3 So rather than pure anamnesis, memory here becomes something instinctual, as with Marcel Proust’s nostalgic recollection of his childhood’s beloved madeleines. ‘It pictured the mind not as a watchtower but as a labyrinth, a subterranean place full of contrived corridors and hidden passages’. Here the act of remembering had more to do with the intuitive than the scientific. The ruins of time was seemingly one of the most important building blocks of the Romantic movement, which meant that memory was inevitably linked to a sense of loss. The Romantics understood human nature to be intrinsically dual, something which was expressed in their own longing for an impending utopia, or alternative reality, which ran alongside a feeling of strong discontent with the present as conveyed in their deep yearning for a past saturated with nostalgic sentiment. Yet, the ‘art of memory’ (as Raphael Samuel terms it) has more in common with nostalgia as practised by the Romantic movement in the nineteenth century, than with the ancient Greek understanding of mnemonics. This connection between memory, knowledge, and history is one that threads all the way through the discourses surrounding vintage clothing. Hence the Greeks meant that in order for history to exist, we humans must be able to remember in other words memory was seen as a prerequisite of human thought. The emphasis that we place on (material) memories and history, can be traced back to ancient Greece where the goddess Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was in addition also the goddess of wisdom, and the mother of Clio, the goddess of history. So, when we yearn for a past, steeped in nostalgic emotion, we are ‘looking back on people who were also looking back, longing for the golden age they supposed to have preceded them.’ 2 Hence, as a style is revived to suit contemporary tastes, it has, as the many revivals and variations of the classical Grecian style have shown, already a history of revivals behind its current one. What is interesting here is that, as dress historian Barbara Burman Baines has noted, in fashion, revivals are a constant theme. Yet another case in point might be the Grecian style of dress which has enjoyed countless revivals, in all from robes worn by the women attending Naploleon’s 1804 coronation to Fortuny’s classically based designs in the early twentieth century, a designer who himself enjoyed a revival in the 1980s. We can see this in Biba resurrecting the glamour of Hollywood’s golden era and in Marc Jacobs several decades later drawing inspiration from Biba. Historical borrowing by dress makers and fashion designers has been as frequent as in other forms of culture, and likewise individuals making use of ‘historical’ sartorial styles is not a new phenomenon. Similarly throughout history the past has continued to fascinate and inspire the present aesthetic. ACCORDING TO SOCIOLOGIST RAPHAEL Samuel, revivalism can be traced back to fifteenth century Italy, 1 a mere two centuries after fashion itself is said to have begun, when classical antiquity was rediscovered and subsequently came to inspire culture in all its forms.
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