Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

66
a materialistic point of view, but artistic forms will never arise from such a
conception. Artistic forms always arise through a relation to the spiritual. For
the mysteries of life and the world merge of themselves into the element of Art. 5
Fashion
Steiner explained to us how our clothing originates in the world of the spirit. But
over the centuries the bond between the human being and his mode of dress that existed in
ancient times loosened more and more until finally it dissolved altogether. If we now wish to
seek for the powers which prevail in the sphere of human clothing today, we could well find
them in all that goes by the name of “fashion.”
It would be of little use to attempt to give a date for the origin of what we call
“fashion.” At the time of the Fall, human beings began to clothe and ornament themselves.
Through the course of millennia, this was influenced by the Mysteries, 6 under whose
guidance the dress of the human being, the costumes of the various peoples, were fashioned
in accordance with spiritual insight.
But with the Fall new soul qualities, such as vanity, love and hate began to appear in
the human being and he now wished his own “personal” inclinations and instincts to play a
part in determining his mode of dress. Thus ornament and dress gradually found their way
from the sacred to the profane.
So it is at the point where mankind abandoned the old ties, where he left the
Mysteries and these finally fall into oblivion, where personal desires and egotism come
ever more to the fore, that traditional dress was replaced by fashion. It is connected with
the change of consciousness in the human being, with the loosening, required by his
development, of the bonds with the spiritual world. The latter ceased to be a determining
factor because the human being could no longer perceive the aura.
Whereas the fact that they had their source in spiritual perception lent a quality of
permanence to the styles of dress worn by the ancient peoples, “fashion,” like the moods
of the human being, is subject to constant variation. It can be seen how its path would at
times cross those of traditional costume, or how they would both play one into the other.
“Costume” accompanies a people or an age through the course of its development, changing
its forms in accordance with this; it then disappears at the close of a certain period of time.
“Fashion,” on the other hand, is caught up in perpetual change, and hurries, quite regardless
of rules and time-honored customs, into ever new forms and metamorphoses. 7 Sometimes it
can seem to be no more than a playful child of fantasy, but at other times it seems to rise up
from dark demonic sources and causes the human being to forget his spiritual origin.
Though in ancient times it affected human life and customs only to a slight
extent, fashion has been growing right up to the present day and has gained in strength
in proportion as the human being has lost his connection with the spiritual world. It has
advanced down the centuries at an ever-quickening pace, continually changing. As early as