From Baudelaire to Christian Dior: The Poetics of Fashion

Author(s): Rémy G. Saisselin

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Sep., 1959), pp. 109-
115
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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 FROM BAUDELAIRE TO CHRISTIAN DIOR:
THE POETICS OF FASHION

RIRMY G. SAISSELIN

Poets and women have been inseparable since the days of Alienor of Aquitaine,
but it is only since Baudelaire's time that poets have also considered women and
fashion. Baudelaire, indeed, taught poets to look at fashion in a new manner, a
manner being a fusion of what one might call a phenomenological approach and
essentialist thought. This revolution in perception we may better understand if
we consider that in the Middle Ages and the Ancien Regime, woman was thought
of in terms of an essence. Woman had a nature particularly her own, a nature
summed up in the term the eternal feminine. Consequently it was not necessary
to consider dress too much. Thus what is apparent in the centuries previous to the
French Revolution is the primacy of woman over dress, so that we may state, and
so finally enter into our subject, a sort of first principle or a first step in the
dialectics of fashion, and say, paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre's dictum existence
precedes essence: Woman precedes essence.
This indeed sums up the metaphysical situation of woman in the eight cen-
turies preceding the Revolution. Yet fashion was not completely ignored and
dress was an important social phenomenon. However, it was the moralists like
Moliere, La Bruyere, Montesquieu and others who thought about fashion. The
moralists satirized those who thought they could enhance their station in life
by adding more ribbons to their dress or more feathers to their hats. Dress was
thus considered an attribute of class and excess in dress was judged in terms of
human vanity. Implied was that no matter how much you tried, clothes did not
make the man, for a gentleman could always tell another, no matter what his
dress was. To sum up then: dress, fashion, had social and human implications,
but no metaphysical overtones.
With Baudelaire a change occurs in this conception of the relation of fashion,
not only to society, but also to woman, and what is more, to life itself. The change
occurs in terms of a reconsideration of woman, one delineated by aesthetic con-
siderations: it is as if Baudelaire, turning from painting to women, saw the latter
with the painter's eye and so concluded, to use his own words, that woman is
surtout une harmonie generate, above all a general harmony. But most interesting
is that this harmony was not that of the nude. It was also that of fashion. "What
poet would dare," he writes in Le Peintre de la vie moderne, "in the depiction of
the pleasure caused by the apparition of a beauty, separate the woman from the
dress?" The implications of this view are, as we shall demonstrate, epoch-
making. They lead us into the second moment of the dialectics of fashion. For,
accepting Baudelaire's judgment, we are forced to revise our first principle and
say, Woman and fashion are inseparable. It is Baudelaire's concept of woman
which explains his reasoning. To be sure he defined woman as a "general har-
mony," but this merely referred to what might be called the form: this is woman
observed; but woman understood intuitively, woman understood in her essence
109

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 110 BEMY G. SAISSELIN

is something else. What then is woma

is a being "peut-etre incomprehensible
un miroitement de toutes les graces de
une espece d'idole, stupide peut-etre, mais eblouissante."
In other words woman is a mystery, a notion in which we may perceive the
romantic notion of the femme fatale, but more important still, woman is nature,
and Baudelaire rejected nature as evil, so that his final appreciation of woman
is summed up as follows: "La femme est naturelle, c'est-a-dire abominable."
But woman ceases to be abominable precisely through fashion, for then she
ceases to be natural. A well-dressed woman thus is one who liberates herself
from her abominable feminine condition. Or, to state this principle in a more
succinct and significant manner: the difference between a female and a woman
is eight centuries of civilization. Woman well dressed ceases to be nature and be-
comes an approximation to art.
Baudelaire's considerations led him to a sort of metaphysical or transcendent
definition of fashion and dress: "Fashion must be considered as a symptom of
the taste for the ideal which has survived in the human mind above all the rude-
ness, the earthly, and the ignoble which natural life has accumulated there. It
must be regarded as a sublime deformation of nature, or rather as a permanent
and successive effort for the reformation of nature." It follows from this defini-
tion and the concept of woman examined above, that we must once more modify
our principles and say, Fashion precedes woman.
For after all, if Baudelaire is right, the charming creature called woman has
been created by fashion. Woman is thus a work of art and the eternal feminine
has disappeared beneath the ever-changing perspective of fashion. Woman has
become a figment of man's imagination, a dream of poets, and a dress-designer's
concept.
For Baudelaire then, fashion participates in the artistic activity which he de-
fines as reformation of nature. It is a phrase worth noting, as well as the defini-
tion of fashion as a permanent and successive effort to reform nature. Fashion
might thus be envisaged as an autonomous activity, evolving to its own laws,
exerting its empire over women, and responding to profound human aspirations
rather than the necessity of wearing clothes merely for protection.

Baudelaire was not the only poet to interest himself in fashion. Mallarme
founded and edited and wrote most of the articles for La Derniere Mode. What
he has to say about fashion is less metaphysical than what Baudelaire wrote;
however, his approach to fashion is based upon the same premises. And he too
looks at woman and fashion through a veil of poetry, or through the poetic fancy,
so that his articles in La Derniere Mode rather sound like prose poems.
When Mallarme writes of women he says nothing essentially different from
what Baudelaire had said. For the poet of the Afternoon of a Faun, as for the
poet of Les Fleurs du Mal, woman and fashion are inseparable. Thus speaking of
ballroom dresses he notes, "The tradition which most formal dresses more or less
obey, I should call or define as that of rendering light, vaporous, aerial, for that
superior way of walking which is called dancing, the divinity appearing in their

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 BAUDELAIRE TO CHRISTIAN DIOR: POETICS OF FASHION 111

cloud" (Mallarme, Oeuvres completes [Pleiade], p. 797). We see that here

the dress is meant to transform woman, into more than a mere approximation
art; woman has become a divinity. The dress indeed it is which makes of w
a mystery, at least surrounds her with an aura of mystery: "If the classic
rials of formal wear are pleased to envelop us in a sort of lifting fog made
the whites imaginable, the dress itself, on the contrary, corsage and skirt, mo
the person more than ever: savant and delicious opposition between the
and the distinctive outline" (idem.). Let us note the last phrase, that del
opposition between the vague and the sharp. Could we not so interpret
Mallarme's poetry? Might not this delicious opposition sum up the essenc
poetry whose syllables and sounds evoke crystalline purity but whose mea
lost, impenetrable to the reason, so to speak in a fog of whites of all sh
Should the reader still have doubts concerning the affinity of fashion an
poetic vision, let him ponder this description of a certain beauty of Mall
time, Madame Rattazzi: "What a miraculous vision! a tableau to dream about
rather than paint it: for her beauty suggests certain impressions analogous to
those of the poet, profound and fugitive" (pp. 832-833).
It was the period of the vision fugitive. Women were not described with the
verb to be: they always appeared, setting young poets such as Laforgue to dream
of a world of beauty beyond the reach of mortals. Thus was the young Marcel
set to dream when he saw his miraculous vision, Madame Swann in the Bois
de Boulogne:

Suddenly, on the sand of the allee, sluggish, slow, and luxuriant like the most beautiful of
flowers who would open only at noon, Madame Swann appeared, expanding about her an
ever differing toilette but which I recall to be mauve; and then she hoisted on a long stalk,
at the moment of her brightest irradiation, the silken colors of a large umbrella of the same
nuances as the flowering petals of her dress.

In the period of the fin de siecle women always appeared and ever evoked a senti-
ment of poetry, grace, charm. Poetry and fashion had become inseparable. But
it was a poetry of reverie. The twentieth century would bring a poetry of intel-
lectual rigor.

We now come to a more difficult part of our subject, namely to find a link
between the poetics of Valery and the constructions of Dior. A difficult task be-
cause in all probability no such link exists. However, a reading of the memoirs
of Dior entitled Christian Dior et moi convinced this writer that his spirit was
akin to that of Valery and that what the latter said about poetry, the former said
about fashion designing. I thus formulated the following question: Could it be
that Dior is the classic of fashion as Valery is the classic of Modern Poetry?
What then is poetry for Valery? Let us enter into this subject by pondering
this general declaration:

We have decided to submit nature,-that is to say language,-to certain rules other than its
own, and which are not necessary but which are our own; and we go so far as not even to
invent these rules; we receive them as they are [i.e. from tradition].'
1Valery, Morceaux choisis (N. R. F., 1946), p. 148.

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112 REMY G. SAISSELIN

This definition of poetry could easily

substitute the word woman for langua
poetry would then become the traditi
willingness to break with the past, wi
speaks of classicism in these terms: "C
sacrifice to idols, which are beauties o
form, which he considers to be a passion of the mind. But equally important is
the quality of workmanship, la maitrise. Classicism he thus further defines as an
imitation of mastery, that is to say: "To seem to command the means of art,-
rather than be visibly commanded by them" (ibid., p. 166). Finally the poem
must be, for Valery, a feast of the intellect: "Un poeme doit etre une fete de
l'Intellect. II ne peut etre autre chose" (p. 159). This is, as we shall see, a capital
point. But let us sum up Valery's points: poetry deals with language, which is
a natural phenomenon, having its own laws but on which the poet imposes other
laws; classicism is above all the cult of form, which is an intellectual passion;
finally what is important in a work of art such as a poem is the unity rather than
the details. Dior, we shall see, will say about the same thing on the subject of
fashion.
The link between fashion and poetry will perhaps become more apparent if
we consider the history of fashion as it existed before 1914. One may say that
before the Great War, fashion was, referring to Valery's concept of classicism,
in its romantic period, for the couturiers sacrificed to the idols of detail. Thus
what changed in the evolution of fashion before 1914 were details rather than the
ensemble of the dress. This was also the result of the organization of the trade of
dress-making, this organization being such that several dressmakers worked on
one dress. A dress was evaluated, judged, appreciated, not in terms of its general
line, but rather its finish, material, workmanship, ruffles, lace, embroidery,
frous-frous and chichis. Thus the general line remained unchanged for many
seasons while the details changed, so that we may call this the romantic period
of dress-designing, in contrast to a classical period which would emphasize
general line.
One may say too that if the general line did not change, it was also because
woman was still considered in essentialist terms: on a basic concept of woman,
on an inalterable base, only details were altered. It was not until woman was
thought of in non-essentialist terms that the dress-designers altered the base.
This transformation occurred just before 1914 with the work of Doucet and
Madeleine Viennot, and was continued after the war by Jeanne Laurin and
Mademoiselle Chanel. What happened? The dress became, to use Dior's term,
an expression of personality. This was done by the dress's becoming a unity, by
an insistence on the whole rather than on details. Details were sacrificed to unity.
This trend toward what might then be called, within quotation marks, classicism,
manifested itself in the 1930's despite the surrealist dresses of Madame Schiapa-
relli, and it is this tendency which, interrupted by the war, eventually became
the New Look.

Dior called the New Look an art of pleasing, a definition significant in its
because we may recall that French eighteenth-century classicism was foun

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 BAUDELAIRE TO CHRISTIAN DIOR: POETICS OF FASHION 113

upon precisely this requirement: the art of pleasing a cultivated elite.

the New Look was much more than that; it was also a rehabilitation o
ity. Dior writes:

We were emerging from a period of war, of uniforms, of women-soldiers built like boxers. I
drew women-flowers, soft shoulders, flowering busts, fine waists like liana and wide skirts like
corolla. But it is well known that such fragile appearances are obtained only at the price of a
rigorous construction... I wanted my dresses to be constructed, molded upon the curves of
the feminine body whose sweep they would stylize. (Christian Dior et moi, p. 35)

Several points are worth noting: Dior's New Look was a reaction against
history, against the ugly in life, as Baudelaire would have said, and so the New
Look responded to man's aspirations toward the ideal; also Dior was putting
femininity into value, thereby decreeing what woman should be. Finally let us
note the contrast established between a fragile appearance and a rigorous con-
struction, a contrast we already saw in the thought on fashion of Mallarme. But
Dior goes further than the poets, who had been content to view women through
a poeticizing veil. Dior gives his dresses the names of what could easily be poems,
certainly-names evoking poetic feeling:

I believe Alphonse Daudet once wrote: "I should like to be, through my works, a merchant
of happiness." In my modest field of dress-designer, I pursue the same dream. My first dresses
were called Love, Tenderness, Corolla, Happiness. (p. 51)

And pursuing his reflections on his trade further, he is, like Mallarme, brought
to a comparison of his activity to poetic reverie:

The dress-designer is not a painter of the Barbizon school, he does not work on the grounds;
his creation is more likely to be akin to poetic expression. A certain nostalgia is necessary.
Summer is dreamt in the midst of winter and vice versa. (p. 80)

If we now wish to know whether this poet-designer is to be considered a classic

or a romantic, let us ponder the following declaration: "But what above all
guides me, is form" (p. 92). One may wonder if it is Dior or Valery. Of course it
is this emphasis on form, the form itself which makes of woman what Baudelaire
called an approximation to art. Dior, who had in his youth wanted to be an
architect, insists on form as much as Valery:

The woman's body being its base, the art of the dress designer is to establish and to propor-
tion upon it an ensemble of volumes which would exalt the forms of the body. For myself
a collection could validly be expressed in black or in white.... (p. 92)

Obviously one thinks more of a sculptor than a poet. But equally obvious is this:
the metaphysics of fashion are the same as Baudelaire's and the perception, the
evaluation of the finished product is the same as Valery's: it is intellectual. This
insistence on form Dior expressed happily in a delicious maxim imitated from
La Rochefoucauld's "II y a de bons mariages, mais il n'y en a point de delicieux,"
and which in Dior's words becomes: "La coutre est avant tout un mariage entre
la forme et le tissu. On sait qu'il en est beaucoup d'exquis, mais on en cite de
malheureux" (p. 97). This marriage between material and form is furthered by
economy and simplicity of means: "Une robe bien coupee est une robe peu
coupee..." And going in this vein, one reminding us of Valery's precepts on

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 114 REMY G. SAISSELIN

poetry, Dior writes: "Today's fashion is above all a question of general line:
from the shoes to the hat, the silhouette is a whole" (p. 104). So that finally we
get this revealing summing-up worthy of Baudelaire: "Comme tu est jolie
aujourd'hui! veut souvent dire:-Comme ton chapeau te va bien" (p. 105)!
Dior answers Baudelaire's metaphysics of fashion: woman, abominable crea-
ture of nature, has been completely transformed by art; woman, a simple base for
Dior, has become a sort of poem of curves, lines, and volumes; woman has become
style. And style for Dior means form, unity, rather than detail. So that we may
formulate the following conclusion concerning the style of Dior: A dress by
Dior, like a poem by Valery, is a feast of the intellect.

Having thus followed the dialectics of fashion from Baudelaire to Dior, we

shall now attempt a dialectical jump at some conclusions. In this task we shall
not be without assistance. Mademoiselle Chanel drew her own conclusion in the
course of a controversy over fashion in 1956. Here is what she told the Parisian
fashion designers:

Why do you work in the realm of genius? We are not artists but producers of dresses. The
essence of authentic works of art is to appear ugly and to become beautiful. The essence of
fashion is to appear pretty and to become ugly. We do not need genius, but much workman-
ship and a little taste. (Quoted in L'Express, 7th August, 1956.)

In other words Mademoiselle Chanel criticizes everything the couturiers and

poets had been saying, and her reproaches bear out our premise to the effect that
fashion had become a sort of art, an autonomous activity, having separated itself
from its function, to dress women, and even separated itself from women to enter
a realm of abstraction. Thus a reporter from L'Express wrote: "In the domain of
spectacle, French haute couture has attained a sort of perfection. In the art of
dehumanizing women it has almost succeeded." The dress makers, in short, have
attempted, perhaps unwittingly, to make of their trade an art and instead of
producing dresses have tried to produce masterpieces which instead of appearing
pretty and then becoming ugly, would be eternally beautiful. It would seem too
that the Parisian fashion-designers are in much the same predicament as certain
American architects who do not quite know whether they are artists, architects,
or moralists, and who wish to transform society by transforming architecture.
One wonders if fashion has not, along with all artistic activity, suffered from a
general phenomenon referred to as alienation and also as the "dehumanization of
art," to use Ortega y Gasset's term. T. E. Hulme in his essay on Humanism,
Vladimir Weidle in Les Abeilles d'Aristee, and Herman Broch in Die Schlaf-
wandler have explored this problem at length and in depth. In the course of this
process of dehumanization leading to abstraction, what occurs is that each art
becomes an end in itself: a common denominator, a common value about which
all the arts are ordered, disappears. Such a common denominator was presumably
God for the Middle Ages, Man since the Renaissance. Once the common value
disappears and ceases to inspire the artist, writer, or poet, the only thing left him
is his art. That usually comes to mean insistence on technique and one gets pure
poetry, abstract art, and alliterature. Perhaps a similar development produced

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 BAUDELAIRE TO CHRISTIAN DIOR: POETICS OF FASHION 115

itself in fashion and the end product of it is what one might term the
woman inseparable from the absolute dress.
Woman has thus become an abstract creature, a beautiful creature ma
the contemplation of the intellect, "La froide majeste de la femme steril
ion thus, which with Baudelaire decrees that it creates woman, implying
tentialist view of woman, has come full circle and created a new essentia
that of the cold, architectural, unapproachable goddess photographed in
of a background of the Place de la Concorde, the Arch of Triumph, an
particulier of the eighteenth century, or the coldly glimmering skyscra
New York. These are our new Beatrices and Lauras and we need not remind the
reader that these ethereal creatures were the creations of poets. Our poets have
simply gone toward the abstract.
In a sense this dehumanization of women via fashion is quite in order, is almost
fitting. It is, so to speak, in the vein of the logic of the modern world and takes
part in a general trend toward a universal style, called by some critics a non-
style, namely functionalism. Thus women conceived by the Parisian couturiers
do quite well in front of Swedish or Danish backgrounds, in the midst of modern
furniture, squares, lines, and geometric color shapes as well as utensils which
look like surgical instruments.
It is not certain that this trend will last, however. Fashion today inspires itself
from history and the creations of today are photographed against a background
of Malmaison. All of which merely goes to prove that women always need some
sort of support in order to exist. The women, of course, have other views on this
and it is perhaps these counterviews which provide the motion necessary to a
dialectic of fashion which we may summarize as follows:
(1) Fashion creates woman, but woman, having some autonomy, and full
autonomy in the U.S.A., reacts, thus creating, or giving rise to a revolution in
fashion.
(2) This revolution occurs when woman feels herself threatened in her femi-
ninity, feels herself de-humanized.
(3) Dehumanization occurs when fashion is dominated by abstraction, or
aesthetic considerations, when it tends to become an absolute and when feeling
gives way to intellectualism.
These various considerations will enlighten us on the nature of fashion: it is
essentially an ambiguous one and the history of fashion might be written in
terms of an oscillation between the dress's necessity of being a garment and the
dress designer's desire to make of it a work of art, a representation of an aspira-
tion to the sublime. Fashion is thus a pseudo-art, for, after all, a dress is an item
of utility.
However, rather than close on this dreary note of utilitarianism and practi-
cality, let us admit that a dress may be at some moment of its existence, a poem
of form, color, and motion, and that at such a privileged instant the dress may
transform the wearer into a poetic apparition. It thus becomes possible to define
woman as a sometime poem alive, and to define fashion as the poetry of femi-
ninity.

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