Mode et philosophie

Author : Anne KRAATZ

Publishing House: Les Belles Lettres

Publication Date : 2005

Description : Why this fashion rather than another? What determines the fashion of an era? Is it the fruit of chance, the result of the frivolity of some imposed on all? Or is clothing the true material reflection of a system of thought, organically adopted by a whole society at a given time? This book proposes to demonstrate that there is an intimate relationship between clothing fashion and the thought of a moment.The mathematical and geometrical aspects of the Neoplatonic philosophy of the Renaissance, which was busy defining the beautiful, made it the ideal terrain for a study of the link between philosophical thought and the materiality of clothing. It is therefore this period that was chosen to test a method of fashion analysis, based on a new approach to textual and iconographic sources.The silhouette, i.e. the contours of the clothed body, is defined as the constitutive and normative element of fashion. This silhouette is represented by a simple archetypal geometric figure, both symbolic and technical: the rectangle or the triangle, depending on whether the social body that adopts it recognizes itself in the asexual but masculinizing angelism of the Neoplatonic years, or, on the contrary, in the courtly but feminized sexuality of the late Middle Ages.At other times in history, other systems of thought and fashion will have prevailed, but the method presented here should make it possible to establish the links that make them dependent on each other.Anne Kraatz is a doctor of the École pratique des hautes études. She is the author of several works on the history of commerce, textiles and fashion.