vienna

to the winter collection are significantly different to what goes
on during the winter sales. There is practically nothing about this
phenomenon of the sales in literature on show windows, which
is why we decided to do our research on the street.
For Roland Barthes, the launching of the spring collection
is that exceptional moment in the year which creates a mythical
experience for the consumers because of its link to the awakening
of nature. In former times, the renewal of nature was linked
to rituals that dramatised the death of the corn god and his
resurrection by using myths such as those of Dionysus. Belief in
magic suggested that when the corn god is resurrected, nature
would wake up as well. Similarly, the renewal of fashion is also
immortal for its followers:
“The spring collections are here! There is much excitement in
Paris. Journalists and buyers are pouring in from all corners of
the world to stimulate their fantasies in the fashion laboratories
with the thousands of new ideas floating around like opalescent
soap bubbles. They are here to be inspired by the extravagant
new trends that Paris invents twice a year for those who believe
in its immortal gift of renewing itself.” 171
This was written in 1958, at the time when Barthes did
his research on the language of fashion in fashion magazines.
But fashion’s renewal is a phenomenon that is not based on
language. Fashion is immortal because its followers perform a
ritual twice a year in order to perpetuate the fashion system. The
importance of nature’s rebirth in spring in agrarian societies has
been replaced by the renewal of fashion in consumer societies.
Rituals serve the purpose of eternalising social structures and
beliefs, which they do by means of symbolic communication.
We believe that analysis of the seasonal sale windows can help
in proving symbolic communication based on Dionysian aesthetics,
which, according to Victor Turner, is the basis for rituals
of passage. Furthermore, it will furnish evidence for Barthes’
assumption that the arrival of the new spring collection still has
roots in the past, for the construction of rituals in our consumer
society is still founded in archaic intuitive images.
171 Charles-Roux (1958:I)*.
The Sales Window
60