Samulski, Magdelena Lauren
The Fashion Object, Death Dialects, and the Contradiction of Historic Time: A Re-Examination of Historicism that Accounts for Fashion's Embodied Practices
This thesis examines contradictions in approaches to fashion cataloging and exhibition by considering how the fashion artifact is used as physical evidence for public memory of the past. As a memorial practice and timekeeper, fashion demands a complex cultural understanding of artistic production, aging, and history. How does this understanding of fashion as a cultural index and narrative challenge our knowledge of history and the problems inherent in trying to produce a historical narrative through cloth? Where do we fall short in dress reconstructions and our understanding of time and aging through approaches to fashion and dressing? How do these considerations challenge cultural attitudes toward fashion's role in helping understand death and aging in the larger cultural lexicon? By addressing fashion's relationship to time and what might be termed the death aspect of dress as connected to bodies from the past, we allow for a less biased approach to historic fashion that will account for more regional, communal, and individual tastes in dress. This method of inquiry permits a more balanced understanding of dressing ideals across socioeconomic levels regarding garment production and reproduction. Continually addressing the personal in fashion reinforces the unique nature of each garment and its relationship with the body as part of fashion's corporeal register. Keywords: Fashion Artifact, Garment Production, Garment Reproduction, Reconstruction, Corporeal, Embodiment, Eastern Time, Historicism, Public Memory, Memorial, Aging, Western Time
Author Keywords: Corporeal, Embodiment, Fashion Artifact, Garment Reproduction, Historicism, Public Memory