vienna

culture that can strategically nuance, privilege, or transform, (2)
deploy them in the formulation of a privileged ritual experience,
which in turn (3) impresses them in a new form upon agents
able to deploy them in a variety of circumstances beyond the
circumference of the rite itself.” 126
The blueprint for constructing ritual power cited above was
created by Catherine Bell. We will try to apply this scheme to
our consumer culture and to the seasonal sale’s rite of passage.
We could assume that the agents are the stores with the power
to communicate the rite on their own. Although we have spoken
about the enormous power of the stores and its buyers, we will
also assume that the power comes from the fashion system.
The stores thus have ritual power and we can be sure that they
also use it, but to what purpose? Primitive agrarian societies
anxiously awaited the return of vegetation in spring. Consumer
societies, in contrast, worry about the periodical advent of the
new trend. Like our ancestors we, too, create rites in order to
exert control over nature. Rituals create power; they do not give
form to power. Knowing this, we are aware of the power of
the symbolic communication of rituals. Retailers are the agents
of ritual mastery and the window dresser is their priest. But this
seems to be a long-known fact. The window dresser has been
described as the master of persuasion, especially during springtime
when flora reawakens:
“The season for the shopping mood is spring. When Nature renews
itself, the seeds of desire begin to germinate in human
beings as well. The decorator’s task is to give voice to such
desires, to promote the growth of these seeds. He can do it, and
he has the power to do it. He can do it through word, through
colour, through image and finally, through the goods.” 127
The window dresser has the power and words, the colours
and the images and his instruments are the material goods.
Ancient shamans had no other materials and yet fulfilled their
social responsibilities. And rituals are practices, which use materialisations.
Although the symbolic effort is immense, rituals take
the help of props. 128 Vilém Flusser described the different forms
126 Bell (1992:116).
127 Spectator (1929:3)*.
128 Macho (2004:16).
The
Death
of
Fashion 45