vienna

Both of them are dressed in a white T-shirt and long white trousers. A red fabric is
wrapped around their pelvis. “SALE %” is written on the white T-shirts. Here, too,
there is a red backdrop and bears the following inscription: “BIS MINUS 50%”.
The shop is already in the phase that van Gennep called the incorporation
phase. This is the last phase of the transition process of passage rites. While the
new life of the fashion collection is shown on the right side of the window, the
transition phase is shown on its left. Nothing from the last seasonal collection is
used in the windows. The ritual dressing of the mannequins on the left side refers
merely to the pieces on sale inside the shop. They indicate that the shop still has
leftovers from the past collection even though the new collection has already
arrived. The decoration makes two kinds of spaces clearly emerge: a sacred and
a secular place. The new collection represents the normal state during the year;
they are pieces that people will wear in the coming season. The very decoration
for the seasonal sale is now for sale. Nobody will ever think of wearing it, for
its sole purpose is to indicate the seasonal sale. The mannequins wearing the
season’s fashion for us are also wearing the dresses of the rite of passage for
us. The symbolic act of transforming the fashion from the past collection into the
new collection is carried out in the show window only. Here the sacred is not the
prestigious, but the poor. The sacred cannot be bought; the sacred is abstract and
monochrome here. This is not the way marketing literature introduces the new
places of pilgrimage:
“Brandscaping transforms the brand itself into a location – an attraction. Behind
all the brand-building efforts there lies the conviction, that the glamour and
power of the brand are the key weapons in the battle for the target groups and
customers. By staging the brand experience in flagship stores, shop designs
or entire theme parks, companies communicate the image of the brand and
imprint a characteristic atmosphere on the consumer consciousness.” 312
Brands try to build sacred places. They build them very consciously with
a lot of money so that the customer is impressed. But they also do it unconsciously,
without money, during the seasonal sale because they do not bring out their own
brand during this period. This is because the windows are kept anonymous, and
their decoration poor. The following text on retail marketing also maintains that
building churches is not necessarily what makes places sacred:
“I enter a flagship store anywhere and sense – due to the artefacts of sacred architecture
– a feeling of grandeur, of magnitude and meditation which reflects on
the range, the image of the company and, last but not least, on my state of mind.” 313
312 Riewoldt (2002:8).
313 Mikunda (2004:125).
The
Death
of
Fashion 129