Showing posts with label mrs morel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mrs morel. Show all posts

9 Feb 2021

D. H. Lawrence: The Reluctant Fashion Beast

 D. H. Lawrence in 1915 modelling his Edwardian 
hipster look complete with velveteen jacket
 National Portrait Gallery, London 
(NPG x140423)
 
I.
 
The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts (2020) is a big, heavy hardback book - over 440 pages divided between 28 essays, written by 27 different authors - so pretty much impossible to read from start to finish. 
 
Thus, once having read the Introduction, one begins to cruise the text, searching out those essays and those authors most likely to give pleasure. Let's begin with Judith Ruderman's essay on the importance in Lawrence's work of clothing and jewellery (though note that I'll not be discussing the latter here) ...
 
 
II.
 
Ruderman says that Lawrence's views on fashion are complex (sometimes contradictory) and often need to be discussed in relation to his other concerns to do with art, sex, and society. That's certainly true. In fact, it could be argued that the Lawrentian call for a revaluation of all values is founded upon a revolt into style: "Start with externals, and proceed to internals" [1], as he puts it. 
 
Unfortunately, however, this statement merely reveals Lawrence's metaphysical naivety. For there are no internals to which we might proceed and outer form or appearance is not expressive of inner essence or substance; things have no concealed reality. The secret of life revealed by dandyism - conceived by Foucault as a critical ontology and philosophical ethos beyond the dualism of inside/outside - is that it has no secret.
 
Thus, what's ironic - Ruderman's word - is not that "an author infamous for having his characters shed their clothes actually paid a great deal of close attention to what they are wearing" [2], but that an author who cared so much about fashion seems not to have grasped its deconstructive  logic. 
 
Strolling along the Strand in brave feathers - which for Lawrence means wearing "tight scarlet trousers fitting the leg, gay little orange-brown jackets and bright green hats" [3] - isn't simply to defy dreary social convention and sartorial dullness, it's to declare that one is Greek in the Nietzschean sense - i.e.,  superficial out of profundity [4].
 
Another thing that Ruderman highlights is Lawrence's fascination for strikingly colourful clothing. And it's true, he did favour fabulous - some might say garish - colour combinations in his battle against the drabness of those he calls the grey ones. And whilst I'd probably feel a little uncomfortable in some of the gay outfits Lawrence proposes, they would certainly have delighted Oscar Wilde, who wrote:
 
"There would be more joy in life if we could accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can fashioning our own clothes. The dress of the future, I think, will [...] abound with joyous colour.” [5]
 
Maybe, Oscar, maybe ... Though as all fashionistas and "naturally exquisite people" [6] - from Mrs Morel to Coco Chanel - know, ultimately, there's nowhere to go but back to black, which paradoxically, is the negation of all colour whilst also the most vital of colours. Sometimes, even Lawrence comes close to admitting this, when, for example, he talks of dark gods and the invisible black sun. 
 
But, push comes to shove, when it comes to clothes, Lawrence prefers sensible blues and browns and home-knit socks. What's more, he often sneers at truly fashionable people (who frighten and repulse him), openly disparaging haute couture. As Ruderman reminds us, although like other modernist writers he was happy to have his pieces published in Vogue, "being 'smart' in the Vogue sense was anathema to him" [7] - full of what he described as the vanity of the ego.      
 
That's why, despite his fetishistic fascination with clothes - particularly stockings - I think we can characterise Lawrence as a reluctant fashion beast or closeted dandy; one who is slightly ashamed of his own love for and knowledge of clothes and who regards those who always dress to impress as affected and a bit show-offy [8]
 
Ruderman concludes: 

"Fashion for Lawrence is best adopted as a hallmark of transformation and revitalisation: not for the sake of impressing others, but, rather, for expressing the self at any given moment in time. [...] As a 'rare bird' among men [...] Lawrence appreciated fashion, but with caveats and contradictions. That Lawrence's attitudes towards this subject are complex and evocative only highlights how they are intricately woven into the fabric of the life and art of a very complicated man." [9]

I agree with that and would only add that Lawrence's appreciation of fashion isn't all that rare amongst male writers; indeed, some of the most insightful meditations on clothes have come from our poets, novelists, and philosophers - from Baudelaire to Roland Barthes. Even Kant, when mocked for wearing silver-buckled shoes, replied: Better to be a fool in fashion, than a fool out of fashion ...  
 
 
Notes
 
[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Red Trousers', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 138.  

[2] Judith Ruderman, 'Clothes and Jewellery', The Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence, ed. Catherine Brown and Susan Reid, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), p. 371.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Red Trousers', Late Essays and Articles, p. 138. 

[4] See section 4 of the preface to the second edition of Nietzsche's The Gay Science. For Nietzsche, living courageously in the Greek manner requires remaining at the surface at the level of folds, adoring appearance, believing in forms, etc.
      Of course, the desire to become-Greek isn't the only logic of fashion; it is also motivated by the desire to become new (to constantly change one's look). To his great credit, Kant realised that fashion has nothing to do with aesthetic criteria (i.e. that it's not a striving after beauty); in this respect his writings on fashion are rather more modern than those of Baudelaire.
      The key point is that fashion seeks to make an object superfluous as quickly as possible. It does not seek to improve an object, which is why there is no ideal of progress within the world of fashion; a short skirt is not an advance on a long one. As Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen writes: "Fashion does not have any telos, any final purpose, in the sense of striving for a state of perfection [...] The aim of fashion is rather to be potentially endless, that is it creates new forms and constellations ad infinitum." See Fashion: A Philosophy, trans. John Irons, (Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 29.  

[5] Oscar Wilde, 'The House Beautiful', in the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, (Harper Collins, 1994), p. 923. 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 151. Quoted by Judith Ruderman, op. cit., p. 371.
 
[7] Judith Ruderman, op. cit., 377.
 
[8] As Ruderman reminds us, in 'Education of the People' Lawrence sneers at the modern woman who follows fashion and "wants to look ultra-smart and chic beyond words", creating an effect on those around her. See D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 152. Quoted by Ruderman, op. cit., p. 381. 
 
[9] Judith Ruderman, op. cit., pp. 381-82.