Spinning the Ephemeral PDF - SMU Fashion Media

300 Fiona Anderson
fashion on quotation from the past means that it interrupts the historical
continuum as Lehmann states:
Through the quotation, fashion fuses the thesis (the eternal or
classical ideal) with its antithesis (the openly contemporary). The
apparent opposition between the eternal and the ephemera! is
rendered obsolete by the leap that needs the past to continue with
the contemporary. Correspondingly, the transhistorical describes
the position of fashion as detached from both the eternal, that is,
the aesthetic, ideal and the continuous progression of history.
Through the Tigersprung fashion is able to jump from the contemporary
to the ancient and back without resting solely in one
temporal or aesthetic configuration (Lehmann 2000: xviii).
This breaking of the historical continuutn through quotation of the past
is very similar to actual developments and imagined perceptions of the
Scottish landscape in the late nineteenth century in that the creation of
the contexts for inherently modern, fashionable lifestyles, necessitated
interrupting the "logical" continuum of human progress by turning
millions of acres of pastoral land both backwards and forwards in time
to form a "wilderness" playground. Although images of mountains,
forests, and moors seem scarcely credible as having similarities witb the
spaces of modern, urban leisure consumption such as the department store
or the art museum. The changes made to the Scottisb landscape and
tbe shifting popular perceptions of that landscape involved a similar
commodification of people's time, experiences of the world, and their
understanding of their identities witbin it. Even if one takes account of
the inherently fluid and unstable relationsbips between landscape and
masculine identities in the era of modernity. Tbe development of tweed
as a fasbion textile tbat was widely worn by ail classes of men in botb
rural and urban contexts in the late nineteenth century is inconceivable
witbout these fundamental shifts towards new modern conceptions of
landscape, identity, and fashionable consumption.
In tbe consideration of tbe relationships between tweed cloth, rural and
urban landscapes, and fasbion in tbe era of modernity it is useful to
consider wbether the rural also influenced the style of men's dress at that
time. Around tbe mid-nineteentb century sbooting jackets or coats, a sbort
style made predominantly in tweed, but also in otber clotbs such as velvet
developed. At that time tbese garments were worn primarily as utilitarian
sporting dress to be worn in the country whilst partaking in sports such
as shooting and fishing. The shooting jacket along witb the addition of
matching trousers evolved into tbe lounge suit, a style tbat was to dominate
the male wardrobe from tbe 1890s, up until the late twentieth century
(Anderson 2000: 416). The basic elements of modern men's dress were
tberefore formulated tbrougb a combination of rural and urban influences
and contexts, despite the importance of dress codes linked to class and