While the first three Issues come out of the Analysis of the intensive period studied (2000 and 2001), the fourth has yet to be unfolded in an Analysis of the extensive period studied (2002-2009).
The approach in the Rhizomatic Position is inspired by the rhizome
understood as both a botanical term and a philosophical concept. Roughly speaking, the botanical approach will offer the image that visualizes trends according to the sixth Position as an organic, relational process, while the rhizome as a philosophical concept will offer the analytical tools for developing the new Position.
Rhizome as botanical term
I have chosen the oak fern (Gymnocarpium dryopteris) as the vehicle for visualizing the Rhizomatic Position. The rhizome is not unique to the fern and there might have been potentials in choosing a different plant with rhizomes such as dangerously lovely lily of the valley or the invasive couch grass with medical properties. However, because of the fascinating cultural history, visual elegance, and sense of mystery shrouding the fern, I opted for the oak fern678 (see Illustration 28).
The botanical diversity of the fern also lends itself visually to the world of fashion trends with their continuous variation of styles, fabrics, colors, textures, patterns, silhouettes, and the multitude ways of wearing them. The majority of ferns
678 In fact, not all types of fern have a rhizome. Nevertheless, I will be looking at the fern as such when unfolding the cultural history of fern. As the role of the fern in the Rhizomatic Position is a vehicle for visualizing the model rather than an actual botanical phenomenon, this inconsistency should be acceptable.
make their homes in moist tropical forests, but they also venture into cold temperate zones, bodies of water, and even the desert. Dating back more than 300 million years, there are about 12,000 different species. The highest ferns can reach an impressive 12 meters, and the colors range through the full spectrum of green but also white, silver, golden yellow, red, pink, copper, burgundy, and even blue. Fern fronds come in different textures and can be thick and leathery, succulent, hairy, waxy, or wafer-thin.
And while fern can be used for purely decorative purposes in landscaping, as houseplants, or cut foliage, the spectrum of fern – as with fashion trends – is polymorphous ranging from the delicious fiddleheads of the cinnamon fern to the dangerous Japanese climbing fern. And relevant within the framework of this dissertation – at least at a metaphoric level – is Ceratopteris or C-fern, which is generally perceived as a model plant for teaching and research.679
Unfurling the fern
It seems natural, so to speak, to take a botanical approach to something as organic and sprawling as trends in fashion. And the distance between the catwalk, the sidewalk, and a walk in the woods is not as far as one might first assume. The natural world of the fern is as visually complex and geographically diverse as that of trends. Flora and the nature of trends have quite a bit in common. Not in the sense of floral patterns, sustainable design, or hula skirts with coconut bras. The connection between plants and trends lies at a deeper level, literally subterranean.
Rhizomes – also referred to as creeping rootstalks or rootstocks – are horizontal, underground stems that strike new roots down into the soil, and shoot new stems up to the surface. While the oak fern propagates through spores, it also spreads by vegetative reproduction through its rhizome. Depending on the context, this underground procreation might be described as invasive by gardeners trying to rid their flowerbeds of the vigorous bishop’s weed; or inspirational by trend researcher interested in understanding the nature of trends through the sprawling network of the fern rhizome. This organic approach is concerned with the complicated, subterranean structure – the trend mechanism – that produces these surface manifestations – the trend. As we will see, one of they key potentials in this approach is the tools it
provides for understanding trends as moving slowly according to variation rather than
679 A Natural History of Ferns, 46-47.
rapidly according to what John Rae called ‘ceaseless revolution.’680 Returning to the image of the oak fern, the underground rhizome keeps growing, changing, and moving while the overground fronds wither and others are shot up. This process will be explored in the Analysis concerning the way the Retro Trend has developed in the first decade of the Noughties.
The Victorian Fern Craze
As discussed in the Analysis, trends are not exclusive to fashion. There are trends in everything from food and power tools to management theories and children’s books.
There are even trends in the down-to-earth world of plants. Not only in decorative flower arrangements but also in such wild growths as the fern. One example is seen in 1830, when England was swept by an insatiable appetite for ferns, that was later referred to as the ‘Victorian Fern Craze,’681 or pteridomania to use the Latin term.
The trend was initiated by the increased interest in ferns by both professional and amateur botanists, which by 1860 moved indoor to become a decorative motif until he 1890s.
Ferns of all types were collected from the countryside and shipped in from the colonies. It was also the trend to decorate the home with china, textiles and furniture with fern motifs.682 Victorian book publishers also benefited as well as fuelled the Fern Craze683 as did Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, who invented the almost airtight containers – referred to as Wardian cases – used for storing and transporting the popular plants. The example of the Fern Craze demonstrates that already in the 19th century, social, mercantile, seductive, and zeitgeist motors were driving trends.
True to form, the Fern Craze gave rise to especially Zeitgeist explanations of the rise of the trend. Some suggested, that the ruffled ferns and coiled fiddleheads went well with other elements of Victorian style. Others ascribed the fern trend to how it reflected the somber mood of the time because the plants supposedly “love a dull, quiet atmosphere.”684
680 Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy, Ibid. 266.
681 “At Home with Ferns,” Landscaping Indoors: Bringing the Garden Inside.
682 A Natural History of Ferns, 250.
683 According to Moran, 14 books were published on ferns during the Craze. He quotes the Phytologist, a journal of the times, saying: ”The literature of ferns ... surpasses that of all the other branches of botanical science together,” 254.
684 “At Home with Ferns,” Landscaping Indoors: Bringing the Garden Inside. Moran is quoting ”one Victorian writer,” 32.
The fern experienced a revival in the 1980s when especially the waxy Boston fern, Nephrolepis – and its plastic counterpart – was found in countless windowsills next to other graceless houseplants such as the yucca. And the fern is about to be subjected to an entirely different type of fashion revival thanks less to its delicate green leaves than to how the plant is structured underground. Because the ruffled fern does have all the frills required in the fashion world. Just think of the transparency of the lacy leaves when the sunlight hits the paper-thin structure, or the seductive drama of the unfurling fiddleheads in the spring. And the fern is not just beautiful and sensuous; there is even a natural history of sexual mystery, which never hurts in fashion trends.
The mystery stems from the fern’s lack of seeds and flowers, an absence that shrouded fern propagation in ambiguity for centuries. Until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century, it was assumed that fern seeds existed but were
invisible simply because no one had ever seen one. It was believed that if anyone ever did see one, invisibility would be conferred to that special person. It was also held;
that the seed could only be collected at midnight on Midsummer’s Night Eve, the exact moment it fell from the plant. “You could catch it by stacking twelve pewter plates beneath a fern lead; the seed would fall through the first eleven plates and be stopped by the twelfth. If you came up empty-handed, it was because goblins and fairies, roaming freely that one night of the year, had snatched the seed as it fell.”685 The sense of mystery concerning how and why trends change still applies to
contemporary trend theories as we have seen for instance in relation to fashion and trend forecasting. The forecaster is assumed to be a sort of medium that possesses a special sense that is able to register future trends.
While the mystery of fern propagation was eventually solved in the 17th century, when botanists discovered that ferns reproduce sexually by tiny dust-like spores, the process never lost its poetic, even magical air not unlike the ephemeral wonder associated with trend mechanisms.
The fertile fern connections are invisible and only the physical manifestation in the triangular shape of the leaves can be grasped. The same can be said of trend mechanisms, at least at first glance. The procreation of trends is not evident, but we see the result of the hidden process in the concrete shape on the surface.
685 “At Home with Ferns,” Landscaping Indoors: Bringing the Garden Inside, 16.
Rhizome as philosophical concept
The rhizome is popular outside its earthy origin. Carl Jung (1875-1961) took up the rhizome as an image of life. In the prologue of his memoirs Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken (1962), he states: ”Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away – an ephemeral apparition.”686
While a fitting metaphor for life, the rhizome also seems to hold potential for describing the invisible mechanisms generating the overground ‘ephemeral
apparitions’ in fashion. However, Jung does not go as far in exploring the
philosophical nature and structure of the rhizome as do French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (1930-1992). They take the rhizome to new conceptual heights in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism &
Schizophrenia (ATP) (1987).687 Here the rhizome is used as part of a philosophical reaction to knowledge based on binary logic, what Deleuze and Guattari imagine as a tree. This brings to mind the diagram in Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916)688 that describes the two faces of the linguistic sign. The diagram shows the signifiant as the word ‘arbor’ and the signifié as the drawing of a tree. In ATP, this is referred to as ‘arborescent systems:’ “It is odd how the tree has
dominated Western reality and all of Western thought, from botany to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, ontology, all of philosophy.”689
The stable structure of the tree with its vertical trunk, roots, and crown is perceived of a system organized according to Dichotomy as in signifier and signified, true and false, self and other; as well as Hierarchy and Point of Origin: “Arborescent systems are hierarchical systems with centers of significance.”690 This dense
statement with its reference to a centralized system organized according to hierarchies, brings to mind what has been treated in the previous chapters: The
686 Erindringer, drømme, tanker, 16. My translation.
687 Because the rhizome offers such historic, visual, organic, and philosophical material with which to develop the Rhizomatic Position, the result should yield enough analytical potential to justify the use of a relatively short text – “Introduction: Rhizome” ATP pp. 3-25 – as one of the main sources of inspiration for this Position and the exclusion of such prominent concepts in ATP as ‘Body without Organs’, ‘Plane of Immanence,’ and ‘Abstract Machines.’
688 Not made by Saussure but inserted by a publisher posthumously.
689 ATP, 18.
690 ATP, 16.
centralized and polycentric fashion systems with the fashion cities, brands and
designers at the top of the Hierarchy, and the meaning of a trend as a direct reflection, or the body as the stage of shifting contemporary seductiveness all associated with a conception of a center of significance; and the arborescent system of the social elite, fashion leaders and the process of emulation motivated by the symbolic class struggle and social contagion.
In contrast to the arborescent system, the rhizome is an open and dynamic system without a center that operates horizontally seemingly by motoring itself, what Deleuze in an interview in Negotiations (1990) refers to as “an uncertain system.”691 The rhizome is dynamic in the sense of being constantly in a state of transformation.
Or what in ATP is referred to as becoming which is a process that is not to be judged by some final result but by the way it proceeds and its power to continue.692 With reference to the notion of the ‘vertical flow hypothesis,’693 discussed in relation to trickle-down in Chapter 3, the Rhizomatic Position proposes what might be termed the ‘horizontal flow hypothesis’ that is concerned not with the Social Mechanism but with the pure mechanisms of trends as such. The rhizome as a pure mechanism is described in ATP as “a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing […] a process that is perpetually prolonging itself.”694 While the focus in each of the Positions in the Toolbox was on something else extending the trend – status anxiety, sexual allure, trade opportunities or current events – the Rhizomatic Position explores the potential of a pure mechanism in trends that cultivates itself. What this involves and how it may strengthen the Toolbox is the focus of the following parts, which will bring in the Eurowoman material from the extensive period bringing the Toolbox up to date.
From temporal to spatial
While both the Mapping and Analysis demonstrated the analytical potential of the five Positions, attention was also brought to limitations of the Toolbox. In comparing the three versions of the Retro Trend – Granny Chic, Glam, Mix – a number of weaknesses – Issues – were brought out among others the direction of emulation
691 Negotiations, 149.
692 Ibid., 146.
693 “Fashion Adoption,” Perspectives of Fashion, 32.
694 ATP, 21.
within a fragmented social Hierarchy; a complication of the role between consumer and designer; the confusion of opposing notions of Contemporary Seductiveness;
clashing narratives concerning dominant moods and ideal; and the rise of the seasonless cycle that questioned the lifespan and even the future life of trends.
The Rhizomatic Position is an attempt to organize and resolve these and other questions that were raised in the Analysis. Most of these concerns are rooted in an understanding of trends as related to a temporal process. However, what seemed like inconsistency and contradiction in the Analysis of the intensive period might turn out to be symptomatic of a shift in trend mechanisms when studying the extensive period.
Thereby, the study of the Line of Development of the Retro Trend holds the key for developing new approaches to trend mechanisms while at the same time resolving limitations within the existing Positions.
The conceptual framework provided by the rhizome opens for new ways of approaching and describing trend mechanisms as a spatial rather than strictly temporal phenomenon. In ATP, the rhizome is described in spatial terms that might be
transferred to the Retro Trend: “The rhizome operates by variation, expansion,
conquest, capture, offshoots.”695 This spatial approach is organic and should allow for an open and dynamic model that can contain the contradictions, describe trends as they evolve rather than after the fact, and introduce a multi-direction process of development that moves according to variation rather than revolution.
The rhizome is not a closed, isolated system but defined exactly by being open and connectable: “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order.”696 This arborescent approach was seen in the Analysis on a general level for instance when the Social Mechanism attempted to fix a social order, which as we saw becomes difficult when fashion leaders range from Alexis Carrington, Granny, and the homeless; and when the Zeitgeist Position attempted to plot the dominant mood as modest and proper in Granny Chic and conspicuous and vulgar in Glam which came to pose a contradiction.
While the EW material proved abundant in visualizing the five Positions, the material is also rich with examples of how trends might be moving according to spatial conditions. Especially the third version, Mix, outlines how the Retro Trend
695 ATP, 21.
696 Ibid., 7.
could be said to constitute an open and connectable system that seems to be
prolonging itself rather than other forces – for instance social, economic, or erotic – motoring the change. Because Mix is characterized by bringing the two first versions of Retro together, it is by definition open and connectable. This was seen in the beauty spread “Remix”697 that connected the glamorous 1940s as represented by Rita Hayworth and the provocative early-1980s as represented by Nina Hagen. It seems to be the alliance between the two, the force of conquest and curiosity of offshoots that fuels the version rather that Hayworth and Hagen as centers of significance. The pure mechanism is found in the process of joining the two in a spatial construction rather than a temporal.
With “Remix” in mind, it is interesting to study the Line of Development in the extensive period of what is in fact just a small detail of the Retro Trend:
Hayworth. I bring this up to give an impression of the dimensions and expansion of the three versions when observed through the Rhizomatic Position, before going into detail with each of the four Issues. What will be interesting to determine is to what extent the Retro Trend has changed through mutations, variations and alliances, and whether some of the elements are varied in more subtle ways without however remaining the same.
In the December 2009 issue of Eurowoman, Rita Hayworth is presented as an embodiment of 1940s glamour described as the “Timeless Classic”698-type of
glamour699 in the fashion feature “Glamorous in 5 Ways.”700 Just as in the intensive period, Hayworth was associated with the classic elegance of Granny Chic but in association with Nina Hagen for effect. Here she is also in the company of various fashion icons and immaterial revivals. Audrey Hepburn as seen in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), who was featured several times in Granny Chic701 is a
personification of the “Hollywood-”type of glamour with actress Scarlett Johansson wearing a “vintage-look” suggesting the mutation of the material revival into the immaterial.702 More of the threads from the intensive study are woven into this single
697 EW33, 146-151.
698 “Tidløs klassiker.”
699 EW141, 55.
700 “Glamourøs på 5 måder,” EW141, 54-56.
701 Some examples are EW27, 20, EW30, 20, EW36, 22.
702 EW141, 56.
fashion feature such as the reference to model Jerry Hall703 in the type of glamour termed “1980s Goddess”704 as well as more references to Dynasty: “the revival of the
fashion feature such as the reference to model Jerry Hall703 in the type of glamour termed “1980s Goddess”704 as well as more references to Dynasty: “the revival of the