vienna

from the sacrifice) is the fashion system and the victim is the
past seasonal collection. In a metaphorical setting, we have killed
the victim by cutting the price (the aorta) after which the consumers
(the ritual audience) are invited to the common meal where
the victim is dismembered by the bare hands of the bargain
hunters (feeding the community). The customers confirm death
consciously by way of enactment. This dramatisation of violence
has been discussed as being contrary to the theory of shopping
as a sacrifice by Daniel Miller. 642 Both approaches are based on
the concept of thrift. A difference emerges from this premise.
While Miller analyses everyday shopping as a sacrificial act, we
face an elaborated festival of thrift by the fashion industry in
the seasonal sale. The sacrifice of the seasonal collection during
the sales can be compared with the ancient rites of the sacrifice
of the god because the victim (fashion collection) represents
the god (fashion). The last step of the sacrifice is the resurrection
of the god and is dramatised through the magical treatment of
signs. The “naked mannequin” is only re-dressed after the sales
period. This magical action also has its ancestors in antiquity.
New life was symbolically transferred to the new resurrected god
by dressing the statue with a shirt.
The results of this research can also be applied to a more
general discussion about the commodity fetish. We would like to
transcend the “death of fashion” to the “death of the commodity
fetish”. The notion of producing ever-newer generations of
commodities, which are only based on the change of aesthetic
properties, can be enhanced by a new point of view. It is not
just the introduction of the novelty that keeps the system running
but also the sacrifice of the aesthetically obsolete commodity.
The death of the commodity fetish has to be added to the critique
of commodity fetish. We see this clearly in the example of the
shoe shop in Paris. Since there is a pedestal in the window, the
shoes are on a throne during the season. When the seasonal
sale arrives, the shoes are thrown onto the floor. The throne
is now empty. This symbolic inversion has been successfully
deployed since ancient times to moderate tensions caused by
an asymmetrical power relation. It is the dramatisation of the
death of the king, or, in terms of the commodity culture, the
death of the commodity fetish on a regularly basis. Consumer
642 Miller (1998a).
The Death of Fashion
266