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The Concept of Fashion in
The Arcades Project Peter Wollen 
ConvoluteBinWalterBenjamin’s
ArcadesProject 
isdevotedtofash-ion.
1
It contains no less than ninety-one items, but it would be quite wrongto assume that all of Benjamin’s citations and observations on the sub- ject of fashion—more specifically, on fashion with respect to clothes—areto be found only there. Remarks devoted to fashion are scattered through-outthe restofthe volume,hidden awayin variousotherbatchesofmaterial.When Georges Bataille invited Benjamin to lecture at the Collège de Soci-ologie in 1939, Benjamin suggested fashion as his subject. It is a recurrenttheme within
The Arcades Project 
and one to which Benjamin gave con-siderable thought, although he was sometimes quite inconsistent in his atti-tudes toward it, as he veered between viewing fashion, on the one hand, asa manifestation of commodity culture—or, more specifically, of commodityfetishism—and,ontheotherhand,asthemanifestationofalong-repressedutopian desire, to be reenergized at a moment of historical awakening (
AP 
,
1. Walter Benjamin,
The Arcades Project 
, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). Hereafter, this work is cited parentheticallyas
AP 
and by convolute.
boundary 2 
30:1, 2003. Copyright © 2003 by Duke University Press.
 
132 boundary 2 / Spring 2003
B1a,2; K2a,4). In numerous remarks on the subject of fashion, Benjaminmade use of his concept of the ‘‘dialectical image,’’ a concept he seems tohave seen as the keystone of his entire enterprise but that, given the unfin-ished nature of the project, still remains somewhat obscure.As Ulrich Lehmann points out in his recent book
Tigersprung 
,
2
anabsorbing and pioneering study of fashion in modernity, Benjamin’s writ-ings on the subject of modernity did not simply cite Charles Baudelaire butalso derived conceptually from Baudelaire, as demonstrated, for example,by his observation in
Central Park 
that ‘‘Baudelaire was perhaps the first toconceive of an originality appropriate to the market, which was at the time just for that reason more original than any other.’’
3
The important assump-tionsherearethat‘‘originality’’isavirtue—onethatBenjaminhimselfexhib-ited—and that it should be considered specifically in its historical context.Benjamin was ready to endorse Baudelaire’s wish to find the originalityappropriate to
his 
context, that of a newly burgeoning market economy.Théophile Gautier had mistakenly understood Baudelaire’s acceptance offashion as paradigmatic for modern aesthetics as implying a surrender tothe market. On the contrary, Baudelaire had proposed that the power oforiginality or novelty could be reawakened in the future, serving as inspira-tion for a further wave of change.In this context, Lehmann cites Karl Marx’s observation, in
The Eigh- teenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon 
, that the great French revolutionaries‘‘Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon, the heroes aswell as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, per-formed their task in Roman costume and with Roman phrases, the task ofunchaining and setting up modern
bourgeois society 
.’’
4
Subsequently, link-ing Baudelaire directly to Marx, Benjamin noted, in his
Theses on the Phi- losophy of History 
, that the site of history ‘‘is not homogeneous and emptytime,butonefilledbynow-time.ForRobespierre,theRomeofantiquitywasthus charged with now-time and blasted from the continuum of history. TheFrench Revolution regarded itself as Rome reincarnate. It quoted ancientRome as fashion quotes a past attire. Fashion has the scent of the mod-
2. Ulrich Lehmann,
Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity 
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).3. See Lehmann,
Tigersprung 
, 201, on Benjamin’s use of Simmel in his discussion ofBaudelaire, to be found in
Central Park 
, fragments, ca. 1938–1940. Walter Benjamin,
Charles Baudelaire: Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus 
(A lyric poet in the eraof high capitalism) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 160.4. Karl Marx,
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon 
, in
Marx and Engels: Collected Works 
, vol. 11 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979), 104. Cited in Lehmann,
Tiger- sprung 
, 36.
 
Wollen / The Concept of Fashion 133
ern wherever it stirs in the thicket of what has been. It is the tiger’s leap(
Tigersprung 
)intothepast.’’
5
FromBaudelairethetorchpassedtoStéphaneMallarmé, who actually edited a fashion magazine,
La Dernière Mode 
, andfrom Mallarmé, via Guillaume Apollinaire’s
The Poet Assassinated 
, to thesurrealists—André Breton or Max Ernst, with his lithograph
FIAT MODES—pereat ars 
. We should also remember that Breton himself worked for thegreat couturier Jacques Doucet, just as Man Ray worked for Paul Poiret,and both Salvador Dalí and Meret Oppenheim worked for Elsa Schiaparelli.Surrealism and fashion mingled, just as surrealism and Marxism mingled.However, to understand Benjamin’s views on fashion more fully, it isalso necessary to look more closely at the history of fashion as it developedin nineteenth-century France. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,as Philippe Perrot points out in his book
Fashioning the Bourgeoisie 
, cloth-ing in France was predominantly ‘‘made-to-measure’’ rather than ‘‘ready-to-wear.’’
6
As a result of the Revolution, the initiative in fashion had begun topass from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, which initiated its own systemof fashion, replacing the old model, which had been built on an aristocraticmonopoly of luxury. The new system was one that required an ability to dis-criminate,tomakejudgmentsoftaste.Withinthisnewsystem,wealthratherthan rank as such became important, but also the ability to deploy wealth,throughfashion,asaformofsymboliccapital,onethatattractedbothatten-tion and envy, as well as respect.Under the ancien régime, the making and selling of clothes hadbeenregulatedbyguildrulesandregulations.Thecustomerboughtmateri-als from the draper and then took them to the tailor. Tailors, who dressedwomen as well as men, could not legally stock or sell cloth, and, conversely,draperscouldnotlegallymakeclothes.Originallyanonymous,tailors,dress-makers, and milliners eventually succeeded in building public reputationsfor themselves and their work. Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker, Rose Bertin,for example, became a great celebrity, and tales were widely told about herimpertinence as well as her skill. In time, tailors and dressmakers openedworkshops and boutiques in the Rue Saint-Honoré, to which aristocratsthemselves would go, rather than the dressmakers going to the aristocrats.TheRevolutiondidlittletochangethesystem,butitdidchangetheclientele.
5. Walter Benjamin,
Illuminations 
, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York:Schocken, 1968), 261. My translation.6. Philippe Perrot,
Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century 
, trans. Richard Bienvenu (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).Hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically as
FB 
.
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