The second quality of the clothing-fashion code is best evident in the uniformed appearance of suited male public figures. The desire to reduce this high level of variability of how the viewers may “read” their style, since the 19th century has gradually led male politicians to opt for clothing that is virtually devoid of any significant variations in form, colour or fabric, and effectively has become a uniform. While in the early 20th century women started to claim the public space making more definite inroads into the sphere of politics, one of the challenges they encountered was the necessity of inventing a new dress code that would make them neither too obtrusive nor too dismissive when compared with the uniformly attired and hence homogenously looking male colleagues.
Sociological studies of consumption generally accept fashion as a system of signs, which is used by individuals to construct their identities. However, Colin Campbell in his essay “When the meaning is not a message. A critique of the consumption as communication thesis” (159–169), refutes such a claim. Summarising the five main tenets of the theory on fashion as communication, which regards clothing as having symbolic meanings that are shared by consumers, who through fashion “ ‘send messages’ about themselves to others” (159) communicating and reinforcing their self-identities, Campbell proposes an alternative theory. Countering Thorstein Veblen’s view that fashion is “the language of wealth” (161), he points to the multiplicity of ‘languages’ that fashion comprises, such as the language of lifestyle or sexuality. According to Campbell, what makes it difficult to accept that fashion is a language is the lack of any sound evidence to prove that the wearer and observer share sufficient competence to communicate ←21 | 22→through fashion. To support such a claim, Campbell uses the example of the general public’s lack of consensus on fashionable clothing, and notes that the theory which regards fashion to be a language needs to be narrowed down to specific contexts. The current study proposes to examine such a specific context, namely that of the arena of politics, based on the assumption that unlike common fashion consumption patterns, consuming fashion by public figures is far less ambiguous and is usually directed at the specific target audience. Sartorial messages sent by politicians and activists seem also clearer because the observer is usually informed about clothing’s “intended context of use” (162) and already knows the social role of the wearer. Therefore, it appears that for the sake of the present analysis pertaining to how fashion reinforces political messages, it can be assumed that clothing is a form of a language.
Since according to Campbell, fashion communicates impressions about the wearer, one may regard clothing worn by public figures as what he terms “a ‘language of character’ ” (163). Just like a prospective employee who intends to impress an employer at a job interview by wearing suitable attire, people in the public space communicate that they are “ ‘smart’, ‘tidy’ or at least ‘respectable’ ” (163). However, this is not enough to treat fashion as a language, argues Campbell, entering into polemics with Davis’s notion of fashion as a “quasi-code.” What for Campbell excludes fashion from the category of language is its inability not to send messages (164). A consumer of fashion, argues Campbell, can only abstain from communicating messages when alone, while any viewer automatically becomes a receiver of messages, whether voluntarily or involuntarily sent by the wearer. Although such argument can be rightly used to challenge a more general/universal theory of fashion as a language, it seems less harmful to the view proposed in this study, namely that fashion is form of a political language employed to enhance and reinforce messages transmitted in other ways.
Even though Campbell refutes the claim that fashion is a language, he contends that clothing performs a communicative function, bringing about “a range of cultural associations” (165). According to Campbell, “clothing functions as a means of personal expression, and hence should be regarded as an art form” (165) rather than a language. Being incapable of communicating anything more than “a mood, whim or temporary need” (165), clothes are “largely unrelated to the basic personality, let alone the social identity of the wearer” (165), he claims. When compared to art forms, however, fashion is closer to architecture than to music. Unlike music, fashion fails to communicate through an “agreed system of abstract symbols” (165), whereas similarly to architecture clothes have “instrumental functions” and “expressive properties” (165).
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While Campbell’s views seem to fit relatively well the sartorial practices of average fashion users, who may or may not be aware of the messages they communicate through their garments, in the public sphere of politics, what Campbell calls “the clothing as language argument” appears to be still valid. Political and public figures, unlike average fashion consumers, rarely choose their attires randomly, and the management of their appearance usually plays relatively important role in their political careers (often even if they claim to be otherwise). In fact, the dismissal of “the clothing as language argument” seems only possible when one omits (as Campbell does) all the cultural contexts in which fashion/clothing is intended to communicate the wearer’s identity, for example ethnic clothing, religious garments, or clothes worn by representatives of some professions. For instance, while it can be noted that clothes worn by for example builders on construction sites perform mainly instrumental functions, ensuring body protection, the freedom of movement, etc., the conventional dress of for example High Court judges is intended to first and foremost “make a statement” and express “ ‘singular’ meaning” (166), evoking various cultural associations. The growing visualisation and mediation of politics, which started in the late 19th century and has continued into the 21st century, seems to have brought politics closer to a form of a spectacle, in which like in performative arts (theatre and film), clothing can be regarded as “ ‘conveying a message’ ” (166) about an individual who is wearing them.
It is Malcolm Barnard who sheds some more light on the communicative role of fashion in the political context, examining Bush’s and Blair’s attires as his case study in the essay entitled “Fashion Statements: Communication and Culture.” In modern western cultures, fashion is regarded as meaningful, “Clothes are selected for purchase, and for wearing, according to the meaning we believe them to have, or the messages we believe them to send” (171). Based on the understanding of fashion as a “cultural phenomena” (171), Bernard proposes a view that communication through fashion “is the cultural construction of meaning and, thereby, identity” (171) rather than a process of reception and transmission of messages. Borrowing Anne Hollander’s broad definition of fashion as “everything that people wear” (171), Barnard notes that fashion is closely linked to a society’s social structure and social mobility, with classless societies having no fashion or indeed even no need of fashion. Because fashion produces meaning, it is a form of “communication” that “constructs people as members, or non-members, of cultural groups” (172).
In order to explain the way fashion communicates meaning, Barnard refers to Barthes’ concept of connotation, explaining that it is far more convincing than alternative definitions of meaning, which treat meaning as either related to ←23 | 24→the intention of the wearer or as inherent in the garment. Similarly to Barthes, Barnard notes that connotations cannot be “correct or incorrect” because they are culture and context specific as well as dependent on “an individual’s socio-historical location” (173). Yet, unlike Barthes, Barnard proposes to define meaning as purely connotational, that is eliminating anything that is not a connotation for example denotation, observing that “a piece of fashion is not meaningful in itself and a piece of fashion or clothing is not meaningful because of any individual intention” (174).
Barnard’s ideas about how fashion communicates meaning resemble Davis’s in that both theorists regard communication through fashion as “a negotiation of meanings through the interaction between items of visual culture and the values (beliefs and ideas) held by an individual as a member of a cultural group” (174). This semiological definition of communication appears to be linked with metaphor theories