For they know not what they don: Fashion as Ideology, Part 1

Dec 16

Dec 16 For they know not what they don: Fashion as Ideology, Part 1

Fashion seems, for all intents and purposes, to be precisely the expression of one’s intents and purposes. This is the case whether these be the intents and purposes of an employer, trade, or school requiring certain attire to signal that the individual represents the firm, belongs to the trade, or is an ambassador of a certain institution; or whether they are the intents and purposes of the individual when enjoying “free time”, however that is materialized and expressed. Fashion, clothing and manners, can appear constricting as well as liberating. When seen as constricting, fashion is objected to on the very basis that it has the potential for a form and style of self-expression which is denied. “I don’t feel like myself,” might be one response. Lest we think only we can determine the extent of our self-expression — i.e., the threshold of what is allowable for us to wear before anyone says anything — friends frequently chime in unannounced and uninvited by asking “what’s that you’re wearing,” or “who do you think you are wearing that?”

Fashion as self-expression lays bare our very aesthetic and potentially ethical commitments, intents, and grants the possibility of externalizing oneself for others to see. Where we find individual desire, the perceived transparency of self-expression, and that which we consider most natural to ourselves — where these things are, there we find ideology. Fashion is not, I claim, ideologically neutral. Moreover, it is precisely in our claiming fashion to be expressive of our desires, intents, (political or cultural) allegiances, in other words the most personal and individual, that ideology expresses itself, as it were. All of this, of course, hinges upon what I mean by ideology.

The title for this piece is a play upon the crucial and important section in the Gospel According to Luke, just at the moment where Jesus is about to be crucified (Luke 23:34). It, interestingly, is also bookended via reference to fashion, in this case ostentatious clothing used to mock Jesus. This episode occurs at the height of accusations against Jesus, the accusation claiming Jesus himself claims to be Messiah, and opposes payment of taxes to Caesar. After appearing before Pilate, Jesus is brought to Herod before whom he is ridiculed and mocked; he is then dressed “in an elegant robe” and sent back to Pilate after which he will be crucified. Just before crucifixion, Jesus utters the words, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing…”[1] After the crucifixion, Jesus’s clothes are divided by cast lots among those present. Why go to this scene, and what does it have to do with ideology and fashion?

One reason to go to this quote, I claim, is that it served unofficially to be the tagline for a certain understanding of what is known philosophically and culturally as “ideology critique”, or the analysis and unveiling of false consciousness. As early as Karl Marx’s German Ideology, we find a politically-inclined philosophy highlighting the meaningful and problematic aspects of one’s life. [2] Understandably, so the argument goes, what one thinks is meaningful is actually not the case, and vice versa. People value, according to this logic, the unimportant and inessential, while they act negligently and uncaring toward the true, the essential, and important. It’s an old act in philosophy: people are involved in activities they do not know have consequences that undermine those people’s own commitments; in short, they act without knowing that they are acting against one another. This is what ideology critique usually has been understood to mean: the exposé of false consciousness. It has usually depended upon the belief that telling people what is involved in their activities, something contrary or in juxtaposition of those people’s desires, will make them change their behaviors.

“This “I live for X” is an ideological expression par excellence. Though we may never say it out loud, as a phrase it formally encapsulates the activities we engage in, especially our fashion desires and choices. ”

Rather than blaming individuals, however, Marx first accuses philosophers themselves of inverting the important and unimportant, the essential and inessential, and secondly social institutions that allow, if not socially educate and prescribe, such views. These philosophers — so-called wise guys — according to Marx fail to provide an accurate picture of the world. They espoused claims that ideas rule and determine the world, while material and empirical circumstances are an after-effect and insubstantial. In contrast to this, Marx advanced a materialist understanding of the world, where ideas — the ideas individuals and groups, in this case social classes, hold — are conditioned, if not determined, by one’s material circumstances. It is precisely the false thought, or consciousness, of philosophers themselves that is one obstacle in the way of having people question their institutions rather than believe in their freedom of thought while participating in forms of life that go against their own explicit desires.

Ideology, then, comes to be a predominant, or ruling view of the world, a view that one may associate with and identify with, without knowing why — and, in the process, possibly acting against one’s own interest. I argue that we should not only move away from such a view of ideology. Part of moving away means understanding where it comes from and its implications. The view of ideology as false consciousness re-inscribes intellectual and elitist biases, while downplaying the role of desire in one’s activities in the world. However, rather than give up on ideology as an existent social phenomenon or ideology critique as theoretical practice, I claim we update ideology and see how such an update might teach us all about the clothes we don.

Contrary to the above passage from the Bible, we instead find ideology to mean precisely an activity wherein people know what they are doing, but their knowledge, firstly, implicates activities they may not subscribe to and, secondly, is supported by an enjoyment intimately linked to their self-understanding of their identity. This second aspect is key, since it depends entirely about one’s desire, a much more complex process and activity to disentangle and address instead of just factual information and knowledge. Two examples to show this at work, one from politics, the other from entertainment though dealing with the ethics of fashion.

The first example: debates and fact checking. Let’s say we’re watching a political debate. Usually these debates now have ‘fact checkers’ individuals whose role is to verify or falsify the claims made by candidates, whether those claims be about the state of the world, their opponent, or even their own actions. One can have all the fact checkers in the world writing in immediately during a political debate, informing the viewing public when someone said something false, misleading, or true. If ideology was simply false consciousness, understood as the lack of correct information or the absence of correct thinking, then the fact check would be enough to educate and change people’s minds if they thought differently. However, this is never the case. Quite the contrary, oftentimes: we see individuals not just doubling down upon the candidate but blaming either the fact-checkers, the fact-checking institution (for having “an agenda”), or saying the information was manipulated. To blame only one’s intelligence for this phenomenon is short-sighted and reveals the blamer’s own lack of understanding of the situation and why people act the way they do. It’s also more honest to admit that people sometimes do know what they are doing. In other words, it is not just knowledge of information that is at work in supporting people’s actions and identifying with an ideology — dominant idea — that is not in their best interest. People’s activities are motivated by desires, and these desires and activities are intimately connected with their self-identity. Our investment in our own self-identities, then, show our ideological commitments, which is precisely why it is so difficult to change both our behavior and ruling ideas.

The second example: Cruella de Vil from Disney’s 101 Dalmatians (1961)s. There are very few, if any, redeeming factors of this character: she smokes constantly, creates a toxic work environment for her employees Horace and Jasper, drives in a selfish manner endangering the lives of others, and of course craves fur coats. Not just any fur coats, but especially fur coats made from Dalmatian puppies. She’s not that different from the food critic craving a foie gras and veal schnitzel dining experience: the pleasure in both cases stems from cruel acts toward living beings. It would be extremely short-sighted of us to claim that Cruella does not know what she’s doing. Not only does she know, she actually proudly claims it. She also expresses her desires. In response to her friend, Anita’s question as to whether she has on a new coat, Cruella responds: “My only true love, darling. I live for furs, I worship furs. After all, is there a woman in all this wretched world who doesn’t”. Discounting Cruella’s essentializing women and claiming what they should desire (which in itself carries interesting ethical consequences), this paints a very transparent picture of one’s desires. The number of fur coats are never — will never be— enough to satisfy desire, since Cruella leaves telling Anita to inform her when the puppies arrive. One key phrase, however, accurately captures how we should think of ideology, though we are never as transparent as Cruella is: “I live for furs”. This “I live for X” is an ideological expression par excellence. Though we may never say it out loud, as a phrase it formally encapsulates the activities we engage in, especially our fashion desires and choices.

“We know exactly what we are doing when we subscribe to fast fashion, or purchase clothing produced in horrible circumstances; to think sweatshop labor is not part of the fabric of one’s wardrobe is wishful, though ultimately misguided, thinking.”

We should not downplay this example. Cruella is not simply an aberrant character in a particular movie franchise. Rather, Cruella (or at least the sentiment she offers here) expresses what we could call our fashion desires today. Cruella is, to a certain extent, us when it comes to our fashion desires: it’s a condition we could identify as the Cruella complex. Do our actions not reveal a similar claim to “I live for X,” where we precisely are not ignorant about the general conditions of production of our clothing. We know the horrible circumstances surrounding the production of clothing today in textile factories. While we may not know the particulars of each factory condition, we know general circumstances, whether they be about working hours, wages provided the workers whose living conditions are precarious, the physical and material conditions of producing clothing in the factories and workshops themselves, the presence of major international corporations in politically, and the environmental conditions surrounding the factory (to take one example: think of the use of water in cotton lifecycle).

The political and ethical questions facing us do not concern the knowledge about our current actions, but rather our desires and the knowledge about our future actions. We know exactly what we are doing when we subscribe to fast fashion, or purchase clothing produced in horrible circumstances; to think sweatshop labor is not part of the fabric of one’s wardrobe is wishful, though ultimately misguided, thinking. What we precisely don’t know is how to go forward from this, how to break our (individual and collective) habits that choose to invest and, thus, identify with such practices. While ideology critique had in the past simply focused on knowledge as the target of its work, it has now shifted to examining the investment of our desire and identities in our practices. This, I think, is a step in the right direction.

In the next piece on “Fashion as Ideology” I will expand on the ideology of our fashion desire — what it means for Cruella to be our fashion desire — and, more importantly, how we can marshal a critique in response to this ideology, a critique with political and social implications.