University of Rhode Island  
Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design

TMD 402K The Art and Science of Fashion - Speaker Summaries

Karl Aspelund: “Extensions of Self: media, history, and the perception of style in the post-modern age”, by Clarissa Nault

            Karl Aspelund’s presentation titled “Extensions of Self: media, history, and the perception of style in the post-modern age” was challenging in the best ways, requiring of his audience a level of focus and progressive comprehension rarely seen at URI.

            In the space of one hour Aspelund gave us a comprehensive introduction to post-modernism and how it is different from modernism. He then proceeded to ask the question, “now what?” More importantly, he examined possible answers. From this framework the importance of post-modernism in society and its relationship to style, and the perception thereof, is starkly revealed. Aspelund presented four philosophers that he feels made the most significant contributions to defining post-modernism.

McLuhan addressed the effects of media on our interactions with the world, including each other. Aspelund used the electric light as an example of a technology that caused a fundamental shift in how we live our lives. As technology progresses we reach a point where we have a “total field of inclusive awareness.” While the inclusiveness of our awareness is important to post-modernism, the important thing to McLuhan is the technology itself and the extent of the change it wreaks on our lifestyles and perceptions, thereby nullifying our old patterns of “psychic and social adjustment.”

Baudrillard insists that we have passed into a “hyper-real” state of existence where we can find no reality. Everything that influences us is just “simulacra”, images of images. Cara Landy talked about a great example of this when she discussed receiving orders from people who had seen her hand bags in magazines or on television and they would call and say “I want the bag that was on Oprah” and they did not care about color or cost, they just had to have what they saw people with on television. 

When we have access to all the (hyper-real) information we could ever want, we become inundated with more than we can ever hope to integrate; the information will even contradict itself, and we become skeptics. Lyotard defines post-modernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives.” Metanarritives are the stories that people have used to define their place in the world.

            Derrida insists that as people try to function in the overwhelming, fast-paced cynicism, we have to question the mental framework with which we interact with the world. We have to ask questions: does ‘it’ have to be pretty, useful, functional? We must answer without prejudice, but most importantly we must ask the questions in the first place. This deconstruction of our patterns of “psychic and social adjustment” shows us that those patterns (which could also be called categories or definitions) are indeed nullified, and the information which contradicted itself under the old metanarrative system no longer does.

            All this philosophy relates to style, which is closely linked to our identity and our very existence, in three ways. Having the capability to perceive the past and pick and choose our identity from it also gives us the unique capability to reject it, and rather than inevitable progress in a linear fashion, we find ourselves at a liminal moment: everything is possible. We can invent ourselves from a clean slate with no old definitions, categories, or identities to limit us. However, confronted with a future entirely unknown, we feel scared, apprehensive, and isolated. We long for structure. The second effect of all this philosophy on style is that we are enamored with what we see as ‘simpler times’. The clean elegance, and luxuriant lifestyles that we think of as art deco fashions is recreated in movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and The Aviator. Tribalism revives in the form of renewed interest in aboriginal cultures like the Maori, phenomena like the casual kilt, museum exhibits like the Met’s “Wild: Fashion Untamed”, and the fanatic affiliation that more and more everyday people feel with sports teams.

            Style is intrinsically bound up with our ideas of identity as societies and as individuals. Everywhere we look we can see the proofs of post-modernism on how we shop and what we buy, on the availability and diversity of merchandise, the demand for customized apparel, and the speed with which styles rise, and fall, and rise again. Aspelund’s answer to the question of “now what?”, which could also be phrased as “who are we?”, is: anything.