78
Popular Culture Review
Pamela Fiori sums up this all encompassing universe:
Long before I ever met him, Ralph Lauren was a part of my life. For
years, I had slept on his sheets, dried myself with his towels, worn his
clothes, applied his mascara and given Polo shirts, ties and fragrances as
gifts (always gratefully received) to the male members of my family. And
although I have yet to paint a room in one of his hues or cuddle up with a
lion cub, as model Bridget Hall does in his Safari ads, I hope one day I
will. (140)
Thus by surrounding one’s self with everything “RL,” one can enter the world
of the ads! This is a world that has stood still, one that is not affected by the vagar
ies of industrial civilization. In these ads, as in the Ralph Lauren universe, there is
no reference to contemporary society. These worlds are both historical recreations
and ahistorical reconfigurations. The ads, like the stores and the boutiques, are
devoid of anything that is technological or even modem. There are no clock radios,
computers, stereos. As Rybczynski has astutely recognized, “There are pipe racks
and humidors in the bedrooms, but no cordless telephones, no televisions.... The
mechanical paraphernalia of contemporary living has been put away, and replaced
by brass-cornered gun boxes, silver bedside water carafes, and leather-bound books”
(11). Perhaps this is suggestive of the idea that the people who inhabit this world
have servants to do the mundane tasks. The fantasy is of “old world splendor” or
the “English country house” where living well is an art and a career. Here, there
are no distractions. The absence of technology reflects the focus on the past. This
is a nostalgic fantasy of a world when there were no intrusions, and in particular,
reinforces the “veneration of the archaic” as an ideal.
Clothing has the unique ability to serve, in the words of Fred Davis, as a
“visual metaphor for identity.” Thus the significance of dress and appearance as
Goffman and others have recognized should not be discounted as trivial. Like pos
sessions, clothing not only allows us to manage our ambivalences, but at the same
time, for many people, serves to codify and classify what we want people to think
of us (Davis 25). Relevant here is the fact that since people began to wear clothes,
the more expensive and elaborate the dress, then generally, the higher one’s status.
The expense of clothing was just as key to decoding who one was, as much as the
“look”. It was important for one “not to dress above one’s station” and “sumptuary
laws” periodically governed what one could wear. (Lurie 115-116) What is essen
tial here is the fact that, historically, vast gulfs separated the classes yet at the same
time one could simply tell by looking at the garment and the wearer, whether or
not it was dear. But as Lurie has remarked, beginning in the twentieth century,
“counterfeit” (re)productions, synthetics, and modem manufacturing techniques