Dress as Metaphor British Female Fashion and Social Change in the 20th Century. Katarzyna Kociolek

SIGNIFICANT IS BIG, notes Kövecses, finds its realisation in architecture as well as in monumental sculptures. Not only material culture is replete with metaphors, also political discourses and morality are structured around conceptual metaphors, which relate to notions of strength, weakness, being good or bad, as in “being good is being upright, being bad is being low, doing evil is falling, evil is a force, morality is strength” (69). Another commonly operating metaphor ←51 | 52→QUALITY IS QUANTITY underlies schools’ grading systems, with alphabetical grades having their numerical equivalents. Thanks to rapid developments in Conceptual Metaphor Theory particularly, the insightful research of Charles Foceville and Alan Cienki on non-verbal metaphors, metaphors are currently regarded and “be[ing] manifested in (…) pictures, sound, music, and gesture, and perhaps even smell, touch, and taste” (72), notes Kövecses. Because, as Kövecses concludes, “conceptual metaphor pervades much of our social, artistic, psychological, intellectual and cultural life” (73), it seems somewhat surprising that so far CMT has not been applied to the study of fashion and the interpretation of meanings produced by clothing. The aim of the current study is to at least partially fill this void, and to trace primary metaphors realised in female clothing in 20th century Britain.

      According to Kövecses, metaphors exceed the realm of language and cognition, for they can be amply found in the physical world of cultural practices, “When I say that a conceptual domain “turns into” social–physical reality, I simply mean that the conceptual domain occurs not only as a concept or as a word but also as a more or less tangible thing or process in our social and cultural practice (i.e., as a social and physical object, institution, action, activity, event, state, relationship, and the like)” (Kövecses 2005, 164). Although fashion is not included among the cultural practices mentioned above, it seems that sartorial practices are constituent of actions, events, and states. Also, clothes form part of what Kövecses calls the life as a show or spectacle metaphor, which dominates for example in American culture. According to Kövecses (2005, 184), this is a “foundational metaphor” that organises vast areas of cultural practices, dating back to Shakespearian conceptualisation of life as theatrical performance. The linguistic evidence proves that the theatre vocabulary is commonly used to metaphorically relate to various life experiences, while closer analysis of such metaphors proves that they are based on several mappings such as: a person leading a life is an actor, the beginning of the play is his/her birth, the end of the play is his/her death, while parts are the person’s roles in life. Such conceptualisation of life became dominant in the USA in the 20th century, when consumerism and entertainment industry started to govern social and cultural life. In the process the old puritan values of courage and hard work embraced by earlier “character culture” gave way to likeability, personal charm, and ability to perform that loom large over the new “personality culture” (186). Yet, if it is assumed that life is a performance then clothes should be regarded as costumes that help to convincingly play the parts, can be put on and discarded when necessary, but most importantly serve as a code that assists actors in communicating their message. While Kövecses convincingly argues ←52 | 53→that the show metaphor dominates in American politics as well as daily activities, he does not extend the metaphor to discuss sartorial practices and fails to account for the importance of clothing as costumes in these performances. The implication of adding a new mapping which is clothes are costumes to life is a show metaphor, aids the perception that actors consciously select dress to enhance their public performance. This in turn effectively minimises the problem of unpredictability and randomness of fashion that in the past precluded the possibility of a more systematic analysis of meanings expressed in and through clothing.