 |
What is the oldest and most universal language?
"The Language of Clothes," Alison Lurie suggests, and she discussed its "rules of grammar" and its dialects from diverse cultures with a David L. Call Alumni Auditorium audience on July 16.
Lurie, the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of American Literature and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has studied "the psychology of fashion" for many years, she said. Her talk was part of the Wednesday lecture series in July sponsored by the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions.
"My clothes are making a statement and that statement might be making you feel uncomfortable," Lurie said after she appeared on stage wearing a head scarf and a raincoat. "The unconsciously learned rules of fashion tell you to try to interpret why I am wearing this costume and to make sense of it."
Lurie's point about the appropriateness of attire for certain times and places was demonstrated when she removed her outerwear. The flowered sundress she wore underneath her costume spoke another language, one which the audience could interpret and understand in the familiar context of a speaker delivering a lecture.
"Even if we are never introduced, clothes tell about class status, age, family origin, personal opinion, taste, current mood or even give information about erotic interest and sexual status," Lurie said.
She explained that the effect of differences in clothing style is similar to differences in dialect, because each can produce misunderstandings. She gave an example of a Northeastern businessman in a gray, three-piece suit meeting a businesswoman from Miami, wearing red silk pants, high heels and a bright floral shirt unbuttoned at the top. The businessman, she said, incorrectly reads into the woman's costume what it would suggest where he comes from.
"Assuming she is sexually available," Lurie said, "he gives her a friendly squeeze -- and she smacks him across the face. She is, in fact, mildly sophisticated and fond of tropical gardening."
Interacting with the audience, Lurie invited volunteers on stage to exhibit different styles of clothing and discuss their meaning. One woman's ring, from her grandmother, showed that she values and cares about the past, Lurie said, while another girl's flowered dress from an earlier period made her appear "retro." One may gain a feeling of sophistication, wit or style by identifying with a past era, Lurie suggested.
"The language of clothes can be free or prescribed, eccentric or conventional, plain or elaborate," she said.
Lurie added that the components of the language of clothes can be compared to those of spoken language, in that a costume is like a complete sentence and individual garments or accessories are like words. "Each constituent, however, is more complicated than a spoken word because one change in either style, material, color, pattern or size changes the whole message of a shirt," she said.
She also discussed the element of color in clothing, which gives information about the wearer's mood. Displaying slides of famous paintings, she described how the sexual energy of red compares to the informality of blue or the conventionality of brown. In life, she said, one notices that couples that have been together for a long time often choose to wear the same colors, indicating their similar moods.
And Lurie talked about many reasons for getting dressed aside from a desire to express oneself through a particular style. Utilitarian reasons may compel us to put on clothing, she said, such as protection from the weather or simply to avoid being arrested for indecent exposure.