'No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions it will not look ugly' Oscar Wilde
Some key points:
- 'Nothing is beautiful in itself - only in the relationship between us and the object [the context] can it be beautiful.
- Fashion and 'taste' are inextricably linked.
- Ideas about fashion are culturally and temporarily specific. They are linked to a time and a place.
- Taste is subjective - it is difficult to know what taste is, it can only be judged.
- Professional issues - how does the institute create taste? (trickle down, copying, ideas are enforced on us about taste.)
- Revivals and Retro fashion - Its possible to 'return' to fashions. {Positivism - versions, not copies. Always getting better through time}
- Issues of taste and indentity.
Androgyny and Mary Quant.
Quant wanted to do away with the idea of a 'woman' that girls should turn into their mother. She shifted the signifier of women and taste away from traditional ideas. The androgynous look she created sought to redefine the markers of taste. (Taste is temporal, the markers can be changed.) She argues that taste is noy succession, it doesnt neccessarily get better with time. Taste was an object owned by the old and the middle classes. The idea that cheap fashion could be tasteful was refuted.
Fashion and Bad Taste
[Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen.] Designers who use limits and what is considered 'bad taste' in their work.
McQueen's Highland Rape 1995 was considered bad taste at the time. As his reputation rose on the basis of bad taste, so their designs became tasteful. The object hasnt changed, but the recognition of its tastefullness has.
Hidegger - Tried to stop us thinking about KNOWING what taste is and focussing on how we go about understanding taste and beauty.
Wittgenstein - Fashion as a language - unable to represent real meaning.
Kant - The sublime - our ability to approach understanding of the unseen and unknowable
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