A. F. Vandevorst catalogues, images of the show are dynamically mixed and put into dialogue with other images, generating an interaction between the viewer, the image and the time of the event. By flipping through the pages, the beholder does not recreate the chronological succession of time, or its concentration in a moment, but, on the contrary, encounters a different rhythm made up of allegorical associations. The time of the show is not achieved through the recreation of a naturalized organization of instants but through something similar to what Doane defines as a ‘defamiliarization of time’.52 According to Doane this practice of ‘defamiliarization’ is a technique that forces a rupture of time in the viewer and it is used in avant-garde films such as Bill Brand’s Demolition of a Wall (1973) or Moments de Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Jean Louis Boisser. In these films, explains Doane, the impossibility of reproducing sequential time is accepted and even problematized by inter-cutting sequential scenes with other images that deepen a particular aspect of the story. Analogously, these catalogues acknowledge the temporal lapses and fill them with spliced images that expand our understanding of the show’s time. Rather than collages, these assemblages recall the cinematic practice of montage. As Gilles Deleuze suggests, in his Cinema 2: The Time-Image, montage is a technique that exists in a constant relation with time, ‘precisely because it selects and coordinates “significant moments”, montage has the property of “making the

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Figure 56  A.F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 catalogue, pages 2–3. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 57  A.F. Vandevorst s/s ’02 catalogue, pages 10–11. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 58  Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, packaging. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

present past”, of transforming our unstable and uncertain present into “a clear, stable and desirable past”, in short of achieving time’.53 Interpreting these ephemera as a form of montage reveals the way in which these objects represent time in the archive through a sort of ‘time patchwork’. By presenting Louwyck’s performance in different parts of the Branquinho catalogue or by mimicking the scenographic technique in the A. F. Vandevorst catalogue, these ephemera generate a time-shock that recreates the schizophrenic temporality of the shows. In this sense, the montage creates the effect of a jump cut that allows us to experience time while also permitting us to understand how ephemera assemble what Deleuze defines as ‘significant moments’.54 If the ‘look-moment’ freezes the show into a fragment, the montage of ‘significant moments’ evokes an idea of movement through a circular representation of time that is determined by the dialogue of images of the show with other types of image. In his discussion of filmic shock and montage, Walter Benjamin argues that the montage technique does not create chronological order but, rather, accumulates and juxtaposes contingencies.55 In the same way, both the Vandevorst and the Branquinho catalogues resist chronological order in favour of alternating images of different moments, recreating the destabilization of time performed in the event and its impact on the

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Figure 59  Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

spectator. They expand the temporality of the event beyond its real duration, evoking the fictional time performed in the fashion show. The association between fashion ephemera and the cinematic technique of montage suggests that fashion ephemera often function similarly to cinema and photography in the representation of time and the ephemeral. Similar links between cinematic technique and fashion photography were discussed in the exhibition Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990, held at the Museum of Modern Art of New York (2004). Curated by Susan Kismaric and Eva Respini, the exhibition explored how forms such as photography and cinema have influenced the construction of narrative in fashion. The two curators argue that fashion ‘attempts to represent a moment in time’ through the device of story lines or interrupted narratives that, similarly to cinema and photography, blur the boundaries between fiction and reality.56 As Doane argues in her The Emergence of Cinematic Time (2002), ‘it is by using portions of historical time that cinema builds up fictional time’.57 Similarly, fashion ephemera stage this potential of fashion, its ephemeral obsession with time via constant attempts to manipulate its nature. Here time is enacted via a manipulation of fiction and reality, a juxtaposition of fictional images and catwalk pictures. If the use of montage creates an alteration of the time of these events, by looking only at these ‘decisive moments’ we perceive a contraction, a compression of the event. As the Branquinho or Vandevorst catalogues show, these ephemera may dramatize the Performances of time

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Figure 60  Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, page 3. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

time of the show and its ephemeral values. If the fashion show speeds up, accelerates, halts or slows time,58 these fashion ephemera are able to restage these temporal games. Ephemeral time, in these ephemera, is enlarged or compressed via a retention of time, consisting of a framing and transforming of space–time relations into written, material or visual narratives.

The liveness of the show Mimicking the performative nature of the fashion show, fashion ephemera are documentary in nature, but are themselves more performative than they are merely informational. The invitations, catalogues and press releases in MoMu’s archive represent, in different ways, the temporality of the show and, by doing so, not only evidence but also enact the show. A date, an image, a text, a double page on a catalogue construct a performative indexical relation with a show’s temporality that exceeds its mere historical existence. To do so, these fashion ephemera stand in a constant tension between the fictive and the real, persistently moving in this double condition that invokes the multiple temporal conditions of the show. In this sense, fashion ephemera function similarly to what Doane defines as ‘time-based media’.59 Referring 112

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Figure 61  Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, page 7. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

to television, cinema and photography, she explains how these media make time not only visible but also palpable.60 Focusing on early techniques of representing time in film and photography during the nineteenth century, Doanne argues that these experiences re-enacted the ‘time of the now’ and were united ‘by the insistence upon breaking down or fragmentation as the first step in the reconstitution of a continuity of time, and by the embrace of the photographic instant as time’s minimal unit’.61 Looking, for example, at chronophotography, Doanne speaks about an obsession with the indexicality of time that well resonates in those fashion ephemera which try to ‘catch time’ by fragmenting the show into multiple instants. Comparably to the devices described by Doanne, the fashion ephemera at MoMu manifest an urgency in the way that they represent different forms and registers of time, not only informing the beholder about them, but also re-enacting them through the combination of their material, visual and written features. Instants, decisive and significant moments concur to construct a performance of an ephemeral time that may compress, extend and even chronicle the fashion show. One of the clearest examples of this is the Dries Van Noten a/w ’11–’12 catalogue which is inserted into a white box with silk paper (Figure 58). Created by the backstage photographer Schohaja Stassler, it consists of images depicting the moments before, during and after the show. Each page contains four pictures, resembling a series of snapshots taken sequentially over time. The cover of the catalogue portrays four Performances of time

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Figure 62  Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, pages 15–16. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

different images of the area around the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, the location of the show (Figure 59). They are all taken in daylight, suggesting a moment before the start of the show. In the following pages, the beholder is taken inside the Hôtel de Ville by images of its paintings, sculptures and triumphant alleys (Figure 60). From page three, the catalogue shows images of the backstage preparations for the show (Figures 61–62), including the tableau de passage of the models (Figure 63) and the final rehearsal. This chronological climax of instances of the show continues up to page thirty, where catwalk pictures announce the start of the show, which began at eight p.m. The catalogue closes with an image of the final parade of all the models, signalling the end of the show. The sequential organization of images suggests the chronological time of the show, reinforced by the format of the catalogue. Resembling a photographer’s contact sheet, the images are printed on grainy, colour photo-paper held together by metal clips. Developed as a way of selecting images for printing from a strip of photographic negatives, the contact sheet format suggests the exhaustive, moment-by-moment documentation of an event, emphasizing the possibility of its comprehensive depiction. Thus, not only the content and organization of the images, but also the materiality of the catalogue, deliver the temporality of the event, transforming the catalogue into a time device able to relay the different moments of the fashion show. By flipping through the pages of the catalogue, 114

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Figure 63  Dries Van Noten’s a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, pages 27–28. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

the beholder is projected into the event as if she, or he, were witnessing the show: from before its beginning to after its ending. This privileged perspective is underscored by the blurred texture of the images of the models that suggests the temporal nature of their walking, and by the backstage perspective. In fact, the images are not taken from the point of view of the audience but from ‘behind the scenes’, further reifying the real effect of the show. The catalogue assembles the images in such a way as to present an insider view of the show, suggesting the beholder’s point of view. Models on the catwalk are seen from the vantage point of backstage, only partially in view, their image obscured by shadows from the stage lighting and by the curtains of the catwalk. This sort of disturbed view evokes the atmosphere of the live show, reinforcing the idea of the event itself. The Van Noten catalogue evidences – and this is reinforced by the designer’s decision to choose a backstage-photographer like Stassler to document the show  – how the ephemera at MoMu often manifest a kind of documentary attitude in the creation of these ephemera.62 To some extent, ephemera like the Van Noten catalogue could metaphorically evoke the mechanics of an optical toy that creates the illusion of movement and the passage of time through the mechanical use of images. First named ‘philosophical toys’, such devices were used to demonstrate scientific experiments in optics, physics and mechanics, to later become popular as ‘optical toys’, such as the kaleidoscope or the praxinoscope.63 As Jonathan Crary suggests in his The Techniques Performances of time

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of the Observer, these tools aimed to produce, ‘a compulsory and seductive vision of the “real”’.64 While providing ‘access to “the real”’, suggests Crary, they made ‘no claim that the real is anything other than a mechanical reproduction’.65 Playing on a ‘vividness’, ‘tangibility’, and ‘proximity’, these optical toys mechanically reconstruct an experience of movement that seems to be evoked via the unfolding of Van Noten’s catalogue. Its consultation uncannily projects the beholder into the event. The reality of the show is dictated by a sort of technique of the real consisting of the use of a combination of ‘documentary tools’ such the contact sheet, the chronological sequence of the images and the metal clips donating a sense of precariousness and human intervention. The catalogue performs an idea of the real although, as Crary explains in relation to optical toys, it is evidently staging its fictional nature. The fragmentation of the show into its constituent parts (from the calm within the building before the event to the grand finale, passing through the moments of preparation and the lining up of the models), and the adoption of these visual and material ‘tools of the real’ demand a connection with the beholder. They are more than simple images of a show. As Lynda Nead argues in The Haunted Gallery (2007), the most significant feature of optical machines was that they ‘were meant to be touched and held, to be physically connected to the viewers’.66 Similarly, the Van Noten catalogue requires both visual and physical contact in order to reproduce the temporal sensation of the show. By holding, looking at and flipping through the pages of the catalogue, the beholder can witness the chronological passage of time, page after page. The space–time relations of the event are rethought, re-enacted and reperformed, so that this object is more than just photographic evidence of the show. Such a time-based performance is not exclusive to material and visual features, but may also be achieved via text. Clear examples of this are Maison Martin Margiela press releases that always contain minute narratives of the event, as in the following abstract, taken from the s/s 2004 press release: September 28th 2003, the Museum of Modern Art in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris closed its doors to carry out large-scale renovation work. This closure, due to last more than one year, allows its rooms to host the Martin Margiela staff just few days later. The starkness of the four large rooms used for the show is accentuated by the removal of all art pieces. The invited public enter the museum via a little used graffiti entrance on the Avenue de New York running along the right bank of the Seine. Eighteen specially constructed black podiums and a large spotlight on a tripod trained on each are the only structures to be found throughout the spaces. A large black panel rises at the back of each podium; black steps lead up at their front. Red wine is served as at every Martin Margiela show and the invited public mingle freely awaiting the show. 27 women each present one outfit of the collection. The eighteen spotlights warm up to cast a turquoise light on each podium as the room lights fall for the show’s start. A soundtrack is made up of the instrumental sections of many disco hits of the past twenty years. 18 women leave the backstage together to mount a podium and stand facing the backdrop. Once the turquoise light changes to white each woman turns to present her outfit 116

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to the crowd assembled at each podium. After fifteen seconds the light returns to turquoise and the women descend to make their way to the next. They are chaperoned on their way through the crowd by a man dressed in black. One by one the nine women backstage at the beginning of the show enter the room to replenish the circuit of women, passing, as the show proceeds, from podium to podium. The finale of the show takes place when all of the women have presented their outfit on each podium. At this moment the chaperones present all of the women, as they stand on the podiums, with a bouquet of artificial flowers that have been sprayed turquoise. (Maison Martin Margiela s/s 2004) While I will later focus on the narrativization of the show by the Margiela press release, here I want to address its temporal factor. The press release starts from the closing date of the museum (28 September 2003), and moves forward to a few days before the show with the arrival of the Margiela staff in the museum, and then begins to describe the interaction between the public and the location. Like the beginning of the Van Noten catalogue, the first seven sentences project the fashion show into a larger timeframe than that of the simple presentation of the garments. The press release not only focuses on the model walking on the catwalk, but also makes use of a specific rhetoric to describe the flow of interlinked moments that structure the ephemeral event. The event is described in processual terms that foreground its time–space imagery: from the moment the audience enters the museum and waits for the beginning of the show, to the finale when all the models appear on the podiums, passing through other time-related descriptions like ‘the fifteen seconds after which the light returns to turquoise’. This last example in particular shows the attention paid to the temporal aspect, stressing its centrality in the show. The entire narration of the event contains several time-bound actions such as ‘the removal of art pieces’, ‘the invited public enter the museum’, and ‘one by one the nine women backstage at the beginning of the show enter the room’. The press release thus resembles what Mikhail Bakhtin defined as the ‘chronotope’:67 a term used to express the ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’.68 Bahktin’s concern is not simply the representation of time but, rather, its narrativization through the use of specific rhetorical strategies that generate the experience of time in the reader. The writer of the Margiela press release adopts a chronotopic technique in order to convey the entwined relation between the progression of time and the organization of the space: a double variable that helps to perform the complexity of the show as event. Methodically illustrating its quick-change scenarios and outlining them in a series of precise spatial and temporal references (e.g. ‘fifteen seconds’), the Margiela press release does more than just describe the fashion show. It instigates an understanding of its dynamic action through a climax of entwined moments. The attention given to each singular moment resembles what theatre theorist Bernard Beckerman named ‘units of time’ to define those eventful moments that characterize theatrical events.69 In his Dynamic of Drama (1970), Beckerman discusses stage plays as a form of art in which time is not simply a Performances of time

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variable but its central character.70 Like theatre plays,71 the fashion shows organized by the designers discussed in this book are often built of narratives structured around time, and this becomes particularly clear in Margiela press releases, which constantly invoke the temporal factor. In the case of the Margiela s/s ’04 press release, this theatricality is rendered through a specific rhetoric that not only stages the models’ parade, but also encompasses other moments and elements of the fashion show. In its chronotopic narration, the Margiela press release relies on a method of progressive description where ‘units of time’ are used to deliver the chronological flow of the show’s time and its complexity in terms of internal micro-events. Both the Van Noten catalogue and the Margiela press release are examples of the ways in which ephemera may fragment time, functioning as chronicles of the fashion show that are able to render its liveness. By this, however, I do not mean that these ephemera return the beholder to the ‘live’ fashion show. Rather, I argue for their capacity to incorporate and re-enact the temporal aspect of the live show. I use the term ‘liveness’ borrowing from scholars in performance studies such as Schneider and Auslander,72 who suggested, in relation to performances, that ‘liveness’ is not simply a condition of being in the present, but rather a condition of the event ‘being “in-time”’.73 Initiated by Auslander in his Liveness (1999), this idea has been developed by Rebecca Schneider, whose work is important to the understanding of how documents or other remnants of events may be considered as ‘sedimented acts’ able to re-enact the liveness of the event.74 Schneider uses the example of battle re-enactment to show how these performances aim to keep the past alive, provoking ‘an in time experience bearing some relation to “living”’.75 Challenging the idea of temporal immediacy chained to the live, Schneider proposes that liveness is a condition of the event that it is possible to reanimate through documentation or performance. Schneider therefore not only rethinks live performances, but also the meaning of records as historical re-enactors able to pulse and ‘reanimate’ an experience of liveness in the present.76 This idea becomes particularly useful in rethinking the Margiela press release or the Van Noten catalogue. In fact, Schneider’s idea of liveness helps us to understand the capacity of this type of fashion ephemera to conserve and re-present the dynamic and temporal features that animate the liveness of the show. By breaking down the event into chronological fragments, using specific rhetorical documentary tools, these ephemera restage its chronological development, its temporal immediacy and its multiple ephemeral ingredients. These ephemera not only contain images or descriptions of the show, but also share a chronophotographic attitude towards the fashion show event.77 Through their different features, fashion ephemera fragment the show’s time in order to recreate the multiple characters of the live, another intrinsic circumstance of the ephemeral. In his Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (1988), Jean-François Lyotard signalled this multiple nature of the ephemeral through what he defined as the ‘multiplicity of an event’. The French thinker explains how an event is a complex transient entity able to veil many events that may ‘come to us concealed under the appearance of everyday occurrences’.78 Lyotard explains how the individualization of a discontinuity (and a consequent event) is variable and requires a ‘high degree of refinement in the perception of small differences’.79 118

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Fashion ephemera like the Margiela press release and the Van Noten catalogue seem to be built around this type of attention and the recognition of these small differences, consequentially directing the beholder’s attention to the ephemeral’s properties via the individualization and celebration of its imperceptible matter.

Show mediatization The fragmentation of time and the event in ephemera eventually unravels the show as a designed ephemeral event, displaying the matter of the show involving specific figures, objects and technologies. By breaking up the rhythm of the show, representing its complexity and performing its liveness, these ephemera reveal both the economic and creative investment in the making of this ephemeral event, including the different forms of mediation involved in its production. For example, early Margiela press folders included diapositives of the shows or even polaroid attached to the press release, recalling a specific use of a technology and a way of creating and distributing the images by catwalk photographers especially during the 1980s and 1990s (Figures 64–65). This type of media remains manifests both the shifting techniques and practices at play in the making of the show (from the placing of the catwalk and catwalk photographers to the organization of the backstage) and a media material culture deployed around the ephemeral event. Within MoMu’s boxes, it is possible to consult press folders containing analogic photographs shot at the show, contact sheets and faxes. Circulating privately, these are remnants of the specific way to disseminate the show and its constant adaptation to technological innovation. The invitation sent by Jurgi Persoons s/s 2001 to the journalist Gerdi Esch becomes an interesting case to reflect on this (Figure 66). Using the graphic and visual language of the fax without being one, this invitation is not only a trace of this media archaeology but acts as a commentary on this incessant media transformation of fashion and the show. Sent via mail at the time fax became an obsolete technological device, this fax invitation stands as a commentary on an old practice of communication and the transformative nature of mediating a show. What Persoons’ fax invitation reminds us is that the presence of the show in these ephemera is not only a historical mark of an event. Ephemera portraying the pace of the workers, the hectic times of its making, the shifting technologies used to create and capture a show, are more than just evidence of a mediation. Rather, these representations show how these ephemera concur to the fabrication, endurance and transformation of the show, consequentially becoming prisms through which to look back at its mediatization. Agnès Rocamora explained that ‘looking at mediatization in the field of fashion means looking at the ways practices of fashion—practices of production, consumption, distribution and diffusion—are articulated through the media, and, more crucially, are dependent on the media for their articulation’.80 Focusing on digital online platforms, Rocamora explains how today fashion shows are ‘increasingly designed with social media in mind; they have become mediatized events—that is, events produced and staged with a view to being consumed online, on a digital screen’.81 Fashion shows Performances of time

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Figure 64  Maison Martin Margiela – press folder diapositives a/w ’92–’93. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 65  Maison Martin Margiela – press folder casting a/w ’92–’93. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. Performances of time

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Figure 66  Jurgi Persoons s/s 2001 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. 122

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Figure 67  Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 2–3. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

are today constructed to suit media technology that broadcast them, showing ‘the transformative power of digital media over fashion practices’.82 Such vision is indeed relevant when thinking about ephemera and the live in the archive. If, according to Rocamora, social media are forcing today a specific construction of the show and its practices, MoMu’s fashion ephemera are mirrors displaying a historical process of mediatization of the show. As Philip Auslander explains, the mediatization of the live is ‘historically contingent’ and ‘continually in a state of redefinition’83 and this is crucial also when we speak about fashion shows and their mediatization. While ephemera, differently from social media, were not accessible to a larger public, they become, in the archive, testimonies of a shift in the mediatization of fashion. As previously mentioned, the type of ephemera conserved at MoMu – and discussed in this book – were produced in the 1990s and early twenty-first century, and were created for spectacular shows, or what Evans defines as ‘enchanted spectacles’ resembling theatrical plays or performance art.84 As a result, during these years a number of professionals have become necessary to the fashion show: art directors, specialist producers, sound designers, stylists, photographers and lighting designers. However, despite their centrality, these individuals have often gone unrecognized by audiences.85 As design theorist Flaviano Celaschi argues, one of the aims of performative events such as stage plays is to conceal rather than reveal, and for this reason much labour Performances of time

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Figure 68  Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 5–6. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

remains invisible to the audience.86 However, in the case of fashion shows, a part of this invisible labour has been made visible via ephemera, making evident how these media have also testified to the affirmation of these practices, and their cultural and economic capital in the industry. These ephemera attest to the increasing power played by imagemakers in the industry, the rising mediation of the show in public media, and the necessity of designing the event accordingly. This is not only in relation to the design of the front stage or a specific choreography of models on the catwalk for photographers. The backstage has turned into a central stage and something more than a space where preparing models for a catwalk. Rather, representations of the behind-the-scene, the creation of specific figures like the backstage photographer, the depiction of the work of media actors and interviews, media coverage and technologies become central in these ephemera as perfectly showed in Dries Van Noten a/w ’07–’08 collection (Figure 67). The catalogue is shot by the photograph reporter Wouter Deruytter who depicted the show at the Bassins du Trocadero, Place de Varsovie in Paris. Similar to the a/w ’11–’12 catalogue, the a/w ’07–’08 catalogue projects the beholder in a sort of chronicle of the show. It is not an obsessive chronological recreation, but there is clear attention given to the backstage and the ‘making of ’. The first double page, for example, depicts the provisional metal platforms mounted in the backstage to prepare the models for the show and a close-up of a model being prepared by a make-up artist (Figure 68). 124

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Figure 69  Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 14–15. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Here there is a game of contrast between a black dark background and the lights used to illuminate the work of make-up artists and their assistants in the backstage. The next double page portrays the chart of the line-up of models used in the show (Figure 69), while the following pages show the hair stylist Sam McKnight and his collaborators preparing the model’s hair. The model is here placed in the middle of the scene with an uninterested expression on her face. Around her, the hairstylist McKnight (at the left corner) and his collaborators are portrayed discussing while working on the model’s hair (Figure 70). The following spreads depict: a close-up of the model’s face while a make-up artist is working on her face; an overview of a chaotic backstage with models, dressers and many other actors of the show; and a backstage photographer taking a picture of a model posing while waiting to be dressed (Figure 71). The successive spread shows a sort of diorama of the backstage including models and make-up artists but also television crews interviewing in the backstage area (Figure 72). This Van Noten catalogue becomes a diorama showing how these ephemera participate to the construction of a culture of the live while revealing the mediatization of fashion show. By saying so, I do not mean that the shows, described or portrayed in ephemera, were exclusively built to be mediatized via these ephemera. Rather, I argue

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Figure 70  Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 28–29. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

that ephemera have been participating in a process of mediatization and have become, in the archive, crucial instruments to reveal it. In fact, fashion shows have existed, to borrow once again the words of Philip Auslander, ‘in a mediatized culture’87 and they were meant – especially during the frame of time involving the ephemera discussed in this book – to be documented as much as to be experienced by limited audiences at the venue. The documentary nature of these ephemera, the recurrent uses of the images portraying media actors evidence a transition, a transformation in the mediatization of fashion show and its image control. This is not only evident in the construction of what I previously defined as the ‘look-moment’ but it becomes clear in those ephemera that particularly stage the complexity of practices that participate in an institutionalization of the show as a media event. In this ephemera, the spectacularization and aestheticization of these practices nurture a culture of the ‘live’ that paradoxically certifies the existence of the show as event, inverting the hierarchies that see the documentation of the show as a secondary tool. When speaking about live performance and the performativity of their documentation, Auslander proposes to think of a ‘mutual dependence of the live and the mediatized’, challenging ‘the traditional assumption that the live precedes the mediatized’.88 Instead, the performance theorist proposes that the ‘general response of

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Figure 71  Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 30–31. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

live performance to the oppression and economic superiority of mediatized forms has been to become as much like them as possible’.89 This perspective resonates fascinatingly in Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’09 menswear show, when the Belgian house decided to transform its usual catwalk into a live performance of a catalogue (Figure 73). Recreating a life-size catalogue on the catwalk, this fashion show demonstrates the role that catalogues play as aesthetic tools for Margiela, while unexpectedly inverting the condition of dependence of ephemera on the show. The show stages its mediation. At the Margiela’s show, the scenography mimics the accordion structure of the catalogue and its aesthetics: the circled number, the written description of the look and the black mark on the models’ eyes. Here models stand still recreating live the exact images of the catalogue. The live materialization of Margiela’s catalogue in the show perfectly stages the economic dependence and aesthetic contamination of the fashion show from its mediatization and, to some extent, evokes Auslander’s vision of the reciprocal relation between the live and the mediatized performance. Here the show is created to perform the catalogue in a sort of short-circuit that displaces any hierarchy or interdependence of the live event and its mediated documentation. The catalogue becomes live and the live becomes the catalogue. Performances of time

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Figure 72  Dries Van Noten women’s collection a/w ’07–’08 catalogue, pages 32–33. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Allusive fragments A temporal relationship of the ephemera to the event determines a transformation of its epistemic potentials, especially in those alluding to ungraspable elements which constitute the show, such as light, smell, sound and scenography. While they originally function as allusive seeds before the show, afterwards they are transformed into allusive fragments and traces of the event, able to evoke its multi-sensorial scope. The reverberation of scenographic effects in the archive may assume a more suggestive nature, evoking a metaphorical materialization of a specific aspect of the event: music, scenography, location or theme. A particular case is the Walter Van Beirendonck invitation a/w ’89–’90 (Figure 74): an invitation taking the shape of a music cassette containing ‘Hard Beat by Real Man’ by Jan Roelen of the Belgian band Arbeid Adelt. The song not only gives its name to the collection but is also used as the soundtrack of the show. The reference to the sensory nature of the show is not just written in a press release but is also transformed into a concrete echo of both the inspiration and the sound of the event. The latter is preserved in the form of an invitation that reverberates in the

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Figure 73  Maison Martin Margiela menswear s/s ’09 fashion show. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

archive. The presence of this cassette-invitation in the archive recalls the fundamental role played by the music in the show, functioning as echoes of the show rather than a direct record of the show’s sound.90 In similar ways, other fashion ephemera represent the aesthetic of the show, referring to its specific scenographic elements, such as the catwalk, without, however, being visual representations. Dries Van Noten’s womenswear s/s ’03 invitation (Figure 75), for example, is a postcard portraying a Magritte-like cloud which was physically reproduced on the ceiling of the room in which the fashion show was staged. The small card portrays an evanescence. To hold this invitation portraying a cloud in the sky, the beholder hauntingly infers – and in the archive is reminded of – both the scenography of the show and a tendency to grasp the transient in fashion. Fashion ephemera like the Van Noten card or the Van Beirendonck cassette stimulate an experiential relation with the event, functioning similarly to what Schneider defined as ‘architectures of access’ to explain how, in the archive, media devices impact on the ways ‘information can sound, feel, look, smell or taste’.91 In line with the show’s nature, fashion ephemera hint at the senses involved in the event

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Figure 74  Walter Van Beirendonck invitation a/w ’89–’90. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

Figure 75  Dries Van Noten s/s ’03 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. 130

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by evoking them. They do not simply inform us about their presence in the show, but they hail these sensations, alluding to them through material, visual and textual rhetoric. The ephemera in the archive of MoMu that manifest more declaratively such sensory complexity are probably press releases which often contain precise explanation of the scenographic element of the show like in the case of Margiela’s press releases. While I previously discussed how Maison Martin Margiela press releases temporally fragment the show, here I want to focus on their capacity to intimate and record its multisensory nature, looking at the s/s ’99 press release. It says: 6 rue Fèrou, a large abandoned private house at Place St Suplice in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. The official ‘calendar’ of shows, sent to journalists by the French Chambre Syndical of Haute Couture and Prêt a Porter is stamped and used as invitation. The invited public fill the first two floors of the house. All shutters on the windows and curtains are shut to the outside world. Only the existing light bulbs, hanging on a wire from each ceiling, light each room. The sound and conversations of the public on the first floor are broadcast to the public on the ground floor and vice versa. While the public waits for the show to begin, men in white coats, wearing ‘sandwich boards’, walk in procession through the rooms. Poster size photographs of garments from ‘6’ are printed on each sandwich board. Fifteen men wearing garments from ‘10’ follow them. When all twenty-five men leave the space, the lights go out, and the invited public stands in darkness. Forty women wearing the collection begin their procession, one at a time, through each room. As each woman enters a room they are lit by small lights hand-held by a team of fifty-four men spread throughout the house. As they move through the room their light follows them and goes out as they leave the room. Each woman smells of patchouli oil. A soundtrack of heavy rock music plays over the sound system. For the finale all of the forty women and twenty-five men, pass through the crowd. (Maison Martin Margiela 1998) This press release not only focuses on the catwalk but also describes the physical presence, movements and interactions among audience, objects and models. The press release pays much attention to the synaesthetic character of the event, explaining how this event is not merely a ‘one-way’ action but is created through the interaction between objects, subjects, sound and smell in space and time. The sandwich boards, the garments, the models, the smell of the patchouli oil, the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the broadcast conversations of the public and the public itself all participate in the constitution of the event. The press release presents the complexity of the event where objects (sandwich boards, garments, bulbs) are actors just as much as the models and the public are. While the description of the public in the first paragraph of the press release is testimony to the passage of time, the public is here seen as a vehicle through

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which to experience the show. Reading the press release, it is possible to evoke the event from the perspective of the viewing public, rethinking its different experiences: from the darkness in which the public sits, to the smell of patchouli. The different elements – the voice of the narrator, the fragmented account of the event, and the chronotopic rhetoric used to describe it – all transport the reader into the show, with its constituent parts and its multiple moments. This final example illustrates how fashion ephemera accentuate the different components of the fashion show, highlighting what Gilles Deleuze defines as the ‘properties of the event’. In his essay ‘What is an Event?’ in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Deleuze explains the event has ‘having intrinsic properties (for example, height, intensity, timbre of a sound, a tint, a value, a saturation of colour). […] Matter, or what fills space and time, offers characters that always determine its texture as a function of different materials that are part of it (the event).’92 Similarly to the definition given by Deleuze, fashion shows are events with intrinsic properties that connect them to each other, comprising their ‘matter’. Smell, sound, lights, but also garments and the public, shape the event as such, and ephemera – like those described in this section – are all transient entities helping to re-animate this ‘matter’ of the show while being matter themselves. The constant dialogue between the material and the immaterial is what constitutes these fashion ephemera and shapes their discourse on the ephemeral. The ephemeral in fashion is therefore not only at the basis of a consumeristic practice but it is affirmed – if not equally importantly – through a consolidation and construction of its imaginary. In her Esthétique de l’éphémere, Christine Buci-Glucksmann explains how the ephemeral is constructed via images of the present. ‘It [the ephemeral] is a present’, she writes, ‘that has been stopped and immobilized […], or a frozen and fragmented image like in the case of the baroque allegory or the modern montage’.93 Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s perspective of the ruin as allegory, Buci-Gluscksmann stresses the narrativization of the ephemeral through the instances of time and its immaterial sensations. ‘The ephemeral’, suggests the philosopher, ‘is not time but the sensible manifestation of its vibration’.94 It is this generative character that is present in these fashion ephemera. While we cannot consider ephemera as ruins in a Benjaminian sense, these ephemera share an allegorical generative impulse as fragments of time while also acting as epistemic tools that fragment time in fashion. While not limited to it, this potential becomes particularly evident in relation to the fashion show that is used, in ephemera, as a trope to perform the concreteness of the ephemeral. Each element of the event is staged in a materialized celebration of the immaterial: from the model’s walk to sound or smell passing through its temporal deployment. All these ingredients are allusively enacting the ephemerality of a show, consequentially hinting at the ephemeral nature of fashion and its practices. This is achieved via an allusive practice dictated by the temporality of the making that insinuates an evocative potential rather than a ‘documentary truth’. If invitations anticipate the event and then become its traces, press releases are often written before

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the show and are then given to press and buyers on the day of the event, or even in those catalogues that articulate the temporality of the show by juxtaposing images of the show with other images. In this sense, the timing of their making determines their allusive potential. Judith Clark has briefly touched upon this character when speaking of invitations and reading them as ‘seed(s) of intention’.95 In her article, she explains how this allusiveness is a game played by fashion designers and graphic designers in order to create an allusion that ‘conceals one intention whilst it reveals another; it relies on the reader to understand the message, to get it, in order for it not to remain a merely decorative device’.96 In fashion ephemera, all these clues about the show are more than simple decorative elements; they rather demonstrate a specific epistemic function overpassing their understanding as promotional tools or static evidence. Their particular matter reveals a conscious reflection by its makers on their being ephemeral materials and their particular value as remains of an event. Ann Demeulemeester’s a/w ’06–’07 invitation acts as a hymn to this self-reflexive practice (Figure 76). The invitation comes in the shape of a folded poster on which, once unfolded, it is possible to read the text: ‘What Remains is Future’. The shiny paper of the invitation, and the contrast between the black font of the text and the brown background create an optical effect forcing the beholder to hold the invitation in a particular way in order to properly read the text. While the text states the importance of the remains, it sublimely creates a parallel with the type of ephemera on which this sentence is inscribed. The statement ‘What Remains is the Future’ provocatively assesses the nature of these fleeting objects and their centrality for the future duration of the show, while, at the same time, it works as an appeal for conservation. Here, time and the principles of transitoriness are embraced, celebrated and fetishized. The invitation plays with time in multiple ways. It moves materially and immaterially from past to future: from being an announcement of a show, to remains of the event, while suggesting its capacity to function as a seed for its future reconstruction.

Performances of imagination In fashion ephemera, time is not simply a historical variable but it is a recurrent imaginative tool used to valorize and construct an experience of the ephemeral. In her discussion of Sayre’s ‘Object of Performance’, Stiles explains this difference between these two potentials of a document, describing it as ‘the contingency of the document’. Stiles explains how a performance document not only refers ‘to a former action but also to the construction of a wholly fictive space’.97 As in the case of some performance documentation, the beholder of MoMu’s ephemera is constantly projected into a fictional space, faced with a staged idea that characterizes this peculiar form of documentation. Their performative nature is therefore connected to their aesthetic nature, their mobility in time but, most importantly, their capacity to use the fictional as an instigator of an experience of time in the beholder. In this sense, this type of fashion ephemera demand

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Figure 76  Ann Demeulemeester a/w ’06–’07 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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from their beholder an imaginative faculty able to recognize these objects as fertile and suggestive rather than definitive or static evidence. The only proof that these ephemera strive for is the proof of the imaginative character of fashion, as empirical and allusive matters of the show are constantly meshed together on a plane between fiction and reality. This nature is well grasped by the graphic designer Paul Boudens who has coined the term ‘post-invitations’ to define a type of invitation card that he created for Yohji Yamamoto.98 Boudens’ post-invitations are cards, with images depicting fictional moments of a hypothetical show. Consisting of a photographic montage, the front of the invitations superimposes different types of image, often portraying typical moments or elements of the fashion show, such as the line-up of models backstage, models on the catwalk or images of the looks. These photographs are not necessarily taken at the show they depict but allude to a hypothetical show. With his ‘post-invitations’, Boudens anticipates and reminds the beholder of the timing of a collection’s presentation. By using specific references to the show, Boudens plays tricks with time, projecting the invitation and its beholder into a warped time dimension. Unlike catwalk pictures, Boudens’ post-invitations reverse the chronology of ephemera and the fashion show. Instead of resembling the show, these post-invitations visually represent a fictional past show, simulating its real happening through their temporal features. If these ‘post-invitations’ do photographically refer to a fictive fashion show, they simultaneously track and chase its becoming (in their being ‘before the event’) and its disappearance (in their being ‘after the event’). By meshing fiction and reality, Boudens’ post-invitations for Yamamoto become a fruitful metaphor that shows how fashion ephemera in the archive haunt the event rather than contain it.99 Their fictive nature does not create a direct connection to the past event that is, however, requested by their data. By playing on the temporality of the event, these ephemera produce, in the archive, a sort of short-circuit of time mixing past, present and future. In this sense, another extreme example is Margiela’s menswear a/w ’09–’10 invitation (Figure 77). Taking the shape of a three-dimensional small plastic television, the invitation works as a modern praxinoscope as it contains a black and white pictorial slideshow which can be watched by holding up a tiny viewfinder to the eye and clicking a button to scroll through the pictures. Although this invitation physically works as an optical toy, it acts differently from the previous category of ephemera discussed before. In fact, Margiela’s invitation does not create an illusion of movement as the projected images start with a frame giving the details of the show (date, location) and acting as a sort of theatrical announcement for the following frame-images which are a mix of old pictures from the menswear line ‘10’ and some new pictures portraying models holding a ‘prison plate’ reporting the year of the collection and the name of the line. The invitation functions as a peepshow where the beholder is required to look into this little hole in order to enter the show. While this technique seems to play on the intimacy and exclusiveness of the fashion show, the montage of images does not, in this case, represent the passage of time. The criminal mug-shot preview of the forthcoming show consists in a performance recreating a police line-up. In the archive, these visual allusions evoke a show that Performances of time

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Figure 77  Maison Martin Margiela menswear a/w ’09–’10 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

happened without ‘truly’ evidencing it. Although the invitation’s images do not originate from the show, they still create a proximity to the event in the archive. In the archive, this invitation acts as a sort of fictional evidence of the fashion show, where the pictures of prisoner-models evoke a show performance that was staged in reality at ‘La Maison des Metallos’, 94, Rue J-Tambod, Paris. This latter example manifests, once again, a recurrent relation between cinematic and theatrical representations and time, showing, both materially and immaterially, how these fashion ephemera generate a very peculiar epistemic functioning. Taking the shape of a praxinoscope filled with images of a potential show, this invitation makes us rethink the nature of its material, visual and textual features. In fashion ephemera, different techniques of representation of time are at play, provoking a peculiar relation to the experience of time in the beholder. In this Margiela invitation, for example, the images do not simply evoke a Barthesian photographic ‘having been there’, nor do they evoke the cinematic ‘being-there of the thing’ through their capacity to perform the time of the show in the present. Instead, this Margiela toy evokes fashion ephemera’s potential to enact an ‘imagined having been there’. Their fictional nature and their temporality activate – rather than simply evidence – imagination. The Margiela invitation evokes how fashion ephemera function as performances of imagination rather than as mere records of the show. In haunting the event in time (before and after), 136

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these ephemera show how they require and demand an imaginative practice instead of a factual reconstruction. Through their meshing of fictive and factual references to the show, these fashion ephemera reshape the show in the present, thereby enabling a contingent experience of the event in which imagination plays a crucial role. When speaking about press releases as marketing tools, Paola Catenaccio argues that these communication devices use a specific form of description that combines promotion and information, and for this reason they must be seen as a hybrid form of narrative that strategically aims to create wonder.100 In the archive, their promotional nature is put in dialogue with their informational nature, as these ephemera do not directly mirror the event. Rather, through their various features, these objects spark imaginative evocations in their beholder, simultaneously performing the imaginary character of fashion shows. In this sense, fashion ephemera generate and stimulate a mechanism of imaginative engagement that is, once again, reminiscent of Philip Auslander’s theory on performance documentation. Drawing on the idea of ‘fusion of horizon’ by Gadamer, Auslander explains the importance of reaffirming a phenomenological relation between the document and the viewer as a way to experience the performance. ‘The truth of a performance documentation does not reside’, he argues, ‘in its indexical relationship to the event or the verifiable accuracy with which it depicts the event’ but rather in its capacity to ‘imaginatively reactivate historical performances in the present’.101 Such a vision resembles the ways of functioning of fashion ephemera conserved at MoMu and their capacity to lead their beholder to an imaginative reconstruction. This does not mean that ephemera invoke only fiction. Rather, their promotional and informational flow ground an imaginative empiricism where the ontology of the show – as a performative ephemeral device of fashion – is mirrored, promulgated and staged. In this sense, the promotional nature of these ephemera in connection to their informational value exceed a degree of mere description and enter the realm of the performative representation. In a passage of his Lecture I, J. L. Austin hints exactly at this difference when he tries to explain the nature of performative utterance. ‘To [performatively] utter the sentence’, he says, ‘is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it’.102 This distinction is employed and further discussed by performance theorist Matthew Reason, who explains how ‘publicity photographs […] do more than illustrate marketing material, but also come to represent and prepresent the performance in its continuing absence’.103 All the fashion ephemera discussed here manifest a similar potential. They do not simply present and promote a show but they project the beholder towards (or backwards to) the fashion show, by inviting them towards an activation of the event. The promotional meshed with the informational produces a performative act that engages the beholder in practices of animation and this potential, as I show in the following chapter, becomes even more apparent when ephemera evoke the qualities of garments.

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CHAPTER 3

Poetic transformations

Ann Demeulemeester’s catalogues always contain pictures of all the garments in her fashion shows, while Walter Van Beirendonck’s catalogues always include a selection of studio images that depict the entire collection. Maison Martin Margiela’s press releases dedicate a section to a general explanation of the fabrics, cuts and shapes used in the collection, while A. F. Vandevorst’s are often organized in four sections describing the theme of the collection, the materials, the colours and the types of garment (e.g. trousers, skirts, coats). These are just a few examples of how the ephemera at MoMu enable knowledge about dress. Garments may appear in catwalk pictures or still images; they can be depicted on models in movement, or standing still, or on mannequins; they can be shown in invitations as a sort of preview of the forthcoming collection; and they can be described in press releases either individually, piece by piece, or as an entire collection. Depending on the type of ephemera, the beholder may gain more or less detailed knowledge about the colour, shape, material, or manufacture of the dress. In other cases, garments are pictorially distorted or even blurred via specific photographic, textual and graphic techniques. Building on the previous chapters, this one investigates the particular ways in which fashion ephemera reveal their capacity to enable sensory and embodied types of knowledge. Here I not only explore techniques of storytelling in relation to garments, but I want to stress how these ephemera make evident the centrality, in fashion, of embodied and material forms of knowledge. Initially drawing on the work of Roland Barthes and theories of the representation of dress, this chapter will stress the capacity of this type of fashion ephemera to activate a discussion on tactile knowledge in fashion, instigating a dialogue with studies of haptic and tactile epistemology developed in art history, cinema studies, material culture studies and literary studies. In this chapter, I continue my attempt to evidence the imaginative potential of fashion ephemera, focusing on the ways in which fashion ephemera evoke the sensorial qualities of dress, consequentially revealing their specific functioning as objects of knowledge.

A ménage à trois In The Fashion System, Barthes argues that the circulation of a garment relies on an ‘activity of transformation’,1 whereby the real three-dimensional garment is ‘translated’ into visual and verbal representations. Basing his study on images and captions in fashion magazines,2 Barthes identifies three languages of dress (real, word and image)3 that are

Figure 78  Maison Martin Margiela catalogue a/w ’00–’01. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

then seen as moving through different steps of signification: the technological (the real garment), the iconic (image) and the verbal (word). In a similar way, fashion ephemera often convert the three-dimensional garment into a visual representation and a written description, acting analogously to what Barthes defines as ‘written-clothing’ and ‘imageclothing’4: two useful concepts to introduce the ways in which fashion ephemera enable knowledge about dress. Like fashion magazines, fashion ephemera rely on written descriptions and/or visual representations that, once put together, convey a more indepth knowledge of the properties of the garment. For example, the verbal description of a garment in a press release may be combined with the image in a catalogue from the same season, showing once again the efficacy of comparing fashion ephemera from the same season in order to activate their epistemic potentials. In other cases, ‘written-clothing’ and ‘image-clothing’ may be combined in the same object, which is very common in fashion catalogues. Maison Martin Margiela’s catalogues are probably the clearest example of this. Like the fashion captions analysed by Barthes, Margiela’s catalogues always contain descriptions of the garment at either the bottom or the side of the image (Figure 78), where the look number is also written in white chalk and circled, for the benefit of buyers and journalists. For example, the womenswear a/w ’00–’01 catalogue contains an image of a model in a long black wool coat, a knee-length black dress and black leather boots. The description on the left of the image says in both French and 140

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English: ‘Panneau rectangulaire en laine porté en manteaux (31A047). Ancienne robe compressée (00R086). Cuissardes tabi en cuir (02Z082). Détail: porte olé. / Rectangular length of wool as a coat (31A047). Compressed vintage dress (00R086). Thigh tabi boots in leather (02Z082). Key ring detail’. While the catalogue is a good example of how Barthes’s ‘written-clothing’ and ‘imageclothing’ are suitable concepts to understand how ephemera enable knowledge about dress, it also shows two differences from Barthes’s study that characterize the particular ways MoMu’s fashion ephemera enable knowledge about garments. Firstly, the content of ‘written-clothing’ and ‘image-clothing’ is different in fashion ephemera and fashion magazines. Fashion ephemera present additional information for the buyers and journalists. While a fashion magazine caption usually contains the brand name and a brief description of the garment, fashion ephemera may highlight different things. For example, in the case of the Margiela catalogue the written-clothing also includes technical information such as the buyers’ codes used to identify a garment or fabric (31A047 in Figure 78), and the ‘look’ numbers placed below the image (number 1 in Figure 78). While the code signals the buyers’ practice, it also presents the designers’ language which refers to and identifies the garments, colours and fabrics in a collection. Meaningless to someone who is not familiar with the fashion industry and its forms of communication, the ‘garment code’ and the ‘look’ are knowable only to fashion industry professionals. They remain ‘mute’ to outsiders, showing not only the specific language of the industry but also the multiple contexts in which garments assume meaning. A specific look, for example, both shows the Maison’s categorization of garments into an assemblage and enables a comparison with its successive interpretations in fashion shows and fashion magazines. A second difference from Barthes’s idea of ‘dress transformation’ regards the diverse epistemic registers at play in ephemera. The importance of combining readings of the visual, the textual and the material in order to fully understand the epistemic functioning of fashion ephemera becomes particularly evident in the ways knowledge about garments is enabled through ephemera. Again, Margiela’s catalogues are good examples to show this mechanism and relate back to the discussion initiated by Barthes about the various forms garments may take. In fact, if Margiela’s catalogues clearly show the idea of ‘written-clothing’ and ‘image-clothing’ proposed by Barthes, these catalogues also show the inadequacy of recognizing an epistemic superiority of the word over the image, and the importance of material features. The capacity to transform and ‘direct’ the beholder’s interpretation of the garment is influenced by the material features of fashion ephemera. Like all of Margiela’s catalogues, the a/w ’05–’06 catalogue is a small booklet made from white, fabric-covered cardboard on which the photographs of the looks are glued. Margiela’s catalogues always come in the shape of an accordion, allowing the beholder to play with the images, physically manipulating them in ways that may have an effect on his/her knowledge of a garment. In the case of the ‘Artisanal’ a/w ’05–’06 catalogue (Figure 79), the beholder, by moving the pages of the accordion-catalogue, can see both an image and a written description of the garments. By unfolding the accordion-shaped catalogue and matching different pages, the beholder can create a sort of montage effect Poetic transformations

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Figure 79  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’05–’06 catalogue, view from above. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

that permits them simultaneously to see both a full-length image of the garment on a model and a close-up of the garment on a headless mannequin (Figure 80). In this sense, the physical nature of the catalogue influences the knowledge that the beholder attains by engaging with it, allowing them to compare different types of images and descriptions. Furthermore, the analogic nature of the image and the Courier font used to describe the image evoke an old practice of reporting fashion via specific media of communication (typewriter and analogical photography for example) that stress a specific remote manner to experience the garment.5 Self-reflexivity here is demonstrated through the use of a rhetoric of materials aiming to discourse the garment and its mediation. The texture, shape or layout of an invitation, catalogue or press release can enable a physical relation with the beholder, influencing their perception of the images or descriptions of the garments, recalling a parallel with the wearer’s tactile relationship to the garment. As Joanne Entwistle explains, the properties of a dress are not limited to its colour, shapes or fabric; rather, clothing is indissolubly linked to the body, being in constant contact with the skin.6 The complex sartorial and conceptual nature of the garments created by these designers draws attention to the more sensory aspects of knowledge through their embodied and tactile properties, and the ephemera that relate 142

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Figure 80  Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’05–’06 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

to them have the capacity to be more than textual or visual indexes. Indeed, as Sophie Woodward stresses, the reduction of garments to symbolic representations ‘ignores the crucial tactile and sensual aspects of clothing as worn by people’.7 Similarly, the reduction of ephemera to representations of garments would fail to account for the ways in which fashion images, textual descriptions and material features can convey these qualities to the beholder. Without undermining the importance of representation and visuality in the ways ephemera enable knowledge about garments, fashion ephemera hint at something more than clear representation. They require a different type of engagement, stimulating an embodied involvement in their beholder. In ephemera like Margiela’s accordion catalogues, the act of wearing is paralleled with an act of manipulation. As such, fashion ephemera evoke the sensory attributes of garments, instigating a reflection on the performative and embodied forms of knowledge activated by garments. Matter is here rethought in other materials and even evoked via specific visual and textual rhetoric. In these ephemera, the material is as important as the visual and textual. If Paul Jobling was stressing the importance of reading images and text in tandem when speaking about the interpretation of editorials in fashion magazines, fashion ephemera demands a tryptic view, a ménage à trois between image, text and material. In many cases, an image or a text, in order to be seen or read, requires a physical manipulation. The beholder is asked to physically and metaphorically unfold and unpack these Poetic transformations

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ephemera. In fact, the majority of fashion ephemera in MoMu’s archive do not solely contain focused images or descriptions. Press releases may come in the shape of a poem or a collection of short essays without clearly describing the garments. In other cases, catalogues may unfold blurred images of garments, or images that do not show the garment at all. What kind of knowledge about dress do these blurry images and elliptical descriptions evoke in the beholder of the ephemera? What do their features evoke? And how does their materiality affect the way of knowing a garment?

Haptic fashion images Dries Van Noten’s menswear s/s 2013 catalogue contains a range of images shot during the fashion show, from backstage to the catwalk. It juxtaposes them against another type of picture that, at first sight, is difficult to read. For example, a double page spread shows a close up of a check jacket while in the background there are two blurred images of models hanging on the wall (Figure 81). The image is ambiguous as the material does not suggest a specific garment, at first sight. Flanked by the two blurred images of models, the central portion is ‘immersed’ in the garment, showing only its checked, woollen fabric, and with no further clues about the type, shape or cut of the garment. This immersion is enhanced by the materiality of the catalogue, as the centre fold between the pages corresponds to the folds of the fabric, suggesting the fluidity of the textile rather than the structure of the jacket. Rather than clearly representing a garment, this spread disorients the beholder, showing a close up of the garment that enhances the haptic potential of the image. Deriving from the Greek ‘haptikos’, the term ‘haptic’ means ‘able to come into contact with’ and is a noun and an adjective that both relate to the sense of touch.8 Used by scholars in art history, philosophy and cognitive psychology, the term was firstly systematized by the art historian Alois Riegl, who distinguished ‘haptic’ vision from ‘optic’ vision as two different types of perception in Greek and Roman art.9 Riegl suggested that the ‘haptic’ was a form of close-range vision that stimulated a tactile perception, contrasting it to the long-distance and disembodied gaze of ‘optic’ vision.10 Riegl’s work was taken up by Gilles Deleuze, who focused on the etymological meanings of the haptic, interpreting the concept in terms of tactile proximity.11 Rather than distinguishing the ‘haptic’ and ‘optic’ through the opposition between touch and sight, Deleuze considered their correlation, investigating the tactile perception of an object through its visual representation.12 Deleuze’s etymological turn is highly relevant to how the term is used in contemporary visual media, and particularly in film studies. Most often discussed in relation to the capacity of film to stimulate a tactile sensation in the spectator,13 the term ‘haptic’ has been used to explain how the spectator can ‘touch through the eye’.14 Analysing ethnographic essay films, Laura Marks, for example, shows how a certain type of intercultural film makes extensive use of blurry or close-up images that are able to destabilize vision and encourage a tactile sensation in the spectator. These

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Figure 81  Dries Van Noten menswear s/s 2013 catalogue, pages 5–6. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

‘haptic images’15 are intended by the filmmaker to create a shock response in the viewer in order to reperform and problematize the condition the filmmaker wants to criticize. Similarly to haptic images in film, Van Noten’s blurred fashion image destabilizes the vision of the viewer and seeks to stimulate in him/her a tactile perception of the garment. By presenting a close up of a jacket, the image initially disorients the viewer, who needs a few seconds to take in the picture. The close up of the garment works as what Marks defines as a ‘tactile close-up’,16 where proximity to a specific object at first generates disorientation but then privileges the tactile qualities of the image. Analysing the close up of the hairs gleaming on the scalp of the protagonist in the video Sniff, Marks shows how this technique ‘may give the impression of seeing for the first time, gradually discovering what is in the image rather than coming to the image already knowing what it is’.17 According to Marks, in haptic visuality the viewer is more ‘likely to lose herself in the image, to lose her sense of proportion’, requiring a bit of time to realize what they are viewing.18 This becomes evident in Van Noten’s image where the centrality and size of the jacket in relation to the blurry background work to disorientate the viewer and trick their vision, provoking a tactile sensation. The tactility of a garment can also be suggested by a montage of images showing different elements of a garment, as in the case of a double page spread in Van Noten’s a/w ’06–’07 catalogue (Figure 82). While the picture on the right shows the entire garment, Poetic transformations

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Figure 82  Dries Van Noten menswear a/w ’06–’07 catalogue, pages 10–11. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

the image on the left depicts a detail. Neither image stands on its own, but each is in dialogue with the other. The spread demonstrates Riegl’s differentiation between ‘optic’ and ‘haptic’. The image on the right performs the ‘optic’, giving a long-distance view that does not seek to stimulate any sort of tactile perception. By contrast, the image on the left works as ‘haptic’, giving the viewer a close up of the soft material of the duvet jacket and its quilting. While in the previous example this sensation was created by a blurred close up of a single image, here the combination of a catwalk image (optic) and the close up (haptic) highlights the physical feeling of the garment. Thus, the double page spread not only informs the beholder about the construction techniques of the jacket but also evokes its materiality. If in previous examples the montage technique was used to perform the time of the show, here it is adopted to induce a tactile sensation of the garment. Hence, Van Noten’s examples help to introduce what I want to define as a haptic fashion image. What, then, is a haptic fashion image? Or when is a fashion image haptic? And how does it differ from other fashion images? While the definition of a fashion image has been at the centre of many debates,19 the idea of haptics in relation to fashion images has largely been investigated in connection with representations of dress in paintings and, more recently, in fashion photography.20 Following Marks’s definition of haptic images,

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I define a haptic fashion image as one that stimulates the tactile sensation of a garment (or another fashion object) in its viewer in two ways. First of all, the ‘effectiveness’ of a haptic fashion image may vary drastically depending on the ‘fashion competence’ of its viewer. The blurred image of the woollen jacket or the close-up of the quilted coat may generate different types of tactile sensation in the viewer, depending on their knowledge of fabrics or sartorial practices. For instance, a viewer with no knowledge of fabrics or sartorial practices may miss some epistemic qualities of Van Noten’s image (and of the garment). To explain this mechanism, Marks speaks about the ‘memory of touch’.21 Drawing on Deleuzian film theory, with its roots in Henri Bergson’s study on memory and perception, Marks argues that, by destabilizing the viewer, haptic images go beyond audiovisual sensations to stimulate in the viewer a tactile sensation which is based on their embodied knowledge and sensorial memory. However, this knowledge is informed not only by an individual’s personal memory but also by the cultural context in which they experiences the image: what Marks defines as the ‘cultural sensorium’.22 Marks explains how the spectator’s tactile sensation is grounded on both an individual and a collective embodied memory that influences the ways an image is both created and received.23 Using this theory to study the audience for early twentieth-century fashion shows, Evans proposes the idea of ‘a material, haptic, fashion gaze’ where ‘a tactile memory of silk, velvet or skin can be evoked by a fashion image or performance’, onto which a ‘viewer, depending on their specific historical moment, will bring their own “sensorium” to bear’.24 Evans discusses how the vision of a garment worn by a model could stimulate a specific tactile perception of a garment in the fashion show’s spectator, depending on a certain ‘cultural competence’.25 In the case of fashion ephemera, this competence is linked to the idea of the ‘implied beholder’, a concept I presented in the introduction to refer to the original addressee of these ephemera: someone with specific knowledge about a garment and its material qualities. Being initially created for buyers or journalists, these images rely on a ‘fashion competence’ that requires the viewer to be able to read the information about the garment from the image. In her work on fashion buyers, Joanne Entwistle describes this type of knowledge, explaining how decision-making processes in fashion are often based on a tacit and embodied aesthetic knowledge.26 Similarly, in fashion ephemera, the blurry image, which does not represent the garment clearly, functions as haptic by invoking a shared knowledge within the fashion industry and a specific visual and material fashion competence of the addressee. This does not mean, however, that haptic fashion images can only be experienced by fashion professionals. As Entwistle argues, culture mandates that each body is a dressed body, and hence everyone develops an embodied knowledge of fabric even without specific fashion training.27 While haptic images in cinema are culturally specific and some viewers may miss the implication of some references,28 in the case of haptic images in fashion, the viewer may not need any particular fashion knowledge for their tactile senses to be triggered. Through different degrees of knowledge, the haptic fashion image always triggers an embodied knowledge of a garment and its properties, although this knowledge may range from the general to the more specialized. Poetic transformations

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Figure 83  Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’86-’87 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 84  Yohji Yamamoto menswear a/w ’86–’87 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

This leads to the second characteristic of a haptic fashion image: the functionality of the image and the intentionality of its creators. Not every blurred image of a garment has to be haptic, nor are blurred images of garments the only form of haptic image. Thus, it is crucial to contextualize their creation and function in order to fully understand their scope. As already explained, catalogues, for example, are intended to present the collection in images. This visual presentation can range from practical information about size, colour and fabric to more suggestive information about the tactile qualities of a garment and the embodied sensations of wearing it. This range can be seen in Yohji Yamamoto’s catalogues, created in collaboration with the art director Marc Ascoli, the photographer Nick Knight and the graphic designer Peter Saville. Produced between 1986 and 1995, this series of catalogues has since assumed iconic status, and some are conserved in the archive of MoMu, having originally belonged to Linda Loppa. As the three creators of these catalogues have stated, these photographs aimed to prioritize the role of fabric and cut in Yamamoto’s creations at a time when much fashion photography privileged the role of models and overlooked the properties of the garment.29 In Yamamoto’s catalogues, the attention shifted to the textures, lines, colours and cuts of his garments, exemplified in the iconic photograph of the model Sarah Wingate that was shot for the womenswear a/w ’86–‘87 catalogue (Figure 83). The image appears on the cover of the catalogue and depicts a graphic black silhouette of Wingate wearing a cap, a long coat and shoes, against a white background. It is a Poetic transformations

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Figure 85  Yohji Yamamoto catalogue a/w ’86–’87, pages 2–3. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 86  Yohji Yamamoto catalogue a/w ’86–’87, pages 4–5. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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flat and two-dimensional image of her body, making it impossible to see her face or skin. Contrasting with this two dimensional quality of the image, a red-pink bustle of glittery, translucent net flares out from the back of the coat. The bustle is depicted threedimensionally, in contrast to the rest of the image. In her analysis of this image, writer and cultural critic Alison Bancroft interprets this contrast as a negation of the subject, since the model is deprived of her threedimensionality.30 Bancroft uses Knight’s photography as an example of the alienation of the female body in fashion photography. Unlike her, I argue that, especially in the case of these catalogues, the decision to depict only a flat, black, graphic silhouette of the model foregrounds the properties of the garment rather than the alienation of the female body. Knight explains how these photographs were not based on the relationship between the model and himself but, rather, between the garment and  himself,31 and it is significant that he used this technique to photograph both male and female models. The first catalogue created by the trio of Ascoli, Knight and  Saville was for Yamamoto’s menswear ’86–’87 collection and depicts only male models in silhouette, showing an ambition to mimic Yamamoto’s particular cut (Figure 84).32 The impulse behind these images should be rethought as a conscious attempt to evoke the sensation of the garment. The image seeks to evoke the feeling of the garment in the viewer: to make the garment ‘alive’. Although it does so in a different way to the previous examples, the bustle image also destabilizes the viewer in order to stimulate a tactile sensation. As Bancroft recognizes in her interpretation of Yamamoto’s catalogues, these images often confuse the viewer (who does not understand what they are looking at) by requiring ‘a pre-existing knowledge that the viewer brings to the image’.33 In this claim, however, Bancroft seems unwittingly to confirm the haptic nature of these images, as her idea of ‘pre-existing knowledge’ echoes what Marks calls ‘memory of touch’ and which I previously defined as a fashion competence. While this destabilization can be created through blurred or close-up images of the garment, here it is provoked by the juxtaposition of the black, flat two-dimensional silhouette and the vivid red threedimension bustle. This attempt to make the colour shine is augmented by the all-red pages at the beginning and the end of the catalogue. Opening the catalogue, the beholder can touch the three red pages that, to some extent, visually prepare them for the colour contrast of the image (Figures 85–86). This last example stresses how, in fashion ephemera, haptic fashion images are used to privilege the tactile properties of the garment to the detriment of clear visual representations of it. In fashion ephemera (and especially in the case of fashion catalogues), the presentness of the garment is linked not only to its being visible, but also to the capacity of an image to recreate the multiple properties of the dress and to metaphorically make it ‘touchable’. Haptic images in fashion ephemera not only convey signs of the dress, but also mime their tactile sensation through specific photographic techniques, using visual or material combinations that reinforce the sensorial qualities of a garment, including its tactile aspects. Although this may also be the case for some independent fashion magazines,34 the concept of haptic images is particularly useful 152

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as regards ephemera such as catalogues because of their aim to allude to the tactile properties of a garment. Thus, the above examples show, on the one hand, how haptic visuality is an appropriate theoretical tool to investigate the ontology of those images that do not clearly represent the garment, but which may be more effective in delivering its sensorial properties. On the other hand, these examples show the importance of rethinking these ‘unclear’ images in their original material context to fully understand their ontology as fashion images that move beyond the optical and evoke the haptic qualities of dress.

Material animations Fashion ephemera do not necessarily rely on a symbolic representation of the garment; rather, the beholder becomes the spectator of a tactile mimetic action that seeks to render the dress ‘feel-able.’ As the use of haptic fashion images suggests, the ‘feel’ of a garment is expressed through the creation of a simulated reality that is able to guarantee the performance of some distinctive traits of dress. This capacity of the image, and ephemera in general, relies on what Marks calls a ‘mimetic faculty’ in her discussion of the central epistemic stimulation provoked by haptic visuality.35 Building on the work of Michael Taussig,36 Marks suggests that haptic images in intercultural cinema are based on ‘sensuous mimesis’ as a form of knowledge rather than Western-centred symbolic representations. Similarly, a catalogue may be created with the desire to materialize the garment, using strategies to make it ‘alive’ through different registers of representation. As the photographer Nick Knight attests, catalogues such as the one produced for Yamamoto evoke the ‘reality effect’ through the constant challenging of photographic paradigms and through concentrating on specific elements of the garment that may disappear in a two dimensional representation of it.37 This mimetic tendency towards the ‘reality effect’ was indeed present in the red bustle image and becomes even more evident in another example from Yamamoto’s a/w ’87– ’88 catalogue, photographed by Nick Knight (Figure 87). Reproduced as a double page spread, the image shows Naomi Campbell from behind in a long, red coat, with her head turned to the right. As in the previous example, the model is seen in silhouette, so that her body and her face cannot be seen. Shot against a white background, the image of the coat is framed on either side by two long, blue, out of proportion gloves, converging towards the lower extremities of the coat. The coat does not follow Campbell’s figure, but is depicted in motion as she turns, showing the coat in its entirety. The picture does not show how the garment is tailored, nor does it show its material. On the contrary, the coat is ‘filled’ with intense red colour and black shadows. The technique used for this image resembles the colour-field technique used in painting. Emerging in abstract expressionism,38 this technique aims to heighten the sensation of colour and form while strengthening their dynamic.39 In this image Knight adopts this technique to recreate the feeling of the red woollen coat through a negation of shapes and cuts. The dynamic of the coat created by the colour-field technique Poetic transformations

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Figure 87  Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’87–’88 catalogue, pages 6–7. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

is also intensified by Knight’s use of colour printing.40 This technique produces a highcontrast colour negative in order to evoke the sensation of movement that is generated by the contrast with the white background, which eliminates any spatial reference. The coat is shot and printed as ‘it moves’. Contrary to the previous example, this image stimulates a dynamic sensation of the garment through the combination of different elements: the way in which the coat is depicted in movement; the colour-field used to depict the surface of the coat; the photographic technique used to evoke this movement; and finally the scaledup gloves depicted as if they were in movement towards the coat. The animation of a garment through the physical unfolding of ephemera represents an attempt to create a parallel between embodied sensations. While there is no clear equivalence between the tactile properties of the catalogue and the garment, the material animation of the catalogue aims to stimulate a physical engagement that hints at both an embodied feeling of the garment and its design complexities, as clearly evidenced in Margiela s/s ’94 catalogue. Margiela’s catalogue contains not one but four images for one ‘look’: a white men’s shirt transformed into a women’s dress. Although these images are laid out in the typical accordion format, they depart from Margiela’s usual visual style, which tends to feature the model against a white background with their eyes masked by a black bar, and label captions describing the garments. In this instance, the backdrop is 154

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Figure 88  Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’94 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

the same but, alongside the model, Margiela’s staff appear in their iconic white lab coats, dressing the model. Each image depicts a different stage in the process of draping the white shirt on the model. The first image shows her wearing a white, rope-like support on which the shirt will be draped. The second shows her holding a man’s shirt on a hanger from which the collar has been removed, but which is outlined in black, as the caption says. The third shows two members of staff draping the shirt on the rope-like support, and the final image shows the garment on the model. Step by step, the unfolding of the catalogue permits the unfolding of a sequence of actions that stage the mechanics of fitting the garment, unlike other examples where the accordion format is used to create a montage of images. Additionally, instead of the usual typed captions, brief descriptions of the garments’ properties are handwritten on the image itself, as in the first image where an handwritten text gives the look number and a description of the garment: ‘6A. Structure élastique, couleur clair. Reporté sur le devant. Rentré dans la structure élastique et porté en V drapé’ (Figure 88). In this case, the combination of words, material and images does not suggest haptic visuality but, rather, shows the sartorial qualities of the garment, staging its structure and wearability. The garment is presented in its sartorial complexity, showing inner details that are invisible when worn. One image alone could not convey the different Poetic transformations

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Figure 89  Maison Martin Margiela s/s ’99–’00 press folder image. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

steps necessary to design the garment or show its ‘elastic structure’ and design qualities. The material unfolding of the catalogue, the information about how to wear the garment, the handwritten interventions on the image and the presence of Margiela’s staff render the dynamics of the shirt. The design historian Mhairi McVicar explains how letters, faxes and emails specifying the construction details of an architectural project are crucial to the translation of a ‘poetic ideal [in]to a constructed reality’.41 Documents of the process, suggests McVicar, may actually concur to the transformative making of the object as much as its material making.42 Similarly, the Margiela catalogue stages a transformation, constructing a real effect through its specific references to the process of making a garment. Its sequence of backstage images depicting the members of staff dressing the model, and their handwritten comments, resemble the different steps in the making of a garment, projecting the beholder into the chronological sequence of its creation. While the ideas of work-in-progress and backstage are often aestheticized by Margiela in various practices with various meanings, the catalogue represents the garment dynamic, acting it in a state of becoming rather than as a finished object. Another important aspect of fashion ephemera is the centrality given to the garment in the image. This is visible in the previous example, where the shirt-dress is always at the centre of the image while the staff (and sometimes the model) appear to the side as 156

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devices that help to animate the garment. The focus on the garment is highlighted by the fact that the faces of both the model and the staff are cropped, and the image shows only the arms and hands of the latter as they fit the garment on the still body of the model. Here, an inanimate garment is animated through animate subjects who are cut out and, to some extent, objectified. Focusing on the role of models, Evans shows how, in the early twentieth century, mannequins’ bodies were rationalized in a sort of alienating process that led to their objectification. As Evans explains, the mannequins were asked to bring the dress to life, acting as ‘agents of transformation, […] as tricksters whose role was to animate the dress’.43 Hence, the objectification of models served as a counterpoint to the animation of the garment, as in the case of Margiela’s catalogue in which the model and the staff are objectified in order to represent the dynamism of the shirt. This counter-dialogue between objects and subjects is a common technique used to instil ‘life’ into garments through ephemera. This becomes even more evident in the case of the Maison Martin Margiela a/w ’99–’00 womenswear images attached to the press release (Figure 89). Instead of depicting the clothes on models, the pictures show pieces of the collection on mannequin parts. Similarly to the gloves in the Yamamoto catalogue, the focus is exclusively on the garments. In this press image, the body is cropped at the waist in such a manner that it appears to have been dissected. Here, the image tends towards the uncanny, as if the figure’s lower half existed in isolation. In this way, the jeans are still worn by a body, but by an incomplete body – evidenced by the slice of flesh that sits atop the waistband. The image of a cropped body is not uncommon in fashion photography, especially in advertising campaigns.44 However, in this case, the animation of the garment is not created by a model’s expressionless performance, but through a mutilation of the body in motion. In these images, the body is transformed into an inverse bust that, due to its fragmented nature, gives life to the garment. The relationship between the model’s cropped body and the worn garment can be compared to that between neoclassical busts and sculpted drapery, as described by the art historian Charles Robb. According to Robb, sculpted drapery has served highly strategic aesthetic purposes as it alleviates the abruptness of the truncated format and the compromising visual consequences of the ‘cropped’ figure, while framing the sculptural body.45 In the case of the Margiela image, there is an inverse action. Here, it is the cropped body that frames the garment, disguising its inanimate nature. The half body serves as a kind of fleshy scaffolding that supports and fills out the trousers, uncannily animating them. All these instances presenting the garment ‘in action’ exemplify a paradox. By presenting unreal and fictive narratives, these ephemera seek to create lifelike effects in the garments, to show their wearable and dynamic qualities. As these ‘animations’ show, garments are imbued with life and action as a way to compensate for the lack of their presence. Here the ‘liveness’ is not anymore in relation to time but to materiality as a way to enter an affective realm as a commercial and epistemological tool in the fashion industry. The garment is here bestowed with agency in order to enhance the function of garments, but also ephemera. This becomes particularly explicit in the press Poetic transformations

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Figure 90  A. F. Vandevorst s/s 2004 catalogue, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

releases that anthropomorphize garments, such as the Dries Van Noten a/w ’98–’99 press release, which explains how ‘the jackets are just asked [sic] to be loved and worn’. Here the press release provocatively claims a soul for the dress. Through its textual rhetoric, the press release presents the garment as an animate entity, capable of feeling loved when worn.

The sense of fabric The animation of garments in fashion ephemera contributes to an understanding of them not only as dynamic objects, but also as entities that involve multiple sensory levels. This quality is particularly accentuated by fashion ephemera alluding to the texture of garments and the properties of fabric, as in Yamamoto’s a/w ’91–’92 catalogue (Figure 16). While Chapter 1 focused on the capacity of the quotation to enhance the authorship of the designer, here it can be reinterpreted as a sort of hymn to the properties of the fabric. The left-hand page has two quotations: ‘It’s fabric’, under which is written, ‘Beautiful as it is, we want to handle it, push it, pull it. It’s like a current, it draws us in. But I didn’t make anything, really. Not this time’. On the right-hand page there is an image of a black dress on a mannequin and its reflection in the mirror. The statement 158

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Figure 91  A. F. Vandevorst s/s 2004 catalogue, pages 4–5. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

‘It’s fabric’, printed in bold style on the middle of the page, acts as a declaration of the condition of existence of the textile, and its capacity to be. The sentence alludes to the properties of the fabric, to a sort of magical capability in the creation of a garment: a condition that is reinforced by the picture on the right. Shot in what seems to be the atelier of the designer, the image stresses this centrality by showing the garment on a mannequin in front of a mirror as if it were looking at itself. The absence of the designer or model gives an uncanny feeling to the image, drawing attention to the properties of the dress and the fabric. The fabric is defined as a ‘current’ which emphasizes its capacity for sensation and aliveness. As claimed by the designer, the fabric has been untouched and has metaphorically created the garment itself. While on the one hand, this typifies the common animation of inanimate garments in ephemera, on the other, it alludes to the suggestive potential of fabric and its capacity to influence the ontology of garments. The centrality of fabric becomes even more accentuated by those ephemera that rely strongly on the physical correspondence between an image of a garment and the material on which this image is printed, as in the case of the A. F. Vandevorst s/s womenswear ’04 catalogue. Experimenting with the material attributes of paper, the collection is a study of the forms in which A. F. Vandevorst recreates, in brown kraft paper, classic garments Poetic transformations

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such as a trench coat, or develops more experimental pieces such as a skirt consisting of cubist shapes (Figures 90–91). In a game of resemblancees, the catalogue is also made of brown kraft paper, recalling the way the designers use paper in the key pieces of the collection. This similarity between the photograph and the material features of the catalogue recalls Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart’s study of the materiality of photographs. In their Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images (2004), Edwards and Hart explain how photographs are not only two-dimensional images but also threedimensional objects. In their analysis of the multiple physical properties of photographs, they argue that, in some cases, by looking at a represented object, the beholder can easily translate the texture of the object represented into the materiality of the photograph.46 As Edwards argues, ‘when we look at photographs, we often move from pure opticality to the optical-tactile as our attention moves from a thing being represented to an awareness of the texture of the thing (for example, the grain of skin or the weave of foliage), until a point is reached where we identify this with the very texture of the photograph’.47 Such a perceptual mechanism becomes evident in the A. F. Vandevorst catalogue. Made of paper, it creates a material correspondence with the dress it depicts, stimulating an identification between the material of the catalogue and the material of the garment in the image. Unlike the previous examples, here it is the paper material of the catalogue that facilitates a recognition of the paper garment in the beholder. The sensation of the three-dimensional garment and its paper texture is not only encouraged by the image but is also stimulated by the combination of the image and the paper on which the image is printed. If in haptic fashion images the viewer is compelled to ‘touch’ through the eye, in this case the beholder engages with the materiality of the photograph and its capacity to stimulate a physical contact through its texture. A similar perceptual property of materials is discussed by Deleuze and Guattari when exploring the paintings of Cezanne. They explain how materials such as oil paints, paste and watercolours evoke a sensation of what is depicted, stressing the impossibility of detecting ‘where in fact the material ends and sensation begins’.48 Deleuze and Guattari thus stress the properties of resemblance that materials and tools have in the transmission of a tactile sensation to the viewer. Reflecting on a specific brush technique or a particular oil paint, they argue that these materials may affect the ways in which the viewer (but also the painter) senses the depicted object.49 Similarly, in the A. F. Vandevorst catalogue, the brown paper of the catalogue intervenes in and solicits the beholder’s perception of the depicted garment, highlighting some of its features. The paper of the catalogue draws attention to the sensorial effect of the paper as fabric, its fragility and roughness evoking that of the garment. Its use in the catalogue may also draw the attention of the beholder towards particular features of the image, such as the stretch marks that evidence the draping of the paper on the body, or the rigidity of the coat that forces a space between the model’s body and the garment. To some extent, the paper facilitates a sensory identification by creating a

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material correspondence analogous to what Walter Benjamin has defined as ‘sensual similarity’.50 In an early version of his text ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Benjamin adopts the concept of ‘sensual similarity’ to explain one of the mechanics behind the concept of the ‘aura’ of an artwork.51 Focusing on the relation between an original artwork and its representation, Benjamin suggests that the aura is not only based on a visual similarity but also on a tactile relationship, as the reproduction evokes in its viewer a material trace of contact with the original work.52 The idea of ‘sensual similarity’ helps us to further understand how, in the A. F. Vandevorst catalogue, the material correspondence between the paper of the catalogue and the paper used to create the garment seeks to engender the sensation of contact with the fabric, rather than simply proposing a correspondence of materials. The catalogue evokes in the beholder a similar (but not identical) sense of touch as that experienced by the wearer in the depicted image. Such a sensory material correspondence is particularly strong in fashion ephemera that are made of the same textile as the garment, as in the case of the Dries Van Noten a/w ’92–’93 invitation (Figure 92). Measuring 10x20 cm when folded flat, the invitation is a piece of yellow wool fabric, resembling the fabric used in the collection. As an invitation, it gives a glimpse of the character of the new collection, whereas after the show it becomes a sort of touchable testimony of the material used in the collection. By holding the invitation, the beholder makes contact with the wool, feeling its qualities that suggest the tactile properties of the garment. In Fashioning Fabrics, Sandy Black describes the crucial role played by fabrics in the design process as both inspiration and trait of some contemporary fashion designers.53 In her selection of significant designers, Black includes Dries Van Noten, showing his peculiar approach to fabrics in terms of both creative process and experimentation.54 Thus, Van Noten’s fabric sample invitation not only creates a correspondence with the garment, but also emphasizes the evocative role played by fabrics in his work. Rather than just being a bearer of personal memories and emotions, as discussed by several scholars,55 here the fabric is also used for its capacity to be a source of tactile imagination in fashion design. By touching the fabric invitation, the beholder is not physically touching the garment, but is to some extent invited to imagine the properties of the fabric in the dress. In this sense, this invitation functions similarly to what the filmmaker and artist Jan Švankmajer defines as ‘sources of tactile imagination’.56 Presented in his book Touching and Imagining: An Introduction to Tactile Art (2014), these sources of imagination are objects created by Švankmajer, who investigates the lands of touch as imaginative practice. Švankmajer describes how these objects can trigger the imagination in the form of ‘tactile boards’ created from everyday objects. Made of blades attached to kitchen boards, these ‘tactile boards’ are created to imaginatively suggest to the beholder the practice of cutting something on the board, and the accompanying fear of pain and cutting. Analogously to Švankmajer’s ‘sources of tactile imagination’, Van Noten’s fabric invitations seek to trigger the tactile imagination

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Figure 92  Dries Van Noten a/w ’92–’93 invitation. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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of the beholder, suggesting both the sensory properties of fabric and its role in the design process. This latter aspect is performed by the shape of the invitation, which not only recalls the traditional size of invitations, but also the fabric samples used in the process of choosing fabrics for a collection. Due to their material features, fashion ephemera like the A. F. Vandevorst brown kraft paper catalogue, or the Van Noten felt invitation, show similar epistemic properties to those recognized by art historian Mark Paterson in sculpture. In his study of the different ways of stimulating the sense of touch in the visual arts, Paterson explains how sculpture evokes a more embodied and multisensory response than painting due to its more accentuated three-dimensional form and materiality.57 Looking at sculptures of human bodies, Paterson explains how sculpture is more than a simple translation from a sense of touching to a sense of seeing. Sculpture rouses a tactile association from a three-dimensional body to another three-dimensional object, which aims to affirm the material fleshiness of the body.58 According to Paterson, the haptic experience of sculpture is an ‘art of palpation’, ‘stemming from the possibility of our touching an object and its touching us’.59 Similarly, fashion ephemera like the A.F. Vandevorst catalogues or the Van Noten wool invitation ‘ask’ to be touched rather than just to be looked at. Their material features demand a physical engagement, touching their beholder back. As Giuliana Bruno argues when writing about the potential of fabrics in design objects, when we touch something we are inevitably touched back, as the action of touching the object always ‘enable[s] an affective return’.60 By touching the Vandevorst paper catalogue or the Van Noten wool invitation, the beholder is touched back with a stimulus that suggests ‘being with’ the garment and its three-dimensional ‘fleshiness’. In this sense, these fashion ephemera allude to what I call the ‘sense of fabric’. I use this term to refer to the central meaning and role played by fabrics in the sensory qualities of the garment, and to stress the role of these ephemera in affirming it. Being made of fabric and stimulating a sensation of it through their material features, these ephemera not only pictorially evoke the garment but also move the tactile imagination into a tangible and physical engagement. While fashion images, as Eugénie Shinkle argues, often evoke the relation between clothing and the body through the representation of drape and the texture of fabric to suggest the sensual pleasure of its touch against the skin,61 these fashion ephemera do the same by becoming fabric. Even if they are not ‘real’ fragments or parts of garments, they create a correspondence between their materiality and that of the garment, performing an embodied experience of the garment through physical touch. Similarly to sculpture, they materially evoke our physical ‘withness’ in relation to dress. By touching the wool invitation of Dries Van Noten or the paper catalogue of A. F. Vandevorst, the beholder is put in contact with the concreteness of the material and with the sensation of the fabric on the skin. These fashion ephemera evoke ‘being with’ the dress and evoke its tactile qualities. Through  their material, they functions as reminders of the meaning of fabrics in fashion while they also create a parallel with the direct contact between the fabric of the garment and the skin of the wearer.62

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Point of touch The previous examples showed the crucial role played by touch as an epistemic practice in fashion and in the way we come to know a garment. Knowing through touch is a form of ‘embodied knowledge’, a term commonly used to refer to a non-verbal form of knowledge residing in the body. As Constance Classens argues in her The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, within the realm of knowledge practices, touch has historically been dismissed as a more primitive form of knowledge.63 The epistemic potential of touch has nevertheless been discussed within many disciplines from philosophy to art history, from neuroscience to psychology and from anthropology to cognitive science.64 Its discussion has also proliferated in cultural studies due to the influence of phenomenology and its focus on sensorial knowledge. Based on the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology emphasizes the experience of the ‘lived body’, as Husserl defined it, and its epistemic properties.65 Phenomenology highlights an embodied type of knowledge in which the senses, and in particular touch, are considered as tacit devices of knowledge.66 This turn instigated the development of studies of sensorial epistemology in relation to issues of gender,67 film spectatorship68 and design.69 In the case of fashion, scholars have investigated the epistemic role of touch in different fields, especially in connection with dress and textile history,70 wardrobe studies, merchandising evaluation,71 and practices of consumption of fashion (including the sensorial perception of dress in shops and virtual retailing).72 These studies have mostly focused on the role of touch in the processes of consumption or in the economic evaluation of commodities, partially  overlooking the role played by touch in the design process. This tacit knowledge may be manifested and celebrated in fashion ephemera, showing how it is not completely mute but, rather, speaks through a specific fashion language. As the previous examples have shown, some fashion ephemera not only ‘ask’ to be touched but also evocatively represent the sensory poetics of fashion design, stimulating a discussion of the role of touch in the creation and perception of dress. Indeed, in the MoMu archive I identified a tendency in these objects to contain references to the tactile potentials of knowledge in fashion, manifesting a reflexive attitude on the part of fashion designers towards their own practices. One of the most performative examples is Ann Huybens’s s/s ’01 press release (Figure 93). The collection made a connection between cooking and creating a garment. The press release is not printed on standard A4 paper but on a latex glove, printed with information about the collection divided into three categories: ‘ingredients’, ‘models’ and ‘colours’. At the bottom is written ‘clothes brewed in the kitchen, for men & women’, followed by the brand’s contact details. The object, terminology, font and layout all evoke sterile environments such as a food lab or a kitchen, where hands becomes tools of creation. This parallel between cooking and fashion design is further reiterated by the use of language in the three sections. The ‘ingredients’ listed include fruit juice, linen, silk, and human genes; the ‘colours’ listed are classical colours such as white, but also other food-related colours, such as ‘tea’, ‘raspberry’ or ‘chardonnay’. By 164

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Figure 93  Ann Huybens s/s 2001 press release. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

mixing materials like textiles with potable or edible ingredients, and by printing this information on a latex glove, the press release seeks to trigger the beholder’s senses, rather than just informing them about the collection. The possibility of wearing the glove on which these ingredients are written strengthens this sensorial involvement and celebrates the potential of the hand. Although the action of wearing a glove may suggest the elimination of direct contact, in this case the glove is not simply a sign of sterilization. The glove stresses the analogy between food and fashion design, between cook and fashion designer, where the hand becomes synonymous with knowhow. The glove suggests the epistemic potential of the hand, asking the beholder to wear the information, echoing what Entwistle defines as the act of physically wearing knowledge.73 Referring to the work of fashion buyers, Entwistle argues that, in the fashion industry, knowledge may circulate tacitly as practices are often articulated through embodied sense-making.74 It is to this type of embodied knowledge that Ann Huybens’s glove seems to allude. The focus on the hand in this example is not rooted in the authorship or presence of the designer in the way I wrote about them in the previous chapter. Rather, it points out the epistemic functions of touch and the hand in the ways fashion designers create a garment. As Mark Paterson and the sociologist Richard Sennett explain, the hand has historically been synonymous with touch, becoming both a symbol and a device Poetic transformations

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of knowledge.75 While Sennett speaks of the ‘intelligent hand’ as a type of image that appeared in the sciences in the nineteenth century, Paterson explains how the epistemic potential of the hand has long been discussed in philosophy and art history.76 In fashion, the hand assumes an even more important role, being constantly referred to in the industry to signify quality and judgment. While the term ‘hand-made’ indicates a quality garment, the term ‘hand’ is also used, within the textile and related industries,77 to indicate all the sensations of touch, and the manipulation of textiles, which go by the term ‘the hand of a fabric’.78 The ‘hand’ indicates the ‘feel’ of the fabric against the skin or between the fingers, and it identifies the quality of the textile. In this sense, the reference to the hand not only contributes to symbolic meaning in fashion but also stands for the central role played by sensory knowledge in fashion, as suggested by the Huybens glove invitation and even more explicitly by the Angelo Figus ‘Quore di Cane’ press release (Figure 94). By tracing his right hand in this invitation, matching the five colours of the collection to each finger, and handwriting the phrase ‘handmade felt coats without seams’ on the palm of the hand, Figus indicates the role played by touch in the creation of a dress, and the use of his hand and fingers as tools of knowledge. This unconventional press release alludes to an embodied knowledge that resides in the fingers, suggesting they do more than simply execute actions. The association of each finger with a colour recalls the synaesthetic elements at play in the design process. This becomes even clearer in another double page of the aforementioned Yamamoto womenswear a/w ’91–’92 catalogue (Figure 95). While the previous example drew attention to the properties of the fabric, here the combination of image and words evokes the role of tactile knowledge in the design. On pages seven and eight of the catalogue, there are two images depicting Yamamoto at work on the garment, adjusting it on the model. In the left-hand image, the designer’s hands are depicted fitting the dress on the model. On the opposite page, the designer himself is seen squatting in front of the model, working on a long piece of fabric floating down her body. This image is in black and white and its strong tonal contrasts make the white hands at work stand out. In both images the fluidity of the fabric is an important element, in contrast to the rigidity and tension of the gestures of the hands. Below the two images is a statement by the designer: Yes, you stop thinking. And a plan, a fixed objective fades. Beyond it, though, my fingers still working. I trust my fingers. That’s what I want to do. (Yamamoto, a/w ’91–’92 catalogue) The statement makes a clear reference to the centrality of tactile knowledge in the practice of creating a garment. By attributing a sort of independence to his fingers, the designer presents a moment of tactile sensibility, detached from conscious thinking, which is reinforced by the close-up image of his hands at work. The emphasis on the hands at work suggests their autonomy. Furthermore, the quotation starts with the phrase ‘stop thinking’, and goes on to celebrate the fingers as able to move beyond any ‘plan’ or ‘fixed objective’. The fingers are still at work even without thinking. Yamamoto’s 166

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Figure 94  Angelo Figus ‘Quore di Cane’ collection press release. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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Figure 95  Yohji Yamamoto a/w ’91–’92 catalogue. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

words acknowledge a distinction between rational and conscious thought on the one hand, and tactile perception through the fingers on the other. Thus, Yamamoto affirms the possibility of knowing through the fingers. In this sense, Yamamoto’s statement recalls what film scholar Vivian Sobchack defines as ‘carnal thought’.79 In her What My Fingers Knew, Sobchack makes a phenomenological reading of cinematic experience, exploring the ways in which bodies engage with cinematic images. Analysing the first shots of the film The Piano, where blurred images depict the fingers of the protagonist Ada, Sobchack suggests that she knows the images through her fingers rather than her eyes, as she ‘experienced [them] without a thought’.80 Coining the term ‘cinaesthetic spectator’, she argues that spectators feel films with their entire bodily being, as vision always works in cooperation and exchange with other senses. She suggests the possibility of a ‘body that makes meaning before it makes conscious, reflective thought’.81 It is fruitful to read Yamamoto’s quotation through Sobchack’s idea of ‘carnal knowledge’, as this notion helps to clarify what type of knowledge this catalogue prompts. Yamamoto affirms the possibility of knowing through the fingers, spelling out the role played by tactile knowledge in fashion similarly to the way Sobchack discusses ‘carnal knowledge’ as a way of knowing through touch. Indeed, in fashion design, perhaps even more than in cinema, tactile knowledge plays a crucial role, especially in the case of designers like 168

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Yamamoto who often make use of draping techniques. Indeed, in this quotation the designer is describing the technique of draping (or ‘flou’ in French), which requires the designer to manipulate the fabric with their hands to create the garment. Unlike the use of patterns, the technique of draping demands a tactile experience, as the designer works in three dimensions on the mannequin. The garment is constructed through the interaction between hands and the fabric, which informs and influences the practice of the designer. In draping, more than in other techniques, the choice of fabric and its weight changes the ways in which a garment falls on the body. Furthermore, the decision to cut along the grain or diagonally (‘bias-cutting’) changes the properties of the fabric.82 In the case of draping in particular, the designer’s decisions are based on what Sennett defines as ‘material consciousness’.83 Referring to the work of the craftsman, Sennett describes their involvement with materials, including an awareness of the properties of materials that allows them to articulate meanings through their manipulation.84 It is to exactly this type of consciousness that Yamamoto’s quotation refers. In the examples above, the technique of draping is both evoked by and used to evoke the role played by tactile knowledge in the practice of creating a garment. The centrality of this tactility is emphasized even further by the model’s body, which acts as a sort of inanimate mannequin on which the designer drapes the fabric to create the garment. By depicting only the designer’s hand and only a portion of the model’s body, the image suggests this ‘carnal contact’ even more. All these examples exemplify how some fashion ephemera enhance the properties of touch and tactile knowledge in fashion, stimulating a reflection on both the practice of creating garments and the transmission of knowledge within (and about) this practice. They seem to demand a ‘point of touch’ rather than a ‘point of view’. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to have a ‘point of view’ means to have a ‘particular attitude or way of considering a matter’. If transported to the allusive ‘point of touch’, the idea of having an attitude, or a way of considering a matter, assumes further meanings, stressing how, in fashion, matters of touch correspond to matters of knowledge.

Paratexts and touching concepts The attention given to tactile knowledge in these ephemera shows how the type of fashion designers (and their collaborators) discussed in this book, often use these informative tools self-reflexively to instigate a discourse on the properties of garment and fashion design. Rather than simply creating promotional materials, fashion designers, graphic designers, ghost writers and photographers employ and use these devices to build a discourse about their work as a fashion designer and their approach to this discipline and its languages. It can be useful to think this through another fabric invitation, the A. F. Vandevorst a/w ’00–’01 invitation (Figures 96–97). Coming in the shape and size of a grey felt postcard, the invitation is made of the fabric used in the a/w ’00–’01 collection, while it recalls the work of artist Joseph Beuys, who is a constant reference in the work Poetic transformations

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Figure 96  A. F. Vandevorst a/w ’00–’01 invitation, front. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

of A. F. Vandevorst. Unlike Van Noten’s felt invitation, this invitation sample seems to compound a multi-layered discourse. The invitation refers to Beuys’s ‘Filzpostkarte’, a series of felt cards belonging to the ‘Multiple’ project where the German artist created cards resembling the letters sent home from the front by German soldiers during the First World War. The felt cards were reminders of affective bonds while also being entangled with Beuys’s own felt legends and affinities. As art historian Mullins Willow has explained, felt is a consistent element in Beuys’s sculptural vocabulary, and it not only signified physical warmth and insulating properties for him, but also became a magical material, a transmitter of ideas.85 In his ‘Filzpostkarte’, Beuys speaks of the cards as vehicles, travelling objects meant to move his ideas through space, with the capacity to allow people to ‘stay in touch with people’.86 By employing the same material and shape for their invitation, A. F. Vandevorst’s intention seem multi-fold. First, the designers communicate an artistic reference and, by doing so, align their commercial practice (and fashion) with a realm of art and artistic practices. Furthermore, the reference to Beuys’s felt cards creates an interesting connection between the meaning given by the artist to this fabric and the meaning given by A. F. Vandevorst to the invitation. A. F. Vandevorst’s invitation recalls the connective potential of felt recognized by Beuys, while creating a discourse on the conceptual scope 170

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Figure 97  A. F. Vandevorst a/w ’00–’01 invitation, back. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

of using this felt sample as invitation. Here the felt is used as a connective agent relating to an artistic reference, the tactile force in fashion design and the capacity of invitations to connect people. What this invitation shows is ephemera’s potential to enhance the conceptual scope of fashion design, both materially and immaterially. The materiality of the invitation evokes an immaterial conceptual element and viceversa. When speaking about this duality in design, the philosophers of design Peter-Paul Verbeek and Petran Kockelkoren explain that ‘if our attachment only concerns this immaterial aspect and not the object itself, it is destined to remain secondary. It can easily be replaced at any time by another artefact with the same immaterial quality’.87 Here the two philosophers hint at the intrinsic relation between the material and immaterial, not only as a way to elevate the cultural value of the design object but also as a design practice in itself. ‘In order to increase product lifetime’, Verbeek and Kockelkoren continue, ‘we therefore think designers would not only create things that are meaningful, but things in which meaning is firmly anchored in their materiality’.88 This form of material anchorage suggested by Verbeek and Kockelkoren is not only reminiscent of a Barthesian idea of anchoring meaning via images and text,89 but seems as well an appropriate tool to recognize fashion ephemera’s role in conveying meaning about a collection. Poetic transformations

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Practices of visual displacement, material references and written rhetorical games are strategies adopted in fashion ephemera to trigger a positioning of these fashion designers and a specific significance of fashion. While A. F. Vandevorst’s felt invitation shows how fashion designers rely on tacit knowledge, artistic references and material meanings, it is also reminiscent of the complexity and difficulty of unravelling concepts through materials. As Judith Clark argues, invitations do not simply give access to a show but also make allusions that the beholder is asked to ‘get’.90 While these tacit messages require a certain cultural capital – what I defined previously as a ‘fashion competence’ – in order to be interpreted, they are more than simple clues about a collection. They are performative by discursively enacting an exclusive language that generates a transition between the physical collection of garments and its conceptual interpretation. Their function is similar to what literary theorist Gerarde Genette has defined as a ‘performative paratext’: a literary device having ‘the ability to perform what they describe’.91 In his Paratext: Threshold of Interpretations (1997), Genette develops the notion of paratext to refer to all those productions that support and accompany a novel (the text) and mediate it to the reader (the title or subtitle, notes, prefaces, epilogue, cover). Although the idea of paratext originates from literary studies, Genette extends its properties to cinema, music and visual arts in general. As the French theorist suggests: ‘it is obvious that some, if not all, of other arts have an equivalent of our Paratext: examples are the title in music and plastic arts, the signature in painting, the credits or the trailers in film’.92 Similarly, in fashion, the paratext could be identified with fashion ephemera as thresholds of interpretation for collections and designers’ work. But, if in the case of literature, the paratext is what ‘brings to the ideality of the text some degree of materialization’, in the case of fashion, ephemera become those devices that bring a degree of immateriality – and ideality – to the material collection. If fashion ephemera are, to use Genette’s words, ‘[a] discourse devoted to the service of something else which constitutes its right of existence’ (the collection),93 they are also constitutive of the definition of the immaterial meaning of the collection and the designer’s positioning in the field of fashion. They exist ‘to make it present’;94 they have an ‘illocutionary force’95 that, according to Genette, is ‘what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers, and more generally, to the public’.96 This discursive capacity is recognizable in the ephemera discussed here. While the function of an invitation, a catalogue or a press release is auxiliary to the presentation of a collection in a show, their existence is what enables a collection and a designer to be defined through specific conventions and presumptions: what make that collection interpretable by journalist and buyers. In this sense, the most declarative type of paratext amongst MoMu’s ephemera are probably press releases. Going through MoMu’s archive, I found different styles of presenting fashion collections – some already discussed – where there are presentations of concepts, mechanics of garments, original inspirations and different types of processes of design: all reflecting the specific approaches to fashion design of particular designers and brands. If these ephemera help to contextualize the meaning attributed by the brand to the garment, they may also help to better understand the multiple concerns and different approaches behind the creation of garments. Some press releases 172

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in MoMu’s archive perform what Alessandra Vaccari defines as a ‘conventional process of design’ that moves from the idea to its realization as a garment.97 As Vaccari argues, the collection is indeed a way to regroup things, a narrative built by an assemblage of garments and often organized through a concept.98 The A. F. Vandevorst a/w ’01–’02 womenswear press release is a good example of this: This collection of A.F. Vandevorst is a work around horses. Their femininity and grace as well as the force and purity of this animal are translated in the silhouette. The robust element reveals in structured forms and masculine garments as overcoats, men shirts [sic], corduroy pants, long johns and solid boots. This aspect is emphasized by the use of raw and firm fabrics: felt, leather, tweed, corduroy and heavy cotton, in woollen check-patterns and in knitwear. The elegant counterpart is represented in fluid lines of bias cutdresses [sic] and skirts, mostly knee-length or ¾, and refined fabrics as silk chiffon, viscose and flowing wool. The grace of the manes, raw or braided, is reworked in the back of shirts and dresses and fully expressed in the hairstyle of the models. These two opposite senses lead their own way through the collection but find themselves reunited in one garment. […] This quote shows the clarity of the writing in the explanation of the relationship between concept and garment. The first sentence of the press release presents the original inspiration of the collection (‘horses’) and an interpretation of their qualities such as ‘femininity’, ‘grace’, ‘force’ and ‘purity’. The collection is presented as starting from an idea rather than any commercial intent. After spelling out these four attributes of horses, the press release goes on to explain how these immaterial qualities are the leading concepts that are then ‘translated in the silhouette’. The use of the word ‘translation’ in the press release suggests both a continuity between the idea and the garment and a recognition of the role of translation in the design process. Thus, the idea of ‘force’ is materialized by the use of ‘raw and firm fabrics’ like leather, tweed or felt, while the idea of ‘elegant’ is translated into fluid lines of bias and in the use of materials like silk chiffon. The press release shows an awareness of the correspondence between a specific theme or idea and the choice of a specific material or type of garment. The descriptions of the collection illuminate the process of design as a form of translation that starts from an inspiration and then develops though specific sartorial interventions to encapsulate the original idea of horses and their attributes in the final design. The centrality of the concept as a stimulus for the creation of the garment becomes even more evident in those press releases that focus exclusively on the idea behind the collection, hiding, to some extent, the garments and their process of creation. A good example is the Raf Simons s/s ’03 press release, which is written in the form of an essay with the title ‘Consumed. A reflection on consumerism’ (Figure 98). While the previous examples focused on the translation of an idea into a garment, here there is a total absence of explanation of this process, of any sartorial technique, material used in the collection or of how the collection may manifest the concept of ‘consumerism’. The press release is written on A4 white paper with the logo and the title Poetic transformations

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Figure 98  Raf Simons s/s 2003 press release. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. 174

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of the collection ‘Consumerism – Summer 2003’ and right below a subtitle ‘A reflection on consumerism’. The press release is graphically and rhetorically built as an essay on contemporary political and economic concerns such as consumerism. The press release suggests the collection as an idea and the designer as a political agent. Here Raf Simons’ press release not only refers to consumerism, but also reflects on its relation to fashion and suggests how fashion can be not only a leisure/luxury commodity but also a place for ‘possibilities’, as the press release says. It explains how the collection aims to tackle and ‘chart’ the issue of consumerism. The text does not judge consumerism (‘the question is not whether consumption is good or bad’) but tries to show how fashion may offer alternative forms of commenting on it, turning ‘resistance and anti-feelings into handson creativity’. While the Raf Simons example shows how contemporary cultural issues may feature in some fashion design, it is also a provocative and controversial statement. By appealing to a sort of resistance to consumerism, the press release manifests the ease with which ideas and ideologies may be adopted in ways that are simplistic, uncritical or even contradictory, and then attached to materials and garments. No attempt is made to explain the transformation of these concepts into garments, nor is any explanation given on the way consumerism may be combatted through the creation of a collection. Symbolic of this neutralization of ideologies is the first sentence of the press release that says: ‘Without taking any sides …’ while the following text portrays apocalyptic and futuristic scenarios “turning resistance and anti-feelings into hands-on creativity and positive fragmentation”. By contrast, the Margiela press releases focus exclusively on design techniques and garments descriptions as a way to reflect on fashion. For instance, this can be observed in the a/w ’04–’05 press release: The Collection this season comprises 4 main groups of garments: 1. ‘Authentic Wardrobe’: a selection of garments stereotypical of their genre in fabric and form – such as a trench coat, a man’s overcoat, aviator and tuxedo jackets. The details that are most typical of these garments are emphasised either by their removal or exaggerating their size. 2. ‘Surfaces’: textures of surfaces are photographed and printed on various fabrics. A ‘Chesterfield’ armchair, Long hair, a wicker chair seat, wrinkled metallic foil. Each surface print proposes its own different small collection of garments and accessories within the collection. Each surface print garment will be delivered in a packaging that evokes its surface (dresses folded into hairnets for the hair print for example). 3. Objects as clothing: the accumulation of objects create garments. Men’s fedora hats become capes and tops, ladies knit hats become sweaters, leather boots are worked together to form bustier tops, used ballets shoes (collected from the main Opera houses of Europe) are worked together as a bag. 4. ‘Cliché Fabrics’: garments for which their choice of fabric pushes them to an extreme. Examples of this are ‘Ostrich Feathers’, ‘Gold lamé’, ‘chiffon’ and ‘snakes skin’. Poetic transformations

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The press release contains clear and specific notes on the sartorial techniques that characterize the four categories of garments it describes, specifying first the technique used to create the garment, and then the type of garment. Unlike the previous example, the concepts are all fashion related. They refer to materials as ‘cliché fabrics’ and to print techniques as ‘surfaces’, and they use terminology such as ‘objects as clothing’ and ‘authentic wardrobe’. Margiela’s subdivision of themes shows both how the garments in the collection are organized and how the press release plays a seminal role in creating interpretative strategies that imbue the garments with meaning. The press release not only gives information about fabrics and shapes, but also breaks down the collection into themes and presents garment as a conceptual entity without any references to other artistic or intellectual fields. The discursive action of the press release becomes complementary to the design process in the definition of the garment as much as their material construction does. Unlike the previous examples, the techniques and design features of this collection are not only the means of translating an idea, but become the concept itself. All these examples showed how fashion ephemera are, to use Genette’s definition of paratext, ‘zone[s] not only of transition but also of transaction’, a place for pragmatics and strategies to influence the public ‘at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it (more pertinent, of course, in the eyes of the author and his allies)’.99 In fashion ephemera, this ‘better reception’ may be attained via different techniques. It may be achieved via association to artistic strategies like in the case of A. F. Vandevorst or disassociation with the very making of clothing like in the case of Raf Simons, but also through the adoption of a specific fashion language, a reflexive use of the tools and tropes of fashion design like in the case of Margiela. The graphical organization of the press release, the decision to give a title and a subtitle, the use of different terms to speak about the transformation from an idea to a physical objects, the description of sections of a collection as chapters of a novel. All these are paratextual techniques that, rather than simply referring to promotional strategies, define and constitute these fashion designers – and their work – in the industry. It is in this sense that ephemera act as constitutive performative paratexts. They have an effect in the interpretation of the collection not because they simply make statements about the collection but because they are not presenting a traditional description of the collection. These ephemera have an effect in the conceptual interpretation of the collection by playing the game of a fictional conceptual discourse or, to use Genette’s words, because they ‘constitute this fiction by dint of fictionally convincing details […] and to the most effective way of doing so seems to be to simulate a serious preface, with all the paraphernalia of discourses and messages (that, is functions) which such a simulation entails’.100 Fashion ephemera enact this fictional simulation not only by giving the possibility to touch – or rather I should say get in touch with – the concepts behind the collection but also by transforming a functional device of communication – like an invitation, a press release or a catalogue – into a space for conceptual communication.

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Poetic transformations What these fashion ephemera instigate are acts of transformation of meaning and value of garments and fashion, or to go back to Roland Barthes’ work, they stage another ‘transformation of dress’. As I have shown, these ephemera animate the garment, presenting it as a sensory object. Through the use of either blurry or sharp images, specific photographic techniques, written rhetoric and the material uses of fabric, ephemera enable knowledge about a garment as more than just a static object made of fabric. Rather, they suggest the garment as a poetic object. With the term ‘poetic’ I return to Roland Barthes, with whom I began this chapter. In The Fashion System, Barthes not only argues for ‘written-clothing’ and ‘image-clothing’, but also introduces the idea of the ‘poetics of clothing’, recognizing the garment as an excellent example of ‘an excellent poetic object’ for two reasons.101 This quality is recognized by Barthes because garments firstly mobilize all ‘the qualities of matter’ such as tactility, substance, colour, form, movement and rigidity. Secondly, the French thinker argues that the garment is indissolubly related to the body ‘functioning simultaneously as its substitute and its mask’.102 However, while recognizing this poetic potential of clothing, Barthes criticizes the linguistic rhetoric used by fashion magazines in describing these multiple potentials. If Barthes did not see these qualities expressed in those fashion magazines he analysed, the same cannot be said about the catalogues, press releases and invitations conserved at MoMu. In their transformation of dress, these ephemera attempt to reveal and discourse what Barthes defined as ‘all the qualities of matter’ (from movement to tactility). Dries Van Noten’s press releases in particular seems to play on this poetic nature addressed to clothing, activating an extreme rhetorical form of transformation. Written in the shape of a poem, the s/s ’02 menswear press release mixes references to the garments in the collection with descriptions of the atmosphere behind it. It says: Sunshine and monsoon, Wet and discoloured clothes Comfort and suppleness of forms Harmony and variety of colours Raincoats, biker and bomber jackets, Fitted or oversized, suits and jackets, Multi-pleated and baggy trousers; shorts and sarouels, Military and safari details: tabs, zips and raw hems, Flap and button pockets. By avoiding the more conventional textual format of a press release, this one combines the visual form of a poem with allusive language. The text refers to the garments (raincoats, bomber jacket, suits, etcetera), forms, and colours, while the poem seeks to stimulate an emotional relation to them. It juxtaposes the names of garments with evocative adjectives

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Figure 99  Dries Van Noten a/w ’99–’00 press release, cover. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp.

referring to physical sensations such as ‘wet’, ‘comfort’ and ‘suppleness’ to define the clothes, forms and colours used in the collection. For example, the adjectives ‘wet’ and ‘discoloured’ do not imply the actual physical qualities of the garment, but instead refer to the technique used to create them. Furthermore, the use of the conjunction ‘and’ becomes a linguistic tool to allow the coexistence of opposites. When speaking about the poetic description of paintings, literary scholar Peter Verdonck argues that the use of conjunctions like ‘and’ intensifies the listing of all the things that can be seen in the painting.103 The conjunction ‘and’ is called in rhetorical terms a syndeton, which comes from the Greek syndéton, meaning ‘bound together’. In the case of the Van Noten press release, the use of the conjunction ‘and’ serves to metaphorically stitch the elements and qualities of the garments. The ‘and’ join the different garments and materials in the collection, while it also performs the capacity of the collection to include oppositional types of garment and qualities. This rhetorical enumeration of garments is a constant in Van Noten’s press releases and it suggests the quantitative element of the collection, through the use of an accumulatio, that is, a way of stressing a point in a series of compact, forceful adjectives separated by commas. Rather than just being ‘written-clothing’, Van Noten’s press release seem to claim a relation to a more performative form of writing, something that could bring to mind the 178

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Figure 100  Dries Van Noten a/w ’99–’00 press release, pages 12–13. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. technique of ekphrasis. Coined by the Ancient Greeks, ekphrasis is a rhetorical term for a written description that delivers the sensation of a work of art in painting or sculpture. Usually combining graphic and dramatic registers, ekphrasis recreates the sensation of an absent work, summonsing up for its reader/listener the feeling provoked by the contemplation of the artwork. To some extent, the Van Noten press release poems strive for the same effect, implying the need to find new languages to perform the poetics of dress, and adopting poetical rhetoric as an instrument able to evoke its dynamic properties. As Mitchell stresses, the ekphratic object ‘is no “mere” object, but a highly charged form and a representational form at that’.104 While the press release does not precisely resemble ancient forms of ekphrasis, the presentation of the collection in the form of a press release written in the shape of poetry (in visual and linguistic terms) continue, as explained before, to fictionally function as a paratext. Although I do not want to elevate the press release to the status of poetry or ekphrasis, it is nevertheless important to highlight the intentionality behind the choice of this format beyond its commercial purpose. This strategy becomes even more evident in Van Noten’s a/w ‘99– ’00 press release which is hidden inside an old science manual (Figures 99–100). As Van Noten writes in his monograph, the decision to insert the press release into an old book was twofold. Firstly, it had to stage the absence of the library book from the show venue (the Bibliothèque de France in Paris), which was completely emptied, the entire Poetic transformations

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collection of books having been moved to a new archive. Secondly, it had to perform an idea of ‘old-ness’ to which the garments alluded in their fabric and colours.105 In this case, the beholder is not only asked to read a poem but also to engage with an old book, and to search for the press release concealed in its pages. The material, visual and written features of the press release ‘ask’ the beholder to approach the content in a less practical and conventional manner. The combination of material forms, textual metaphors, rhetorical figures and the graphical use of stanzas inevitably influence the way a garment is experienced. They show how, rather than exemplifying a written or visual ‘dress transformation’, fashion ephemera such as Van Noten’s press release seek and construct a ‘poetic transformation’. As Barthes argues, to speak about the ‘poetics’ of an object means to move beyond a technical description of the object and ‘shift from real function to spectacle, even when this spectacle disguises itself under the appearance of a function’.106 While this shift is present in all the fashion ephemera explored in this book, this passage is particularly pertinent to the Dries Van Noten press release, which has a practical function but which also projects the garment into a poetic dimension through a visual, material and textual strategy. Here it becomes unclear if the spectacle disguises itself in the functionality of the invitation or if the invitation is disguising itself under the appearance of a spectacle. In this sense, Van Noten’s press release encapsulates the tension that governs fashion ephemera: their ontological function of being auxiliary to the collection and its presentation, while also striving to be recognized as poetic objects in their own right.

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CONCLUSIONS

Fashion remains

My main aim throughout this book has been to investigate the multiple epistemic potentials of fashion ephemera – specifically invitations, catalogues and press releases – in order to argue for their importance in the understanding of fashion, its practices and actors. Motivated by the lack of attention given to these materials in both academia and museums, my study has put fashion ephemera at the centre of attention, inverting the common practice of using them in support of the history of designers, garments and fashion shows. After discovering these ephemera in the archive at MoMu, my initial ambition was to show their complexity and aesthetic value. But my engagement with these ephemera in the archive soon led me to realize how their aesthetic potential was symmetrical with their capacity to enable knowledge about fashion. I noted specific discursive mechanics that were triggered by their particular material, visual and textual features which had previously only been studied with regard to their promotional function. Their aesthetic qualities not only functioned on a promotional level but also operated epistemologically. Thus, my aim has been not only to show their distinctive features, but also to explain how their aesthetic qualities enable and evoke a specific knowledge about fashion. In this attempt, I disclosed the ways in which these ephemera are conductors of discourses about authorship and creative practices; time, the event and the live; and tactile knowledge and the poetics of the garment. By doing so, different characteristics of these ephemera emerged, while this exploration has also shown how these materials are strategical in opening up some issues connected to fashion, its actors, its practices and its ideologies. These ephemera were not only flimsy objects conserved in boxes in a library’s archive but, as I showed, revealed a specific epistemic functioning, acting as metaphors for fashion, due to their capacity to closely mirror its disposable and ephemeral essence. Exceeding the increasingly frenetic seasonality of the ready-to-wear industry, invitations, catalogues and press releases are created to last mere moments. Nevertheless, they are vested with a great deal of economic, temporal and creative effort by fashion designers, graphic designers, make-up artists, models, photographers and their collaborators. As I have shown, this effort is often synonymous with their epistemic potential as indicators of self-reflexive fashion knowledge in a manner that garments or accessories are slower to reveal. The labour that goes into the making of fashion ephemera and the richness of their content, however, is not always proportionate with the transience and ephemerality of their practical function. Probably better than garments, these ephemera epitomize the fickleness of fashion, manifesting how fashion contradictorily both discards and invests in the ephemeral.

Still, these fashion ephemera remain. They escaped the ephemeral while being named after it. Their capacity to remain is therefore dual, and this led me to propose to rethink them through the idea of fashion remains. Here the term ‘remains’ stands as both noun – the material object – and as a verb – the action of remaining. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun ‘remains’ stands for ‘what is left after an action or a person; a material that survived but not necessarily for a conscious or voluntary action’.1 Such a definition perfectly suits fashion ephemera as a category of artefacts, which outlive fashion’s practices or events, but which are not necessarily at the centre of fashion conservation and collecting agendas. The concept of ‘fashion remains’ stresses how ephemera are commonly discarded and how, on the other hand, they represent the form of materiality that best reflects the ephemeral nature of fashion. In this concluding chapter, my intention is to highlight some strands that have emerged in my study of the MoMu archive and some specific aspects connected to the epistemic function of these ephemera as fashion remains.

Between material and immaterial To think of fashion ephemera through the idea of ‘fashion remains’ show how these artefacts, more than other fashion objects, evidence the unstable opposition of material and immaterial phenomena. As I showed, they may become vessels of both material and immaterial knowledge in a manner that subverts the distinction between the two, recalling the discussion of the relationship between materiality and immateriality proposed by Daniel Miller within material culture. Criticizing a ‘vulgar’ account of the artefact as external to the ‘ephemeral, the imaginary, the biological, the theoretical’, Miller proposes a ‘processual materiality’ in which materiality and immateriality are put in a dialectical relation.2 To some extent, what my analysis of fashion ephemera as fashion remains has brought up is exactly this dialogic relationship, in which the material seems to presuppose the immaterial and vice versa. But, while in fashion studies (and in material culture studies) the relation between materiality and immateriality has been mainly directed towards issues of identity, my study of fashion ephemera as ‘fashion remains’ has expanded this relation to other forms of fashion materiality and immateriality. In this book, I have shown not only how garments or accessories become spaces where fashion is materialized, but also how invitations, catalogues and press releases – among other things – make us think of alternative ways in which fashion actors and practices are manifested and, maybe, more outspokenly discussed. As Sophie Woodward and Tom Fisher have argued, the problem in fashion studies has been to identify materiality only in sartorial and vestimentary practices, while in actuality many other overlooked forms of materiality manifest and perform the immaterialities of fashion as well.3 Indeed, fashion ephemera are one such example, being able to stage this duality. Fashion ephemera’s materiality is a precondition of their immateriality, and their immaterial effects are contingent upon their objecthood. In this sense, fashion ephemera are materials that invite an immaterial action in both physical as well as 182

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teleological terms, as Dries Van Noten’s felt invitation clearly shows. In this case, the fabric both exists as a material and stimulates the immaterial act of thinking that is unleashed by the texture of the invitation and, to some extent, remains activated by its encounter with the beholder. Here, fabric exists not only as a material, but also immaterially. While the capacity to merge materiality and immateriality may be common to other objects, these fashion ephemera are especially rooted in this oxymoronic condition due to their intrinsic capacity to escape time, individuals and practices while also being marked by them. The dynamic nature of these fashion ephemera – here considered as ‘fashion remains’ – is not only manifested in their interactive nature but may also be glimpsed in their capacity to move through time. In fact, the idea of ‘remains’ presupposes their having survived something, their endurance. Expanding the idea of the ‘social life’ of objects proposed by Appadurai, I have shown how these fashion ephemera persist, manifesting a capacity to resist their disposable nature. This capacity to resist and remain in time (and space) becomes a condition of their existence and transforms their state as disposable objects into durable ones, while it also materially and immaterially changes their epistemic capacities. While the temporal passage and the related intervention of multiple hands on these ephemera may affect their very material state (e.g. leaving traces of uses), the passage of time may also immaterially affect their interpretation, bringing ephemera into new contexts, such as the archive, which may favour new interpretations. At the same time, the permanence of these ephemera in time allows them to accrue the characteristics of, and attest to, the multiple practices and events that relate to them. In fact, another crucial dynamic character of these fashion remains is their capacity not simply to testify to, but actually to embody, the causes and effects of immaterial events and relations in fashion. As outlined above, these fashion ephemera are in a constant dialogue with people and things, provoking and materially performing multiple ‘immaterialities’, such as ‘intimacy’ between designers and journalists, through handwriting or ‘personal affection’ in the case of a name or a note written by a private collector, for example. To think of ephemera as remains represents, thanks to their performative features, a more dynamic and ‘a-live’ way for fashion to remain, initiating, not only an expansion of the discourse on fashion materiality but also on the means of fashion immaterialities. Fashion ephemera in the archive show how these immaterialities do not completely disappear but persist materially through and in these flimsy objects. Invitations, catalogues or press releases (and probably other ephemeral materials) have the ability to capture these ephemeral practices due to their capacity to share their ephemeral nature. The transient nature of these fashion ephemera and their need to represent, and be in, the moment permit them to apprehend all the immaterial practices of fashion that, otherwise, could be lost. Probably better than garments and accessories, these ephemera are able to reveal the ephemeral labour and networks which are hidden within the objects that emerge from the industry – or, for example, all of the hands that go into the design, making and distribution of a garment. CONCLUSIONS

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These fashion ephemera uniquely permeate the transience of fashion, due to the ease with which they may be handled and their ‘slippery’ nature. While such dynamic characteristics contribute to their inherent disposability, this disposability also permits them to ‘hide’ and to evade disposal, allowing them to bear witness to transient events or practices. In this sense, their ephemerality and their capacity to remain, are linked not only to their disposable nature but also to their capacity to ‘sneak out’ of one context into another, recording multiple forms of interaction and passages. Thus, these materials are ephemera not simply in name but also in their capacity to escape fixed contexts and meanings, or at least to challenge them.

From inform to perform Fashion ephemera do not only inform but also perform. The distinction between these two verbs is crucial in understanding the epistemic capacities of these fashion ephemera and their ways of functioning as remains. While, in this instance, to ‘inform’ recognizes fashion ephemera’s capacity to act as static indexes – recalling, for example, the time and location of a fashion show – to ‘perform’ encompasses all those other ways in which the beholder knows through ephemera. In concrete terms, this means differentiating the use of these ephemera as giving static data, and understanding the ways in which these ephemera enable a specific knowledge about fashion through a more performative activity. As J. L. Austin explains, performativity is an utterance that not only conveys information but also, by its being spoken, accomplishes some significant act.4 In the case of fashion ephemera, this is not only guaranteed by their practical capacity to give access to a show or their being paratextual elements of a collection, but their performative nature is also at play in their capacity to enable actions, relationships and ideologies at work in the fashion industry. In these ephemera, there is not only an informational flow but also a performative one that determines hierarchies of creative and collaborative work, constructions of time and the poetics of a garment. These ephemera are performative and concur with the definition of the ontology of a piece of clothing, a fashion show and its authors. They activate their meaning and characters, while constructing them as central tropes of fashion. Being fashion communication devices, invitations, catalogues and press releases usually give clear information about a show, a designer or a garment. However, in the cases discussed in this book, information is not always clearly given. Rather, the beholder is required to engage on multiple levels that not only rely on a representational register, but also occur on a performative level. Although information may be extrapolated from them, these ephemera are not conventionally informative, but, rather, require an engagement in order to fully satisfy their epistemic potential. To know fashion through these fashion ephemera means not only to read or look at their content, but also to physically engage with them and to navigate the complex effects determined by their set of features: their being performative. The specificity of these ephemera in enabling

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knowledge about fashion rests on their tripartite nature that involves an embodied and performative form of knowledge rather than one relying solely on representation. By saying so, I do not claim that representation is absent from fashion ephemera, as these materials do often work on a representational level, nor do I suggest that representation is in opposition to performance. Rather, I advocate a recognition that representation is not the only way of knowing through ephemera, and that performative practices may, to some extent, exceed it. In Art beyond Representation, Barbara Bolt explains this transition when writing about art as a performative act in order to overcome its being understood as representational practice.5 Bolt suggests that the regime of representation is based on a practice of substituting a thing with something else that is better for re-presenting reality. She proposes to think about art through a performative logic, which permits one to understand its capacity to create realities rather than to merely represent them, and where ‘knowing operates at the level of hands and eyes’.6 In the case of these fashion ephemera, there is a similar type of functioning. An example can be seen in Chapter 3, where I speak about ‘point of touch’ not only as a way in which some ephemera evoke the role of fabrics and touch in creative practices, but also as an allusive method to affirm how matters of touch are intrinsic in practices of knowledge in fashion. Through fashion ephemera, the beholder not only knows via the actions of reading or looking at representations of fashion, but also through embodied practices of knowledge, such as touching or unfolding. Hence, my use of verbs like ‘evoke’, ‘trigger’ and ‘enable’ has been seminal in indicating this performative character. Without trying to imbue ephemera with magical powers, these ‘active’ verbs are employed to highlight the potential of ephemera in affecting the ways in which fashion, its actors and its practices remain in these ephemera and are conversely re-enacted through them. As opposed to simply being used to extrapolate information about fashion, these ephemera are crucial in performing sensibilities about, and relations in, fashion practices. They manifest them materially, allowing them to survive and be deciphered. In this sense, these fashion ephemera become guides to multiple immaterial fashion practices that are often overlooked or unacknowledged: from practices behind their creation, to the practices of exchange, to their being kept as personal memorabilia or collected for preservation in private or public archives. Yet, such a position has only recently garnered the attention of different fashion scholars and fashion curators. Caroline Evans shows the importance of studying ephemeral practices, such as modelling, to make sense of fashion and its capacity to engender technologies of the body, for example.7 The curator Olivier Saillard has also stressed the multiple immaterial aspects of fashion in his fashion performances, such as ‘Models at Work’ (2012) or ‘Models Never Talk’, where fashion models from the 1980s and 1990s reperformed gestures, gazes, walks, voices, and postures, stressing the immateriality of these practices and the importance of reanimating them in the present through bodies in performance. In this new terrain of the performative, ephemera guarantee another dimension of investigation, leading us to rethink the role of the archive as a space of activization of these performative remains.

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The archive and the agency of ephemera All these verbs presuppose a sort of stimulus for an action, a capacity to hint at something, and the archive becomes a space where these activity flourish and remain. As I have shown, the appearance of a designer’s name or handwriting on ephemera works not only as a sign affirming the affiliation of ephemera with a designer. Rather, these specific features (in connection to the material and visual ones) have a performative capacity to create the perception of relationships of intimacy and contact, as shown in Margiela’s s/s 2010 handwritten postcard invitation. This interactive nature reminds us of what philosopher Don Ihde has defined as a form of ‘material hermeneutics’.8 Focusing on practices of knowledge creation in the natural sciences, Ihde suggests how the role of technological instruments (e.g. the microscope) must be considered not only as instrumental but also hermeneutical, urging the researcher to recognize how these devices become active mediators in the way reality is interpreted.9 Ihde argues for the participatory role of these instruments in the creation of knowledge, thereby extending the realm of hermeneutics from textual to material artefacts. In this manner, he suggests that material hermeneutics must ‘look at how we are to get material things to evidence themselves, or metaphorically, to speak’.10 In questioning the way in which we make things speak, Ihde’s material hermeneutics is aligned with Latour’s idea of agency, promoting the concept of artefacts as active instruments of knowledge. As Latour argues, the archive is, in that sense, not only a physical place but also a context where it is possible to rebuild the activity of objects and reactivate and retrace the networks in which they participate.11 Latour’s idea of agency and Ihde’s ‘material hermeneutics’ are useful tools with which to rethink fashion ephemera’s epistemic functioning in the archive and their potential in ‘demanding to be handled’ by their beholder. The specific design, their visual, textual and material nature not only stimulate specific ways of engaging with these objects in the industry but, in the archive, their performative nature become intrinsic in the ways in which we know fashion through these ephemera. Similar to Idhe’s hemerneutics tools, these fashion ephemera demand a material interaction in the archive, and the low consideration of their material value in museums, if compared to garments, paradoxically allows this interaction which, I argue, is crucial to an effective use of these objects as remains of fashion. To rethink fashion ephemera, their transformative nature and their ‘activity’ in the archive has become a fruitful link to open the tradition of object-based approach in fashion studies (something that has privileged the study of dress or other wearable objects), reconsider the possibility to study other types of fashion archives and bridge archival fashion studies with studies on the ontology of documents and a material epistemological practice. If the study of fashion has been strongly affected by the role of archives, the study of documents as objects per se and their functioning has been markedly overlooked. Ephemera as remains help to rethink the value of the fashion media archive, the performative nature of the document and the epistemic practice of archival work. When speaking about media archaeology, Jussi Parikka has recently suggested

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to speak of a ‘hands-on epistemology’ to refer to a ‘performative mode of engagement with the collection’.12 My understanding of the encounter in the archive has been similar to Parrika’s idea where the ephemera has demanded physical engagement as a central practice in the epistemological work. More than a space for mere static evidence, the documentary archive has become a space to observe the mobility and the lively nature of fashion ephemera. To touch the ephemera and observe the remains of their dynamism freed these objects from a static documentary perspective, while instigating a practice of unmaking their content and their narrative to consequentially rethink their status. While the archive has been the space from where many histories of fashion have been written, more must be done in fashion studies to explore new type of ephemeral archives or reflect the experience of the fashion archive beyond garments, its predetermined hierarchies of objects and even its poetics, as a number of scholars and curators have done in other fields.13 For example, when studying the function of documentation in performance archives, Philip Auslander defined the passage from an ‘ontological relation’ to a ‘phenomenological relation’ with the document. In his ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’, Auslander criticizes a vision of performance as ephemeral and the consequent use of the document as evidence of a performance: a vision that put a sort of dependence of the document to the event-performance. Auslander suggests inverting this relation and that ‘the crucial relationship is not the one between the document and the performance but the one between the document and its audience’.14 He continues that ‘perhaps the authenticity of the performance document resides in its relationship to its beholder rather than to an ostensibly originary event: perhaps its authority is phenomenological rather than ontological’.15 This phenomenological approach to the document and the archive is what my study of fashion ephemera as remains has argued for. The constant need to interact with the objects, their ‘handleability’ made this potential of the archive more evident without, however, claiming a sort of magical power of ephemera and the archive. As historian Ludmilla Jordanova stresses, there is a danger in thinking that objects can ‘speak’ and they ‘should not be treated as if they were autonomous, transparent, and self-evident’.16 Referring in particular to interpretations of aesthetic objects (works of art, especially portraits and figurative statues), Jordanova critiques the identification of a sort of magical power in objects in scholarly investigations. While I agree with Jordanova’s critique of the idea that objects can ‘act’ or have ‘intentions’ like a scholar does, I argue that it is fruitful to rethink her critique through the idea of the ‘agency of objects’ proposed by Bruno Latour and rethink the archival work in more participative terms. My work with ephemera has demanded a certain form of engagement that, in my case, has immediately brought to the fore the need to rethink the material nature of fashion documents or even the importance of rethinking a hierarchy of fashion objects and of the traces inscribed into them. In this sense, we may see a new scenario for the fashion archive and a new understanding of, to use Valerie Steele’s words, the ‘role that objects can play in the creation of knowledge’17 following what Appadurai has defined a necessary ‘methodological fetishism’.18 Appadurai explains that if ‘from a theoretical point of view

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human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their social context’.19 If Appadurai mostly refers to the importance of the biography of objects as a fruitful method for revealing social material-based ties, his concept of ‘methodological fetishism’ recalls how objects are necessary tools of knowledge that, through their peculiar features, direct interpretation. This ‘methodological fetishism’ becomes particularly relevant for fashion studies where, as in archaeology, objects may become clues able to participate in the determination of knowledge, and not only evidence of it.20 As shown by the studies outlined above, fashion is a material-based cultural phenomenon where objects are not only embedded with meanings, but are also conductors of knowledge. Thus, I draw attention to the ‘role’ that a close study of the materiality of fashion, such as ephemera, may have in enriching interpretations and theoretical discussions about new fashion archives, its practices and its actors. At the same time, the recognition of such an active role of ephemera also speaks to the capacity of objects and their materiality to enhance other methodologies and theoretical approaches in fashion studies that have been traditionally resistant to the engagement with objects.21 In this sense, my attempt to question the role of ephemera in the process of interpretation has been similar to the questioning of the role of images – and in some cases objects – developed within visual culture studies. While W. J. T. Mitchell asks what pictures ‘want’ from us,22 Chris Goden rephrases Mitchell’s work, asking, ‘what do objects want?’.23 Sherry Turkle suggests that objects have the capacity to ‘evoke’,24 while Aura Satz and Jon Wood recognize the capacity of objects to ‘articulate’.25 What all these works share is an alternative vision of images or objects that, as Mitchell argues, constitute a theoretical interrogation of the image/object and how it affects us.26 By rethinking these fashion ephemera as performative in the archive, it is possible to recognize in them an active form of referentiality (or even indexicality), where they are not passively chained to a specific event or individual, but also have the capacity to determine, trigger and problematize the ontology of fashion practices, while proposing alternative and multiple narratives about fashion.

‘Ways of operating’ of fashion ephemera When reflecting on the agency of fashion ephemera, it is crucial to recognize their tendency to mesh the fictional and the real. Invitations, catalogues and press releases are not conventional documents as they often mix visual, textual and material data referring to real events with fictional information, therefore requiring an in-depth investigation of the ways in which these two registers (the fictional and the real) dialogue. Clear examples discussed in this book were Paul Boudens’s ‘post-invitations’ for Yamamoto or Bernhard Willhelm’s fictional story press releases. Indeed, fiction and reality are entangled in these fashion ephemera, and have often been interpreted as resulting from the need to attract and surprise buyers and journalists. Once in the archive, this nature alerts us about the functioning of these objects as documents of fashion. In doing so, I affirmed the need to 188

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further explore their capacities to instigate specific knowledge about fashion, by asking how these fashion ephemera function in addition to addressing what events or subjects they index. In this sense, I shared the aim of writers in other disciplines to discuss the ways in which we gain knowledge from everyday objects and the way such objects may ‘direct’ our knowledge. For example, theatre historian Susan Bennett has stressed the importance not only of recognizing the epistemic tropes of everyday objects but also of exploring ‘the explicit articulation of the ways in which these tropes organize and often control the theatre histories’.27 Similarly, in this book, it has been important to show the narrative inherent in these ephemera in order to recognize which stories are celebrated and which are hidden or left out. This exercise has been fundamental to recognize the genre of these ephemera as fashion documents and possibly open up a discussion on their epistemic functioning. Drawing on the debate that emerged in cultural history around the reliability of sources, Christopher Breward has stressed how fashion research demands a constant confrontation with the status and reliability of fictional documents, but that these types of sources are also crucial ‘alternative maps’28 to be pursued by fashion historians. Interestingly, the fashion ephemera discussed in this book have confirmed the richness of these alternative, overlooked and ephemeral sources but they also confirmed the fashion industry’s control of discourses about creativity or authorship, for example. Being created and distributed within the industry, these fashion ephemera appeal and contribute to some discourses of fashion while overlooking many others like printing techniques or negotiations of creative work, for example. If the type of actors involved in the creation and dissemination of these ephemera have indeed subverted some traditional formats of fashion communication, they have also perpetuated a form of self-reflexivity that did not extend into a critique of their own practices. If, as I have claimed, this range of fashion ephemera embodies a form of self-reflexivity, then it is also important to examine differing uses and degrees of self-criticism, as I have shown in the case of the Raf Simons s/s ’03 press release in Chapter 3. Claiming to be a critique of consumerism in fashion, the press release enacts a critical stance while hiding its commercial purposes and its participation in a consumerist sphere. While this example shows how self-reflexivity is not necessarily synonymous with criticality, it also permits one to reflect on the contradictions behind the interpretation of these fashion designers as conceptual, alternative or subversive. In fact, even though their approach to fashion may have been different from other more conventional forms and practices of fashion design,29 these designers have still aligned themselves with conventional commercial fashion practices and discourses. While my intention has been to evidence these lacks, further works will be required to deepen these perspectives and implement a better understanding of the making of the ephemera from a more materialist and historical perspective. What these ephemera have shown is that, in the fashion archive, these remains seem to be more ‘controlled’ and ‘docile’ rather than ‘subversive’. To pay attention to the ‘how’ has also allowed me to measure the multiple registers through which these ephemera enable knowledge about fashion. Differently from other fashion objects (e.g. garments) and fashion media (e.g. magazines), these fashion ephemera combine visual, textual and material characteristics manifesting a CONCLUSIONS

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common epistemological behaviour that attests to their capacity to be more than mere promotional tools. The word, the image and the material have emerged as the mutual ways in which knowledge proliferates, and is evoked, through these ephemera. As proposed in the introduction and chapter 3, my idea of a ‘ménage à trois’ stresses the importance of recognizing the specific epistemological functioning of these ephemera. While in the case of garments the epistemological potential of the ‘material’ may appear less ‘declarative’, the interrelation between image, text and material in ephemera highlights the centrality of material knowledge in fashion. Thus, the question of the ‘how’ has not only drawn attention to the material as epistemological trope but has also allowed me to reflect on the different forms of discursive interrelations between images, texts and material in fashion media. This was facilitated by the ‘mixed’30 nature, to quote Mitchell, of fashion ephemera and their capacity to enable reflections on the scope of these interrelations. As my analysis has shown, it is not enough to recognize the dialogue between images and texts. Rather, it is important to ‘listen’ to these dialogues, measure the ‘tone’ of the discussion and evaluate, from time to time, their specific functioning. This means that, in some cases, the image may have supremacy over text and material, while in other cases, text may be more influential than an image or a material feature, and so on. Thus, to question the ‘how’ has highlighted not only the different and specific registers of knowledge at play in ephemera, but also the importance of adopting a more dynamic approach to the relations among image, text and material features in ways of knowing about fashion and its practices, through media and objects. While their material, textual and visual nature may have the intention of attracting buyers or journalists and promoting designers,31 such an intention has been demonstrated to possess an epistemological value as well. These ephemera manifest a capacity to make strange their own function while still fulfilling it. In concrete terms, what I have shown is that the extravagant or odd form of an invitation may reveal specific knowledge about fashion. A press release written in the shape of a poem or a fictional story may reveal a designer’s particular authorial trait, while the blurred image of a garment contained in a catalogue may trigger sensorial knowledge about a garment and not simply attract the interest of the beholder for its extravagance. What my analysis has shown is that these ephemera possess a very particular epistemic functioning that, once revealed, may reach a high degree of efficiency in delivering knowledge about fashion. A blurry image of a garment may be more epistemologically effective than a clear image of it – or, at least, equally effective. By constantly challenging conventional forms of delivering information, these fashion ephemera have the capacity to perform the less immediate but essential characteristics of fashion, such as the role of tactile knowledge in fashion. Thus, to fully evaluate the epistemic capacities of these ephemera means not only to let the materials speak for themselves, but also to scrutinize their complex ‘ways of operating’. Here, I refer once again to what de Certeau called the historical operation of the archive and the importance of recognizing and evaluating a ‘transformation of [the] function’ of everyday objects into documents.32 As I argued in the introduction, de Certeau stresses the importance of evaluating how everyday objects function epistemologically, once they have entered the archive. Although my analysis has shown 190

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how, in fashion ephemera, epistemic capacities are ‘at play’ even before the entry of these ephemera into the archive, it has also demonstrated how the archive plays a crucial role in the recontextualization of these ephemera as objects of knowledge. Rather than decontextualizing them, the archive highlights their epistemic capacities and ‘puts to rest’ the promotional attitudes of their fictional elements, endorsing their ambiguous but seminal role in the understanding of fashion, its actors and its practices. In the archive, the fictional and spectacular elements of these ephemera (e.g. blurry images, peculiar shapes) do not have to be considered as adverse to practices of knowledge but, rather, as characteristic objects of fashion knowledge. In this sense, while it is important to affirm that the promotional attitude of these fashion ephemera may mislead, it is also crucial to recognize their potential as devices through which we can imaginatively reanimate fashion and its practices.

Ambivalent knowledge As I pointed out in Chapter 1, the collection and conservation practices of museums concerning this type of ephemera are inevitably linked to a particular and, in some cases, self-referential web of relations. Being distributed within the industry, the survival of these fashion ephemera in museums is uniquely determined by fashion insiders who donate them to museums. In the case of the ephemera analysed here, this situation is, at first sight, slightly different because of MoMu’s proactive collecting practices and, most importantly, because of the close networks that characterize the Antwerp fashion scene. In fact, Antwerp is a unique and atypical case where the fashion industry and museum are constantly intertwined with one another, and this is highlighted by the presence of fashion ephemera in MoMu’s archive and by the names inscribed on them, which permit one to retrace these various relationships. In this sense, these ephemera stand in between the museum and the industry as a testament to their relationship, revealing the very close networks of fashion designers, journalists, curators and even local politicians who have a vested interest in promoting the Antwerp fashion scene. Investigating the ephemera at MoMu unleashed these connections. In doing so, these fashion ephemera, more than any other type of fashion object, revealed the problematic nature of these networks where directors and curators of the museums not only donate their collection but also assume a variety of roles within the Antwerp fashion scene – therein perhaps attesting to the ‘edginess’ and completeness of the MoMu collection, but also leaving little space for critical distance and detachment. While fashion ephemera may be symbolic of this ambivalent closeness, they may also hint at the importance of knowledge ‘conserved’ in the industry. In fact, the contribution of fashion industry insiders has been fundamental to the evolution of critical reflection in fashion museums.33 Similarly, the blurring of boundaries between industry and museum in Antwerp plays an ambivalent role as it has also generated one of the most innovative and internationally recognized forms of fashion curating in the contemporary realm of fashion museums.34 By approaching fashion from a design point of view, MoMu has CONCLUSIONS

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Figure 101  Maison Martin Margiela invitation s/s ’12, front. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. 192

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Figure 102  Maison Martin Margiela invitation s/s ’12, back. © Collection MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. CONCLUSIONS

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avoided the pitfalls of focusing exclusively on the final product (garments), and instead directs its full attention to the creative process and to the multiple practices and objects involved in the creation and dissemination of fashion. Ephemera such as invitations, catalogues and press releases become emblematic of this approach, while also showing the other side of the same coin. In fact, fashion museums – MoMu included – have, for the most part, failed to acknowledge these crucial networks or, in their exhibiting practices, to critically engage with these objects as indexes of selfreflexive practices within fashion, for example. Museums have tended to employ these fashion ephemera merely as static and self-explanatory objects without fully exploiting their multiple epistemic potentials. These conditions lead one to question the role of the fashion museum, its difference from other art or design museums, as well as the very nature of collecting and exhibiting fashion: who is licensed to talk, curate and write about fashion? What is the role of the non-academic commentator who has a high level of ‘field’ knowledge? And what is their relationship with museum professionals? The case of ephemera at MoMu, in fact, raises issues not only about exhibiting fashion but also about the ontology of the fashion museum.35 To discuss the role of these fashion ephemera in a fashion museum brings one to reflect on the very nature of fashion collections in museums and the possibility – or maybe I should say the impossibility – of ‘neutrally’ collecting fashion objects belonging to the field without a close relation to the industry. The closeness to the fashion industry is in fact a crucial aspect behind the methodical collection of these materials. As the library director Dieter Suls argues, fashion museums have the ‘need to work with designers, press agents or “significant others”, including journalists and shopkeepers in order to acquire information. We moreover have to play close to the ball, because a designer makes his or her name in a single collection’36. The fact that ephemera span the industry and the museum means that they bring with them ambivalent types of knowledge, being emblems not only of the controversial relations behind MoMu, but also of the necessity of dialoguing between industry and fashion museum – especially at a time when public funding of public museums is scarce.

Future remains and the economy of the live Museums may not only have to face the difficulties with the reachability of these ephemeral materials, but they are today also dealing with a new format for these remains. Indeed, these practices are in constant evolution – especially at this present, highly digital moment. In this context, it is useful to look at one very last example. In MoMu’s boxes on Maison Martin Margiela, I found a white page with a QR code, under which is written ‘MMM invitation s/s 12’ (Figures 101–102). By scanning the QR code, I was directed to an expired link. Intrigued by this, I decided to contact Margiela’s press office and I discovered that the link originally showed a video of a Parisian modelling school. While the video alludes to the reflective tendencies of fashion discourses, it also reveals the problem of the digital turn, in which materials are circulated online rather than in a material format, becoming even more ephemeral than those discussed in this 194

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book. This indeed adds another variable to the challenge of collecting, conserving and, most importantly, studying fashion through ephemeral materials. This incident points to the difficulties and challenges faced by fashion archives and museums with the advent of the internet and digital culture. As Erik Schaefer argues, ‘materials that are “born digital” – whether a digital film, an e-mail, or a word-processed memo – are even more evanescent than the nitrate’.37 In this sense, the ‘digital’ in fashion museums and archives has, in fact, diversified the fashion-museological landscape originally made of physical materials (objects and printed documents), by adding another layer to the paradoxical triumvirate ‘fashion-museum-ephemerality’. With the advent of the digital, there has been a migration from an object-centred to a digital-centred practice that has, in many ways, transformed the very nature of fashion archives and museums.38 This is not only due to digitalization practices but also because the fashion industry is materialized online at an increased pace. Agnès Rocamora has explained how ‘new digital media have supported the speeding up of fashion’ nurturing ‘evanescence’ and an idea of ‘instant fashion’.39 Digital and internet fashion are indeed fast time-related phenomena and, to some extent, have become the perfect tool to cope with the speed of fashion expression. The internet’s quality of being ‘in the moment’ has exaggerated the idea of ephemerality and has consequentially produced new forms of ephemeralities and remains of fashion. What these ‘online fashion remains’ evidence is the utopian enterprise instigated by the very idea of remains. An economy of the remains stimulates an incomplete practice that made evident the idealistic nature of museums, archives and collecting. Following Jacques Derrida’s work on the archive, the art historian Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has fittingly defined the museum as ‘a refuge for utopian thought’40 to explain how museums and collecting practices are moved by a desire to conserve and preserve our ungraspable identities and cultures. Hoskins similarly suggested that digital archiving ‘makes us aware of the limits of the human capacity to arrest and to hold and to keep the archive’.41 For example, during my study, Maison Martin Margiela’s website decided to change their old ftp site aesthetic and use a more common WordPress theme. The original website played on the idea of the archive and showcased an aesthetic of an ‘under construction’ site which referenced Maison Margiela’s attention to design and construction processes in fashion. The website was removed in 2012 and no trace was left. This change was particularly relevant as it followed a shift in the art direction of the brand and an attempt to distance the fashion house from its former aesthetic, and even from the figure of its founder Martin Margiela. This case flourishes new specific factors of fashion ephemeralities like the transient nature of software, websites and graphic online languages in fashion brands, leading us to reflect on the dynamism of websites, the central role of the digital in branding and marketing practices and, most importantly, provoking a reflection on the agency and responsibilities of archiving fashion. Who were the authors of this website? And who was supposed to monitor and record this shift? The digital not only stages the utopic attempt to ‘arrest’ in the archive but exaggerates the ephemeral condition of fashion and its ontological relationship with its remains. The digital is reinforcing a scenario for the ephemeral in fashion, augmenting the culture and CONCLUSIONS

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celebration of its characters and values. Online platforms like SHOWStudio.com, created by Nick Knight and Peter Saville in 2000, or the advent of social media like Instagram have pushed an idea of present-ness and transitory-ness through a constant search for the live, in a way that has also characterized the nature of the ephemera discussed in this book. In the digital, similar to these material ephemera, the self-reflexive nature of fashion is staged and made ‘a-live’. But, what does this obsession for the live and liveness say about fashion and these ephemera? While Rebecca Schneider speaks about the ‘live’ and ‘liveness’ as an economy of recording and reproduction, it could be also argued that these fashion ephemera catapult us in front of another dimension of ephemeralism: the capacity of fashion to stage an economy of the live, as another frontier of the capitalistic process. Media studies scholar Ioana B. Jucan explains how ‘in the […] capitalistic system of disposable redundancy, the (planned, programmed) production of the new is in equal measure the production of the obsolete’.42 Fashion is at the forefront of this mechanism as the obsolete is not only a consequence but has also become a paradigmatic element of its construction. The discarded is therefore a paradigm of the system which must be produced concurrently. In this sense, the ‘new’ and ‘newness’ are ideologies which are paralleled by returning obsolescence that is not only, as Caroline Evans suggests, a matter of historical return.43 Rather, it is a result of what I defined as ‘fashion ephemeralism’. The ephemeral, in this sense, is more than the result of a mechanism of producing the new. Rather, it is a condition that must be constructed through the discursive activization and live animation of obsolescence and remains. It is in this manner that fashion ephemera as remains represent the ultimate paradigmatic embodiment of this principle that is less governed by a constant production of the ‘new’ and a consequent disposable factor, but rather through a constant discourse of the ‘live’. The ephemera showed in this book perform this activity with the representation of the atelier, the fitting, the making of a garment, the machines, the frenetic element of the show’s backstage, its mediation, the bodily traces of the designers and other actors. All these games of activation of spaces, bodies, objects and practices of fashion becomes discourses able to instigate a re-evaluation of the ways commodities are exchanged in this strand of fashion. In fact, this constant search of the live seems to interestingly evoke Marx’s theory of the commodity fetishism and his idea of “transformation of the material by living labour, by the realization of living labour in the material […] ”.44 These words resonates in these ephemera that, at the same time, seem to show us an inverse mechanism. In fact, the ephemera discussed in this book conversely evidence how the living is not only materialized in the commodity but rather fetishized, represented and made alive in these objects. In all these ephemera, the live and its capacity to prompt a discourse on the ephemeral is adopted as more than a simple technique to justify the commodity and its newness, but rather show how the live becomes a paradigm to perpetuate the transitoriness of fashion. In this way, these ephemera clearly demonstrate an alternative projection of what Marx saw as the living nature of labour in the commodity which, in these ephemera, is not only hidden but paradoxically staged as living: made a-live. Discussed in performance theory and 196

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media theory, the ‘live’ seems a useful tool to rethink the condition of fashion and its necessity to instigate and constantly find new ways to discourse its capitalistic habit. The live allows the ephemeral to endure while revealing a new dimension to fashion. The live, in this sense, is not only a matter of recording but it is another capitalistic tool to activate and evoke the multiple facades of an economy built on the need to instigate the animate into the inanimate. Rather than the ‘new’, fashion seems today – especially with the advent of the internet and the social media – to rely on this condition where ephemeral materials and practices show a capacity to be pervasive within the culture they operate in. As discussed by queer scholar Josè Esteban Munoz in relation to queer communities in New York or by literary scholar Anna Poletti in relation to youth and subculture (and also recalled by Schneider in her text), ephemera have the capacity to penetrate their specific culture, and this is also the case for these fashion ephemera which, thanks to their mobility and (even) their disposability, become aggregators of ephemeral sensibilities that nurture a specific culture and its practices. Similarly, these fashion ephemera as remains capture and stage the discourses and ingredients that characterize a specific ephemeral live culture of fashion becoming eloquent capitalistic symbols. Their being remains becomes a condition showing how ephemera encapsulate the ontological nature of the remain as a type of documents ‘in time’; their capacity to stage the ephemeral, their being in time, their being discarded, considered as notvaluable while still remaining. All this not only speaks to the condition of ephemera at large but, in the case of fashion ephemera, it speaks to their capacity to incarnate the contradictions of fashion. Their ontological nature of being between creation and dispersion, fiction and reality, information and performance, material and immaterial, prospect the type of knowledge, and the scant – but articulated – ways in which this knowledge is proliferated within the fashion industry.

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NOTES

Preface 1 https://fashionresearchlibrary.com/about

Introduction 1 Ulrich Lehmann, Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 201. 2 Mary-Elise Haug, ‘The Life Cycle of Printed Ephemera: A Case Study of the Maxine Waldron and Thelma Mendsen Collections’, Winterthur Portfolio 30.1 (1995): 59–72. 3 Tamsin Blanchard, F&G: Fashion and Graphics (London: Laurence King, 2004), 110. 4 In this period, I was working as an intern at the library of the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp. 5 As defined by ephemera amateur Maurice Rickards, the term ‘ephemera’ may be used both in singular and plural forms, and it was also used ‘by physicians, who applied it to transient fevers; and poets, to whom it described mortal beings’. Maurice Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera (US: Abbeville Press, 1988), 13. 6 Haug, ‘The Life Cycle of Printed Ephemera’. 7 Paula McDowell, ‘Of Grubs and Other Insects: Constructing the Categories of “Ephemera” and “Literature” in Eighteenth-Century British Writing,’ in Studies in Ephemera: Text and Image in Eighteenth Century Print, eds. Kevin D. Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2013), 37. 8 Christopher B. Balme, ‘Playbills and the Theatrical Space’, in Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography, eds. Charlotte M. Canning and Thomas Postlewait (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2010), 37. 9 Winterthur associate librarian Mary-Elise Haug notes the importance of this in ‘The Life Cycle of Printed Ephemera’, where she argues that the collection of ephemera has been meaningful only in a domestic or private sphere, being virtually invisible as a cultural pursuit and, for this reason, it is difficult to retrace in historical terms. See Haug, ‘The Life Cycle of Printed Ephemera’, 66. The collection of ephemera originated in amateur practices and the study of ephemera was first institutionalized with the creation of The British Ephemera Society in 1975. The society was coordinated by Maurice Rickards, who was joined by seven other collectors. As Rickards explains, the society aimed to create ‘[…] a society of like-minded people who love ephemera for its own sake, but also recognize its value as historical evidence. […] A society to be internationally recognized in due course as the body for the study of ephemera.’ Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera, 13. This society studied ephemera through collecting them and also organizing exhibitions. Genre and other

issues related to ephemera were debated (e.g. pronunciation of the word). The most famous example is the manifesto-exhibition This is Ephemera at Paper Point in Central London, 11 November 1975. The exhibition showcased various printed materials from calendars to postcards, from invitations to advertising. To read more about this exhibition, see Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera. In 1980, The Ephemera Society of America was founded with a similar aim and purpose to the British society. 10 See for example the Centre for Ephemera Studies at the University of Reading. www.reading. ac.uk/typography/research/typ-researchcentres.aspx 11 Although works within literary studies have not dealt with ephemera in the way I do here, they draw attention to the power of everyday objects, consequentially helping me to recognize different ways to think theoretically about flimsy objects. See Steven Connor, Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things (London: Profile Books, 2011). 12 Anna Poletti, Intimate Ephemera: Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 3. 13 Ibid. 14 MoMu is not, however, the only public fashion museum conserving these ephemeral materials. Other notable international examples of archives of fashion ephemera include the Musée de la Mode de la ville de Paris Galliera, Fashion Museum of Bath, The Kyoto Costume and Fashion Museum, The Costume Institute in New York, the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Museum of New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum of London and design museums such as the Design Museum of Copenhagen or MUSE in Lisbon. Private fashion brands’ museums such as the Ferragamo or Gucci museums also have large collections of fashion ephemera. Fashion ephemera can also be found in city museums or other types of museums, which may conserve business documents from brands, such as the Crédit Municipal de Paris, which contains many fashion ephemera about Haute Couture houses at the beginning of the twentieth century. 15 To read more about the formation of MoMu and its practices see Marco Pecorari, ‘Contemporary Fashion History in Museums’, in Fashion and Museum: Theory and Practice, eds. Marie Riegels Melchior and Birgitta Svensson (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2014) 46–60. 16 See the chapter ‘The Rise of the Designer’ in Christopher Breward, Fashion (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 21–48. 17 Marco Pecorari, ‘Zones-in-Between: The Ontology of a Fashion Praxis’, in Couture graphique, eds. Jan Brand and José Teunissen (Breda Moti/ Terralannoo, 2013), 58–95. 18 Nancy Troy, Couture Culture. A Study in Modern Art & Fashion (Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 2002), 2–10. 19 Ibid., 2–10; 46. 20 Paul Morand, L’allure de Chanel (Paris: Hermann, 1976), 107. 21 Judith Clark, ‘A Note: Getting the Invitation’, Fashion Theory 5.3 (2001): 354. 22 Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, translated by M. Ward and R. Howard (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), xi. 23 A recent example is the book edited by Djurdia Bartlett, Shaun Cole and Agnès Rocamora, Fashion Media: Past and Present (New York and Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2013). The book is divided into three parts: a) magazines; b) painting, photography and film; c) new media. No attention is given to ephemera and their role as media. To read more about ‘fashion media discourse’ see also Agnès Rocamora. Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and Media (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).

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24 The transformation of fashion press releases into magazine articles has been interestingly discussed in ‘Conversation on Power: Patrick Scallon’, Interview by Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, in Vestoj, issue 4, xxxix–xlv. See also Sinisa Bosanac, Bojama Mandic and Andrija Sprcic, ‘Objective Journalism or Copy-Pasted Press Releases: A Preliminary Media Content Analysis’, INFuture2009. Digital Resources and Knowledge Sharing. www.academia. edu/636527/Objective_Journalism_or_CopyPasted_Press_Releases_A_Preliminary_Media_ Content_Analysis. 25 Barthes, The Fashion System, 236. 26 See Chapter 1, Figure 25. 27 Caroline Evans, ‘Yesterday’s Emblems and Tomorrow’s Commodities: The Return of the Repressed in Fashion Imagery today’, in Fashion Cultures. Theories, Explorations and Analysis, eds. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (London: Routledge, 2000), 96. 28 Ginger Gregg Duggan, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth: A Look at Contemporary Fashion Shows and their Relationship to Performance Art’, Fashion Theory 5.3 (2001): 243–70. 29 Akiko Fukai, Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion, (London: Merrell Publishers, 2010). 30 Magda Keaney, chaired by, ‘In Conversation with: Roundtable with Nick Knight, Marc Ascoli and Peter Saville,’ in Yohji Yamamoto. ed. Ligaya Salazar, catalogue of the exhibition held at V&A, 12 March–10 July, 2011 (London: V&A, 2011), 177. 31 Ibid., 158. 32 Tamsin Blanchard, F&G: Fashion and Graphics, 110. 33 See Chapter 1, Figure 10. 34 Amongst the coffee table books on this type of ephemera, a particularly relevant work is by fashion critic Ian R. Webb, who compiled a book with all the fashion invitations he collected through his life. Other examples of coffee table books presenting this type of ephemera are: Liz Farrelly, ed., Wear Me: fashion + graphics interactions (London: Booth-Cibborn Editions, 1995); Blanchard, F&G, Jay Hess and Simone Pasztorek, Graphic Design for Fashion (London: Laurence King, 2010). Ian R. Webb, Invitation Strictly Personal: 40 Years of Fashion Show Invites (London: Goodman Books, 2014). 35 Magazines like Wallpaper or T Magazine or online platforms like ‘SHOWStudio.com’ have started to dedicate features to these materials almost every season, reporting brief descriptions of the items and a visual selection of the most extravagant fashion week invitations or catalogues. See for example: www.wallpaper.com/gallery/fashion/best-showinvitations-fashion-week-aw18. 36 For historical fashion ephemera see the case of ‘Diktats’, an online bookstore, founded in September 2006 specializing in antique books, fine prints and rare documents on fashion (https://www.diktats.com/en). For contemporary fashion ephemera see ‘rarebooks paris’, an online Instagram account selling media materials from contemporary ready-to-wear brands (www.instagram.com/rarebooksparis/?hl=fr). 37 Few exhibitions have focused on fashion media showcasing fashion ephemera like invitations, catalogues and press releases. These exhibitions focused mostly on specific, iconic cases such as the magazine Six by Comme des Garçons, or discussed generally the creation of these ephemera in relation to famous fashion designers or fashion shows. See: Showtime: le défilé de mode, Palais Galliera Musée de Mode de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 4 March–30 July 2006, Paris: Association Paris-Musées; Not in Fashion - MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 25 September 2010–9 January 2011, 23–37. 2010; Couture Graphique: Fashion, Graphic Design & the Body was curated by José Teunissen and held at

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the Museum of the Image in Breda (Holland) in 2013. Another example of small installation dedicated to this type of fashion ephemera was part of Photographie Vestimentaire, exhibition curated by Olivier Saillard at Les Recontres de photography d’Arles in 2008, curated by Christian Lacroix. 38 To read more about the lack of attention regarding the value of ephemera, see Kevin D. Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll, ‘Introduction’, in Studies in Ephemera: Text and Image in Eighteenth Century Print (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2013). 39 Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans (eds.), Fashion and Modernity (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005). 40 Gilles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, [Translated by Catherine Porter], (Princeton NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25. 41 Ibid., 47. 42 Ibid., 69. 43 Ibid., 71. 44 Ulrich Lehmann, Fashion and Materialism, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 25. 45 Allistair O’Neill, ‘Cutting and Pasting’, in Fashion and Modernity, eds. Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), 175–90. 46 Christine Buci-Glucksmann, L’Esthétique de l’éphémere (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2003), 14. 47 Blanchard, F&G. 48 Judith Clark, ‘A Note: Getting the Invitation’, Fashion Theory 5.3 (2001): 354. 49 Murphy and O’Driscoll, ‘Introduction’, 4. 50 Cheryl Simon, ‘Introduction: Following the Archival Turn’, Visual Resources 18:2 (2011): 101–107. The archive has been at the centre of attention in multiple disciplines, especially during the twentieth century. It has been examined as a form of authority (e.g. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge), as a form of artistic inspiration (e.g. Susan Hiller, ‘Working through Objects,’ in Thinking About Art: Conversations with Susan Hiller, ed. Barbara Einzig (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996), 226–34); as a form of human condition (e.g. Jacques Derrida, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics, 25.2 (1995): 9–63; Hal Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’, October, 110 (2004): 3–22); and as repository of history (e.g. Walter Benjamin, Arcades’ Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative III, (Chicago, IL: University Chicago Press, 1978)). 51 Lehmann, Tigersprung; Barbara Vinken, Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System (London and New York: Berg, 2004). 52 Harold Koda and Richard Martin, The Historical Mode: Fashion and Art in 1980’s (Milan: Rizzoli International Publications, 1990); Caroline Evans. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 53 Felice McDowell, ‘“Old” Glossies and “New” Histories: Fashion, Dress and Historical Space’, Fashion Theory 20.3 (2015): 1–20. 54 Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 74. 55 Many fashion historians and curators have used ephemera in their work on fashion designers’ historical works, using them as sources to retrace the history of fashion designers’ brands or creative practices. Exemplary are Caroline Evans’ Mechanical Smile: Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America 1900–1929 (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013) where the authors makes an extensive use of show invitations. Notes

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On fashion shows, we have the study of Dior (2009) by Alexandra Palmer (Alexandra Palmer, Dior, London: V&A, 2009), who uses of sketches, scrapbooks, commercial receipts and other internal photographs to reconstruct design practices and commercial connections of the maison with specific clients or countries. 56 Ann L. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 57 Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archive, translated by Thomas Scott-Railton, (Durnham, CT: Yale University Press, [1989] 2013). 58 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 20. 59 Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 60 Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 13. 61 See Chapter 3. 62 For art history, see Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf, ‘The Implied Viewer’, in Subjectivity and Methodology in Art History, ed. Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf and Dan Karlholm, (Stockholm: Eidos nr 8), 155–76. See also Wolfgang Kemp, ‘The Work of Art and its Beholder: The Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception’, in The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspective, eds. Mark A. Cheetman, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 186–87. The idea of ‘implied viewer’ or ‘beholder’ is also developed in relation to the figure of the ‘implied reader’ discussed in literary studies. See Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 60. 63 Carolyn Steedman, Dust (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 150. 64 This aspect will be particularly discussed in Chapter 3. 65 Anne D’Alleva, How to Write Art History (London: Laurence King, 2006), 27–46. 66 Michael Hoey, Textual Interaction: An Introduction to Written Discourse Analysis (London and New York: Routledge 2001). 67 Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (eds.), Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2. 68 In his Image, Music, Text (1977), Barthes uses the terms ‘anchorage’ and ‘relay’ to explain how a text in a visual advert fastens the meaning of the image, generating a precise knowledge in its viewer. Barthes refers to the capacity of the word to ‘anchor’ the multiple and uncontrollable meanings of the image. See Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978), 16–17. 69 W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘There Are No Visual Media’, in Media Art Histories, ed. Oliver Grau (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), 395–408. 70 Paul Jobling, Fashion Spread: Word and Image in Fashion Photography Since 1980 (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 91. 71 See Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath, (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978), 5–6. 72 Michel de Certeau et al., The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol. 2: Living and Cooking (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1998), 256. 73 Mario Lupano, ‘In the Lands of Morphing’, ZoneModa Journal 1.1 (2009): 11. 74 Ben Highmore, ‘Introduction’, in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 3.

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75 Ibid. 76 Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, ‘Intellectuals & Power’, in Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 208. 77 For a discussion on objects and theory in fashion studies see Giorgio Riello, ‘The Object of Fashion: Methodological Approaches to the History of Fashion’, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 3, 2011. www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/8865. 78 For the attention to objects and critical theory, see Bill Brown, A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2004). For an example of a study on the indexicality of garments, see also Kitty Hauser, ‘The Fingerprint of the Second Skin’, in Fashion and Modernity, eds. Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans, (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), 153–70. 79 Rebecca Schneider, Performance Remains: Art and Wars in Times of Theatrical Reenactments, (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 98.

Chapter 1 1 Kevin Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll, ‘Introduction’, in Studies in Ephemera: Text and Image in Eighteenth Century Print eds. Kevin Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2013), 6. 2 This is particularly true for the designers analysed here who all use their personal name as the name of the brand. See Introduction. 3 Pierre Bourdieu and Yvette Delsaut, ‘Le Couturier et sa Griffe: Contribution à une Théorie de la Magie’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 1.1 (1976): 12. 4 Ibid., 21. 5 Ibid., 21. 6 As fashion scholar Agnès Rocamora argues, this lack of attention towards the materiality of objects is rooted in Bourdieu’s fixation on the role of objects as ‘objectifications’ of social structures, which leads him to overlook their material aspects and their role in the creation of value. Rocamora argues that: ‘[…] though Bourdieu insists on the central role played by discourses in the process of symbolic production, he actually pays little attention to those discourses themselves. This is because he reduces them, in the same way that he reduces other texts such as paintings, high fashion garments or literary writings, to an objectification of the field structure to which they belong’. Agnès Rocamora, ‘The Symbolic Production of Culture in Discourses on Fashion in Le Monde and the Guardian: A Critical Application of the Work of Bourdieu’ (PhD thesis, London: University of London, 2002), 9. Her critique continues in the article ‘Fields of Fashion’ (2002), where she affirms: ‘Bourdieu’s work has also shown some difficulties overcoming its fixation on status differentiation and on the role of objects as signs. The materiality of the objects engaged in processes of consumption has been taken over by their symbolic dimension’. Agnès Rocamora, ‘Fields of Fashion’, Journal of Consumer Culture 2.3 (2002): 343. 7 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘But Who Created the Creator?’ in Sociology in Question (London: SAGE Publications, 1993), 147. 8 Another example of Demeulemeester’s uses of handwriting can be seen in the press release communicating her decision to leave her own brand in 2013. Business of Fashion, ‘Ann Demeulemeester to Exit Label’, Business of Fashion, 20 November 2013, www. businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/ann-demeulemeester-to-exit-label. Notes

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9 See Derrida’s chapter ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’, in Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 6–26. 10 Sonja Neef and José Van Dijck. ‘Introduction’, in Sign Here! Handwriting in the New Media, eds. Sonja Neef, José Van Dijck and Eric Ketelaar (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 12. 11 Troy, Couture Culture, 273. 12 In her Couture Culture (2004), Nancy J. Troy explains this practice, focusing on early fashion designers like Charles Fredrick Worth, Paul Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet. An example of this relation may be seen in Madeleine Vionnet’s labels which only bore her signature but also included her thumbprint. Troy, Couture Culture, 247. See too Mary Lynn Stewart, ‘Copying and Copyrighting Haute Couture: Democratizing Fashion, 1900–1930s’, French Historical Studies 28.1 (2005): 103–30. 13 Troy, Couture Culture, 23. 14 The text on the invitation says: ‘Chers Amis, nous vous invitons, le 2 octobre 2009 à 18h30 áá notre défilé PE 2010. Ce sera au Palais Omnisport de Paris Bercy, Salle Marcel Cerdan-Porte 28. 8, bd de Bercy 75012 Paris. A Bientot! Maison Martin Margiela P.S.: Métro Bercy’. 15 To read more about the role of postcards see David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson eds., Postcards Ephemeral Histories of Modernity (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010). 16 In this period, the designer Lucile already consciously mixed private and business relations, inviting her clients to her fashion show as if they were afternoon parties. See Caroline Evans, ‘The Enchanted Spectacle’, Fashion Theory 5.3 (2001): 274–75. 17 Agnès Rocamora, Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and Media (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 28. 18 Joanne Entwistle and Agnès Rocamora, ‘The Field of Fashion Materialized: A Study of London Fashion Week’, Sociology 40.4 (2006): 741. 19 Blanchard, F&G, 115. 20 Rebecca Arnold, Fashion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 18. 21 The womenswear catalogue features Willhelm’s co-founder and collaborator Jutta Kraus, who is also depicted naked while spitting out small fairies dressed in the new collection. The catalogue is not shown here because it was not available during the period in which I photographed the ephemera at MoMu. 22 The vision of the creative process as introspective work has been discussed in relation to Antwerp-trained designers. See Valerie Steele, ‘The Light of an Old City Shines on New Ideas’, The Washington Post, 12 August 2001; and Kaat Debo, ‘The Antwerp Fashion Academy,’ In Antwerp 6+, eds. Gert Bruloot, Kaat Debo, catalogue of the eponymous exhibition held at the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp, Antwerp, 25 January – 23 June 2007, (Antwerpen & Gent: Ludion, 2007), 34–35. 23 Hanna Westely, The Body as Medium and Metaphor (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008), 10. 24 Ibid. 25 Kaat Debo, ‘Walter’s World of Wonder,’ in Dream the World Awake, catalogue of the eponymous exhibition held at the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp, 14 September 2011–19 February 2012 (Antwerp: MoMu, 2011), 18.

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26 For the role of storytelling as branding activity, see Joseph Henry Hancock, ‘Branding and Storytelling’, in Fashion in Fiction. Text and Clothing in Literature, Film and Television, eds. Peter McNeil, Vicki Karaminas and Catherine Cole (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009), 95–104. 27 For the use of storytelling in the creative practices of designers, see Alessandra Vaccari, La Moda nei Discorsi dei Designer (Bologna: Cleub, 2013). 28 Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’ in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 150. 29 Ibid., 152. 30 In the most recent press releases I examined in the archive, biographies were no longer used, and this probably related to the fact that these brands were beginning to establish themselves worldwide. 31 Keith Moxey, ‘The History of Art after the Death of the “Death of the Author”’, in Subjectivity and Methodology in Art History, eds. Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf and Dan Karholm (Stockholm: Eidos nr. 8. 2003), 120. 32 On fashion autobiographies as a genre, see Vaccari, La Moda nei Discorsi dei Designer, 23. 33 ‘He arrives in Europe in 1969 where he does not do anything particular but it is a period during which he observes, develops his talent and sensibility. In 1970, he goes back in Japan to see his mother, who also works in haute couture. […] Lover of jazz and contemporary paintings, of readings and Japanese cuisine […]’. My translation. 34 The fitting is the final stage of the design in which prototypes are refined on a live model. 35 Bertolt Brecht, ‘Über Photographie’, in Works in 30 Volumes, Berlin and Frankfurt Critical Edition, eds. Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei and Klaus-Detlev Müller (Berlin/Frankfurt: Aufbau/Suhrkamp, 1988), 98. 36 Richard Martin, Fashion and Surrealism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 218. 37 Michael Wetzel, ‘The Authority of Drawing: Hand, Authenticity and Authorship’, in Sign Here! Handwriting in the Digital Era, eds. Sonja Neef et al., (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 55. 38 Gloria Bianchino, ‘Drawings and Memories’, in Walter Albini and His Time: All Power to the Imagination, eds. Maria Luisa Frisa, Stefano Tonchi, (Marsilio, Venezia, 2010), 32. 39 Fiona Dieffenbacher, Fashion Thinking: Creative Approaches to the Design Process (Oxford and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 40 Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture and Consumers (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2008), 5. 41 Geert Jacobs, Preformulating the News: An Analysis of the Metapragmatics of Press Releases (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing company, 1999). 42 Paola Catenaccio, ‘Constructing Identities in the Fashion Industry: Building Brand and Customer Image through Press releases’, in The Use of English in Institutional and Business Settings: An Intercultural Perspective, eds. Giuliana Garzone and Cornelia Ilie (Bern: Peter Lang Publisher), 54. 43 Yamamoto often declares his tendency of communicating with his team through writing who declared to be confident with words. See ‘Yamamoto in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist,’ A Magazine curated by #2, guest curator Yohji Yamamoto, (Antwerp: A Publisher, 2005), 10–14. 44 This aspect will be further discussed in Chapter 3. 45 Caroline Evans, Mechanical Smile: Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America 1900–1929 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 139.

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46 Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’, 150. 47 Ibid. 48 Founded in 1987, BAM Magazine was a Belgian magazine aiming to give space to the new wave of Belgian designers like the Antwerp Six. 49 In the ephemera at MoMu, the names of Ronald Stoops and Inge Grognard frequently appear in the credits of various Antwerp fashion designers (and also in some of Yamamoto’s ephemera). In the book Belgian Fashion design (1999), the last section is named ‘Collaborations’ and it is dedicated to the most important actors who gravitated around the Antwerp fashion scene, contributing to the creation of a Belgian fashion imaginary. Here Grognard, Stoops, Kurris and Bosschaert are listed alongside other crucial Belgian figures who participated in the construction of Belgian (or Antwerp) fashion, such as the photographers Etienne Todoir and Willy Vanderperre, or the graphic designer Paul Boudens. See Luc Derycke, Belgian Fashion Design (Antwerp and Gent: Ludion, 1999). 50 Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 7. 51 Ibid. 52 Jennifer Anyan, Philip Clarke, ‘The Role of the Stylist in Hypermodern Image-Making’, paper presented at Fashion Colloquia. London, 13 January 2012, http://process.arts.ac.uk/ content/role-stylist-hypermodern-image-making. 53 Ibid. 54 Paul Jobling, Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography, 1999, 37. 55 Famous cases in fashion history are Anna Piaggi for Prada and Missoni or Giusy Ferré for Armani or Gianfranco Ferrè. See Judith Clark, ‘Doppie Pagine. Not Spelling it Out’, Fashion Theory 10.1–2 (2006): 273. 56 Becker, Art Worlds, 10. 57 Blanchard, F&G, 8. 58 Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1–2. 59 The unique thing in all the Bernhard Willhelm lookbooks when you compare them to other products is that we had the total freedom to do as we liked and were in control of the overall look’. Hess and Pasztorek, Graphic Design for Fashion, 158. 60 Susan Bright, ‘Physical Photographs’, Foam. International Photography Magazine, Winter 2009, 151–54. 61 Designed by MoMu’s scenographer Bob Verhelst, the exhibition consisted of a structure in which visitors could walk through walls hung with life-size versions of Boudens’s fashion invitations and catalogues. www.247feature.com/2010/08/23/paul-boudens-trust-me-graphic-design. 62 See Blanchard, F&G, Hess and Pasztorek, Graphic Design for Fashion. 63 Tamsin Cook, ‘Guest Interview n°45: TT’, Blogazine, 28 February 2013. www.theblogazine. com/2013/02/guest-interview-n45-tt. 64 Gerard Mermoz, ‘Designer as Author: Reading the City of Signs- Istanbul: Revealed or Mystifies’, Design Issues 22.2 (2006): 79. 65 Marco Pecorari, ‘Paul Boudens. Grafico della Moda’, Wit Magazine, #15, 2008. 66 As Boudens said in an interview: ‘I called a nurse and she took blood from my arm and I used it to splash from a pencil and then rushed the result to the scanner. It’s brownish when it dries. We were young and aggressive then’. Blanchard, F&G, 118. 67 Blanchard, F&G, 118.

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68 Mieke Bal and Morra Joanne, ‘Editorial: Acts of Translation’, Journal of Visual Culture 6.5 (2007): 7. 69 Ibid. 70 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Virgo, 1968); Susan Pearce, On Collecting: an Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Susan Pearce, Interpreting Objects and Collections (London and New York: Routledge, 1994); John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, The Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). 71 Entwistle and Rocamora, ‘The Field of Fashion Materialized,’ 744. 72 Yunia Kawamura, Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 34. 73 Caroline Evans, ‘Foreword’, in Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, eds. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 77–82. 74 Jonathan Gray, ‘When is the Author?’ in A Companion to Media Authorship, eds. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson (Oxford, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 85. 75 John Potvin and Alla Myzelev, ‘Introduction: The Material of Visual Culture,’ in Material Cultures 1740–1920. The Meaning and Pleasures of Collecting, eds. John Potvin and Alla Myzelev (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 2. 76 It is, however, important to state that recently these ephemeral materials can also be bought online – but their origin is always connected to a private collector. 77 Gray, ‘When is the Author?’, 100–01. 78 Ibid., 101. 79 Ibid., 101. 80 Becker, Art Worlds, 2. 81 Linda Loppa, ‘Collecting’, Backstage. Selection I, catalogue of the exhibition ‘Backstage. Selection I’, held at the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp, 21 September 2002–4 April, 2003, 11. Antwerpen and Gent: Ludion, 2002, 7. 82 Gabriele Monti. ‘After Diana Vreeland. The Discipline of Fashion Curating as a Personal Grammar’, Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion, Beauty, and Style 1.1 (2013): 63–90, at 68. 83 Suzy Menkes, ‘Museum Integrity vs Designer Flash’, The New York Times, 25 February 2007. 84 The curators featured in the catalogue are: Fronsacq Julien, Matthew Higgs, Olivier Saillard, Nicolas Trembley and Hans Ulrich Obrist posing for the men’s collection. Kaat Debo, Stéphanie Moisdon, Elizabeth Neilson, Leanne Sacramone and Angeline Scherf pose for the women’s section. No curators are featured from other fashion museums in London or Paris such as the V&A or Les Arts Decoratifs. 85 This relationship began with the retrospective exhibition on Yamamoto titled ‘The Dream Shop’, was held at MoMu, 7 March–13 August 2006, Antwerp. The exhibition was a tour exhibition with a last venue at MoMu and also coincided with the opening of a Yamamoto shop in a section of the museum. 86 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press 1984), 133. 87 Ibid. 88 Rocamora, Fashioning the City, 58. 89 Bruno Latour, Re-Assembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 81. Notes

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90 Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote’, in Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, ed. Jorge Luis Borges (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1962). 91 Sean Burke, ‘Writing the Self ’, in Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern. A Reader, ed. Sean Burke (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), 307.

Chapter 2 1 There have been many academic studies and exhibitions dedicated to the fashion show. Particularly relevant academic studies are: the special issue of Fashion Theory dedicated to the fashion show (volume 5 issue 3, 2001); Entwistle and Rocamora, ‘The Field of Fashion Materialized’ Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 2013. Amongst the exhibitions, a celebrated show was SHOWTIME. Le Défilé de Mode held at Musée Galliera of Paris, 3 March–30 July, Paris. 2 Timothy G. Young, ‘Evidence: Toward a Library Definition of Ephemera,’ 11. 3 Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 34. 4 Ibid. 5. 5 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London: Routledge 2000), 50. 6 Alfred Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), 145. 7 Ibid. 8 Michel Serrès with Bruno Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, trans. Roxanne Lapidus (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 60. 9 Ibid., 57. 10 To read about the relation between time and agency in Serres’ and Bruno Latour’s theory read Serres with Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. 11 Steedman, Dust, 11 12 The relation between the different approaches to the ontology of the performance in relation to its documentation is discussed in Raphael Gygax, ‘Horcruxes of Art or the Curses of the Performative – On Rituals, Rites and Relics in Contemporary Art,’ in Between Zones. On the Representation of the Performative and the Notation of Movement, eds. Raphael Gygax and Heike Munder (Zurich: JRP-Ringier, 2010), 255–58. 13 For one of the most influential examples see Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York and London: Routledge, 1993). 14 An example of this approach to performance and its documentation is: Philip Auslander, ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’, Journal of Performance and Art 28.3 (2006). 15 Schneider discusses this concept in various articles. See Rebecca Schneider, ‘Performance Remains’, Performance Research 6.2 (2001): 100–08; Rebecca Schneider, ‘Document Perform Collaborate Perform Document’, in Manuel Vason: Encounters, Symposium at Arnolfini, Bristol, 7 June 2007; Rebecca Schneider, ‘Cut, Click, Shudder: The “Document Performance”’, in Manuel Vason: Encounters, ed. Dominic Johnson, (Bristol: Arnolfini, 2007), 34–36.www.manuelvason.com/cut-click-shudder-the-document-performance-rebeccaschneider-encounters/.

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16 Philip Auslander, ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’, 5. 17 Caroline Evans addresses this issue in her Fashion at The Edge, where she argues: ‘The comparison of fashion with performance art, however, fails to acknowledge the commercial reality of fashion shows. Just as Worth and Poiret hid the commercial reality of their business practice behind claims to unique artistry and genius […], so the contemporary fashion show’s allegiance with art served, in reality, merely to enhance its status and commercial value in an increasingly sophisticated market.’ Evans, Fashion at the Edge, 70. 18 Rebecca Schneider, Performance Remains. 19 Paola Marrati, Genesis and Trace: Derrida Reading Husserl and Heidegger (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 189. 20 Evans, ‘The Enchanted Spectacle’, 271–72. 21 Ibid. 22 Nancy Troy, ‘The Theatre of Fashion: Staging Haute Couture in Early 20th Century France’, Theatre Journal 53.1 (2001): 1–32 23 Richard Tawn, The Politics of the Provisional: Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France (Louisville, KY: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 102. 24 Ibid., 107. 25 For a definition of ‘look’, see Ashley Mears, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 17. 26 In this book I decided to include ‘look-book’ within the category of ‘catalogue’. 27 Eugénie Shinkle, ‘Interview with Penny Martin’, in Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion, edited by Eugénie Shinkle, 113–125, New York and London: I.B. Tauris, 2008. 28 Look-books can also contain studio photographs. See Shinkle, ‘Interview with Penny Martin’, 116. 29 Ibid. 30 Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 247–50. 31 The potential of some fashion ephemera to perform the chronological time of the show is discussed in the section, ‘The liveness of the show’. 32 Hanneke Grootenboer, The Rhetoric of Perspective: Realism and Illusion in SeventeenthCentury Dutch Still-Life Painting (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 16–21, 176. 33 ‘To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression’. Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment: Photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 10. 34 Matthew Reason, Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 137. 35 Ibid. 36 ‘The global idea of this collection is to make a reference to the past, specially the first two parts of the show. Fashion goes so quick that people tend to forget the historical meaning of clothes, especially costumes. This is why the opening of the show was like a procession to create the right atmosphere’, Raf Simons ‘Disorder-Incubation-Isolation’ a/w ’99–’00 press releases, MoMu Archive. 37 Shinkle, ‘Interview with Penny Martin’, 116. Notes

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38 Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 237. To read more about the history and evolution of the model’s pose, see Caroline Evans, ‘The Evolution of the Pose,’ in Handbags: The Making of a Museum, ed. Judith Clark (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). 39 Marco de Riviera, ‘Models at Work’, in A Shaded View on Fashion by Diane Pernet, published on 13 April 2012, accessed 16 March 2012, http://dianepernet.typepad.com/diane/2012/04/ models-at-work-by-olivier-saillard-photos-by-marco-de-rivera.html. 40 Henry M. Sayre, The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde Since 1970 (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 55. 41 As Lise Skov et al. explain, the photographers’ position depends on the importance of the agency or magazine for which they work, and in many cases the runway photographer has a physical battle to get the right spot. See Lise Skov, et al., ‘The Fashion Show as Art Form’, Creative Encounters, Proceedings of the Conference at the Copenhagen Business School, October 2009, http://openarchive.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10398/7943/Creative%20 Encounters%20Working%20Papers%2032.pdf?sequence=1. 42 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 53. 43 Vivian Kelly, ‘Dan Lecca – “The Good, the Bad & the Ugly”: A Profile of a Runway Photographer’, www.lookonline.com/lecca2.html. 44 Matthew Reason, ‘Still Moving: The Revelation or Representation of Dance in Still Photography,’ Dance Research Journal 35.2–36.1 (2004): 43–67. 45 Ibid., 49. 46 Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 74–76. 47 The term ‘photodynamism’ was coined by Anton Bragaglia. On Bragaglia, see Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 29; and Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 86. 48 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 86. 49 Braun, Picturing Time, 299. 50 Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 250. 51 Ibid., 250. 52 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 213. 53 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema II: the Time Image (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 34. 54 Ibid. 55 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hanna Arendt, (New York: Schocken, 1969), 163. 56 Susan Kismaric and Eva Respini, Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 12. 57 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time. 143. 58 Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 250. 59 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 4 60 Ibid. 61 Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 212.

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62 The relation between documentary photography and fashion is briefly discussed by Alistair O’Neill in his article ‘Uneasy Bedfellow’. See Alistair O’Neill, ‘Uneasy Bedfellow’, Aperture, special issue ‘Fashion’, guest editor Inez & Vinoodh, Fall 2014, 52–57. 63 On optical toys see Barbara Stafford, Devices of Wonder, From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2001); and Lynda Nead, The Haunted Gallery: Painting, Photography, Film c.1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 176. 64 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1992), 132. 65 Ibid. 66 Nead, The Haunted Gallery, 176. 67 Mikhail Bakhtin borrows this term from physics and specifically from Einstein’s theory of relativity. Mikhail Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Michael Holquist, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84. 68 Bakthin, Dialogic Imagination, 84. 69 Beckerman critiques a fragmented analysis of the event in theatre criticism where the elements of the show (characters, stage) are unchained from one another (‘horizontal approach’). To oppose this technique, he proposes a ‘vertical approach’ which consists of a chronological description of the event based on a temporal progression of its moments. Hence, he uses the concept of ‘units of time’ to define those discursive elements which character this ‘vertical’ approach to the event’s description. Bernard Beckerman, Dynamics of Drama: Theory and Method of Analysis (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1979), 36. 70 Beckerman, Dynamics of Drama, 36–37. 71 See: Troy, The Theatre of Fashion and Evans, The Enchanted Spectacle. 72 For a resumé of the various approaches to the documentation of performance see Raphael Gygax, ‘Horcruxes of Art or the Curses of the Performative – On Rituals, Rites and Relics in Contemporary Art’ in In Between Zones: On the Representation of the Performative and the Notation of Movement, eds. Raphael Gygax and Heike Munder, (Zurich: JRP-Ringier, 2010), 254–63. For studies on the concept of ‘liveness’ see: Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 1999); Rebecca Schneider, ‘Dead Hare, Live’, Performing Arts Journal 55 (Summer 2010): 62–67. 73 Schneider, Performing Remains, 90. 74 Ibid., 92. 75 Ibid., 90–94. 76 ‘Is the live really only a matter of temporal immediacy, happening only in an uncomplicated now, a “transitory” present, an im-mediate moment?’ […] does it not take place or become composed in a double, triple, or multiple time – especially if performance and the “sedimented acts” that compromise the social are already a matter of “twice-behaved behavior?”’ Schneider, Performing Remains, 92. 77 Invented by the French physicist Etienne-Jules Marey, chronophotography is method of photographing a set of photographs of a moving object or creature, in order to record and show successive phases of motion. See Braun, Picturing Time. 78 Jean-François Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 79 Ibid., 18.

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  80 Agnès Rocamora, ‘Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion’, Fashion Theory 21:5 (2017), 509.   81 Ibid., 510.  82 Ibid.  83 Auslander, Liveness, 184.  84 Evans, The Enchanted Spectacle.   85 Julien Neuville, ‘The Creative Class. Etienne Russo, The Fashion Show Producer’, The Business of Fashion, 1 August 2012, Accessed 24 October 2012. www.businessoffashion. com/2012/08/the-creative-class-etienne-russo-fashion-show-producer.html   86 Flaviano Celanschi, ‘Dal Progetto delle cose al progetto delle esperienze’ in L’evento in Strada. Il progetto, la produzione, la gestione e il controllo come strategia di marketing, ed. Giorgio Gilberti, (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2004), 13.   87 Philip Auslander, Liveness, 3.   88 Ibid., 11.   89 Ibid., 7.   90 Drawing on the work of Lee B. Brown, Auslander argues that ‘documentary’ audio recording is assumed to be a ‘straightforward capturing of real sonic events’, while ‘phonography’ is an audio alteration that does not reproduce the exact sound of the event, but contains its essence. In this sense, Van Beirendonck’s cassette works less as a ‘documentary’ recording and more as a ‘phonography’ recording, containing the sound and the theme of the event. The presence of this cassette-invitation in the archive recalls the fundamental role played by the music in the show, functioning as echoes of the show rather than a direct record of the show’s sound. See Auslander, ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’, 8.  91 Schneider, Performing Remains, 105.   92 Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), 87.   93 My translation, ‘L’ éphémere est pris dans les images synchrones du présent, dans le ‘ressouvenir du médiatif […]. Il est un présent arrêté et immobilisé […] ou encore image figée et fragmentée, comme dans l’allégorie baroque ou le montage moderne’. Christine Buci-Glucksmann, L’Esthétique de l’éphémere (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2003), 14  94 Ibid.   95 Judith Clark, ‘A Note: Getting the Invitation’, 347.   96 Judith Clark, ‘Installing Allusion’, in The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusion, eds. Judith Clark and José Teunissen, published in the occasion of the exhibition The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusion, 19 September 2009–10 January 2010, (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2009), 13.   97 Kristine Stiles, Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949–1979, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 23.   98 Jay Hess and Simone Pasztorek, Graphic Design for Fashion, 112.   99 Here I refer to the work of Tim Etchells and specifically to Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment (London: Routledge, 1999). 100 Paola Catenaccio, ‘Press Release as Hybrid Genre’, Pragmatics, 18.1 (2008): 9–32. 101 Philip Auslander, ‘Toward a Hermeneutics of Performance Art Documentation’, in Kunsten A Falle Lessons in the Art of Falling, ed. Jonas Ekeborg (Horten: Preus Museum, 2009), 94.

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102 J. L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, eds. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 6. 103 Reason, Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance, 156.

Chapter 3 1 Original italics. Barthes, The Fashion System, 6. 2 In The Fashion System, Barthes focuses on Elle, Le Jardin des Modes, Vogue and L’Echo de la Mode. Barthes, The Fashion System, 11. 3 In his analysis of fashion magazines, Barthes individualizes three modes of existence of garments: the technological (the real garment), the iconic (image) and the verbal (word). Barthes sees these steps of representations as the mechanics of signification of a garment that passes through these transformative shifts: real/image, real/word and word/image. Barthes, The Fashion System, 6–8. 4 Ibid., 3–18. 5 In relation to this aspect of experiencing the garment via industry media please see the exhibition Un-Making the Fashion Digital Image (2018) held at Glassbox Gallery, 11–16 March, Paris. 6 Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000). 7 Sophie Woodward, Why Women Wear What They Wear, (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007), 27. Another article that discusses the issue of sensory and embodiment of dress is Iris Marion Young, ‘Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality,’ Human Studies 3.2 (1980): 137–56. 8 Oxford English Dictionary, 4th Edition. 9 Alois Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, trans. R. Winkes (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider Editore, 1981). 10 See too Mark Peterson, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (Oxford, New York: Berg), 85. 11 Peterson, The Senses of Touch, 86. 12 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota, 2005). 13 Sobchack has taken a phenomenological approach to tactility and vision. See Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 14 Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Media, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2000), 161. 15 Marks, The Skin of the Film, 5. 16 Ibid., 172. 17 Ibid., 163–78. 18 Ibid., 172.

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19 See Eugénie Shinkle, Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008). 20 See Eugénie Shinkle, ‘Uneasy Bodies: Affect, Embodies Perception, and Contemporary Fashion Photography,’ in Carnal Aesthetics: Transgressive Imagery and Feminist Politics, eds. Bettina Papenburg and Marta Zarzycka (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 73–88; Eugénie Shinkle, ‘Playing for the Camera: Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: Technology, and the Playful Body in Fashion Photography,’ in Images in Time: Flashing Forward, Backward, in Front and Behind Photography in Fashion, Advertising and the Press, eds. Aesa Sigurjonsdottir, Michael A. Langkjaer and Jo Turney (Bath: Wunderkammer Press, 2011), 165–82. 21 Marks, The Skin of the Film, 163. 22 Ibid., 163, 206. 23 Ibid., 164. 24 Ibid., 164. 25 Ibid., 164. 26 Joanne Entwistle, The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion: Markets and Values in Clothing and Modelling, (Oxford and New York: Bloomsbury, 2011). In The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion, Entwistle develops her interpretation of ‘aesthetic knowledge’, regarding the work of fashion buyers and model bookers: ‘Aesthetic knowledge is difficult to verbalize precisely because it is largely tacit in nature. Indeed bookers and buyers struggle to describe it but often use very similar embodied metaphors to describe their knowledge, all stressing the importance of “gut instinct” or having the “eye”’. Entwistle, The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion, 116. The cultural historian Constance Classen also identifies the gendered nature of the tactile perception of fabric, and of other tactile practices, in the nineteenth century, analysing the concept of ‘women’s touch’ in relation to handcrafts like embroidery and sewing. Constance Classen, The Deepest Sense. A Cultural History of Touch (Urbana and Chicago, IL: Illinois University Press, 2012), 71. 27 See Entwistle, The Fashioned Body, 2000; Joanne Entwistle, Elizabeth Wilson, eds., Body Dressing: Dress, Body, Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2001). 28 ‘Spectatorship is an act of sensory translation of cultural knowledge. For example, when a work is viewed in a cultural context different from that in which it was produced, viewers may miss multisensory images’. Marks, The Skin of the Film, 153. 29 Magda Keaney, chaired by, ‘In Conversation with. Roundtable with Nick Knight, Marc Ascoli and Peter Saville,’ in Yohji Yamamoto. ed. Ligaya Salazar, catalogue of the exhibition held at V&A, 12 March–10 July, 2011, 177. 30 Alison Bancroft, Fashion and Psychoanalysis: Styling the Self (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 55. 31 Keaney, ‘In Conversation with’, 177. 32 Peter Hall, ‘Gravitas and Grace’, in Designed by Peter Saville, ed. Emily King (London: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), 94. 33 Bancroft, Fashion and Psychoanalysis, 55. 34 See Ane Lynge Jòrlen, ‘Between Frivolity and Art: Contemporary Fashion Niche Magazines’ Fashion Theory 16.1 (2012): 7–28. 35 Marks, The Skin of the Film, 143. 36 Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 39.

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37 Keaney, ‘In Conversation with’, 182. 38 David Anfam, Abstract Expressionism (World of Art) (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990). 39 Anfam, Abstract Expressionism, 3. 40 As Knight explains, transparency was the most common photographic technique used during the 1980s in fashion photography. This colour printing technique consists of the use of a colour negative, which is then manipulated by printing it in different shades or hand tinting it. Keaney, ‘In Conversation with’, 178. 41 Mhairi McVicar, ‘Reading Details: Caruso St John and the Poetic Intent of Construction Documents,’ in Writing Design: Words and Objects, ed. Grace Lees-Maffei, (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 149. 42 Ibid. 43 Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 197. 44 Regarding the cropped body in fashion and its Freudian uncanny elements see Evans, The Mechanical Smile, 205; See also Karen de Perthuis, ‘Beyond Perfection: The Fashion Model in the Age of the Digital Manipulation,’ in Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion, ed. Eugénie Shinkle, (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 182; and see also the Special Issue ‘Body Parts’ in Fashion Theory 16.2 (2012): 133–264. 45 Charles Robb, ‘Wrapped Fragments: Drapery, the Eighteenth Century Portrait Bust and the Male Subject,’ in King Power: Designing Masculinities Symposium, 16–17 August 2007, RMIT, Melbourne, Victoria. 46 Edwards and Hart, Photographs Objects Histories, 9. 47 Ibid. 48 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson, (London and New York: Verso, 1994), 166. 49 ‘If resemblance haunts the work of art, it is because sensation refers only to its material: it is the percept or affect of the material itself, the smile of oil, the gesture of fired clay, the thrust of metal, the crouch of Romanesque stone, and the ascent of Gothic stone.’ Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 116. 50 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken), 217–52. Benjamin speaks about ‘sensuous similarity’ in his article ‘On the Mimetic Faculty’ (1978), and Marks, drawing on him, argues that the ‘sensuous similarity describes correspondences between one’s body and the world that precede representation, such as the relationship between people and the heaves described by astrology’. Marks, The Skin of the Film, 140–41. 51 Marks, The Skin of the Film, 140–41. Here Marks refers to: Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”,’ New German Critique, 40 (winter) (1987): 179–224. 52 Marks develops this point further, connecting it to Benjamin’s essay ‘On the Mimetic Faculty’ (1978). Marks, The Skin of the Film, 140. 53 Sandy Black, ed., Fashioning Fabrics: Contemporary Textiles in Fashion (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006), 6. 54 Ibid., 76. 55 The idea of fabric as source of personal memory is developed by various scholars. For example, see Peter Stallybrass, ‘Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning, and the Life of Things,’ Yale Review 81.2 (1993): 35–50. See also Sophie Woodward, Why Women Wear What they

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Wear, 51–56; Caroline Evans, ‘Materiality, Memory and History: Adventures in the Archive,’ in Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore!, ed. Alistair O’Neill, (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2013), 136–41. 56 Jan Švankmajer, Touching and Imagining: An Introduction to Tactile Art (New York and London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 26. 57 Peterson, The Senses of Touch, 93–94. 58 Ibid., 94 59 Ibid. 60 Giuliana Bruno, ‘Pleats of Matter, Folds of the Soul,’ in Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy, ed. D. N. Rodowick, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 221; See also Giuliana Bruno, Surfaces: Matters of Aesthetics (Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2014). 61 Eugénie Shinkle, ‘The Line Between the Wall and the Floor: Reality and Affect in Contemporary Fashion Photography,’ in Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion, ed. Eugénie Shinkle, (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 223. 62 An instance of this visceral connection is described by Sophie Woodward as ‘sensual relationship’ when referring to the ways women refer to and choose specific garments, without always being able to describe them. In her wardrobe study, Woodward affirms the importance of recording the feeling of the garment on the skin, the sensuality and tactility of the garment as another form of knowing about the properties of the garment. See Woodward, Why Women Wear What they Wear, 32. 63 See also Frances W. Herrings, ‘Touch: The Neglected Sense,’ Journal Aesthetics and Art Criticism 7.3 (1949): 199–215. Claudia Mareis, ‘The Epistemology of the Unspoken: On the Concept of Tacit Knowledge in Contemporary Design Research,’ Design Issues 28.2 (2012): 61–71. 64 Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 5–15. 65 The two most referenced books on phenomenology are: Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (Oxon and New York: Routledge 2002, first published 1931) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London and New York: Routledge 2002, first published 1945). 66 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 10. 67 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Duke University Press, 2006. 68 Sobchack, The Address of The Eye. 69 Richard Buchanan, Victor Margolin, ed., Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 70 Marilyn Delong, et al., ‘May I Touch it,’ Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 5.1 (2007): 34–49; Marilyng Delong, ‘Tactile Response and Shifting Touch Preference,’ Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 10.1 (2012): 44–59. See also Donald Clay Johnson and Helen Bradley Foster, Sense Dress: Emotional and Sensory Experiences of the Body and Clothes (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007). 71 Joanne Entwistle’s ethnographic research on fashion buyers focuses on tacit knowledge, and her study is one of the first systematizations of the nature of this type of fashion knowledge within fashion studies. Defining fashion knowledge as ‘aesthetic tacit knowledge’, Entwistle discusses the difficulties of investigating the nature of this type of knowledge, which is commonly called ‘gut feeling’ or ‘instinct’ by her interviewees. Entwistle addresses a tension

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between the ‘said’ and the ‘unsaid’, which she describes as the difference between expressive and embodied knowledge, as if in fashion ‘one could wear knowledge’. Entwistle, The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion, 139–40. 72 Aradhna Krishna, ‘An Integrative Review of Sensory Marketing: Engaging the Senses to Affect Perception, Judgment and Behavior,’ Journal of Consumer Psychology 22.3 (2012): 332–51. 73 Entwistle, The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion, 139. 74 Ibid. 75 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 76 Sennett, The Craftsman, 150; Paterson, The Senses of Touch, 93–94. 77 This field of research was started in the middle of the nineteenth century by the physicians Ernst Heinrich Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner in their study of the relationship between physical stimulus and the human perception of the intensity of this stimulus. While Stanley Smith Stevens extended the Weber-Fechner law to other forms of sensory perception, it was Henry Binns who drew attention to the hand and the fabric, starting a field of engineering research which established specific criteria and language for the definition and evaluation of the properties of fabric. See: Henry Binns, ‘A Comparison Between the Judgments of Individual Skilled in the Textile Trade and the Natural Judgments of Untrained Adults and Children,’ Journal of the Textile Institute Proceedings 17.12 (1926): 231–32; Frederick Thomas Peirce, ‘The Handle of Cloth as a Measurable Quantity,’ Journal of the Textile Institute 21 (1930): 377–416; Sueo Kawabata The Standardization and Analysis of Hand Evaluation (Osaka: The Textile Machinery Society of Japan, 1980); Sueo Kawabata and Masako Niwa, ‘Fabric Performance in Clothing and Clothing Manufacture,’ The Journal of the Textile Institute 80.1 (1989): 19–50; George K. Stylios and Norman J. Powell, ‘Engineering the Drapability of Textile Fabrics,’ International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology 15.3/4 (2003): 211–17. I would like to thank Dr Elda Danese for bringing these sources to my attention. 78 Binns, ‘A Comparison’, 233. 79 Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004). 80 Ibid., 59. 81 Ibid. 82 For example, cutting on the bias will give more elasticity and fluidity. 83 Sennett, The Craftsman, 119. 84 Ibid., 119–42. 85 Chris Thompson, Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys and the Dalai Lama (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 86 Jörg Schellmann, Joseph Beuys: The Multiples (Munich and New York: Edition Schellmann, 1997), 9. 87 Petran Kockelkoren and Peter-Paul Verbeek, ‘Matter Matters. A Spectre is Haunting Design,’ in Eternally Yours. Visions on Product Endurance, ed. Ed Van Hinte (Amsterdam: 010 Publisher, 1997), 105. 88 Ibid. 89 See Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, (Translated by S. Heath, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978).

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  90 Clark, ‘A Note: Getting the Invitation’.   91 Gerarde Genette, Paratext: Threshold of Interpretations, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 11.   92 Ibid., 407.   93 Ibid., 269.   94 Ibid., 261.   95 Ibid., 10   96 Ibid., 1  97 Vaccari, La Moda nei Discorsi dei Designers, 100.  98 Ibid.   99 Gerarde Genette, Paratext: Threshold of Interpretations, 2 100 Ibid., 36. 101 Barthes, The Fashion System, 236. 102 Ibid. 103 Peter Verdonck, The Stylistics of Poetry: Context, Cognition, Discourse, History (Oxford and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 165. 104 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 167. 105 Dries Van Noten, Dries Van Noten 01–50: A Golden Anniversary (N. V. Van Noten Andries, 2005), 241. 106 Barthes, The Fashion System, 236.

Conclusions   1 Oxford English Dictionary, 4th Edition.   2 Daniel Miller, Materiality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 4.   3 Sophie Woodward and Tom Fisher, ‘Fashioning through Materials: Material Culture, Materiality and Process of Materialization,’ Critical Studies of Fashion and Beauty 5.1 (2014): 3–24.   4 Austin, How To Do Things with Words, 5–7.   5 Bolt, Art Beyond Representation, 50.   6 Ibid., 51. Here Bolt also refers to Bruno Latour’s article ‘Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together,’ in Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, eds. Henrika Kuklick and Elizabeth Long, (Bingley: Jai Press 1986), 1–40.   7 Evans, The Mechanical Smile.   8 Don Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986).   9 Ibid.   10 Aud Sissel Hoel, ‘Teknikkfilosofiens relevans: Et intervju med Don Ihde,’ Norsk medietidsskrift (Norwegian Journal of Media Studies), 15.1 (2008): 57–61.   11 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social, An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 79–81.

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12 Ioana B. Juncan, ‘Remain x Remain(s)’ in Remain (Lünenburg: Minnesota University Press, 2018), xvi. I want to thank Caroline Evans for sharing this work with me. 13 Also in this direction is the publication Archive Species Bodies, Habits, Practices by Joke Roobaard and Camiel van Winkel (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2018). In relation to dress archives, please see Amy de la Haye and Valerie D. Mendes, The House of Worth: Portrait of an Archive (London: V&A Publishing, 2014). The staging of the archive must be contextualized into a sort of ‘archival fetishism’ in fashion and fashion exhibitions that, I argue, originated in the ‘archival turn’ and in an aestheticization of the archive in the field of art (Cheryl Simon ‘Introduction: Following the Archival Turn’, Visual Resources 18:2 (2002): 101–07). Exhibitions such as Backstage: Selection I (2002) at the Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu) or Cristóbal Balenciaga, Collectionneur de mode (2009), have created a mise-enscène of the archive by using boxes and archival metal structures to signify practices of creativity in fashion, and to foster ideas of openness in museums (Pecorari, ‘Contemporary Fashion History in Museum’; Julia Petrov, Fashion, History, Museums: Inventing the Display of Dress, Oxford and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019). 14 Philip Auslander, ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’ Journal of Peformance and Art, 28.3 (2006): 5. 15 Ibid. 16 Ludmilla Jordanova, The Look of the Past: Visual And Material Evidence in Historical Practice, (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 32. 17 Valerie Steele, ‘A Fashion Museum is more than a Clothes-Bag,’ Fashion Theory, 2.4 (1998): 327. 18 Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 5. 19 Ibid. 20 For a further discussion of Appadurai’s methodological fetishism in relation to archaeology, see Hicks, ‘The Material and Cultural Turn: Event and Effect’ in The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 84–86; and Lambors Malafouris, How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 133–34. 21 See Riello, ‘The Object of Fashion’. 22 W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago, 2005). 23 Chris Godsen, ‘What do Objects Want?’ Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 12.3 (2005), 193–210. 24 Sherry Turkle, ‘What Makes an Object Evocative?’ in Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, ed. Sherry Turkle, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), 307–26. 25 Aura Satz and Jon Wood, (ed.) Articulate Objects: Voice, Sculpture and Performance, (Bern: Peter Lang International Academy, 2009). 26 Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, 8. 27 Susan Bennett, ‘The Making of Theatre History,’ in Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography: Essays in Performance Historiography, eds. Charlotte M. Canning and Thomas Postlewait (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2010), 78. 28 Christopher Breward, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinity, Fashion and City Life 1860–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 18. 29 See Evans, Fashion at the Edge.

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30 W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘There Are No Visual Media’, in Media Art Histories, ed. Oliver Grau (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 395–408. 31 See Blanchard, F&G. 32 de Certeau, The Writing of History, 74. 33 Diana Vreeland is probably the most celebrated case. See Clark and Frisa, Vreeland After Vreeland; and Melchior Riegels, ‘Introduction’. There are many other examples of the history of fashion in museums, such as the fashion photographer Cecil Beaton, who curated the seminal exhibition Fashion: An Anthology at the V&A (1971). See Judith Clark, Amy de la Haye, Exhibiting Fashion. Before and After 1971, (Durham: Yale University, 2014). 34 See Introduction. 35 The relationship between the fashion museum and industry has been also discussed by fashion scholar Peter McNeil. See Peter McNeil, ‘“We’re not in the Fashion Business”: Fashion in the Museum and the Academy,’ Fashion Theory 12.1 (2008): 65–81. 36 Dieter Suls, ‘The Library of the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp’, Libraries Journal 12.3 (2008): 21. 37 Eric Schaefer, ‘In Focus: The 21st Century Archive’, Cinema Journal 46.3 (2007): 112. 38 Susana Bautista and Anne Balsamo, ‘Understanding the Distributed Museum: Mapping Spaces of Museology in Contemporary Culture’, Museums and the Web, 2011, www. museumsandtheweb.com/mw2011/papers/understanding_the_distributed_museum_ mapping_t.html. Accessed 2 April 2019. See also Robyn Haley, ‘Immateriality’, in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, eds. S. Black, A. de la Haye, J. Entwistle, A. Rocamora, R. A. Root and H. Thomas (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 325–46. 39 Agnès Rocamora, ‘New Fashion Times: Fashion and Digital Media’, in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, eds. S. Black, A. de la Haye, J. Entwistle, A. Rocamora, R. A. Root and H. Thomas (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 61–77. 40 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘The Museum—A Refuge for Utopian Thought’, in Die Unruhe der Kultur: Potentiale des Utopischen, eds. J. Rüsen, M. Fehr and Annelie Ramsbrock (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2004). 41 Andrew Hoskins (ed.), Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2018), 5. 42 Juncan, ‘Remain x Remain(s)’, xvii. 43 Evans, Fashion at the Edge. 44 Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, London: Alla Lane, 1973 [1857–58], pp. 360–361).

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INDEX

Page numbers in italic indicate figures. agency 72, 88, 157–8, 186–8 alternative maps 189 animations 153–8 Anyan, Jennifer 55 Appadurai, Arjun 18, 87, 187 architectures of access 129 archival turn 17 archives 16–18 Arnold, Rebecca 32 Ascoli, Marc 11, 149 Auslander, Philip 91, 118, 123, 126, 137, 187 Austin, J. L. 137, 184 authenticity 28–30 authorship authorial network 81–3 biography 41–2 embodiment 32–6 keeping and expanding 69–74 multiple authors 51–60, 81–2 signatures 25–31 storytelling 36, 40–1 voices 42–51 backstage photographs 97, 113–15, 124–5, 156 Bakhtin, Mikhail 117 Bal, Mieke 67, 69 Balme, Christopher B. 4 Bancroft, Alison 152 Barthes, Roland 10, 139–40, 177 Baxandall, Michael 19 Becker, Howard S. 55 Beckerman, Bernard 117–18 Benjamin, Walter 110, 161 Bennett, Susan 189 Beuys, Joseph 169–70 Bianchino, Gloria 45 biographies 41–2, 73 Black, Sandy 161 Blanchard, Tamsin 12, 16, 57 Blaszczyk, Regina Lee 45 blood ink 63, 64, 66, 67, 68 body parts 32–6 Bolt, Barbara 185 Borges, Jorge Luis 81–2 Bosschaert, Jan 36

Boudens, Paul 32, 60, 63, 65, 135 Bourdieu, Pierre 25–6 Bragaglia, Anton Giulio 101 Branquinho, Veronique catalogue 101–2 invitation 81, 82 Braun, Marta 101 Brecht, Bertold 44 Breward, Christopher 14, 189 brown kraft paper catalogue 159–61 Bruno, Giuliana 163 Buci-Glucksmann, Christine 15, 132 Burke, Sean 82 buyers 69, 70, 72, 74 calendar format 92–3, 94 Campbell, Naomi 153 carnal knowledge 168 Cartier-Bresson, Henri 95–6 catalogues animations 153–6 art curators in 76, 78, 79 body parts 33, 35 catwalk pictures 95–6, 97–8 collaboration 11, 58 comic books 36, 37, 38, 39, 40–1 fabric properties 158–61 fiction 101–2 haptic images 144–6, 149–52 mediatization 125–6, 127 mirrors 103, 105 optical toy 115–16 quotations 45–7, 166, 168–9 significant moments 113–16 sketches 48 tactile properties 166, 168 temporality 101–5 written-clothing and image-clothing 140–2 Catenaccio, Paola 137 catwalk pictures 94–9 Celaschi, Flaviano 123 Chanel, Coco 10 chronophotography 113 chronotype 117–18 cinaesthetic spectator 168

cinematic techniques 111 Clark, Judith 10, 16, 133, 172 Clark, Philip 55 Classens, Constance 164 collaboration 11, 51–60 colour-field technique 153–54 comic books 36, 37, 38, 39, 40–1 Commes des Garçons, Six magazine 11 concert ticket format 1–3, 90 cooking 164–5 copyright 57–8 Crary, Jonathan 115 credits 55–6 cultural sensorium 147 de Certeau, Michel 17, 21, 190 Debo, Kaat 36, 69, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79 decisive moment 95–7 defamiliarization of time 105 Deleuze, Gilles 22, 105, 132, 144, 160 Delsaut, Yvette 25–6 Demeulemeester, Ann catalogue 94–5 invitations 70, 71, 87–9, 133 press releases 26–8, 41 Derrida, Jacques 26 Deruytter, Wouter 124 digital media 194–6 Doane, Mary Ann 101, 105, 111, 112 documentary 19, 115–16, 126 draping 169 drawings 42–5, 48–9 dreams 40, 44 Edwards, Elizabeth 160 ekphrasis 179 embodiment 32–6 Entwistle, Joanne 70, 142, 147, 165 ephemera, definition 4 epistemic potential 17–18, 19 Esch, Gerdi 69 Evans, Caroline 14, 47, 94, 98, 101, 103, 123, 157, 185, 196 exclusivity 16, 31 fabric 158–63, 169–71 Farge, Arlette 18 fashion competence 147, 152, 172 fashion intermediaries 45 Faust, Marina 58 fax invitation 119, 122 felt invitation 169–72 fiction 40–1, 101–2, 110–11, 133, 135–6, 176, 188–9 field of fashion 31, 119, 172 Figus, Angelo, press release 166

Index

Fisher, Tom 182 Foucault, Michel 40, 47–8 Freudenthal/Verhagen 12, 33, 58 Genette, Gerarde 172, 176 Goden, Chris 188 graphic designers 51, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61–3 Gray, Jonathan 72, 75 Grognard, Inge 11, 51, 53, 54, 103 Guattari, Félix 160 hands 165–6 handwriting 12, 25–31, 50, 51, 70, 71, 72, 73, 81, 82 haptic images 144–53 Hart, Janice 160 hermeneutics 20–1, 186 Highmore, Ben 21 Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean 88 Hoskins, Andrew 195 Huybens, Ann, press release 164–5 Ihde, Don 186 image-clothing 140–2 imagination 133–7 immateriality 15, 22–3, 31, 132–3, 136, 171, 182–4, 185 implied beholder 19, 147 information, performance and 184 institutions of consecration 80 intermedial translation 67 internet 195–6 interpretive community 75–6 intimacy 31, 183, 186 invitations blood ink 63, 64, 66, 67, 68 body parts 32 calendar format 92–3, 94 collaborative 51–4, 56 as concert ticket 1–3, 90 credits on 56 fabric properties 161–3, 169–71 folded poster 133, 134 ‘getting the point’ 10 graphic design 61–3 mediatization 119, 122 music cassette 128–9, 129 as a newspaper 11, 51–4 personalised 69, 70, 71 as postcards 30–1, 32, 33, 129, 130, 169–71 post-invitations 135 QR code 192, 193, 194 quotations 81, 82 signatures/handwriting on 12, 28–30, 50, 51, 81, 82

237

sketches 42–4 television-shaped 135–6 watch-shaped 85–7 invoice 5 Iribe, Paul 9 Jobling, Paul 20, 55 Jordanova, Ludmilla 187 journalists 69, 70, 72, 74 Jucan, Ionana B. 196 Kawamura, Yuniya 70 Ketelaar, Eric 28 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 195 Kismaric, Susan 111 Knight, Nick 11, 149, 152, 153–4, 196 Kockelkoren, Petran 171 Kurris, Anne 11, 51, 53, 54 Lanvin, Jeanne, invoice 5 latex glove press release 164–5 Latour, Bruno 81, 89, 186 Lecca, Dan 100 Legendre, Marc 36 Lehmann, Ulrich 15 Lepape, Georges 9 Lipovetsky, Gilles 15 liveness 118, 157, 196 look-moment 98–101 Loppa, Linda 69, 70, 71, 75–6, 90 Louwyck, Sam 101–2 Lupano, Mario 21 Lyotard, Jean-François 118 McDowell, Paul 4 McKnight, Sam 125 McVicar, Mhairi 156 make-up artists 51, 54, 124–5 Margiela, Martin catalogues 48, 127, 140–1, 154–6 invitations 1–3, 30–1, 49–51, 90, 92–3, 94, 135–6, 194 press releases 48–9, 57–8, 73, 116–18, 119, 131–2, 157, 175–6 website 195 Marks, Laura 144–5, 147, 153 Marrati, Paola 92 Martin, Penny 95 Martin, Richard 44 material consciousness 169 material hermeneutics 186 materiality 20, 31, 51, 114, 144, 160, 163, 171, 182–3, 188 Mears, Ashley 44 mediatization 119–27

238

memory of touch 147 Mermoz, Gerard 62–3 methodological fetishism 187 Meulemans, Marc 103 mimetic faculty 153 mirrors 103, 105 Mitchell, W.J.T. 20, 188 mixed media 20 montage 105–6, 145–6 Morand, Paul 10 Morra, Joanne 67, 69 Moxey, Keith 42 multiple authors 51–60, 81–2 multiplicity of an event 118 Munoz, Josè Esteban 197 Murk, Ninette 70, 71, 87, 88 Murphy, Kevin D. 16 music cassette invitation 128–7, 130 Myzelev, Alla 74 narratives 36, 97–9, 111, 116–17 Nead, Lynda 116 Neef, Sonja 28 newspaper format 11, 51–4 objects of contact 31 O’Driscoll, Sally 16 online fashion 195–6 optical toys 115–16, 135–6 paratext 172–6 Parikka, Jussi 186 Paterson, Mark 163, 165–7 performance, by ephemera 184–5 performance documentation 90–1, 137, 187 performative paratext 172 Persoons, Jurgi, invitations 32, 34, 63, 64, 67, 68, 119, 122 phenomenology 164, 187 philosophical toys 115 photodynamism 101–2 photographers 51, 54, 57, 58, 62, 100 photographs backstage 97, 113–15, 124–5, 156 catwalk pictures 94–9 chronophotography 113–14 cinematic techniques 111–12 materiality 160 photodynamism 101–2 poetic transformations 177–80 Poiret, Paul 9 Poletti, Anna 4, 197 postcards 30–1, 32, 33, 129, 130, 169–70 post-invitations 135 Potvin, John 74

Index

Premet, correspondence 6 press releases animations 157, 158 biographies 41–2, 73 collaboration 56, 57–8 handwritten 26, 27, 28 handwritten comments on 72, 73 latex glove 164–5 mediatization 119, 120, 121 multisensory descriptions 131–2 narrative 116–18 paratext 172–6 poetic transformations 177–80 quotations 42, 173 sketches 48–9 storytelling 40 tactile properties 164–5, 166 properties of the event 132 QR code invitation 194, 192, 193 quotations 42, 45–7, 81, 82, 166, 168–9, 173 Reason, Matthew 96, 100, 137 Respini, Eva 111 Riegl, Alois 144 Robb, Charles 157 Rocamora, Agnès 31, 70, 80, 119, 195 Rose, Mark 57 Saillard, Olivier 76, 99–100, 185 Satz, Aura 188 Saville, Peter 11, 149, 196 Sayre, Henry M. 100 Schaefer, Erik 195 Schneider, Rebecca 91, 118, 129, 196 sculpture 157, 163 seating plans 70 Sennett, Richard 165–6, 169 sense of fabric 163 sensual similarity 161 Serrès, Michel 88–9 Shinkle, Eugénie 163 signatures 12, 25–31, 50, 51 significant moments 105, 110, 113–16 silhouettes 148, 149, 149, 152, 153–4 Simon, Cheryl 17 Simons, Raf catalogue 97–8 invitation 61–2 press release 173–5 sketches 42–5, 48–9 Sobchak, Vivian 168 social media 119, 123, 196 Stassler, Schohaja 113 Steedman, Carolyn 19, 90

Index

Steele, Valerie 187 Stiles, Kristine 133 Stoler, Ann L. 18 Stoops, Ronald 11, 51, 53, 54 storytelling 36, 40–1 Suls, Dieter 194 Švankmajer, Jan 161 syndeton 178 Taws, Richard 94 television-shaped invitation 135–6 theory, everyday studies 21 time decisive moment 95–7 defamiliarization of 105 invitations 85–7, 92–3, 94 look-moment 98–102 mirrors 103, 105 photodynamism 101–2 significant moments 105, 110, 113–16 time-based media 112 units of 117–18 Tosseyn, Tom 61–2 touch 164–9 transformation 17, 139–40, 141, 177–80, 190 translation practices 67 Troy, Nancy 9, 28 Trust Me exhibition 60 Turkle, Sherry 188 units of time 117–18 Vaccari, Alessandra 173 Van Beirendonck, Walter catalogues 36, 37, 38, 39, 40–1 invitations 11, 51–4, 56, 85–7, 128–9 Van Dijck, José 28 Van Noten, Dries catalogues 113–16, 124–5, 144–6 invitations 69, 129, 161–3 press releases 41, 42, 158, 177–80 Van Saene, Dirk, invitation 42–4 Vandevorst, A. F. catalogues 102–5, 159–61 invitation 169–71 press release 173 Verbeek, Peter-Paul 171 Verdonck, Peter 178 voices 42–51 watch-shaped invitation 85–7 websites 195 Westely, Hanna 36 Wetzel, Michael 45 Whitehead, Alfred North 88

239

Willhelm, Bernhard catalogues 33, 35, 58, 59, 60, 61 invitations 12, 28–30 press release 40 retrospective exhibition 13, 14 Willows, Mullins 170 Wingate, Sarah 149 Wood, Jon 188

240

Woodward, Sophie 143, 182 written-clothing 140–2 Yamamoto, Yohji catalogues 11, 45–7, 76, 77, 78, 79, 149–52, 153–4, 158–9, 166, 168 invitations 32, 63, 66, 135 press releases 42 Young, Timothy 85

Index

241

242