vienna

a signal-red pullover. Its arms are knotted at the back. Written thrice on the
abdomen is the word: “Sale”.
The legs of the mannequin are cut off so that it does not need much
space. In the 1960s, the Austrian artist Christian Ludwig Attersee proposed that
fashion models should have their legs amputated to establish new criteria
for beauty. The intention was to attack commercialised codes of fashion, natural
beauty and the rapid changes in fashion. 364 At the same time, Ernest Dichter, a
pioneer of motivational research, developed less radical ideas. Like Barthes he,
too, referred to the excitement of the female customers in spring:
“Why do women or, let us be frank, why do all of us get so excited about new
shapes and new fashions in clothing? And why does this happen especially
in spring? When asking this question we have to extend it to cover the
behaviour of all human beings, since many animals, too, show a comparably
curious behaviour. True, they don’t have hat stores. But they can grow new
feathers instead of having them pasted on. And it would be a robin indeed who
would not renew his plumage at least once a year.” 365
It would be interesting to see how Dichter would have described the sales
period. What motivates the consumer society to enact the seasonal sale as a
Dionysian feast? According to Dichter, the human wish is the basis of our
behaviour. 366 Rituals do not merely persuade us, they force us into behaving in a
particular manner. And force is not the subject of consumer research. 367 We walk
by a window that is totally covered in red (“Final Sale”), and stop a bit later:
The window of this men’s fashion boutique is completely covered with one red,
one yellow, and yet another red fabric. The effect is that of a flag that is slit
crosswise in the middle so that the tension in the fabric rips a hole through it. In
the hole is a cross made of tape with “ABVERKAUF” written on it. We can see
the window display through the small incision: The mannequins are dressed in
winter clothes and have big price tags attached to each fashion item.
Marketing has borrowed numerous symbolic gestures from the past and
Warburg was the first to point out this phenomenon. 368 It is a trivialisation of
old myths and of human fears and wishes. Does the seasonal sale reproduce an
old myth like the soap advertisement, which Warburg placed within the context
of other mythological illustrations?
364 Koller (1987:104).
365 Dichter (1964:76).
366 Ibid., p. 53.
367 Dichter (1985).
368 Warnke (1980:126).
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