 Postmodernism and the Avant-Garde:Stylistic Change

in Fashion Design
 Diana Crane  (bio)

In intellectual circles today, it is fashionable to argue that modernism and its counterpart,
avant-gardism, as the dominant “world views” that influenced the nature of style for most
of the twentieth century, have been replaced by postmodernism, not only in the arts but in
popular culture. According to a French scholar, “Avant-garde art still exists but it treads
water and upsets no one. . . . Modern art no longer scandalizes its public.” 1 It has become
the new academy, a new form of official art. 2

Modernism and avant-gardism, which presume the existence of clear-cut distinctions

between different types of aesthetic endeavors, are perceived today as elitist in
comparison with postmodernism, in which high culture is no longer viewed as
aesthetically superior to popular culture and dominant cultures are no longer more
significant than minority cultures. The shift from modernist to postmodernist styles is
viewed as a consequence of social, political, and cultural changes that have altered the
relationships between different social groups and the dominant culture, as well as the
ways in which these social groups can be plausibly represented by cultural categories.

The enormous proliferation of different forms of popular culture (cinema, television,

and popular music) transmitted by film and electronic media has made it difficult to
ignore the aesthetic influence of these cultures in everyday life, and, at the same time, has
had the effect of marginalizing traditional arts, such as painting, theatre, dance, poetry,
and experimental music. The concept of two cultures, one aesthetically superior and
identified with the arts as traditionally defined, and the [End Page 123] other aesthetically
trivial and identified with culture produced for mass audiences, has ceased to be
convincing. From the postmodernist perspective, all forms of culture today mix elements
from different styles and different time periods, erasing the distinctions between high and
low cultures and between dominant and minority cultures.

Unfortunately, the enormous amount of discussion and debate about the significance
and impact of these types of styles has created what are in fact stereotypical images of
both postmodernism and modernism, and particularly the role of avant-gardes. As Wilson
has observed, our “generalizations begin to seem to have more to do with the creation of a
cultural myth about ‘our times’ which . . . seeks to create a stereotype of the present in the
present.” 3 The modernist avant-garde is characterized in terms of its alleged aloofness
from popular culture and political concern rather than in terms of its critique of modernity,
specifically the latter’s commitment to the belief in progress. 4 Avant-garde art tends to be
identified with its post-World War II phase of experimentation with artistic form, while its
engagements with political issues in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are
forgotten (PC, 237). Instead of being aloof from popular culture in the late nineteenth
century, French avant-garde artists often appropriated motifs from certain aspects of
popular culture. 5 Curiously, while the avant-garde tends to be derided in discussions of
postmodernism, the concept has not been entirely abandoned. Postmodern artists, while
eliminating clear distinctions between popular culture and art in their works, are
sometimes described as using avant-garde strategies. Boyne and Rattansi argue that
postmodernists in relation to their battle against modernism constitute an avant-garde in
the same sense as the dadaists and surrealists in their opposition to post-impressionism
(“TPP,” 10). Connor describes postmodernists as using “a lexicon of cultural subversion
and deconstruction which is partly inherited from modernist culture and its avant-garde
theories” (PC, 166- 67).

At the same time, some writers have argued that postmodern theorists exaggerate the
extent to which postmodernity has replaced modernity. Kellner suggests that there may be
“continuities” as well as “discontinuities” between the two types of societies and suggests
the relevance of Williams’ distinction between “residual,” “dominant,” and “emergent”
cultures. “Using Williams’ distinctions we might want to speak of postmodernity as an
emergent tendency within a still dominant modernity which is haunted as well by various
forms of residual, traditional cultures. 6

Collins has pointed to “the simultaneous presence of [postmodernism] alongside

modernist, pre-modernist, and aggressively non-modernist styles, all enjoying significant
degrees of popularity with different audiences and institutions” (quoted in PC, 177).
Wilson provides an example, that of a subcultural style, punk, as “modernist, as
postmodernist, and as an avant-garde manifestation” (“NCS,” 214). In the past fifteen
years, the electronic media have appropriated the looks and tactics of the avant-garde.
Caldwell claims that “every framework of the avant-garde . . . had become highly visible
in some form in the corporate world of the new television.” 7 Kaplan, in [End Page
124] an attempt to classify music videos in the 1980s, found that all the categories she
identified used avant-garde strategies. 8 One of her video categories was postmodernist.
Some advertisements, particularly for clothing manufacturers, replace clarity with
ambiguity in order to attract the attention of a public so sated with advertising messages it
no longer bothers to notice them. 9 One technique has been to present ambiguous images
whose connotations are unclear and which do not appear to have an obvious connection
with the product being advertised. Sometimes these images are intended to be disturbing
or at least provocative,as Goldman and his colleagues note: “To confuse further the
ideological field, some advertisers now actively encourage multiple readings as they try to
recapture the attention of alienated viewers by encoding messages that are ambiguous,
incomplete, or polyvalent.” 10

The assimilation by the mass media of stylistic devices associated with the avant-garde
raises the question of the extent to which oppositional themes are being
disseminated. 11 Goldman and his collaborators note: “. . . behind the apparent ideological
randomness of the ads and the multitude of different voices with which they address
viewers, lie the familiar guiding assumptions of commodity consumption and a
remarkable ideological regularity structured by the framework of ads.” 12

Kaplan points out that oppositional messages are likely to be “overridden by the
plethora of surrounding texts” (RRC, 65). The sheer volume of messages of all kinds
being transmitted by the mass media tends to obliterate the effect of oppositional
messages when they do appear; high culture, in contrast, framed oppositional messages in
such a way as to highlight their effect: an entire evening at the theater devoted to a
particular playwright, an entire gallery or museum wing devoted to the work of a
particular artist for several weeks. Finally, as some of the properties of high culture are
being absorbed by certain forms of popular culture, the hierarchalization of culture is
being replicated in the latter: popular music is being reclassified in terms of “classics” and
“non-classics.” 13

These ambiguities in the discussion of the relationship between postmodernism,

modernism, and avant-gardism suggest that it is useful to rethink conceptions of the
 nature, meaning, and significance of avant-gardism and postmodernism in contemporary
culture. In this paper, I will examine these issues as they appear in the work of fashion
designers. Fashion with its emphasis on images and incessant change ought to constitute
the epitome of a postmodernist cultural form. Its aesthetic content is often seen as trivial
and its social content as promoting narcissism and self-absorption on the one hand and
thoughtless consumption of unnecessary products on the other. To what extent do fashion
designers engage in avant-gardist, as opposed to postmodernist, practices? Can the history
of fashion design be interpreted in terms of distinct genres or styles that prescribed
aesthetic conventions and traditions against which avant-gardes rebelled? Have these
genres disappeared and been replaced by parody and pastiche, the hallmarks of
postmodernism?

Two authors who have written extensively about the sociology of fashion disagree on
this point. While Wilson finds some elements of parody and self-parody in
contemporary [End Page 125] fashion design that appear to fit a postmodernist outlook,
she argues that other characteristics, such as pastiche and the “nostalgia mode” that
supposedly are indicative of postmodernist style “have been pervasive in popular culture
(including fashion) throughout the twentieth century and . . . earlier” (“NCS,” 226). She is
skeptical of the existence of a postmodern zeitgeist or ethos as defined by leading
postmodern theorists such as Jameson and Baudrillard. 14 Significantly, Yves Saint
Laurent, who does not perceive himself as postmodernist, has been described as basing his
collections on “allusions to a treasure trove of sources ranging from Proust to the theatre,
styles of painting, and, as times go, even references to his own work.” 15

By contrast, Kaiser and her colleagues point to the heterogeneity in ‘fashionable’ looks,
the blurring of binary categories, and the manipulation and violation of cultural codes by
fashion designers as indications of the presence of a postmodernist outlook. 16 The
incoherence of styles in the aggregate leads to pervasive ambiguity in the appearances that
consumers construct from the array of styles in the postmodernist fashion marketplace.

For this analysis, I will draw examples from the activities of fashion designers, past and
present, who have worked or shown their collections in France since that country has been
the center of fashion in the Western world for the past two hundred years. Paris remains
the center of the international fashion world as the place where contemporary designers
are compelled to display their work in order to obtain both recognition as innovators and a
foothold in the global market. It has been in the past, and remains today, a location for the
display of highly innovative designs that are not necessarily adopted immediately. 17 At the
same time, fashion design in Paris and elsewhere has acquired the institutional trappings
of the art world. Fashion museums, sometimes called costume institutes, collect and
preserve clothes from previous centuries, obtain clothes from contemporary designers as
they appear, and produce retrospectives of the work of leading designers. The auction
market, a major center for the sale of works in the fine arts, now includes sales of designer
clothing. 18 As did their counterparts earlier in the century, successful designers often
assume the role of collector, patron of the arts, and exemplar of upper class taste. First,
however, it is necessary to identify elements of avant-gardism and postmodernism in
cultural styles.

1. Avant-gardist and Postmodernist Aesthetic Practices

Analysis of a wide range of uses of the term, avant-garde, shows that it has been applied
to three types of changes: in the aesthetic content of art, in the social content of art, and in
 the norms surrounding the production and distribution of art works. For example, the term
“avant-garde” is applied to the aesthetic content of art objects when those works represent
a redefinition of conventions for creating art, often in such a way that they are perceived
as violating taboos and as shocking or offensive, or when they involve the use of new
tools or techniques, or concern with [End Page 126] the nature of use of techniques per
se, and when they redefine what can be considered an art work. 19 The term is applied to
the social content of art works when they express social or political values that are critical
of or different from the dominant culture, when they attack art institutions, and when they
attempt to redefine the boundaries between high and popular culture. Finally, the term is
applied to creators of art works when they attempt to redefine the social context for the
production of art (for example, appropriate role models, critics, and publics for artists), the
organizational context in which art is displayed and distributed, and the social role of the
artist in terms of his or her participation in other social institutions, such as education,
religion, and politics. By any standards the term “avant-garde” can cover a wide range of
aesthetic and social practices. 20

Postmodernism is difficult to characterize in part because of its preoccupation with

ambiguity and contradiction. According to Boyne and Rattansi, “Many doubt whether the
term can ever be dignified by conceptual coherence” (“TPP,” 9). Postmodernism
obliterates categories and classifications. As a result, it seems to be characterized more by
qualities that it does not have than by qualities it has. Postmodernist works are polysemic,
having no fixed meanings or, to put it differently, multiple meanings. Authoritative
interpretations of texts are neither expected nor possible. In postmodernist works,
signifiers are unstable, changing, contradictory, or disconnected. Binary oppositions
between signifiers are blurred (RRC, 55). Signifiers are ‘collaged’ together but often fail
to produce coherent sequences (RAS, 200). In place of the modernist’s commitment to the
development of a particular style, the postmodernist is not interested in style conceived as
a consistent, integrated set of aesthetic elements but in pastiche and bringing together
disparate elements from many previous texts, regardless of whether they produce a
coherent entity. Because many of the texts that postmodernists plunder are works that
were widely disseminated in the past and hence meaningful to many people,
postmodernism creates feelings of nostalgia for the past. According to Goldman, the
meaning of postmodernist texts cannot be discerned from analyzing the texts themselves,
but only by asking where the elements in the text come from (RAS, 214).

The social content or significance of the postmodernist work is not that of opposition to
the dominant culture but that of exposing or reinterpreting subversive elements in the
dominant culture and in minority cultures. According to Connor, “Much postmodern
aesthetic theory . . . attempts to restore the repressed political dimensions of aesthetic and
cultural activity of all kinds” (PC, 224).

The social context of postmodernism in terms of an organizational environment for the

production or display of these works is left unspecified. Unlike the works of modernist
avant-gardes, which were generally created and displayed in very distinct settings in a
relatively small number of major Western cities, postmodernist works are created in a
great variety of settings, ranging from organizations that produce culture on an industrial
scale to small groups that belong to minority cultures and work with very minimal
resources. [End Page 127]

2. Fashion Design and the Emergence of an Avant-garde

The connections between fashion and the avant-garde are intriguing because both are
concerned with what one art critic described years ago as “the shock of the new.”
However, the two terms have very different connotations in the popular mind. The term
“fashion,” particularly when applied to clothing, refers to a phenomenon that is new but
has been rapidly and widely accepted, implying that its acceptance does not require a
major shift in world view on the part of the public. It is in tune with the zeitgeist. By
contrast, the term “avant-garde” implies a phenomenon that is difficult to understand
because it challenges the public’s preconceptions and consequently is not immediately
accepted by the public.

According to the best known model of the diffusion of fashion, new styles are first
accepted by members of the upper class and gradually spread to members of the middle
and lower classes. 21 When a new style has become widely accepted, it is abandoned by the
upper class in favor of a new one. This model assumes the existence of a dominant style
that is widely followed, and is a fairly accurate description of the diffusion of fashion in
Europe and America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (until, approximately,
the 1960s). The role of the fashion designer was epitomized by Charles Frederick Worth,
an Englishman who worked in Paris and created styles that were adopted by European
royalty and aristocracies and by the upper middle class and the demimonde of courtesans
and actresses. Worth initiated the tradition of haute couture, clothes made to order for
clients who bought them directly from designers. Fashion design as haute
couture emphasized style and technique: style, such as the dominant silhouette, provided a
unifying theme; technical details provided diversity. Fashion evolved according to its own
internal dynamic, following a logical succession of cycles based on shapes of the skirt;
bell, back-fullness (the bustle), and tubular. 22 Clothing had to be perfectly executed, as
customers knew that it would be carefully scrutinized at social gatherings by friends and
acquaintances. Decisions by Paris designers to use a particular type of material or
accessory had enormous consequences for fashion industries in the Western world,
affecting the prices of textiles and sometimes the survival of entire factories. 23

During most of this period, while clothing styles at times changed radically, fashion
change was not associated with an avant-garde. True, some designers had considerable
influence on the way women dressed in the early twentieth century; but they rarely sought
to challenge established aesthetic conventions or comment on social relationships through
their use of clothing motifs. For example, Gabrielle Chanel, who was a major contributor
to the costume of twentieth century women, produced very simple clothes, stripped of
superfluous detail and decoration, that could be (and were) repeated endlessly with slight
variations. Her innovations included the simple black dress that she advocated as a basic
item for every woman’s wardrobe, the cardigan suit that became most famous when she
revived it in the 1950s (when she was in her seventies), and the sweater which quickly
replaced blouses for many purposes. 24 Her clothes were compared to uniforms and to
assembly-line [End Page 128] products like cars. When it first appeared, Vogue described
her black dress as “a Ford signed Chanel.” 25 Her clothes were intended for women of all
social ranks, although only the rich could afford to buy the clothes she actually sold. Since
her clothes were easy to copy, her designs were quickly made available to a very diverse
clientele.

During the same period, the clothes created by another major fashion innovator,
Madeleine Vionnet, did not evolve from one season to another, but in any particular
season her collection exhibited a complete repertoire of her major technique: different
types of draping. 26 Vionnet’s research on drapery led to innovations that had an enormous
influence on other designers and that are still important today. According to Milbank,
“Vionnet was called the Euclid of fashion, and geometric shapes predominate in all her
collections as decorative and functional devices . . . [her] clothes were masterpieces of the
art of dresssmaking (CGD, 163).

Probably the first fashion designer whose work can truly be characterized as avant-
garde was Elsa Schiaparelli, who began her career in the late 1920s. Like Chanel, she was
a close friend of leading avant-garde artists of the period, such as Marcel Duchamp,
Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, and Salvador Dali; but unlike Chanel, who was primarily a
patron rather than a collaborator, Schiaparelli attempted to translate the ideas of dada and
surrealist artists into clothing design. 27

Schiaparelli’s designs in the 1930s were not merely influenced by surrealism, but
constituted a very real collaboration with a group of artists who were exploring the
significance of the body and clothing in their paintings and sculpture. The results of this
collaboration were clothes that challenged aesthetic norms and traditions prevalent in the
construction and design of Western clothing and that questioned, at times, political and
social ideologies rising in prominence during the decade.

Surrealism provided Schiaparelli with an aesthetic rationale for engaging in outrageous

experiments in which artifacts and body parts were placed in unusual locations, such as a
hat in the form of a shoe and eyes, lips, or arms becoming decoration for dresses and
coats. The goal of the surrealists was to create new connotations for body parts and
familiar artifacts, dismantling familiar connections and creating new, surprising alliances.
The intent was to disrupt normal thought processes, to subvert conventional meanings,
and to stimulate new and possibly irrational associations (FAS, 108)

With Salvador Dali, Schiaparelli collaborated on the creation of the Tear Illusion Dress
in which a dress with pictures of tears in its fabric was paired with a cape in which the
tears were real, thus violating the norm of perfection inherent in designer clothing and
intimating associations between expensive clothing and the dilapidated clothing of the
poor (FAS, 114).

The difference between Schiaparelli and other designers of that period can also be
interpreted in terms of Becker’s distinction between craftsmen and artists. 28 Becker
defines a craft as a compilation of knowledge and skills that can be used to produce useful
or beautiful objects, such as pottery, furniture, and clothing. According to [End Page
129] Becker, craftsmen produce their work to order—for clients or employers. For
ordinary craftsmen, utility is the major factor in evaluating his or her creations, while for
artist-craftsman beauty and aesthetic qualities are paramount. The works of artist-
craftsmen often become minor arts. They may be displayed in museums and art galleries
and win awards. These craftsmen are less dependent on evaluation of their work by
individual clients; instead they are evaluated by a larger circle of gatekeepers, including
directors of art galleries and museum curators.

The artist-craftsman develops and perfects his techniques, rather than subverting them.
Most haute couture designers before the 1960s were artist-craftsmen. One of the leading
designers in Paris in the postwar period, who epitomized the tradition of haute couture,
was Balenciaga whose approach has been described as follows: “Armed with a very
elaborate technique that he had himself invented, he did not cease to develop and perfect it
 without abandoning the canons which constituted his style: rigor, unremitting effort,
elegance and beauty.” 29

The difference between these artist-craftsmen and avant-garde artists is seen when the
latter “invade” crafts. In this situation, avant-garde artists use the skills of the craftsman,
but the objects they make are deliberately neither useful nor beautiful. Instead, the artist
who is using craft skills to make art works attempts to create objects that are unique—
totally different from other objects. For example, a contemporary fashion designer, Jean-
Paul Gaultier, playing the role of avant-garde innovator recently showed an outfit the front
of which was an elegant Balenciaga-style sculpted white dress while the back was
completely bare except for fishnet hose and a flower. 30

3. Fashion Design and Avant-gardes in the Age of

Postmodernism
Beginning in the 1960s, understanding fashion change requires a new model. Fashion
change can no longer be understood entirely as a process of diffusion from elites to the
rest of the population. Instead, in any particular season, there are numerous styles worn by
members of different age groups and different life styles. Some fashions diffuse
downward from elites and others diffuse upward from denizens of urban minority
ghettos. 31 Some styles are not diffused at all, but remain in the enclaves where they
originated. Young designers are less concerned with setting fashion than with establishing
a personal style and thereby achieving visibility in the fashion world. Designers who
continue to extend the tradition of haute couture are disappearing. In this chaotic
environment, it is possible to identify designers whose work is avant-gardist or
postmodernist, though many designers vacillate between the two.

One group we may call “the classicists.” They represent an older generation of
designers who continue to observe the conventions of haute couture, making beautiful
clothes in the tradition of the artist-craftsman. On the occasion of the retirement of one of
the last members of this group, Hubert de Givenchy, Le Monde’s fashion [End Page
130] critic commented: “His collection . . . was a manifesto of balance, clarity, rigor, the
grammar of French taste applied to couture. . . . Each detail conformed to an absolute
order of lines, of perfect diagonals, of silk jackets that never creased against the body, but
still clung to it.” 32

The approach to fashion design that underlies the tradition of haute couture is one in
which styles and techniques evolve over time, as exemplified in the work of Balenciaga.
According to Milbank, “Balenciaga’s whole work was thematic, each collection growing
out of the last; his collections, in fact, were more intrinsically related than those of
practically any other couturier” (CGD, 320).

As an example of the nature of his creative style, he invented the three-quarter sleeve
but in the process experimented with numerous variations: “manche montée non ajustée,
raglan, pivot, pingouin, gigot, dolman, chauve-souris.” 33 Similarly, in the 1950s, Dior
devised a series of new silhouettes, to which he gave names taken from the letters of the
alphabet: the H line, the A line, the Y line, and the S line. These lines were created,
systematically varying the basic components of a dress: the width of the shoulders and the
fullness and narrowness of the skirt. 34
 A second group of designers might be called “the avant-gardists.” For them, haute
couture has functioned analogously to an established art style, against whose conventions
they have rebelled. One of the first designers in the postwar period to engage in avant-
gardism was Paco Rabanne. Beginning in the 1960s, he created clothes that were so
original that many of them were virtually unwearable. His goal has been to use materials
that have not been considered appropriate for clothing, such as metals and plastics, which
he views as representative of contemporary life (he believes that cloth will eventually
disappear). His self-image is that of an artist, a sculptor making works that are
unique. 35 “Real creativity is iconoclastic,” he has recently said. “The future will belong to
the person who explodes fashion.” 36 His work is in many museums, but it is not clear
whether it should be classified as “sculpture,” “industrial design,” or “fashion.” 37

Another means of challenging aesthetic conventions involves the creation of clothes

that express values that are the antithesis of those expressed in Western clothing generally
and in the French tradition of haute couture specifically. A Japanese designer, Rei
Kawakubo, who is based in Japan but shows her collections semiannually in Paris, created
clothes in the early 1980s that violated major characteristics of Western clothing as
epitomized by haute couture. Western clothes are expected to be symmetrical. By
contrast, symmetry is unimportant in traditional Japanese clothing and in the work of
Kawakubo. For example, a dress may have three sleeves or one side of a jacket may be
longer than the other. Another characteristic of French haute couture which Kawakubo’s
clothes have violated is perfection of craftsmanship; hand stitching is expected to be
perfect, the cut impeccable. Rei Kawakubo has designed sweaters that are full of holes
and dresses with unfinished ragged hems. 38 Machines are deliberately manipulated so that
what they produce is flawed (RK, 80). [End Page 131]

Clothes with holes or other imperfections are also viewed as social statements, as
oblique references to the clothes of homeless women and as veiled attacks on the
decadence of western fashion (RK, 80). In Paris and other fashion capitals, the effect of
Kawakubo’s clothes in the early eighties was iconoclastic. According to Sudjic, “Placed
against the background of mainstream fashion of the period . . . Kawakubo’s designs were
radically unfamiliar. Indeed some of her garments were interpreted as an out-and-out
assault on the very idea of fashion” (RK, 70, author’s italics).

In the 1990s, young designers like Jean Colonna and Martin Margiela also produce
clothes that deliberately defy the perfect craftsmanship of haute couture: trousers that are
too small, rumpled jackets and dresses, jackets attached in the middle of the back with a
large safety pin, and jackets with buttons and buttonholes that do not align. 39 Even more
iconoclastic because it constitutes a threat to the economic basis of fashion is Margiela’s
project of creating new styles from cutup pieces of second-hand garments (SS, 114).

Subverting the aesthetic conventions of haute couture was also an objective of the early
collections of French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. His work was characterized by avant-
gardist transformations of widely accepted values and icons in the haute couture tradition:
using a type of costume associated with one activity for another very different purpose (an
aviator’s jacket becomes part of an evening dress), or taking up details from lingerie
(corsets serve as outerwear). Alternatively, Gaultier took a major icon of haute
couture, the Chanel jacket, and reproduced it in fake fur using as a belt a chain made for
flushing a toilet. 40 His objective was to change the usual meanings attributed to clothes
and other objects that could be appropriated as apparel, such as the jam jar lids that he
used to make bracelets. His philosophy was that, in terms of aesthetic values, anything
was possible and nothing was sacred. In contrast to the way clothing had been interpreted
previously, he showed that the same piece of clothing could be interpreted in many
different ways, depending upon how and with what it was presented. 41 Contrary to the
previous norms of fashionable dress, Gaultier argued that being in fashion depended not
so much on what one wore, but how one wore it.

Some designers, particularly women, have been engaged in subverting social

conventions concerning the way that gender is expressed in clothing. For example,
Kawakubo’s designs do not conform to norms concerning the expression and
enhancement of female sexuality in the tradition of haute couture; her clothes conceal
rather than enhance female sexual attributes. Martin describes her as suppressing sexuality
and sensuality: “Every seduction of flesh is forsaken, every indication of eros is
sublimated.” 42 Kawakubo has explained her point of view as follows: “We must break
away from conventional forms of dress for the new woman of today. We need a strong
new image, not to revisit the past” (RK, 81).

Other designers ridicule stereotypical notions of female sexuality by emphasizing them

to an extreme degree. According to Drier, “Parodying the stereotype, taking it to
extremes . . . they begin to open the way—to humor, to play, potentially to the [End Page
132] freedom to reconstruct, and thus redefine the terms of what it means to be a
woman.” 43

Another characteristic of the avant-garde is the attempt to redefine the social role of the
artist and the context in which art is displayed and distributed. The avant-garde artist
assumed the role of rebel or, at the very least, the role of someone who was sufficiently
marginal to be able to attack social conventions. Some fashion designers express a sense
of personal alienation of a sort that has been traditionally associated with the avant-garde
artist, such as Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto:
Our work, like all creative activity, ought to rip apart the opaque curtain of social
conventions. We are agitators, and, at the same time, we have to try to belong to the
establishment. This is one of the paradoxical aspects of our activity. The Americans say
to me: “Mr. Yamamoto, you are not successful.” I reply: “Thank you.” The notion of
success in the American sense has nothing to do with my work. 44

Finally, some fashion designers have altered the context in which their work is
displayed by showing their collections in locations that lack the connotations of elegance
and wealth that are generally associated with designer clothing, such as subway stations,
supermarkets in poor neighborhoods, and abandoned housing. 45 The stores where these
clothes are sold are also used to convey statements about the artistic intentions of the
designers. Working closely with architects, Kawakubo invented decors for her shops that
were totally different from those of traditional shops selling women’s clothing or other
types of merchandise for personal consumption. Sudjic reports that her stores “bore no
resemblance to the traditions of shop design as they existed at that time, no merchandise
was visible in the window and little was on show within the store itself” (RK, 114).

Frequently imitated in the subsequent decade, her stores have more in common with the
white, pristine spaces of many art galleries devoted to modern or contemporary art than
with traditional department stores or boutiques. One consequence of the austere and
somewhat forbidding environments in which her clothes were sold was a redefinition of
the traditional clientele for luxury clothes: socialites, actresses, and businesswomen. As
Sudjic points out, “Instead of broadcasting its wares to passers-by, the store acted as a
filter. Its character demanded a certain confidence from the customer—those who would
not feel comfortable with the clothes would be unlikely to brave the shop” (RK, 114).

As is the case with many of the avant-garde designers who violate aesthetic conventions
of haute couture, Kawakubo’s clientele in the West consists largely of intellectuals,
artists, professionals, and women who work in the fashion industry. “These,” according to
Sudjic, “are clothes that appeal to those who see themselves as outside of the conventional
idea of fashion” (RK, 81).

A third group of designers might be called “the postmodernists.” While the avant-
gardist attempts to be iconoclastic, in however minor a way, the postmodernist [End Page
133] prefers to play on ambiguity, creating effects that can be interpreted in different ways
or are difficult to interpret because they are not intended to express a clear message. A
Belgian designer, Ann Demeulemeester, attempts to create gender ambiguity by blurring
binary categories: “I try always to design a woman who is at the same time masculine and
feminine. . . . A person who would be too masculine or too feminine would be less
appealing to me: a style which favors only coquettish and very feminine women seems
void to me.” 46

Androgyny prevails, luxury is undercut with “street looks,” and pastiche dominates—
the continual reshuffling of fragments of preexisting texts. While in the past designers
drew on previous styles to create new work, today they simply recreate them in order to
juxtapose different periods and ambiences. The difference between these approaches to
the past can be seen in Dior’s adaptation of late nineteenth-century style. Rather than
producing a copy, he used elements from the older style to create what is probably the
most famous twentieth-century style, the New Look. By contrast, a postmodernist, John
Galliano, duplicates styles from different periods and juxtaposes them in the same
collection.

An analogue to the postmodernist project of repudiating the modernist cult of

originality by creating and selling identical copies of famous paintings (PC, 239) is found
in the work of Belgian designer Martin Margiela, who recently consecrated his collection
to the production of exact copies of collections of clothing that had been created decades
before. What he chose to copy, however, were collections that had no prestige whatsoever
in the tradition of haute couture: the complete wardrobe of a doll in the sixties, ceremonial
robes from the turn of the century, and black school uniforms. 47

The postmodernist designer also redefines the public’s relationship to fashionable

clothes. According to this approach, fashion is an individual matter; each woman is
expected to assemble her own style of dress, one that is appropriate for her, from a variety
of elements, rather than automatically purchasing and consuming a total look. The
fashionable woman is seen as an individual who does not espouse a single style but uses a
variety of styles in order to express different facets of her personality or to enable her to
participate in a variety of social settings. This attitude toward the clientele contrasts with
that traditionally expressed in haute couture that the client was expected to be dressed
exclusively by a single couturier, who dictated an entire wardrobe.

Some designers are identified with both avant-gardist and postmodernist strategies. A
British designer, Vivienne Westwood, who shows her collections in Paris, exemplifies a
postmodernist approach to fashion design in terms of her emphasis on parody and
ambiguity. One example from a 1990 collection was an outfit entitled “Half-dressed City
 Gent” which consisted of a man’s large shirt with a loose collar and a tie worn with pink
knickers on which was a graffiti of an enormous penis. An item from her 1989 collection
for men was a pair of tights, intended for women, with [End Page 134] a fig-leaf covering
the genitals. Worn with traditional male attire on the feet, the intention was to cultivate
doubt. 48 Is the person male or female?

Westwood’s method of making clothes has been compared with that of a nineteenth-
century avant-garde poet, Arthur Rimbaud. What they have in common, argues Ash, is a
technique of “surmontage” (“PC,” 175), the layering of idea upon idea, “a sort of
surmontage of dissimilarities (cultural and technical) from which comes a new form and
from which emerges a new idea, whether concerning sexuality, dress, cut, history,
painting, music, dance, catwalk performance, philosophy, age, youth, time” (“PC,” 165).

In the mid-1970s Westwood, in collaboration with a music entrepreneur, created one of

the most successful oppositional clothing styles, punk. Abuse of the body and clothing
expressed derisive and nihilistic attitudes toward establishment values. They used razor-
slashed t-shirts, sewn to simulate scars, t-shirts showing the Queen of England with a
safety pin through her nose and mouth, bondage chains, and hair styles in garish
colors. 49 In 1975, Westwood’s partner organized the first punk band, the Sex Pistols,
comprised of working-class men from the neighborhood near their clothing store, and
dressed them in this style.

The “punk sensibility” applied to fashion design continued to be perceived as avant-

garde, even in the early 1990s. Counter-cultural styles, like punk, are able to violate social
taboos to a much greater extent than is possible for designers who have to sell clothes to
the general public, and provide the principal examples of this type of avant-gardism. In
the case of punk, offshoots, such as body piercing, drag, and sadomasochistic dress, were
adopted primarily by the young and by sexual and racial minorities. Their eventual
adoption by mainstream designers, such as Calvin Klein, signaled the end of their
identification as avant-garde. 50 Countercultural styles are frequently copied by fashion
designers, an indication of a postmodernist sensibility, but the change of context has the
effect of negating oppositional elements.

4. Postmodernist and Avant-gardist Themes in Designer

Collections
An examination of descriptions of French designer collections over a ten-year period
reveals that certain themes have recurred year after year. 51 Rather than evolving or
progressing, the styles presented each year by French designers have fluctuated in their
relative emphasis on a set of themes that can be conceptualized in terms of binary
oppositions. Four dominant themes recur: futurity-tradition, masculinity- femininity,
luxury-pauperism, and bodily concealment or nudity. Typically the avant-garde designer
has emphasized the binary pole that appeared to be the antithesis of luxury fashion, while
the postmodernist has engaged in a strategy of blurring binary opposites.

Futurity-tradition was one of the most prevalent themes: a postmodernist blurring of

time periods, often with emphasis on nostalgia for the past, the passage from old to new,
past to present, ethnic to contemporary. What has led to the increasing use [End Page
135] of intertextuality as an aesthetic technique is the phenomenon of “semiotic layering”
that results from the constant proliferation and continual redefinition of images in all the
visual media (film, television, advertising, painting, and fashion). Turim defines it as “the
accrual and transformation of meanings associated with an artifact as it passes through
history, or as it is presented in different versions.” 52 Media culture has provided “visual
databanks” that are constantly being redisseminated and make the past immediately
available in a way that was never possible before, a phenomenon that permits
postmodernist designers to play on the multiple meanings that have become attached to
artifacts and styles from the distant and recent past.

In the same season, it was typical for designers to revive clothing styles identified with
several different decades of the twentieth century or historical periods from previous
centuries. Others used an exotic setting from the past, such as Renaissance Venice, as a
source of inspiration. While Wilson has argued that designers were drawing on past styles
long before the period that is generally defined as postmodernist, referencing the past
appears to have escalated and become increasingly anarchic. Incorporating details from
contemporary ethnic cultures is an equivalent strategy, since ethnic cultures are remnants
from earlier periods; it has provided an additional source of ambiguity based on cultural
fusion. Africa, India, China, and Islam were frequently evoked in these collections. One
designer was described in the following terms: “In a great melting-pot of motifs and
forms, Christian Lacroix pays homage to all the folklores of the world. His luxurious
hippies jump without transition from a large peasant dress to a knotted outfit with multi-
colored Peruvian stripes and pearled fringes.” 53

By contrast, futurity, an attempt to create designs with no references whatsoever to the

past, rarely appeared. Only a Japanese designer based in Paris, Issey Miyake, produced
season after season extraordinary shapes using materials never before used for clothing.
According to one description, “His clothes, danced rather than worn, seemed to weigh
nothing on the body and adhere to the slightest movement. It is the effect of a transparent
gauze made from a fiber which captures light and clings gently to the skin.” 54

The theme of sexual ambiguity (masculinity-femininity) also appeared year after year in
many of these collections. Sexual ambiguity was evoked by juxtaposing items identified
with masculine and feminine clothing. In 1991, the Paris collections for summer, 1992,
included the following: men’s jackets in dark colors worn over a brassiere or a bustier of
thin strips of plastic; over-sized men’s jackets over tops made out of material that
resembled a course fisherman’s net; neckties worn with skirts with seams open to the hip;
severe men’s jackets worn over bodysuits in leather. 55 Fashion reporters spoke of
designers “playing in depth with masculine-feminine ambiguity” or “playing with the idea
of the masculine.” 56 While in some collections, masculine and feminine themes were
mixed in the same costume, in others, they were mixed in the collection as a whole: men’s
jackets, vests, and trousers alternating with nudity, transparency, and cut-outs. While
women have incorporated elements [End Page 136] of masculine clothing into their
outfits for centuries, the extent of gender blurring in these collections is peculiar to the
contemporary period.

The theme of luxury-pauperism entailed elements of avant-garde subversion and

opposition, including the juxtaposition of minimalism to the perfection of couture
clothing, asymmetry to symmetry, and street fashion to luxury. The simulation of poverty
in clothing can be interpreted as commentary on the excessive luxury of fashion
(exemplified in these collections by the use of expensive materials and embroidery, and
the reappearance of trains with evening dresses). Younger designers were particularly
likely to create clothes that suggested poverty in response to luxury. Pauperist motifs
 included partially unraveled sweaters or sleeves, seams on the outside of clothing, torn
materials, and clothing that was either too large or too small. “Everything is a question of
the means, of details, of the method of treating materials. One tears them, one crushes
them, one burns them. One covers them with ‘dirty’ marks, bleaches them or, alternatively
adds rich embroidery.” 57

One designer’s collection was described as “wandering between Sarajevo and the
Salvation Army” while another designer’s clothes in the same season exhibited
“exceptional opulence.” In one collection, pauperism was contained in a single detail, an
unfinished row of stitches and a piece of thread dangling on the front of a dress. A
subtheme of pauperism was a concern for ecology, indicated by an emphasis on simple
materials such as raphia and hemp and the use of shells and pebbles for jewelry.

A fourth theme, concealment-nudity, became increasingly popular during the decade.

Breasts and midriffs were bare or covered with transparent materials or with crochet or net
that revealed as much as they concealed. In one collection, a bridal costume consisted of
nothing more than a bouquet of flowers and a piece of string. Lingerie such as brassieres
and corsets frequently replaced outerwear.

The significance of this theme is ambiguous. In the past, female nudity has generally
evoked powerlessness and subordination. However, emphasis on female nudity in
collections by both male and female designers may reflect changing attitudes toward
female sexuality; it can suggest the idea that women are capable of dominating, rather
than being dominated in, sexual relationships. Pop singer Madonna defends her use of
explicitly pornographic imagery in her videos by claiming that she remains in control of
her image and that she is not a passive sex object. 58 In this sense, emphasis on nudity can
be interpreted as an avant-gardist violation of a bourgeois taboo.

The overall effect of these collections was one of enormous variety and apparent
change because different elements in the repertoire were evoked each season. In fact,
however, the underlying themes remained very similar. Each piece of clothing could be
deciphered in terms of a complex set of allusions to the past and to various sexual
identities. Some items of clothing could be interpreted as “assaults” on the entire
enterprise of luxury fashion or as commentaries on bourgeois conceptions of concealment
of the body. At the same time, these collections included other types of [End Page
137] avant-gardism (such as jackets that were designed not to be closed) and numerous
examples of surrealism (a hat consisting of a box of Kleenex worn with a costume
constructed of a material that looked and felt like paper; a “trompe l’oeil” of blue jeans
painted on canvas trousers).

5. Conclusion
In the field of poplar culture, postmodernist approaches appear to coexist uneasily with
avant-gardism. Holding the attention of audiences that are increasingly sophisticated at
interpreting complex visual and verbal imagery requires the use of more varied techniques
than were necessary before the emergence of the electronic media.In fashion design, the
avant-gardist attempts to subvert aesthetic conventions by taking an oppositional stance,
while the postmodernist oscillates between conventional and unconventional codes,
creating effects of polysemy, ambiguity, and parody. For the avant-gardist, the major
technique for communicating meaning is symbolic subversion; for the postmodernist,
intertextuality. These two tendencies have displaced the classical approach to fashion
 design that reworked elements from the past to produce styles that, while related to the
past, were neither copies nor pastiches.

The oppositional qualities of avant-gardism are muted when juxtaposed with

postmodernism. For the prototypical avant-garde artist of the past, avant-gardism
constituted his or her entire identity: it influenced not only art works, but social
relationships and political views. But for many practitioners of avant-gardism in popular
culture, it is merely a technique, not an identity, a device that is adopted for a specific
purpose and quickly abandoned. Emphasis on avant-gardism and postmodernism, in both
elite and popular culture, has led to enormous variety, but not to evolutionary change or
coherent messages. In the deflationary atmosphere of postmodernism, the mystique of the
avant-garde has been submerged—perhaps forever.
Diana Crane
Diana Crane is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written The
Transformation of the Avant- Garde and Clothing Behavior, Fashion, and Symbolic
Boundaries (forthcoming).

Footnotes
1. Françoise Serre and Philippe Abraizar, “Art et publicité: vers l’accessoirisation de la vie? (entretien avec Gilles
Lipovetsky),” in Art et pub: Art et publicité, 1890–1990, exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, 31 October 1990 to 25
February 1991 (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou), 498–517.

2. Luc Ferry, “L’avant-garde se meurt,” L’Express (22 July 1988): 58–59.

3. Elizabeth Wilson, “These New Components of the Spectacle: Fashion and Postmodernism,” in Postmodernism and
Society, eds. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (London: Macmillan, 1990), 209–37; hereafter abbreviated “NCS.”

4. Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.,
1989); hereafter abbreviated PC. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi, “The Theory and Politics of Postmodernism: By Way of an
Introduction,” in Postmodernism and Society, eds. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (London: Macmillan, 1990), 9; hereafter
abbreviated “TPP.”

5. Thomas Crow, “Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual Arts,” in Modernism and Modernity, ed. Benjamin Buchloh,
Serge Guilbaut, and David Solin (Halifax: Nova Soctia College of Art and Design, 1983), 215–64.

6. Douglas Kellner, “The Postmodern Turn: Positions, Problems and Prospects,” in Frontiers of Social Theory, ed. George
Ritzer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 275; Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977).

7. John C. Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis and Authority in American Television (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1995), viii.

8. E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking Round the Clock (New York: Methuen, 1987), 55; hereafter abbreviated RRC.

9. Robert Goldman, Reading Ads Socially (New York: Routledge, 1992).

10. Robert Goldman, Deborah Heath, and Sharon L. Smith, “Commodity Feminism,” Critical Studies in Mass
Communication, 8 (1991), 341.

11. Caldwell, Televisuality, 360.

12. Goldman, Heath, and Smith, “Commodity Feminism,” 341–42.

13. Motti Regev, “Producing Artistic Value: The Case of Rock Music,” The Sociological Quarterly, 35 (1994): 85–102.

14. Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal
Foster (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983), 111–25; Jean Baudrillard, “The Ecstasy of Communication,” in ibid., 125–36.

15. Caroline R. Milbank, Couture: The Great Designers (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Change, 1985), 310; hereafter
abbreviated CGD.
16. Susan Kaiser, Richard H. Nagasawa, and Sandra S. Hutton, “Fashion, Postmodernity and Personal Appearance: a Symbolic
Interactionist Formulation,” Symbolic Interaction (2): 165–185.

17. See Dorothy U. Behling and Lois E. Dickey, “Haute Couture: A 25-Year Perspective of Fashion Influences, 1900–
1925,” Home Economics Research Journal 8 (July 1980): 428–436; they note that some designs were so far ahead of fashion
that women did not wear comparable costumes until the 1920s. Other cities that constitute major fashion centers include
London, Milan, New York, and Tokyo. See Diana Crane, “Fashion Design as an Occupation: a Cross-National
Approach,” Current Research on Occupations and Professions 8 (1993): 55–73.

18. “Haute couture: le coût de la griffe,” La Gazette de l’Hôtel de Drouot, no. 15 (10 April 1992): 10.

19. Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

20. Diana Crane, The Transformation of the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940–1985 (University of Chicago Press,
1987), 14–15.

21. George Simmel, “Fashion,” American Journal of Sociology 62 (May 1957 [originally 1904]): 541–58.

22. Agnes B. Young, Recurring Cycles of Fashion, 1760–1937, (New York: Harper, 1937).

23. Fernando Martinez Herreros, “Balenciaga le maître,” Hommage à Balenciaga, ed. Pierre Arizzoli Clementel (Paris:
Editions Herscher, 1985), 41–42.

24. Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, Le Chic et le look: Histoire de la mode feminine et des moeurs de 1850 à nos jours (Paris:
Hachette, 1981).

25. Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel: Her Life, Her World, and the Woman behind the Legend She Herself Created, trans.
Nancy Amphoux (New York: Knopf, 1975).

26. Guillaume Garnier, Paris—couture—années trente (Paris: Edition Musées de Paris et Société de l’Histoire du Costume,

1987).

27. Richard Martin, Fashion and Surrealism (New York: Rizzoli, 1987); hereafter abbreviated FAS.

28. Becker, Art Worlds, 242.

29. Herreros, “Balenciaga,” 41.

30. Suzy Menkes, “Galliano’s Theatrics at Givenchy,” International Herald Tribune (22 January 1996): 1, 8.

31. Ted Polhemus, Street Style: From Sidewalk to Catwalk (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994); hereafter abbreviated SS.

32. Laurence Benaïm, “La mode d’hiver a defilé dans une ambiance de fin de siècle,” Le Monde (16–17 July 1995): 16.

33. Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, “Radioscope de la coupe Balenciaga,” in Hommage à Balenciaga, 21–24.

34. Marion Sichel, Costume Reference, vol. 10 1950 to the Present Day (London: B.T. Batsford, 1979), 30.

35. Philippe Tretiack, “Paco le visionnaire,” Elle, no. 2233 (24 October 1988): 105.

36. Laurence Benaïm, “Les trente ans de carrière de Paco Rabanne, ou l’obsession du futur,” Le Monde (5 August 1995): 17.

37. Colin McDowell, McDowell’s Directory of Twentieth Century Fashion, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Frederick Muller, 1987),
226.

38. Deyan Sudjic, Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons (New York: Rizzoli, 1990); hereafter abbreviated RK.

39. Anon., “Jean Colonna,” Journal du Textile, no. 1349 (8 November 1993) 82.

40. Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, La Mode pour la vie (Paris: Editions Autrement, 1983), 154.

41. Delbourg-Delphis, La Mode, 162.

42. Richard Martin, “Aesthetic Dress: The Art of Rei Kawakubo,” Arts (March 1987): 64–65.
43. Deborah Drier, “The Defiant Ones,” Art in America 75 (September 1987): 47–49.

44. “Yohji Yamamoto: dans l’univers des créateurs, une spectaculaire discretion,” Elle, no. 2588 (7–13 August 1995): 54.

45. Laurence Benaïm, “La dictature de l’effiloche,” Le Monde, (17–18 October 1993): 13.