vienna

Preface
This work is about the ugly. To be more precise, it is about the ugly
show window that appears twice a year – during the seasonal
sales of fashion when, strikingly enough, the visual economy of
beauty is disrupted by the impact of the unsightly. We will call
this Dionysian period the “death of fashion”. Once the fashion
collection of the past season is no longer in fashion, the period
of the seasonal sales becomes the transitional phase between
the old and the new collection. It seems to us as if documenting
the ugly is a taboo today as merchandising literature is replete
with images of the beautiful show windows. But what about
the ugly window? The one scene never found on ancient Greek
vases is the solemn moment in which the victim is sacrificed
ceremonially. Is the “death of fashion” only a rational act of selling
out leftovers, or is it something more meaningful? The fashion
industry has perfected the ways of introducing new commodities,
presenting a new generation of aesthetically different products
twice a year. Catwalk shows in major fashion capitals stage
these new collections in a ritualised way and the fashion industry
organises and attends to the Apollonian festival during which the
new collection is born. In contrast, the seasonal sale window is
naked and instead of being clad in an expensive evening dress, the
naked mannequin is merely clothed in packing paper. Rather than
using a distinctive graphic design, window dressers write by hand.
How does fashion die in the show window? Is it a silent death,
is it a murder, or is it a sacrifice? Whatever the case may be it
is a high publicity event. The question lies somewhere between
the production of fashion and its consumption. The “death of
fashion”, however, refers to the displayed garment and not to the
garment worn, the seasonal sale being its last chapter and the
end of a seasonal collection. We wanted to find out how this end
is dramatised in the retail theatre. Do window dressers use any
intuitive images? To what extent is the consumer involved in a
ritualised “death of fashion”?
The
Death
of
Fashion 9