vienna

Not just those in the commercial field discovered the virtues
of the beautiful show window, even architects and designers
showed interest in applying the latest trends in art to this new
discipline. Painting, sculpture and architecture have always
been the sources for “applied” arts – and this was the new term
in discussions around a field of creativity that lay somewhere
between everyday life and fine arts. 137 This marks the birth of the
need for an adequate discourse in the field of design. Nikolaus
Pevsner was one of the art critics who examined applied arts in
the context of art movements. 138 This may have certainly been
true of the pieces that were being analysed, but the rest of the
mass-produced objects remained in the dark recesses of the
banality of everyday life. The artistic aspect of the design
business was an important way of attracting more customers.
Aesthetic research was undertaken in order to find out how
windows could be dressed properly. Since then books and
magazines on window-dressing have disseminated new ideas
and trends for a contemporary design. It is important to be aware
of this aesthetic history because artistic discourse is still vehemently
critical when speaking about show windows. Discussing
show windows in relation to the influence from current art
movements is perhaps a possibility, but we think this would be
the wrong path in our present case. We are not concerned with
Apollonic aesthetics, which has been amply discussed in a huge
body of literature, for the starting point of our analysis is the
aesthetics of the ugly, which we found during the seasonal sales.
We have related it to the aesthetics of Dionysus in contradiction
to the aesthetics of beauty represented by Apollo. However,
we will search for a more substantial definition of Dionysian
aesthetics, which is not guided by what we like and dislike at a
particular time. As rituals are symbolic practices, we can assume
that it is possible to provide evidence for this symbolic communication.
When Roland Barthes analysed the fashion system, he
was convinced that it was irrelevant what year he chose for it. 139
He did not want to describe the fashion of any particular year,
but Fashion itself. 140 We, however, do not wish to merely describe
the fashion window during the sales period, but the conditions
determining how fashion changes symbolically inside it. Our
137 Kiesler (1929:14).
138 Pevsner (2002).
139 Barthes (1990:11).
140 Carter (2003:145) said in his critique that the fashion system is a complex system of social relations, which cannot be
described by isolating just one dimension that is subsequently declared as the source and the essence of fashion.
The
Death
of
Fashion 49