Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:02:46.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Was fashion a European invention?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

Carlo Marco Belfanti
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, University of Brescia, Via S. Faustino 74B, 25122 Brescia, Italy E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Fashion was arguably a social phenomenon that emerged in Europe during early modern times, and this paper seeks to determine whether it was unknown in the refined civilizations of the East. The conclusion is that fashion was not a European invention. The analysis of the evolution of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese clothing systems underlines how these societies underwent phases in which, thanks to propitious economic conditions, the accentuated propensity towards consumption stimulated behaviour that challenged the traditional hierarchies of appearance, usually regulated by canons of a prescriptive nature. Fashion was not, therefore, a European invention, but it only fully developed as a social institution in Europe, while in India, China, and Japan it only evolved partially, without being able to obtain full social recognition.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 René, König, Menschheit auf dem Laufsteg: die Mode im Zivilisationprozess, Munich: Carl Hauser Verlag, 1985.Google Scholar See also Daniel, Roche, La culture des apparences: une histoire du vêtement XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles, Paris: Fayard, 1989, pp. 50–3Google Scholar; Daniel, Roche, Histoire des choses banales: naissance de la consommation dans les sociétés traditionelles (XVIIe–XIXe siècles), Paris: Fayard, 1997.Google Scholar

2 Gilles, Lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphèmere: la mode et son destin dans les sociétés modernes, Paris: Gallimard, 1987, pp. 25–8.Google Scholar

3 A neat synthesis is proposed by Yuniya Kawamura, Fashion-ology: an introduction to fashion studies, Oxford: Berg, 2005.

4 Georg, Simmel, Die Mode, Berlin: Pan Verlag, 1905.Google Scholar

5 Roche, Culture des apparences; Daniel L. Purdy, The tyranny of elegance: consumer cosmopolitanism in the era of Goethe, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998; David Kuchta, The three-piece suit and modern masculinity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in eighteenth-century Europe, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002; Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the making of respectability 1600–1800, New York: Routledge, 2002; Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing la mode: gender, fashion and commercial culture in old regime France, Oxford: Berg, 2004; Maxine, Berg, Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

6 For a recent survey, see Antonia, Finnane, Changing clothes in China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 19–41.Google Scholar

7 Quoted by Fernand, Braudel, Civilization and capitalism: the structures of everyday life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992, p. 323.Google Scholar

8 Quoted by Braudel, Civilization and capitalism, p. 312.

9 Ibid., pp. 311–24.

10 Neil McKendrick, ‘The commercialization of fashion’, in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and John H. Plumb, eds., The birth of a consumer society: the commercialization of eighteenth-century England, London: Europa Publications, 1982, pp. 36–42.

11 Gilles Lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp. 30–1, 55, 71.

12 Chaudhuri, Kirti N., Asia before Europe: economy and civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 182–90.Google Scholar

13 Peter Burke, ‘Res et verba: conspicuous consumption in the early modern world’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the world of goods, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 148–61.

14 Adshead, S. A. M., Material culture in Europe and China, 1400–1800, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Kenneth, Pomeranz, The great divergence: China, Europe and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 157–65.Google Scholar For a more recent survey, see Finnane, Changing clothes in China, pp. 1–17.

16 Craig, Clunas, ‘Modernity, global and local: consumption and the rise of the West’, American Historical Review, 104, 5, 1999, pp. 14971511.Google Scholar

17 For the pre-Mughal period, see Ramesh P. Mohapatra, Fashion styles of ancient India: dress and costumes, New Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1992.

18 Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe, p. 183.

19 Goswamy, B. N., Indian costumes in the collection of the Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad: Calico Museum, 1993Google Scholar; see also Govind S. Ghurye, Indian costume, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1966.

20 Linda, Lynton, The sari, London: Thames and Hudson, 1995Google Scholar; Mujulika, Banerjee and Daniel, Miller, The sari, Oxford: Berg, 2003.Google Scholar

21 Goswamy, Indian costumes, p. 1.

22 Ghurye, Indian costume, pp. 1–30; Mohapatra, Fashion styles of ancient India, pp. 1–100; Shiv N. Dar, Costumes of India and Pakistan: a historical and cultural study, Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons and Co. Pr. Ltd., 1982, pp. 1–35; Goswamy, Indian costumes, pp. 9–14.

23 Richards, John F., The Mughal empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

24 Ghurye, Indian costume, pp. 207–8; Goswamy, Indian costumes, pp. 1–14.

25 Bernard S. Cohn, ‘Cloth, clothes and colonialism in India’, in Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, eds., Cloth and human experience, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, pp. 331–3.

26 Ghurye, Indian costume, pp. 130–6; Dar, Costumes of India, p. 48.

27 Ghurye, Indian costume, pp.129–30; Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 43–7; Goswamy, Indian costumes, pp. 14–18.

28 Mohapatra, Fashion styles of ancient India: hair styles and coiffures, pp. 1–85 (second part, with new pagination, of Fashion styles of ancient India); Goswamy, Indian costumes, pp. 7–8; Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 47, 96–8; Cohn, ‘Cloth’, pp. 313–16.

29 Ghurye, Indian costume, p. 210; Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 43–4; Goswamy, Indian costumes, p. 16.

30 Chris A. Bayly, ‘The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society’, in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 297–301; Goswamy, Indian costumes, pp. 17–18; Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe, p. 188.

31 Ghurye, Indian costume, pp. 130–6; Dar, Costumes of India, p. 48.

32 Pietro, Della Valle, De’ viaggi di Pietro Della Valle …, Roma: Vitale Mascardi, 1663, vol. 3, p. 34Google Scholar; Jean, Thévenot, Troisième partie des voyages de M. de Thévenot contenant la relation de l’Indostan, des nouveaux Mogoles et des autres peuples et pays de l’Inde, Paris: Claude Barbin, 1684, p. 104.Google Scholar

33 Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 51–5; Goswamy, Indian costumes, pp. 18–20.

34 Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 55–71; Goswamy, Indian costumes, p. 20.

35 Pomeranz, The great divergence, pp. 127–30, 145–9.

36 Ibid., p. 148.

37 Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 55–6.

38 Pomeranz, The great divergence, p. 148.

39 Ghurye, Indian costume, p. 21.

40 Govind S. Ghurye, ‘Features of the caste system’, in Dipankar Gupta, ed., Social stratification, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 35–48.

41 Dar, Costumes of India, pp. 58–9.

42 Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe, pp. 55–6. For living standards in India during the sixteenth century, see Ashok V. Desai, ‘Population and standards of living in Akbar’s time’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 9, 1972, pp. 43–62; Shireen, Moosvi, ‘Production, consumption and population in Akbar’s time’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 10, 1973, pp. 181–95.Google Scholar

43 Adshead, Material culture, pp. 73–4.

44 Alvaro, Semedo, The history of that great and renowned monarchy of China, London: John Crook, 1655 (1st edition 1643).Google Scholar

45 See John, Vollmer, In the presence of the dragon throne, Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1977, p. 21.Google Scholar

46 Semedo, The history, p. 29.

47 Ibid., p. 29.

48 Ibid., p. 30.

49 Ibid., pp. 30–1.

50 Vollmer, In the presence, pp. 20–1.

51 Valerie Steele and John S. Major, China chic: East meets West, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 15–19.

52 John, Vollmer, Chinese costume and accessories 17th–20th century, Paris: AEDTA, 1999, p. 4.Google Scholar

53 T’ung-Tsu Chu, Law and society in traditional China, Paris: Mouton & Co., 1961, p. 135.

54 Ibid., p. 137–9; Vollmer, Chinese costume, p. 6.

55 Garrett, Valery M., Chinese clothing: an illustrated guide, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 3–8Google Scholar; Steele and Major, China chic, p. 28.

56 Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 9–12.

57 Schuyler, Cammann, ‘The development of the mandarin square’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 8, 1944, pp. 71–9Google Scholar; Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 14–17; Steele and Major, China chic, pp. 28–9.

58 Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 19–25.

59 Ibid., p. 12.

60 Cammann, ‘The development’, pp. 79–81; Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 29–30; Vollmer, Chinese costume, p. 6; Steele and Major, China chic, p. 29.

61 Cammann, ‘The development’, p. 80; Vollmer, In the presence, p. 22; Vollmer, Chinese costume, p. 6; Steele and Major, China chic, p. 29.

62 Steele and Major, China chic, p. 29.

63 Vollmer, In the presence, pp. 30–45; Garrett, Chinese Clothing, pp. 30–46, 47–61.

64 Cammann, ‘The development’, pp. 79–90; Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 62–75.

65 Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 76–94; Steele and Major, China chic, p. 31.

66 Craig, Clunas, Superfluous things: material culture and social status in early modern China, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991, pp. 147–61.Google Scholar

67 Quoted by Cammann, ‘The development’, p. 78.

68 Ibid., p. 79; Garrett, Chinese clothing, p. 10.

69 Vollmer, Chinese costume, p. 7; Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 30–1.

70 Cammann, ‘The development’, pp. 86–7; Garrett, Chinese clothing, p. 70.

71 Semedo, The history, p. 29.

72 Quoted by Timothy Brook, The confusion of pleasure: commerce and culture in Ming China, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998, p. 220. Brook translates with ‘fashion’ the term shiyang, which literally means ‘the appearance of the moment’.

73 Quoted by Clunas, Superfluous things, p. 155.

74 Quoted by Clunas, Superfluous things, p. 154.

75 Quoted by Brook, Confusion of pleasure, pp. 221–2.

76 Garrett, Chinese clothing, pp. 77–8.

77 Clunas, Superfluous things, p. 5; Brook, Confusion of pleasure, pp. 10–13, 190–210; S. Dauncey, ‘Illusions of grandeur: perceptions of status and wealth in late-Ming female clothing and ornamentation’, East Asian Studies, 25–6, 2003, pp. 43–68.

78 Brook, Confusion of pleasure, pp. 210–18.

79 Clunas, Superfluous things, pp. 160–5.

80 Qitao, Guo, Ritual opera and mercantile lineage: the Confucian transformation of popular culture in late imperial Huizhou, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005, pp. 56–74Google Scholar. See also Madeleine, Zelin, The merchants of Zigong: industrial entrepreneurship in early modern China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.Google Scholar

81 Clunas, Superfluous things, pp. 160–5; Brook, Confusion of pleasure, pp. 210–18.

82 Clunas, Superfluous things, pp. 170–2; Dauncey, ‘Illusions of grandeur’.

83 Adshead, Material culture, p. 75.

84 Clunas, Superfluous things, p. 173; Brook, Confusion of pleasure, p. 160.

85 Clunas, Superfluous things, p. 173; Pomeranz, The great divergence, pp. 152–62.

86 Finnane, Changing clothes in China, pp. 52–6. Peter Burke also does not think that the coming of the Qing produced such a radical change (see Burke, ‘Res et verba’, pp. 151–2).

87 Quoted by Finnane, Changing clothes in China, p. 54.

88 Helen B. Minmich, Japanese costume and the makers of its elegant tradition, Rutland, VT: Tuttle Co., 1963, pp. 28–9; Sylvie and Dominique Buisson, Kimono: art traditionnel du Japon, Lausanne: Edita, 1983, pp. 20–1; Liza Crihfield Dalby, Kimono: fashioning culture, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1993, pp. 25–30.

89 Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 217–69.

90 Buisson, Kimono, pp. 22–9; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 28–32, 217–69.

91 Fumiko Komatsu, L’Évolution du costume au Japon depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à l’époque des Tokugawa, Paris: Maurice Lavergne, 1942, pp. 107–14; Seiroku Noma, Japanese costume and textile arts, New York: Weatherill, 1974, pp. 13–36; Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 30–1; Buisson, Kimono, pp. 31–6; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 34–7.

92 Crihfield Dalby Kimono, pp. 17–21; Hanley, Susan B., Everyday things in pre-modern Japan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, pp. 68–71.Google Scholar

93 Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 31–2; Noma, Japanese costume, pp. 30–5; Buisson, Kimono, pp. 37–9; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 38–9.

94 Shively, Donald H., ‘Sumptuary regulations and status in early Tokugawa Japan’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 25, 1964–5, pp. 123–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 Alan, Kennedy, Costumes japonais, Paris: Adam Biro, 1990, pp. 10–20Google Scholar; Jill Liddell, The story of the kimono, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1999, pp. 121–7.

96 Burke, ‘Res et verba’, pp. 153–4; David S. Landes, The wealth and poverty of nations: why some are so rich and some so poor, New York: W. W. Norton, 1998, pp. 365–6.

97 Kennedy, Costumes japonais, pp. 16–25; Burke, ‘Res et verba’, pp. 154–5.

98 Ihara Saikaku, The Japanese family storehouse or the millionaires’ gospel modernised, ed. Geoffrey W. Sargent, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959, p. 26.

99 Ibid., p. 98.

100 Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 195–251; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 40–9; Liddell, Story of the kimono, pp. 136–9.

101 Liddell, Story of the kimono, pp. 136–9.

102 Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 203–8; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 271–321.

103 Quoted by Shively, ‘Sumptuary regulations’, p. 158.

104 Ibid., pp. 123–58; Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 209–51.

105 Shively, ‘Sumptuary regulations’, pp.131–5, 155–8.

106 Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 208–51; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 286–7; Liddell, Story of the kimono, pp. 147–53.

107 Shively, ‘Sumptuary regulations’, pp. 131–3; Noma, Japanese costume, pp. 37–41; Kennedy, Costumes japonais, pp. 15–28; Minmich, Japanese costume, p. 199; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 274–5; Liddell, Story of the kimono, pp. 128–36.

108 Minmich, Japanese costume, p. 199.

109 Quoted by Minmich, Japanese costume, p. 191.

110 Shively, ‘Sumptuary regulations’, pp. 123–31.

111 Minmich, Japanese costume, pp. 277–82; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 40–51; Burke, ‘Res et verba’, pp. 154–5.

112 Noma, Japanese costume, pp. 89–93; Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp.52–5; Liddell, Story of the kimono, pp. 166–9.

113 Crihfield Dalby, Kimono, pp. 59–107; Hanley, Everyday things, pp. 166–168.

114 Niall, Ferguson, Empire: how Britain made the modern world, London: Penguin Books, 2004.Google Scholar