vienna

suspended the activities of everyday life. His festival created a
space outside the day-to-day reality of the polis. The actors
put aside their own identities, donning masks, high boots (kothornoi),
and colourful costumes. Even the walk to the theatre of
Dionysus, situated as it was on the slope between the homes of
the Athenians and the citadel of their gods, removed them, for
three days, from their familiar surroundings. This carnivalesque
setting, this ‘carnival time’ gave them an opportunity to reflect
critically on, and to call into question, all that was familiar
to them: the polis, the people, the gods. At the same time, it
fostered in them a sense of solidarity, which rendered such
reflection and questioning tolerable. From this perspective,
the festival of Dionysus seems the ideal occasion for the performance
of tragedies.” 17
The creation of space where everyday behaviour can be
reconsidered is an interesting point in the description of this
ancient festival. Do we call into question the fact that we may
have paid the double for a piece of garment had we bought it
a day before the sales began? This, and the fact that with the
upcoming collection the piece we buy during the sales will
become a kind of taboo. The fashion of the past will not be further
discussed after the arrival of the new one, after all, fashion
does not speak about the not fashionable. 18 Rituals articulate
conflicts and transform them into a symbolic practice. Barthes
makes the verbal structures of the “written-garment” the object
of his study. According to him, the study of fashion magazines
is the study of the representation of fashion, for Barthes distinguished
between the “real garment” and the “represented
garment”. 19 To follow this idea of the represented and the real we
would also have to study the “real presentation” of fashion in the
show window on the street. Barthes, on his part, discussed only
the representational aspect of fashion in the fashion magazine.
But purchase holds an equal position beside the fashion magazine,
where the garments are displayed as “represented garments”. 20
The attempt to present the garments in a fetishistic way is
easily identifiable in the beautiful window. But what about the
ugly window? What lies behind this visual attack?
17 Graf (1993:143-44).
18 Barthes (1990:79).
19 Carter (2003:146).
20 In this study, we will not take into account other possible areas (e.g. film) where fashion is in the state of the “represented
garment”.
The
Death
of
Fashion 17