The Arcades Project - Operi

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[Fashion]
Fashion: Madam Death! Madam Death!
-Giacomo -Giacomo Leopardi, "Dialogue between Fashion and Death"l
Nothing dies; all is transformed.
-Honore de Balzac, Pensees) sujets)fragments (paris, (paris, 1910), 1910), p. 46 46
And boredom IS the grating before which the courtesan teases
o Ennui 0 0
death.
[Bl,l]
Similarity of the arcades to the indoor arenas in which one learned to ride a
bicycle. In In these halls the figure of the woman assumed its most seductive aspect:
as cyclist. That is how she appears on contemporary posters. Cheret the painter
of this feminine pulchritude. The costume of the cyclist, as an early and unconscious
prefiguration of sportswear, corresponds to the dream prototypes that, a
litde before or a litde later, are at work in the factory or the automobile. Just as
the first factory buildings cling to the traditional form of the residential dwelling,
and just as the first automobile chassis imitate carriages, so in the clothing of the
cyclist the sporting expression still wresdes with the inherited pattern of of elegance,
and the fruit of this struggle is the grim sadistic touch whicb made this ideal
image of elegance so incomparably provocative to the male world in those days.
o Dream Houses 0 0 [Bl,21
'"In these years [around 1880], not only does the Renaissance fashion begin to do
mischief, but but on the the other side a new new interest in in sports-above all, in equestrian
sports-arises among among women, women, and and together together these these two two tendencies tendencies exert exert an an influence influence
on on fashion fashion from from quite quite different different directions. directions. The The attempt attempt to to reconcile reconcile these these sentisentiments dividing the female soul yields results that, in the years 1882-1885, are
original if not always beautiful. To improve matters, dress designers simplify and
take in the waist as much as possible, while allowing the skirt an amplitude all the
more more rococo." rococo." 70 70 Jahre deutsche Mode (1925), pp. 84-87. [Bl,3]
Here fashion has opened the business of dialectical exchange between woman
and ware-between carnal pleasure and the corpse. The clerk, death, tall and
and ware-between carnal pleasure and the corpse. The clerk, death, tall and