Notes on Psychology of Dress

Chapter Six: Appearance Management and Self Presentation

• In everyday life we are caught up in the act of appearing before others.
• We present existing and idealized images of self.
• By managing appearance we can try to shape others’ understandings of our identities.
• Clothes act as props, helping us move form one role to the next (theatre metaphor).
• Appearance management involves experimentation and self-expression.
• Displaying self to others in a social context, i.e. Self presentation.
• Our lives are interwoven with those of others around us.
• Our self-concepts provide some guidelines for dressing (“that’s me” versus “that’s not me”).]
• We are likely to dress differently when we are alone and when we are with others, The private context of self is likely to involve inner dialogue and thought process, experimentation and fantasy.
• Joanne Eicher (1981) uses the term secret self to refer to the self that may not be shared with any other person and notes that the secret self can dress to fulfil fantasies.
• Fantasy clothes may be sexual or bold colours that would not be worn in public. For example conflicts of gender and age may be apparent in the secret appearances of some troubled adolescents as noted by Michelman and Michelman (1986).
• The public context of self is especially likely to include concern about others’ perception of us.
• What motivates us to think about our self presentations? In part, desire to seek and maintain a sense of personal control/power to exert influence over present and future events. May wish to engage in self-presentation for purposes of individually or socially induced concerns.
• Public expression of self becomes an arena for constructing a compromise of actual and ideal self image (Baumeister, 1986).
• Self promotion, appearance display for perusal of others, to further the self in some way- as is common in a job interview or politics.
• A concept that enables us to understand perceptions of self across contexts is identity. An identity is the organised set of characteristics an individual perceives as representing or defining the self in given social situations.
• Although people have on self-concept, they may have contextually relevant identities (Troiden, 1984). For example, a person is likely to dress and behave differently in class than at a party, or when interacting with their mothers than with a date.
• Through the process of self-identification, individuals places (locate or identify) and express their own identities.
• Appearance management allows them to anticipate what identities they would like to have in a social situation, so they can present themselves accordingly to others.
• “All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts” – ‘As You Like It’, Act 2, scene, Shakespeare.

• Is all the world a stage, with all people as performers of roles? In looking at self concept and appearance, we have seen that clothes most likely represent more in our daily personal and social lives than costumes for performances before others. Yet appearance management as a form of behaviour may be characterized in part by performance of the self in context.
• The social- psychological perspective in sociology known as dramaturgy draws analogies between human behaviour and the theatre.

Notes on Psychology of Dress

Psychology of Dress, Hurlock, 1984, 2nd edition, AYER company, publishers inc.

• Interest in fashion is not of recent origin. Ever since pre-historic man began to adorn his naked body with coloured clays, clothing has been one of the absorbing and all-important problems of life. But never in history has fashion held such power as it does today.
• Fashion can thrive only in a social environment.
• “Both he and his people were black as sloes,

For the region they lived in was torrid;

And their principal clothes were a ring through the nose

And a patch of red paint on the forehead.” – Thomas Hood the Younger.

• Modesty, covering the body (create illusion as underneath is hidden)
• Modesty theory, popular opinion would have it that clothing was first worn as a result of the sense of modesty which is supposed to be an inborn characteristic of the human species. Human trait as no other animal shows any signs of embarrassment, though totally unclothed. Differs from time to time and country to country, depending on ideals of that country.
• Herbert Spencer says “the dress, like the badge was first worn from the wish for admiration.”
• One of the chief values in clothing is that is enables people to advertise themselves in way that will win the attention and admiration of others.
• Many who lack any ability and could not hope to rise above the “average” on their merits alone, find a satisfactory outlet for this desire for recognition through the medium of dress.
• Competitive imitation, previously clothing was used as a means to display wealth, but the style of dress worn by leaders of society is soon imitated by those of lower classes, thanks to commercial manufacturers.
• Primitive peoples have not been free from this form of self-display. In some of the African tribes, people wind around their bodies all the cloth they possess. If they are wealthy, they are so enveloped that their arms stand out almost straight and they nearly suffocate under the rays of the tropical sun. But to compensate for this discomfort is the pleasure which they derive from knowing that they are greatly envied by those who are more comfortable.
• “The extreme importance of clothes would disappear at once if the two sexes were to dress alike” – Havelock Ellis.
• It is a common belief that women alone are worshippers of fashion. Men laugh at them for their interest in dress and point it out as one of the weaknesses responsible for the title of ‘weaker sex’.
• Fashions for women have lagged behind those of men in brilliancy and elaborateness until very recent times. Usually there was a close parallel to be found in the general lines of the clothing for the two sexes, with a tendency for the lines for women to be slightly less elaborate than those for men.
• When women emerged from the home, feminine dress took on the elaborate form which characterised the clothing of men.

The Semiotics of Theatre: Costume Chapter Notes

The Semiotics of Theatre: The Theatrical Code as a System
(p. 83-92)
Erika Fisher-Lichte

The notes from this book have been unbelievebaly informative and usefull for both of my Unit 2 Word & Image documents as well as my general understanding of costume and identity, which I have no doubts will inform my practice.

Notes:
> Constitutes an actor's external appearance.
> Costume is more predominant that make-up or hair, as it is easier to perceive in purely quantitative terms.
> As a rule, the audience's first identification of a character is based on the costume.
> This relationship already appears to be developed and ordained by the social meaning of clothing: functions of theatrical costume largely coincide with the functions of which clothing can fulfill in social life.
> James Laver comes to the conclusion, "it would not be far off the mark to say that all clothes for special occasions and stylized clothes of any kind are, in effect, theatrical costume. We are at least on safe ground in suggesting that all clothes are in origin theatrical costumes."
> Clothing in particular functions as one such means of identifying oneself, Erving Goffman refers to it in this sense as an "Identity document". For clothing informs others relatively quickly and completely about the role it's wearer wishes to play. In this way it gives rise to certain expectations with regard to the future behaviour.
> Units of costume are: material, colour and form. they collaborate to give different meanings, which all relate to the identity of the person and/or character.
> Clothing is capable of communicating: age, gender, religion, distinction between social classes, status, occupation, culture/ ethnicity, climate region, historical function.
> In life these clothes have a practicality connectes (eg. labourer's uniform and it's movement and comfort). However it loses this quality when it becomes a theatrical costume (as it denotes the clothing of character x).
> Costume in theatre has no practical function to serve.
> Costume can also draw on mythological codes, govern the appearance of: Gods, angels, demons, figures from fables as well as animals.
> Use of costume as a means of specific characterization was developed above all in western theatre int his century.
> Costume is also capable of performing general symbolic function which are not exclusively related to character, but rather to the entire performance; underline the meaning of a character (eg. protagonists wear bright colours and supporting/ secondary characters wear 'colourless' muddy tones).
> A distinction has to be made between movements which are imposed by the costume and those which are called for by the costume. (eg. Skin tight dress and heels do not permit long strides; whalebone corset& farthingale permit only measured upright movements).
> Such disparencies are frequently employed as a medium for characterizing the figure, thus the character's identity emerges.
> However external appearances only provide the outlienof an identity, sketching the contours of a role that in concrete form arouses expectations which have to be met. This concretization is performed by the actor through his actions. The linguistic and paralinguistic, mimic, gestural and proxemic signs he produces fill the role outlined by the external appearance with concrete. Concluding the character's identity only takes shape in the course of a process.
> A character's identity cannot be fully constituted solely by external appearance.