FASHION: WHERE DOES MODERNITY COME FROM?
In his essay “The Painter of Modern Life”, published in Le Figaro in 1863, the French Poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire depicts the work of Constantin Guys, a press graphic designer living in the XIX century, who specialized in the rendition of Parisian scenes and the depiction of the contemporary fashion. Baudelaire focuses, in his study, on a series of drawings tracing the fashion history of the past decades. He therefore notices the perpetual shift of the fashion cycles, clothing habits and preferences, leading him to establish a revolutionary theory of beauty. According to Baudelaire, modernity can be defined as ”the transient, the fugitive”.
In his essay “For an aesthetic of reception” the literary critic Hans Robert Jauss reports an etymology of the word “mode” (fashion in French) as derived from the latin “modo”, which also gave birth to the substantive “modernus”, as the characteristic of what is “of this time”, ”just now” .
The elusive idea of “modern life”, in the baudelerian acceptation of the term, is in reality a two-times novelty: first, through scientific innovations and technical progress, the product renewal rhythm has drastically accelerated. Then, with the emancipation from the theological purpose of an eternal life, “modern life” is reduced to the shorter duration of the mere human life. Baudelaire opens ”The painter of modern life” by a chapter entitled ”Beauty, fashion and happiness”, dedicated to a study of Guys’ fashion drawings. The study of these ”fashion-plates” allows Baudelaire to initiate a “modern” theory of beauty, as evidenced in the beginning of the essay: the author states that ”it is in fact an excellent opportunity to establish a rational and historical theory of beauty, in contrast to the academic theory of an unique and absolute beauty”. Baudelaire substitutes the idea of a “composite beauty” where beautiful forms extracted from ”the transitory” to the Platonic concept of beauty per se, which main characteristics are both timelessness and abstraction. The author states in his essay that the drawings of Constantin Guys work as a translation of “the ethics and the aesthetic of the time”. In that sense, the double nature of Constantin Guys’ images, simultaneously artistic and historic, illustrates for Baudelaire the form of the time’s ideal.
He thus removes the anachronistic taboo of the ephemeral, as the representation of the contemporary enters the field of artistic creation. Baudelaire’s essay is widely considered as a corner stone in the definition of the principle of modernity in art. Stating that what is “new” has indeed a value per se, Baudelaire offers a new perspective to artists, deriving from the conventional idea of beauty. Guys’ perspective on fashion nourishes Baudelaire’s theory of beauty in art, meaning that fashion itself is the archetypal system in which one can observe the phenomenon of modernity, through the constant renewal of the common fashion taste.
the ideal of feminine beauty is: The feminine beauty ideal is "the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women's most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain".[1] Feminine beauty ideals are rooted in heteronormative beliefs, and heavily influence women of all sexual orientations. The feminine beauty ideal, which also includes female body shape, varies from culture to culture.[2] Pressure to conform to a certain definition of "beautiful" can have psychological effects, such as depression, eating disorders, and low self-esteem, starting from an adolescent age and continuing into adulthood. (wikipedia)
The fashion drawing, has a dual nature : as a product of the era’s aesthetic, but also as the manifestation of an eternal aesthetic ideal. Modern beauty is defined by Baudelaire as the dialectic tension existing between these two elements. In this context, the fashion designer’s (and, more broadly, the artist’s) purpose is to find what can be saved and perpetuated in these short-lived items. In a way, Baudelaire’s definition of modern beauty is partially conservative. The constant renewal of fashion appears as a distraction, a necessary constraint that allows the artist to escape from academism and boredom. Yet, the artist’s true purpose, for the author, lies in the research of an element of permanency: in that sense, Baudelaire doesn’t stand against the platonic conception of Beauty, whereby the poet seeks the ”divine cake”, ”the stone dream”, the eternal and pure form.
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