Model wearing an Emilio Parka and Ezio Trousers by Loro Piana
loropiana.com [1]
It takes a lot of courage to sail gaily, in super-soft shearling,
right in the teeth of dreary convention. [2]
Nobody denies that we wear clothes for three very obvious reasons: firstly, to cover up our nakedness; secondly, to protect us from the elements and, thirdly, for purposes of ornamentation.
But these aren't the only reasons and only those with very practical minds who always wear sensible shoes and keep their spending in line with their income, would fail to appreciate that dressing up is "an act of meaning beyond modesty, ornamentation, and protection" [3].
In other words, wearing clothes is a signifying activity and that's where its importance and real interest lies - particularly when the clothes in question are haute couture, rather than merely mass produced and ready-to-wear [4].
For within the world of high-end fashion, the frenzied play of signifiers is taken to the extreme; i.e., to the point of enchantment at which systems of reference begin to break down. In this manner, writes Baudrillard, the very logic of the commodity is abolished and there is "no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion, hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit" [5].
This rupture of referential reason goes beyond the collapse of all values into the market and the sphere of commodities. When fashion becomes an art, then it transports us into another world entirely; one in which nihilism is consummated and we become (as Nietzsche would say) like the ancient Greeks; i.e., superficial out of profundity and full of the courage to remain at the surface, the fold, the skin; to adore appearance and believe in forms [6].
Those who fail to appreciate this - who don't enjoy the absurdity of fashion; the frivolity and immorality "which at
times gives fashion its subversive force (in totalitarian, puritan or
archaic contexts)" [7] - will never understand why a young flâneur strolling through Soho in an outrageously expensive outfit made of shearling possesses the beauty an exterminating angel ...
Notes
[1] Loro Piana is an Italian luxury fashion brand, founded in 1924 by Pietro Loro Piana, and based in Milan. Initially known for its cashmere, vicuña, linen, and merino fabrics, the company has expanded to design knitwear, leather goods, footwear, fragrance and related accessories. Since 2013, the company has been majority-owned by Moët Hennessy Louis
Vuitton (LVMH), the French multinational fashion conglomerate.
If any wealthy readers fancy sending me the money, I will happily make the outfit pictured here my winter look for 2024/25. The hay-coloured Emilio Parka, crafted from shearling, costs £10,755; whilst the matching Ezio Trousers, in a creamy cashmere colour but also made from finest lambskin, are priced just over £7,000.
[2] I'm paraphrasing a line by D. H. Lawrence, in 'Red Trousers' (1928). See his Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 138.
[3] Roland Barthes, 'Fashion and the Social Sciences', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 97.
[4] I'm using the term haute couture in a broader contemporary sense, rather than with its strict 19th-century French definition; i.e., to refer to exclusive creations by the world's leading designers, made with high-quality, rare fabrics and crafted with meticulous attention to detail by skilled artisans, but not necessarily made to order by private clients or stamped with the official seal of the Paris Chamber of Commerce.
[5] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Iain Hamilton Grant, (SAGE Publications, 2007), p. 87.
[6] Nietzsche, Preface (4) The Gay Science (1887).
We might note that Baudrillard is sceptical about this. For whilst he speaks of the charm and fascination of fashion and welcomes the resurrection of forms, he dismisses fashion's revolution as innocuous and rejects the idea that it recovers the superficiality that Nietzsche discovered in the ancient Greeks: "Fashion is only a simulation of the innocence of
becoming, the cycle of appearances is just its recycling." Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 89.
In other words, fashion's passion for artifice and for empty signs and cycles - for making the insignificant signify - may be genuine, but it lacks symbolic radicality and only announces the myth of change.
[7] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 94.
