Moda Documenta: Museu, Memória e Design – 2015
“MY COLLECTION IS MY SELF-PORTRAIT”: ABOUT BIOGRAPHICAL OBJECTS,
PATINA AND FASHION
“MINHA COLEÇÃO É MEU AUTORRETRATO”: SOBRE OBJETOS BIOGRÁFICOS,
PÁTINA E MODA
Aline Lopes Rochedo (UFRGS)1
[email protected]
Abstract: This communication goes over people, things and social relations departing from
reflections about garment lent for temporary museum exhibitions which, once the event is done,
were returned to their owners and circuits. Guided by Social Science scholars, such as
anthropologists Janet Hoskins and Grant McCracken, and ethnografic exercises, it explores
tensions around artifacts that found in the museologist phases relevant points of inflection to their
cultural biographies.
Keywords: Biographical objects; patina; fashion
Resumo: Esta comunicação versa sobre pessoas, coisas e relações sociais a partir de reflexões
acerca de indumentárias emprestadas para exposições temporárias em espaços museais e que,
uma vez encerrados os eventos, retornaram às proprietárias e a seus circuitos. Guiada por teóricos
das Ciências Sociais, como os antropólogos Janet Hoskins e Grant McCracken, e por exercícios
etnográficos, exploram-se tensões em torno de artefatos que encontraram na fase museal
relevantes pontos de inflexão para suas biografias culturais.
Palavras-chave: Objetos biográficos; pátina; moda
The biographic dress
In a small paper entitled L’objet biographique, published in 1969, Violette Morin coined two
categories for objects: protocol and biographic. According to the French sociologist, the difference
between these categories would be in the kind of relationship that each one of them establishes
with its carriers or owners – in other words, whilst that one who fits in the biographic standard ages
with the guardian and gives him an identity and a localization in time and space, the protocol does
not provide a personal experience, being replaced.
1
Attending Masters Degree in Social Anthropology at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS),
holds a bacharel in Social Communication/Journalism at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande
do Sul (PUC-RS), is a undergraduate student in Social Science at UFRGS, and is a researcher at Núcleo de
Antropologia Visual (Navisual), also at UFRGS.
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To Morin reflections, the American anthropologist Janet Hoskins (2010) added the idea
that we narrate ourselves through certain objects with which we establish some kind of devoted
relationship. There would not be only one biographical object, but an amount of them, and that we
put them to action in various situations. On the other hand, as the researcher asserts, there is a
group of things around us to which we do not establish this connection – as these objects come,
they go.
Hoskins (2010) insights have been guiding part of my thesis in Social Anthropology. In this
research, I explore the cultural biography (KOPYTOFF, 2008) of a dress created by designer Rui
Spohr, in 1971, in Porto Alegre, and bought by Heloisa Brenner, a lady of local the high society.
Forty years after this acquisition, Heloisa elected it to be her outfit for her 80th Birthday party, when
she received the guests next to her portrait taken decades before, in which she also wears the
dress. When Rui got to know that the dress was “alive”, he offered it as his 60 year-old career
synthesis as he was invited to take part at the exhibition Moda no Brasil: criadores contemporâneos
e memórias, at Museu de Arte Brasileira (MAB), in 2012, in São Paulo. In other words, through the
same object, Heloisa and Rui undertook discourses about themselves. That is why I make my
inference about the biographical character of the dress which I am following.
The fact that it has been temporarily shown in a museum space, and specially in an art
museum has made the dress encourage the designer to claim artist status, an old desire, but it
bumps into discussions between fashion and art. During the first year of my investigations, the
owner of the object also glorified the MAB exhibition, even though she was made invisible in the
narrative proposed by the curators2. Still, the return of the item to its everyday life and my research
were, slowly, potentizing disputes about the object’s future, affecting the relationships among the
designer, the consumer and the dress.
In every meeting and interview, Rui never hided from me his desire to have the garment
donated to his archive. His justification was that he feared for the costume survival. Since his client
does not have daughters, “only” granddaughters, maybe they would not give value to his unique
2
The dress by Rui integrated the unit Costureiros, which gathered items created by the once called “great
Brazilian dressmakers” from the 70’s and 80’s, such as Dener Pamplona de Abreu, Clodovil Hernandes,
Markito and Zuzu Angel, to mention a few. In the composition of the unit, there is information about date
or period of the item, the authorship and the material. There are not given information about the owners
of those items, who could be relatives, foundations, collectors or consumers.
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creation in a museum of art. Hence, the donation would increase the chances to give the dress a
safer future, even though Rui does not know yet which will be the destiny to his collection.
Heloisa, in turn, spent a lot of time changing the subject towards her intentions in relation
to the destiny of the gown acquired 40 years before to go to a party in Rio de Janeiro. Sometimes,
in the face of my insistence, she repeated that she had already asked her relatives not to dress her
up with the dress after her death, because she wanted to be cremated and that it would not be a
good idea to burn a work of art. And she would laughed.
In recent conversations, when I was getting ready to start the writing, Heloisa gave me
hints that the outfit could stay within family. An evidence was a comment that the most important
thing in the dress’ life is the fact that she, the owner, took care of it for so long. This situation moved
in a distinct direction from Rui’s words, to whom the garment was important “because now it is a
work of art”. I mean, there were conflictive connections and narratives around the same
biographical object.
Figure 1: The biographical dress. Photo: Aline Lopes Rochedo, 2014.
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An allegory called Cecilia
While going through the ethographic data and differences between Rui and Heloisa’s
perspectives about the future and the importance of the dress, I was in Italy to participate in a
congress in Milan. The week before the event, though, I visited the exhibition Donne protagoniste,
at Galleria del Costume, in Pitti Palace, in Florence, experience which added new insights to my
investigation and opened new questions around the idea of biographical object.
The exhibition mixed pieces of garment from different periods, pictures and art and was a
tribute to Italian personalities, exalting their styles. It put together objects from the institution as well
as pieces borrowed from private collections. And that is the point to which I would like to call
attention: items of garment displayed in temporary exhibitions, as Rui’s dress, that go back to them
ordinary lives after being seen by the public in a museum.
Before going into the room dedicated to Cecilia Matteucci Lavarini, from whom I had never
heard before, I spent some time in front of her picture and a text assigned to her. Haughty, thin and
vain, she looks at the photographer. I could not tell her age, but she was a lady. I got my attention
at the introduction: “an ecletic collector of haute couture and Oriental costumes”. Next, I read
Cecilia’s words:
“Fashion is the present, novelty and curiosity, but at the same time, it is knowing
the past. For those who have the skill, it means even being able to see what
tomorrow will be.
I love to stand out from the crowd when I dress. I always look for something
that is beautiful, precious and even difficult to wear as long as it is unique. I
have the gift, or talent, of being able to wear the original and the impossible.
My collection is my self-portrait... it is a lonely fulltime job, always done thinking
of a hypothetical destination: the museum.”
In the room, I mean, there were two rooms dedicated to Cecilia, I saw Yves Saint Laurent’s,
Prada’s, Nina Ricci’s, Comme des Garçons’, Chanel’s, jewelry... According to an employee, the
collector selected and organized the objects, arranging combinations which reflected her. The
protagonist in that part was physically absent, but morally present, and eclipsed the haute couture
legends by her extravagancy. Clothing and accessories made Cecilia be Cecilia, and Cecilia made
her clothes and her accessories to stand out from the crowd. Objects narrated Cecilia, and Cecilia
was the narrative of her objects. When they were out from there, certainly they would adorn the
guardian to continue being what they became since they entered her collection and circuits.
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I saw in the exhibition the composition of Cecilia’s biographical object, a way to understand
her. I left the museum thinking about the self-portrait of the character and in Miller’s reflection (2013)
when he says that people make things and things make people. I pushed myself not to judge. I
wanted to understand that mixture of antique and novelty, colors and styles, frivolity, ostentation
and humor.
Figure 2: Part of Cecilia’s collection, at Galleria del Costume, in Florence. Photo: Aline Lopes Rochedo, 2014.
Going through sites and blogs, I found out that Cecilia lives in Bologna, Italy, surrounded
by labels – the majority was acquired from the 80’s on –, objects and art. The widow of a steel
baron gives not too many information about her family’s past, besides the fact that the grandfather
was the owner of a department store in XIX century. The husband’s name does not appear in the
texts.
Cecilia was born “sometime” in Tuscany. And that she does not mind talking out loud about
her collection: there are more than three thousand items, and part has been already promised to
be donated to the Pitti Palace’s Galleria del Costume.
It seems like there are no pieces inherited, but an ensemble put together during 30 years.
As data are repeated by the media and blogs, I expose myself and say that the collection stimulated
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one of Cecília’s desires: to stand out from the crowd, to be unique, more exclusive than any of the
artifacts around her.
In common, I would say that Heloisa’s dress and Cecília’s collection share the fact that
gather, in their cultural biographies, a museum phase – and that they had already lived their
commercial and unique phases (APPADURAI, 2008; KOPYTOFF, 2008). Both left the museums
and returned to their circuits, that is, at the same time they are objects of museums, they are
personal objects. I do not ignore that the Italian’s artifacts have a curriculum more diversified, once
their inalienablety was reverted sometimes in auctions and second hand stores, but Heloisa’s
biographical object is dense in affections, because she wore it for her 80 th Birthday party, the last
Birthday celebrated with husband and one of her four children, both dead.
Would Cecília have anything to do with Heloisa? I believe so – the declared esteem for
objects and the ability to narrate themselves through them. The Italian and the Brazilian lent
personal objects to temporary fashion exhibitions. In Celília’s case, there were lots of items; in
Heloisa’s case, only one dress created by Rui in 1971, when the designer was having the best time
in his career. There are many narratives in unique strategies of social distinction (BOURDIEU,
2008).
Heloisa and marks from the past
Heir of the Brazilian rural aristocracy, Heloisa is not as allegoric as Cecilia. She was
educated in Catholic school attended by famer’s daughters and learned the good society customs
and values. At the age of 18, she married a young doctor, with whom she had four sons. In the
1980’s, separated from her first husband, she married another doctor, remaining in her network.
Her residence and dressing style are contained and classic, even though Heloisa glorifies bright
colors. She has austere furniture inherited from her family, objects given by her grandmother and
the clan memories. As well as Cecília, she likes auctions, art and antiques.
My informer does not have an haute couture collection nor is she a consumer of cloths at
auctions – not in the same way as the Italian lady. The act of repeating the same dress by Rui forty
years after the purchase corresponded to a practice more and more into disuse in contemporary
world, but still common among members of traditional families: the recovery of artifacts called
vintage from their own closets.
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The expression vintage was coined by wine producers to mark the year of harvest and
cannot be restricted to clothing (there are vintage cars, jewelry, refrigerators), but it was embedded
and disseminated in the fashion field as a mark for rare clothes, authenticity (CERVELLON;
CAREY; HARMS, 2012, p. 957). There is another definition that gained space since the 90’s:
vintage would stand for clothes created between the 20’s and the 80’s. Before that, the items would
be classified as antiques, and after, as modern or contemporary.
This strategy of social distinction (BOURDIEU, 2008) is called patina by McCracken (2003)
and acts as a physical and symbolic proof of long-term status authenticity through objects that carry
sings of time in their surfaces. This is not a recent practice – McCracken says its origins are in XVI
century –, but offers advantages compared to other antidotes assumed by the old money keepers
to make themselves different from the new riches.
When I first met Heloisa at her home, in Porto Alegre, I learned that many of the artifacts
around us did belong to her ancestors, and that some were bought by her and her husband in
actions and antique stores. While she narrated her objects, I realized some of them helped Heloisa
to outline her family tree and talk about her relatives, network, tastes and consumption patterns,
and that he was what McCracken would call curatorial consumer in a modern world (2003). Even
when she talks about items bought from antique stores and auctions, Heloisa tries to relate them
to places, facts or people, adding information about uses or places of production. Her words
communicate a responsibility for continuity and belonging to a certain group or to someone. It
connects past and present.
In one of my visits, Heloisa called my attention to tags attached to objects, furniture and
art. She was classifying her heritage in lots to share among her heirs – and she wanted a fair share.
This was the moment for me to ask her about the future for the dress: in which lot it would be set?
“I do not know, I have not thought about it yet. Now that it is a piece of art... I think I am going to
put it in the middle of the living room”, she answered.
I thought it was prudent not to tell Rui’s desire to receive the garment as donation for his
archive, because there was one year to go and would not have to solve the question right away.
But I suspected there were higher chancers for Heloisa to give the dress to one of her
granddaughters. In Rui’s archive, maybe the story of her family would get lost. The gown had
already acquired patina and was able to authentic the owner’s status. Not visually, because there
is little wear out over the fabric, preserved with diligence by the owner, but with the 1971 portrait
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displayed. It was for the god preservation that Heloisa decided to make the dress her self-portrait:
with de certification of antiquity, she was not someone new in her social position.
Final considerations
McCracken (2003) says that, from XVIII century on, fashion went into scene as a reactive
strategy to patina, that is to say, as a form to claim status that is contrast with practices of exaltation
of stock layers of tradition through generations, so in vogue within nobility from XVI century on.
Today, these two forms of consumption and the relation with the objects coexist in our society.
Heloisa is one type which is rare. She appreciates patina to legitimate herself and to claim for what
“always” belonged to her, existing in the dress and with the dress existing in her because the family
and the tradition are both together and that is how it is supposed to be. Cecilia, the Italian with more
than three thousand pieces, narrates herself through the artifacts bought from someone else,
rearranged and reworked in an exuberant and frenetic collection to represent her and to be equally
represented by her.
Joining the challenge proposed by Kopytoff (2008), to follow things in themselves, in their
circulation and social interplay, believing that this process can take us to places other than those
that we could access following only human beings, I think in Cecilia and Heloisa from their artifacts
and a perceive characteristics about lifestyle, values and relationships, but also a recognize the
notion of biographical object as a strong tool for narrative construction. People cannot be
understood apart from their things.
Both Heloisa and Cecília have their artifacts as their self-portraits. As Hoskins (2010)
indicate, stories generated around objects promote a way of introspection and ease discussions
about important questions for these subjects and promote reflections about the meaning of their
lives (HOSKINS, 2010, p. 2).
In parallel to narrative constructions and reconstructions, the objects which belong to
people acquire a hybrid form of comprehension in other circles far from their fields. In this
movement between extraordinary and ordinary spaces, closets and museums, private and public,
these artifacts gain new senses and change social relationships around them. Because these
garment are not innocent. They act upon subjects, create expectations, provoke conflicts,
accumulate memory and reinforce what Miller (2013) underpins: they are not superficial. And Rui
knows it.
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