IndexDiscussionConclusionReferencesUnder the floors of the immense museum, in the light of day, not exposed to everyday life and the everyday words that exchange and echo round and round through the museum hall and disappear out into the apron and light of day, which surrounds the city. Even guests allowed in the basement archives can't see it. Maybe it doesn't even exist, maybe it's just a myth whispered within the walls of the old museum. A myth of the past that spreads its dusty light on all the other stories displayed and materialized all around in the glass cases. It is locked in a dark room, since the slightest exposure to light would be absorbed by the fragile silk fibers with enough power to turn them into dust. This is the shirt that Charles I (1600-1649) wore during his execution. Or at least that's how the story goes. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThat's the problem with history. No witness can prove whether Charles I really wore it, and the stories, the drawings, the paintings of that cold January day are only fragments, small bricks of testimony. Some things we just hold onto because we want to keep the story alive through our imagination. Its validity is secondary. That's how myths are. History tends to shape itself based on the approach or interpretation to be used, and when it comes to fashion it is particularly difficult because objects are usually not fixed in a glass case but used and reinterpreted through materialization in the present. This comparison is central to Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Especially in his Convolute B 'Fashion' where he writes: “The comparison with the fashions of previous generations is a far more important issue than we commonly suppose. And one of the most significant aspects of historical costume is that… it undertakes such a comparison… The question of costume deeply touches the life of art and poetry, where fashion is both preserved and superseded.” The purpose of this essay is to explore how we encounter fashion histories in contemporary fashion and clothing, and to consider whether or not to agree that fashion's constant reinterpretation of the past signals both the preservation and supersession of those original styles . To find out I will examine how the myths of Charles I and Marie Antoinette are still kept alive through contemporary fashion and media, and how contemporary fashion's interpretation of the past is linked to myths and death. To find an answer to how the reinterpretation of past fashion signals both the preservation and overcoming of those original styles and to explore fashion histories in contemporary fashion, I will discuss this with Benjamin's thoughts on fashion and death with the concept of symbolic value by Jean Baudrillard: The myth of the origin. On 30 January 1649 Charles I of England was beheaded in front of the Banqueting House in London, in front of the testimony of the public. His shirt, according to curator of fashion and decorative arts Hilary Davidson, is a knitted blue silk waistcoat, probably used as a T-shirt, which would have been expensive at the time. It is likely that it was worn by a real person, but it is almost impossible to prove that it actually belonged to Charles I. With the advanced DNA technology usually used in forensic medicine, it has been possible for scientists to find body fluids. It is locked away due to its delicate condition, but as we can see from the photos it is almost two dimensional as it lies there, flat and stiff as if made of parchment. If it weren't for thebodily fluids it would be difficult to imagine that there had ever been a body inside it. It is with clothes-like muscles that are old and unused, will be stiff, inflexible and non-performingthe present.Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), queen of France and known for her financial waste and frivolous lifestyle, which made her unpopular with the public, she was beheaded along with the rest of the royal family during the French Revolution. She is best known for her consumerist lifestyle, which included an excessive amount of lavish clothes, shoes and sweets, a lifestyle that was judged and condemned by the public, who suffered from the country's crisis. Antoinette's rebellious and frivolous way of dressing was public compared to previous French queens, who had dressed more modestly. In the article “Let Them Wear Manolos: Fashion, Walter Benjamin, and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette,” Heidi Brevik-Zender draws parallels with Benjamin in her analysis of Coppola's film about the queen. Coppola's film is a historical film made with a contemporary twist that connects it to Benjamin's conceptions of the transhistorical in fashion and questions what is actually modern. There are some similarities between Charles I and Marie Antoinette. The public liked neither of them, which led to the beheading of both, but both live on material testimonies that keep the myths surrounding them alive. Mostly Marie Antoinette was used later in relation to fashion, and fashion designers (e.g. Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior), as well as directors (e.g. Copolla, Delannoy, Jacquot), tried to perpetuate her seduction and its sumptuous universe. And this is not without reason, as she appears as the pastel-coloured personification of what Benjamin calls the "femme fatale", a figure the fashion world has always been fascinated by. I will suggest that this figure/character is crucial to understanding Benjamin's idea of ​​the link between fashion and death. Charles I was not romanticized later like Marie Antoinette. Perhaps because her life as a living person was not as glamorous as Marie Antoinette's, but probably most likely because she was not a woman. Benjamin suggests that there is something seductive about women and this is related to fashion. In Antoinette's time, a woman's expectations were easier to break than a man's, and as queen, she was expected to be docile and supportive of her husband. Therefore, it was easier for her to be seen as rebellious and frivolous than for Charles I. What they have in common are the material testimonies, the brutal deaths and their clothes, which unite them and leave traces of blood that connect to the present and the myths that still surround them. Benjamin understands fashion as participation in death ceremonies. He argues that “fashionable beauty must die to make way for what comes next.” For Benjamin, fashion, death and the feminine are profoundly connected. This is exemplified in his description of the courtesan. The courtesan is a high-class prostitute. For Benjamin it represents pleasure and decay. Furthermore, it was a death passage with all its sexual activities, which would transmit deadly 19th century diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis from one body to another. At the same time, the courtesan was linked to high fashion, as she was rich and could afford to dress in the latest Parisian clothes. Benjamin describes the courtesan as a fashionable and seductive femme fatale, who teases death, just like fashion. Seductive and lethal.DiscussionNe The system of objects French philosopher and sociologist, Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) talks about the symbolic value of objects and the myth of origin. He argues that antiques refer to the past in a way that gives them characterexclusively mythological. Its role is simply to signify. These antiques, Baudrillard argues, are instead functionalities enriched by memory, nostalgia, testimony or escapism. Baudrillard is interested in illuminating what lies behind the search for old things. His answer is that antiques satisfy people's demand for a "final or fully realized being." According to Baudrillard, the characteristic of antiques is what is missing from functional objects; they exist only in the present and do not connect to a previous being, as antiques do. “The functional object is efficient; the mythological object is fully realized.” The ancient object is an origin myth, and they are like myths used to make sense of things that happen in the present world. There is something magical about an object, that belongs somewhere else, somewhere unknown, somewhere beyond our reality. And on the other hand not at all, because the real object is the connection with this world. But is this shown and how can it help us understand how we encounter fashion histories in contemporary fashion and clothing? Baudrillard speaks of the signifier as the sole role of the ancient object. When we see contemporary fashion stealing from the past (for example by taking inspiration from Marie Antoinette), it therefore steals the signifier and transforms it back into a functional object. And so on. But is it possible to understand this concept beyond fashion objects? How does fashion guide? I will suggest that this signifier can be understood in the same way that Benjamin uses the courtesan as a metaphor for the seductive and mortal of fashion. A myth, a veil, something that pushes people to chase it. Throughout history, we have seen different types of myths such as courtesan or fashion signifier. One non-objectified way in which we see the myth is that advertising is used as an “emotional” and “fantastic” attraction, playing with the consumer's feelings by creating the myth of something greater, since – as Baudrillard described it – driven from feelings. such as escapism, nostalgia and a former being and appeals to the need to identify with something greater than oneself. Other types of signifiers that lie beyond objects may be the way fashion has always romanticized illness. An example of this would be tuberculosis (then known as consumption), which ravaged the world throughout the 19th century. It had the reputation of being a disease of the creative and it was, especially because people infected with it took on a "consumptive look", pale and gaunt with dark circles around the eyes, surrounded by so much charm that they became a beauty. The ideal, forcing women to drink only water and lemon and eat sand to starve. The disease was linked to artists and poets who led a frivolous and unmoral lifestyle of sex and alcohol. Illness was celebrated and romanticized. A recent example of this is the "heroin chic" look that permeated the fashion and beauty industry in the 1990s. Partly inspired by photographer Nan Golding's photos of her group of drug-addicted friends and personified by model Kate Moss, the anorexic, unhealthy look was romanticized and glamorized by designers and magazines. I will argue that the signifier in this case manifests itself through the unattainable. The unobtainable person suffering from tuberculosis is partly dead and therefore possesses escape and belonging to another place. The same for both the drug addict and the anorexic. Both have committed themselves to other worlds and distanced themselves from the real world. Like old clothes that still exist in the present but cannot be found as they have already been shaped and molded by bodies, words and voices. The link betweenfreedom and death, which both the sick person, the drug addict and the anorexic have in common, could also be linked to Marie Antoinette for whom the excessive consumption of clothes and sweets was escape, freedom, which ultimately led to her death. Like the seduction of something we rationally know is deadly, like the courtesan who teases death. In 'Adorned in Dreams' Elizabeth Wilson (1936-) writes “There are dangers in seeing what should have been sealed in the past.” Even if there is no danger related to the T-shirt Charles I's bodily fluids are found on it, there is still a certain type of what Michael Jennings calls “uncomfortable proximity”, which he describes as; “The things that in that period seem torn from their context and forced into an often uncomfortable proximity with other seemingly unrelated objects and images, have an explosive charge as they contain within themselves not only a diagram of their previous and expected development, but also image of an experience not formed by historical life”. In a way fascinating but at the same time repugnant, like the body fluids on Charles I's shirt. There is a recognition so familiar that it almost becomes uncomfortable. It's as if it becomes too much a part of our present to be able to move away from it. This is interesting in relation to what we consider valuable historical clothing, such as what we would like to wear and what we consider "too old". As Susan Vincent states, people of all times are born with the same anatomical inheritance. The same blood flows in our veins. Almost the same shapes of body parts are molded into the fibers of our clothes, but there is still something else attached to it that makes it appropriate and attractive to us in the present. It's like this dialectical image that Benjamin describes, where something from the past, like a tiger leaping, references the past and at the same time anticipates the future by representing the present moment. According to Benjamin, the past and the present are inseparable and it can therefore be difficult to say whether the past is preserved because the past disguises itself in the present as it appears. It is experiencing something new and partly dead and partly new. But at the same time, according to Benjamin, he will die for a new one to come. The question then is whether he will ever return. Conclusion“Comparison with the fashions of previous generations is a far more important issue than we commonly assume. And one of the most significant aspects of historical costume is that... it undertakes such a comparison... The question of costume profoundly affects the life of art and poetry, where fashion is both preserved and superseded." looking to the Symbolic Value of Objects and Baudrillard's Myth of Origin, fashion stories in contemporary fashion and clothing are encountered through our desire and desire for myths. Fashion stories are reproduced through fashion through media such as advertising , cinema, and magazines, as seen in the various films about Marie Antoinette and the romanticized idealization of illness and addiction, both in history and in contemporary times We have also seen how the origin myth has been personified through Marie Antoinette and the courtesan, both of whom mock death, and how Benjamin's concept of Fashion and Death draws parallels to this mythical renewal of fashion. We have learned that Benjamin's concept of dialectics can create an “uncomfortable proximity” and that therefore, perhaps, not all things of the past can be reinterpreted and overcome. We saw an example of this in the bodily fluids on Charles I's shirt. I will suggest that if something belongs too much to one side, or too much in the past or too much in the present, it will be either an "uncomfortable proximity" or what Baudrillard describes as an object that