Clothes, accessories, fabrics or nudity: throughout history, the appearance of the body has been a means of political expression, according to a grammar that is constantly being reinvented.
* Lire en français.
From the red caps ('bonnets rouges') of the Ancien Régime to the yellow vests ('gilets jaunes') of 2019, from Che Guevara's beret to the bare breasts of Femen, and to the Sunday best worn by Popular Front workers marching for recognition of their dignity: throughout history, wearing, repurposing or rejecting clothing has been a form of political expression.
Reflecting social demands, while also serving as images of the times in which they are expressed, these ‘fabrics of protest’ are at the heart of François Hourmant's latest book, which traces their recent history and older forms. In this interview, he looks back on the major milestones that have marked this history of political fashion.
The ‘fabric of protest’ at the heart of this new book can be of any colour and any material, covering the body from head to toe, or even revealing it... What exactly is it, in all its diversity?
This book sets out to study the role of fabrics in socio-political protests, but analysing the permanence of clothing as a symbol, medium and vehicle for mobilisation and resistance invites us to take a broader view.
This book is primarily a reflection on material culture. How do everyday objects become socio-political symbols, taking on one or more -often unexpected- lives? It is therefore a question of understanding the conditions of production of this 'protest wardrobe': clothing that has been repurposed (the yellow vests), discarded (the bras in the Freedom Trash Cans in Atlanta in 1968), reinvested (the red caps of 2013 in Morlaix in memory of those of 1675), reappropriated (Fred Perry polo shirts worn by Mods and American white supremacists).
But beyond the clothing itself -worn, staged and accessorised- it is also the body that is questioned: bodies painted ('La Barbe', Guerilla Girls, 'Brigades d'Action Clownesque'), masked (Anonymous, Black Block), tattooed and cross-dressed (Queer, Drag), abused (Suffragettes imprisoned and force-fed), mutilated or degraded (Punks), undressed (Hippies, Femen, Free the nipples), wearing ties or not (depending on the sartorial opposition between the French parties RN, staging its 'respectability', and LFI, rejecting 'bourgeois' codes).
These bodies must also be understood in the context of the dynamics of mobilisation and interaction. Between mobility (conventional marches, the hammered running of the Japanese Zengakuren or the Zap [flash action] of the French association Act Up) and immobility (sit-ins and die-ins), bodies expose themselves to view, but also to repression and violence. Adorned and stylised, they are also often put in danger.
Finally, we must analyse the congruence between protest repertoires and messages. While there is always an element of unpredictability and improvisation, it is also clear that there is a socio-political coherence between the medium and the message. Moreover, clothing is (often) the message. In the case of the punk safety pin, it expresses, more expressively and more than words, the nihilism of values. In the case of the yellow vest, in a media regime of visibility, it expresses the distress of these invisible populations. In other cases, it invests clownish derision as a critical counterpoint to globalised financial predation; it establishes cross-dressing as a springboard for gender protests; it makes the baring of bodies the privileged repertoire of feminist demands against patriarchal domination.
One of the interesting aspects of your book is that it addresses this issue over a long period of time. From this point of view, we can see a significant break with the industrial revolution, which reconfigured both clothing production and the scale of social exchanges. Before that, what political uses of clothing can we observe in ancient societies, characterised by artisanal clothing production, face-to-face social interactions, and often fairly limited freedom of expression?
Putting this into historical perspective allows us to highlight both the existence of a form of constant – clothing as a means of affirmation and protest – and societal, industrial, media and aesthetic developments.
In his book Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton University Press, 2014), the American historian Anthony Corbeill studied how Caesar, during the civil war, had taken to walking in a limp manner (mollis) and tying his toga in such a way that it trailed behind him: a practice considered by his opponents to be a form of deviance or sartorial misconduct. By appearing in public in this manner, Caesar undoubtedly incurred accusations of effeminacy, but above all, he was asserting his difference from the traditionalist senatorial aristocracy, the optimates.
In modern times, particularly in France, a famous page in Breton history is still symbolised by the revolt known as the ‘red caps’ (1675), a tax revolt against tax increases, including that on stamped paper, which was required for authenticated documents. A staple of the Lower Breton peasant wardrobe, the red cap – which was in fact blue in the Bigouden region, but red in central Brittany – became the symbol of this protest, to the point of giving it its name. But unlike the mobilisation of the Breton ‘red caps’ in 2013 against the eco-tax project, this emblematisation of the Ancien Régime revolt by a piece of clothing was not premeditated.
It was another cap, also red, but Phrygian, that became associated with the French Revolution. This was asserted through the deployment of profuse symbolism, with clothing and accessories (tricolour cockades, trousers) marking a break with the Ancien Régime, its system of order and its sumptuary laws, which displayed hierarchies and legislated appearances according to individuals' place in society. The ‘sans culottes’ bore witness to this abolition of clothing laws in favour of a newfound freedom, as evidenced by the proclamation of 8 Brumaire, Year II: "No person may compel any citizen to dress in a particular manner (...) everyone is free to wear whatever clothing or attire of their gender suits them.'"
In a previous book, you studied the ’wardrobe of totalitarianism". From the Revolution to the end of the Soviet project, in an age of mass movements and uniforms, how is liberal protest expressed through clothing, or more generally, appearance?
The protest against authoritarian, monarchical and imperial powers in 19th-century France gave rise to undeniable creativity. Clothing and accessories thus played an important role in the ‘arts of resistance’ evoked by the American political scientist James Scott, to the point of often being perceived and persecuted as symbols of sedition. Between ostentation and discretion, strategies were implemented to fuel this economy of revolt.
Forms of interstitial resistance were inventively developed: double-sided rings featuring the profiles of Louis XVIII or Napoleon, frock coat linings decorated with the Napoleonic bee, fleur-de-lis handkerchiefs for the Legitimists, cane knobs with Napoleon's profile, and later pipes whose shadow projected the profile of the republican Ledru-Rollin...
More visibly, a whole eloquent grammar also unfolded: ‘message hats’ such as the bolivar (inspired by the Bolivarian struggles) worn by liberals during the Restoration, then the ‘bousingot’ of the Romantics opposed to the July Monarchy.
While the contexts and extent of repression obviously modulate the use of this symbolism, the intentionality cannot be ignored. Playing on discretion and even invisibility, protest signs encourage solidarity and recognition. When made visible in public spaces, they also express opposition, defiance and provocation in a more spectacular way, while often cultivating a protective ambiguity. A system of ellipsis developed, as illustrated by the seditious flora studied by historian Emmanuel Fureix, who observed Bonapartists wearing violets (the flower of spring and eternal return), Bourbons wearing white lilies, and Republicans wearing thyme ('farigoule'). Finally, what can be said about trichology itself: the moustache of the Bonapartists, then the 'mouche' (also known as the imperial moustache) in honour of Louis-Napoléon, the sideburns of the Orleanists, the beard of the Republicans...
This ambiguity and inventiveness would also be used as a means of protest by opponents in authoritarian regimes. James Scott recounts how, in Poland, when a state of emergency was declared in 1983, Solidarnosc supporters showed their support for the union by taking to the streets every evening at the time of the propaganda broadcast, wearing their hats backwards. By manipulating the signs of everyday life and recoding them politically, Solidarnosc supporters demonstrated against the regime while protecting themselves from the risks of repression.
The end of the World War II and May 1968 ushered in a new age of individualism, with new demands and new modes of expression. Can we find traces of this in the political use of clothing?
Mass culture, the rise of individualism and the boom in audiovisual media (particularly television) substantially changed both the forms of protest and the nature of demands. The logic of spectacle grew, inviting protest groups to craft protest facades tailored to their struggles and expectations. These staged mobilisations were increasingly thought out and strategically planned. The aim was to create, in the now famous words of sociologist Patrick Champagne, ‘paper demonstrations’, i.e. collective actions designed to reach a wider audience through media coverage. This has led to a shift in the strategic location of mobilisation, from the streets to the media. A renewal of protest codes and forms can be seen in the emergence of new practices such as zap, sit in and die in. Transgression and provocation are also a response to the predictability of largely ‘routinised’ and trivialised demonstrations.
The context of 1968 was also one of intense politicisation of the body. At the heart of the demands of May 1968 and its libertarian side (liberation of desires, ‘living without downtime and enjoying without restraint’, sexual revolution, etc.), bodies became the vectors of this radical protest. From the nudity of hippies to the scarified and pierced bodies of punks, from drag performances to the tattooed bodies of queers, bodies and sometimes flesh act as a radical questioning of the social order and its values. Bodies become surfaces for the inscription and invention of these new protest scripts.
But at the dawn of the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ and the questioning of the hypnotic grand narratives that had structured the post-war period, the turn of the 2000s also saw the emergence of irony and derision, as exemplified by collectives such as Tactical Frivolity, Fairy Bloc, and Pink and Silver Bloc. Carnivalism fertilises anti-globalisation movements (Carnival against Capital, Clandestin Insurgent Rebell Clown Army) in a logic of expenditure and excess (including sound with the Infernal Noise Brigade, Barking Bateria, etc.) and turns militant laughter into an instrument of protest, but also of cohesion through the consensus it generates in public opinion.
Lately, social networks and the democratisation of image production have ushered in a new era, both in terms of ‘protest’ and self-staging. Do you see any new political uses of appearance that correspond to this?
With social networks, protest through fashion and appearance is entering an era of heightened virality and visibility. Now, an outfit, a colour, a slogan on a T-shirt or dress can become a message that is shared and repeated on a massive scale across the globe in a matter of hours. This was the case with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's performance at the 2021 Met Gala, where she wore a white dress with the resounding words ‘Tax the rich’ in bloody letters on the back.
Without substantially changing the forms of protest and the staging of bodies, social media plays a decisive role in the logic of mobilisation. The crystallisation of the yellow vest movement owes much to the Facebook groups that formed shortly after the viral video filmed from his van by Ghislain Coutard on 24 October 2018, calling for a yellow vest to be placed behind the windscreen of cars. In this regard, it is difficult not to mention the current protest movements of the ultra-connected ‘GenZ’ generation, which has found in the instant messaging system Discord a vehicle for a transnational network of mobilisation that is developing rapidly from Bangladesh to Nepal, via Sri Lanka and Indonesia, then Madagascar, and now Morocco.
What is new is the use of codes from digital culture: after the 'V for Vendetta' mask of Anonymous, we now have the three-finger salute from the film The Hunger Games, and the image of the 'One Piece' flag inspired by a manga, which depicts a pirate flag adorned with a straw hat, popular with young protesters who have taken up the banner of the hero Luffy to denounce authoritarianism and injustice.
