vienna

in initiation or puberty rites, may be represented as possessing
nothing. They may be disguised as monsters, wear only a strip
of clothing, or even go naked, to demonstrate that as liminal
beings they have no status, property, insignia, secular clothing
indicating rank or role, position in a kingship system – in short,
nothing that may distinguish them from their fellow neophytes
or initiands.” 152
Although this is extracted from ethnological descriptions
of foreign cultures, there are striking similarities to what we
found in our seasonal sale windows. There are naked mannequins,
which at times are dressed in cheap paper, and there
are windows where a poster is hung to block the view. But van
Gennep, too, tells us that rites of separation use veils whereby
the view is blocked, which symbolises the segregation during the
ritual. 153 Darkness, nakedness, opacity, a minimum of clothing,
poverty, all these seem to describe the aesthetic dramatisation
of the seasonal sale window perfectly. During the year, the mannequins
that represent the role of the well-dressed fashion leader
are often staged as naked, and without cultural identity. But at
least the presence of the body remains. 154 Victor Turner describes
this temporary social condition as follows:
“The second, which emerges recognizably in the liminal period,
is of society as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured
relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even
communion of equal individuals who submit together to the
general authority of the ritual elders. I prefer the Latin term
“communitas” to “community”, to distinguish this modality of
social relationship from an “area of common living”. 155
“Communitas” is a phenomenon, which can be observed
in our consumer culture as well. There are several secular and
religious rituals, which dramatise passage rituals with a symbolic
anti-structure phase. Here, the people involved are made equal
for the duration of the ritual. 156 The visual language of the
store seems to use such intuitive anti-structural images as well.
But when they are not attached to our cultural experiences, as we
152 Turner (1997:95).
153 Gennep (1960:168).
154 Fischer-Lichte (2004:255).
155 Turner (1997:96).
156 Bell (1997:95).
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