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Sartorial excess in Mary Sibande's ‘Sophie’Mary CorrigallPublished online: 13 May 2015.

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Sartorial excess in Mary Sibande’s ‘Sophie’

Mary Corrigall

AbstractMary Sibande has evolved the Sophie character that has defined her art practice – the domestic worker-cum-Victorian garment associated with her has grown in scale, becoming excessive. These exaggerated style codes or adaptations work at liberating the domestic worker from her lowly position in society. Empowerment, or the fantasy of what that may entail, is therefore enacted through dress and the ‘excess’ attached to it that visualises a desire for social mobility. This article presents a critical analysis of the notion of ‘sartorial excess’, employing dandyism as a theoretical tool to access the mechanics of dress as an art form that feeds off and challenges fashion and consumerism. Drawing from fashion theories advanced by Thorstein Veblen and Jean Baudrillard, the article demonstrates how democratising forces allowed fashion to become a tool of mobility – and the illusion of it. This will contribute towards a multifarious definition of sartorial excess that is both inherent to fashion, but as in Sibande’s practice, is also a form of asserting difference and dislocating from the status quo.

Keywords: consumption, dandyism, excess, fashion, luxury identity, social mobility

The rapturous satisfactions of consumptions surround us, clinging to objects as if to the sensory residues of the previous day in the delirious excursions of a dream.

Baudrillard (1981: 63)

What would the ultimate consumerist fashion fantasy entail? Possession of a garment that could transform the wearer’s identity would certainly be a fundamental aspect. If so, Sophie, the quasi-fictional character created by South African artist, Mary Sibande, embodies this dream. Her eyes are always shut, setting her imagination

Mary Corrigall is Research Associate, University of Johannesburg. mary.corrigall@gmail.com

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free to dream up ensembles that could liberate her from domestic toil. Without the constraints of reality she settles on the antithesis of who she is: a royal figure from the colonial era who embodies the power and opulence absent from her everyday existence. Her garments become the site upon which she reinvents herself and maps out her evolution from domestic worker to mistress, from oppressed to oppressor. This imagined transformation plays out on the figure of a mannequin, an inert supplicant associated with shop-window displays designed to seduce observers with the different identities that appear to be within reach if they possessed the garments adorning their bodies. Due to this, mannequins are associated with the subconscious, becoming the conduits for the yearnings that plague the psyche. This may be why mannequins were a popular prop for the surrealists,1 though for them they served as a vehicle to communicate erotic desire (Kachur 2001: 41). For Sibande, the hybrid domestic worker-cum-regal Victorian outfits that Sophie wears are an expression of her inner desires, as well as those of the artist. Named after Sibande’s grandmother, Sophie is both real and fictional on a number of levels. The series includes mannequins of Sophie that have been modelled on Sibande and photographs where she poses as this inert human replica. In this way the act of making her dreams a reality not only plays out in her attire, which displays characteristics evoking a servant’s outfit and regal coronation garments, but is echoed in Sibande’s effort to appear like the mannequin that embodies this dream state. For Sibande makes her dreams come true through her expression.

The Sophie series was initially developed for a solo exhibition in 2009 titled ‘Long Live the Dead Queen’ (in reference to her grandmother), but the character quickly evolved, appearing in different outfits and poses for installations and photographs at exhibitions and art fairs,2 eventually finding a firm place in South African’s collective consciousness when some of these works were enlarged into giant billboards and displayed in Johannesburg’s inner city in 2010.3

The ensembles that operate as these conduits for other selves or the psyche to be expressed are a form of excess in and of themselves; they are the site where Sophie projects her inner desires, her dream to be free from servitude and become the ultimate ‘madam’ – the aristocratic figure of the Victorian royal. In this way her dress is explicitly designed to express her upward mobility and permit it to occur, at least psychically. Clothing, or other products that advance self-illusionary hedonism or daydreaming, cannot deliver on this (Baudrillard 1981: 78; Gonzalez 2012: 10), as such the wearer is trapped in an insatiable pattern of consumption defined by excess.

Excess is explored through a variety of interpretations that are relevant to dress and Sibande’s practice. The physical ‘excess’ inherent in Sophie’s attire, which grows in scale as her aspirations extend past the boundaries of reality to finally eclipse the original aristocratic fantasy, is one strand. Excess as a form of differentiation, which gives rise to the doubling which Homi K. Bhabha (1994: 64) identifies as a

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consequence of mimicry of colonial figures, presents another reading. Building on this idea, excess is presented here as a tool to facilitate dislocation from reality and separation from mass consumerism and uniformity, though it paradoxically brings sharply into focus the ‘power and darkness’ of waste (Calefato 2014: 39).

Thorstein Veblen’s theory on luxury vis-à-vis dress establishes excess as an inherent feature of the consumption of fashion, which is propelled by a desire to express that an individual, the wearer, is not ‘engaged in productive labour’ (Veblen 2013: 157) – a feature of an aristocratic lifestyle. This point has obvious relevance for Sibande’s Sophie, who is characterised by her hybrid domestic worker-cum-regal attire.

Sartorial excess is a form of expression which has been similarly mobilised by the figure of the dandy, a phenomenon of 19th-century Europe, which coincided with the advent of industrialisation. As with Sibande’s practice, dandies employed sartorial spectacles as a means of expression designed to engage with class, social status and ambiguous identities in the face of democratising forces (Fillin-Yeh 2001: 3). Dandies were also concerned with parading as members of the aristocratic class, though their ethos was not simply driven by a basic form of cultural duplication or imitation of what is ‘in fashion’; it is a more complex form of mimicry that haunts or revises the dominant political or social order and thus questions it (Miller 2009: 1). For this reason, dandyism provides a theoretical tool to access the mechanics of dress as a form of expression and to engage with the nature of sartorial excess, positioning it as a contradictory phenomenon that is both the site of rebellion against and embracement of consumption. It is dandyism’s position in relation to the democratising forces which facilitate consumption that makes it the ideal lens through which to unpack Sibande’s practice and the central theme of this special edition of articles.

Through an exploration of Sibande’s work and a selection of Sophie’s outfits, this article charts the ways in which aspiration, empowerment and social mobility shape sartorial excess. What motivates this form of excess? Is it merely a desire for power that translates into conspicuous consumption? Is the cultivation of appearances necessarily an empty pursuit that justifies the moral condemnation it attracts? Dandyism, particularly when loosened from its occidental origins, helps address some of these questions, though ultimately while Sibande adopts this sartorial mode she similarly exposes its inherent limits and contradictions.

Dress and excess

Fashion only truly began to flourish in the West after the 16th century, when a degree of social mobility began to be possible outside of the aristocratic class, and then later, when industrialisation took hold in the late 1800s, making fashion more

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attainable to those in all echelons of society (Kawamura 2006: 25). For this reason fashion, consumption and social mobility are inextricably bound, advancing a form of ‘daydreaming’ that permits consumers the ability to revel in a status that far exceeds their social position. The dreams that are induced are not about possessing the garments per se, but the ‘imaginative pleasure-seeking to which the product image lends itself’ (Gonzalez 2012: 10). Thus insatiable patterns of consumption are motivated by a desire to turn those imagined dreams or pleasurable dramas into reality (ibid.).

Sartorial expression is undeniably a hedonistic pursuit, as it is rarely motivated by utilitarian needs: to establish a ‘respectable appearance’ and in pursuit of attaining the ‘dream’ many people forgo other necessities and comforts (Veblen 2013: 154). For this reason the cultivation of dress offers the clearest understanding of consumption patterns and their payoffs for individuals. Veblen’s theory of fashion advances it as wasteful in and of itself. This form of excess is not motivated by a display of expenditure, a show of wealth, but rather a show of ‘wasteful consumption’ which communicates that the wearer ‘can afford to consume freely and uneconomically’ (ibid: 157). In other words, that the wearer is a consumer of fashion, can afford to regularly procure up-to-date styles, and, significantly, that s/he is not engaged in productive labour. In this context, being in fashion is an expression of not being a worker – it is a leisure pursuit, one which it seems is guaranteed only to those who do not work, or do not need to in order to consume the latest fashions. Realistically, the only population group that could achieve this would be the aristocracy. Fashion allows the wearer not to necessarily pose as an aristocrat but to express an identity outside of that of worker, which ties in with the emergence of the dandy at a time when the industrial revolution was gathering steam. In the context of the history of black oppression in South Africa, where race determined an individual’s status as a labourer, worker or servant, wearing elaborate dress or fashions that paraded excess was the means to claim a right to leisure that was denied (Magubane 2004: 160).

Veblen’s theory has particular significance in relation to Sibande’s Sophie series, which presents a hybrid dress with strong nods to aristocratic dress. ‘Long Live the Dead Queen’, the title of her first solo exhibition in 2009, declared this link, as did the style lines of the dresses on her mannequin installations and photographs.

Sophie emerged during this exhibition. The ensemble for Sophie-Elsie (2009), a fibre-glass mannequin modelled on Sibande, is an amalgamation of the domestic worker’s uniform with stylistic details Sibande has appropriated from British royal coronation attire. The white apron, cuffs and headscarf all evoke the domestic worker’s outfit, while gold buttons, red shoulder wings and hanging sleeves (details that hark back to the Renaissance era) communicate details associated with royal attire. The skirt embodies this aspect with ruching, faux panniers, a white lace border trim, frills and layers of petticoats creating volume. These are all period details from

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the Louis XVI era (the time of Marie Antoinette, when the aristocratic lifestyle had become excessive) that are ascribed to, and can be traced back to, the English Queen’s gown (Wilcox 1958: 210).

In her artist statement, Sibande (2009) does not specify which royal coronation she used as her source of inspiration; and perhaps it would be unnecessary given that in the context of this ceremony it is likely that the ensembles would parade similar traits, given that they tend to be in service of maintaining tradition. Supporting the notion of dress as an ‘excess’ or an expression of being part of the leisure class, as Veblen would put it, are stylistic details that would inhibit the wearer from engaging in any manual labour. The length of Sophie’s dress, the exaggerated sleeves and embellishments at the crown of the sleeves certainly would impede her from performing her duties as a domestic worker, and are part of the sartorial syntax Sibande employs to elevate her from a servant to the ultimate ‘lady of leisure’ – the British royal. Sartorial excess offers the means by which a black subject is able to ‘reclaim’ his/her body from a white dominating class, which in the South African context instituted laws which regulated it, and the ‘aggressiveness’ of the pursuit of leisure or symbols thereof could work at establishing the ‘autonomous nature of black pleasure’ (Magubane 2004: 162).

There are elements in Sophie’s dress that work against this expression of ‘excess’, namely the presence of features relating to her domestic worker status, such as the uniform that provides the stylistic ‘grounding’ of the ensembles for the Sophie figure; the stiff blue poly-cotton fabric is a cheap material commonly used not only for this kind of mass-produced outfit, but other sorts of workers’ attire. Sibande (2010) associates the colour blue with servitude. The white apron, collar, cuffs, piping and head scarf, which form the other recurring motifs of Sophie’s outfits, are also stylistic traits of the domestic worker’s uniform, though they are subject to exaggeration: the apron is longer and larger, the cuffs wider. Sibande’s distortion of these characteristics of the domestic worker’s outfit draw attention to the form of excess embedded in it – that it is in itself a product of a ‘luxury’ lifestyle.

The design of the domestic worker outfit is in itself non-utilitarian (Veblen 2013: 167). These might be uniforms fashioned from cheap materials, but their design boasts details that evoke women’s clothing – skirts, dresses impede physical labour – and some of the embellishments (such as a lace trim around a collar) or a white collar and cuff evoke an ‘elaborate show of unnecessary expensiveness’. This is partly due to the fact that regardless of their status, women remain the ‘chief ornament’ (ibid: 165) in a household and, traditionally, in a patriarchal society the mistress or madam is regarded as ‘the chief menial’, though she may not engage in any cleaning, but rather in relation to her spouse, as defined by her gender.

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Dandyism

The dandy, historically a male figure,4 disrupts this gendered scheme via a flamboyant style that not only emphasises a predilection for idleness which would assure his pseudo-aristocratic status, but in doing so presents him as female via this superfluous sartorial ornamentation. This ties in with the notion that Dandyism worked at ‘feminising modern culture’ (Glick 2009: 16). In this way dandyism was/is not just a social act that transgressed class boundaries, but a political act that questioned the conventions that governed society, and in particular was in response to dramatic shifts in society which would destabilise fixed identities. In Zine Magubane’s (2014: 163) account of the ‘diamond field’s dandy’ of the mid-1880s in Kimberley, the dandyist mode of parading sartorial excess was engineered to challenge racially inscribed identities, presenting a rebellion against ‘the posture of silence that was demanded of blacks in a white supremacist culture’ and forging an identity outside of work.

It is no coincidence that the radical sociopolitical shifts in South Africa following the 1994 elections, which ushered in a new era of democracy, gave rise to multiple forms of dandyism from self-styled individuals who lived as dandies, embracing the historical concept of dandy as ‘both artist and living art’ (Fillin-Yeh 2001: 3). The Smarteez, a sartorial subculture defined by bright clothing, are the most prominent example. They first came to prominence via Lolo Veleko’s photographic practice involving capturing the individual sartorial expression created by young black South Africans who paraded these ensembles on ‘the street’. In observation of Veleko’s photographs, Mark Sealy (2010: 174) notes that this form of expression through fashion ‘lay claim to a new kind of assertive cultural pattern that reclaims the street in a manner that is more akin to historical and political exuberance of black dandyism in Harlem in the 1920s, a moment in history that represented a growing social confidence and new forms of black self-invention’.

Considering the manner in which dress and fashion operate as a social skin, allowing wearers to (re)claim and (re)define new social territory (Gondola 1999: 26), it has proved to be the ideal vehicle for South Africans to redetermine and remap previously fixed racial and national identities in the postapartheid era. The birth of South African fashion, that is a scene in which local designers and their products are self-consciously marketed as ‘South African fashion’, emerged after 1994. In 1997 the first SA Fashion Week was staged and it became a platform where not only local design was celebrated, but where designers played out notions of a new South African identity. Commenting on the advent of this platform, Dion Chang (2007: 7) observed: ‘After the 1994 elections, there was a collective energy that said: “Let’s go proudly South African.”’

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Fashion or palatable shifts in dress are inextricably linked to democracy, producing clothing that is no longer prescribed by class but can be attained via equal work opportunities (Barthes 2013: 26). Sibande’s hybrid domestic worker-cum-regal outfit is made possible by democratising forces; the domestic worker is now able to become ‘the madam’ even though she works with sartorial forms that deny change. The royal queen figure embodies this position, as in South Africa ‘power’ (through apartheid and prior to that colonialism) was seen as the birth-right of any white person. By collapsing the madam and the colonial authority roles, Sibande is able to address the legacy of apartheid and servitude, and pinpoint the historical framework which gave rise to it – it was in the colonial era that laws were instated to ensure that the white proletariat did not exist (Magubane 2004: 159). As with the dandy, Sophie appears to aspire to aristocracy, though there is an intrinsic mockery of it, given it can be ‘attained’ via dress. Dandyism’s reliance on fashion provides the inner friction on which this sartorial expression depends, evoking a conflicted discourse connected to consumption.

The figure of the dandy emerged in Europe, specifically England and France, as the fashion phenomenon facilitated by the birth of industrialisation took hold. The availability of clothing once limited to the aristocracy permitted this sartorial vocabulary as a form of expression, to launch the dandy’s rejection of material accumulation and the brutal realities of production and labour. The emergence of the black dandy in South Africa during the gold rush of the late 1800s is similarly linked to growing urbanisation and the sociopolitical effects of capitalism, as well as the sense of ‘alienation’ that these conditions generated for labourers (ibid.).

To be sartorially adept, the dandy was forced to ‘anticipate patterns of consumption, and to cultivate a knowledge of commodities which he paradoxically dismissed as vulgar and mediocre’ (Lane 1994: 36). This overstatement or form of sartorial excess that the dandy embraces is inherently risky, as the subject appears to be complicit with the social conventions he eschews or questions, making transcendence of them appear impossible – assuming that transcendence is an overriding objective.

The dandyist mode might demand complicity but it can also be empowering, allowing the wearer to propose more fluid identities (Miller 2009: 11). This contrived façade allows the wearer to transcend indexes of race, gender and class, which is why it has been so appealing for artists in the postapartheid era. Miller’s reading of this element of dandyism is rooted in her focus on what she terms ‘black dandyism’, a phenomenon she traces from black slaves, to Enlightenment London, to the sartorial approaches embraced by prominent black hip hop artists in ‘Afro-cosmopolitan’ New York.

In these contexts the black dandy challenged a white majority’s ‘false notions of social order, racial homogeneity and cultural superiority’ (Powell 2001: 222). In the mid-1800s in the United States (US), this rebellion was enacted via male subjects

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appropriating anachronistic aristocratic dress (ibid: 224), as Sibande assumes for Sophie, though she evokes regal dress fit for a queen. In this way Sibande follows (via her subject, Sophie) in the footsteps of the male dandy rather than a female one, which most theorists (Fillin-Yeh, Glick) define as those who dress as men, or appropriate male elements into their attire, such as Coco Chanel who attended social events in a men’s suit before imbuing her women’s wear with detailing that evoked menswear (Fillin-Yeh 2001: 2).

The result of all these multiple forms of dandyism across the ages and genders is a loosening of this sartorial mode from its occidental genealogy, allowing it to be linked to arbiters of style who engage in a deliberate or self-conscious act of reconstruction or deconstruction of identity that is ‘relative to negotiations of race, sexuality and class’ (Miller 2009: 5). As Magubane (2004) establishes, too, dandyism is no longer only a response to the rapid expansion of new technology that was transforming European society in the latter 1800s (Lane 1994: 36), but an expression of an ambivalent relationship to any social shifts with ramifications for identity, and a means of resistance to or a reversing of power relations.

In a hybrid outfit which juxtaposes the servant and the mistress, as Sibande assumes, her expression presents an overt power-struggle via dress. The dandy accrues power through his/her dislocation from the masses; dandyism is driven by the pursuit of individualism (Barthes 2013: 28) – no doubt in response to the industrialised era and mass-produced fashion. To the dandy clothing ‘is not simply an object to be used but is a prepared object’ (ibid.). In an attempt to strive for individualism, the dandy ‘destroys or deforms’ clothing by attempting to remove or at least challenge the recognisable shared values it communicates. This is precisely the activity that Sibande undertakes as she denigrates both the domestic worker and regal Victorian styles by fusing them. This in itself is a form of ‘excess’, as ‘luxury is anything that can dislocate the serial and massified dimension of living’ (Calefato 2014: 17).

A syntax of ‘immobility’

Ironically, the ‘empowerment’ of Sibande’s Sophie character has its roots in a sartorial syntax that seemingly denies the form of social mobility that democracy would encourage. In South Africa the domestic worker uniform is a symbolic marker which not only denied mobility, but asserted and affirmed the difference between white householders and their staff, while similarly articulating the fact that they were ‘extensions of the households for which they worked’ (Ginsberg 2011: 143), thus ‘ordering’ their presence outside the household too. In this way the domestic worker uniform helped whites to ‘make sense of their world’, as blacks were uniformed while whites could indulge in fashion (ibid: 144).

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The sartorial syntaxes (a domestic worker’s uniform and British colonial attire) that Sibande employs are those that are unchanging and are thus not subject to the flighty demands of fashion – broadly defined as ‘a prevailing custom of style of dress, etiquette, procedure’ (Craik 2009: 2). However, by collapsing the domestic worker’s attire with that of a colonial white figure, Sibande works at ‘disordering’ the status quo that apartheid set.

In working with ‘uniforms’, Sibande suffocates the principle of novelty that defines the fashion cycle and the form of conspicuous waste that drives it – garments that are only useful for a short period are intrinsically more luxurious, more excessive (Veblen 2013: 159). In doing so the democratising principle that readily consumable fashion permits is suppressed. However, the subversion of the stylistic traits and fusion of these incongruent styles of the domestic worker’s uniform and royal attire from the colonial era evinces fashion-designer handiwork;5 Sophie’s dress is a revision not only of these unchanging garments but of history itself, so as to reveal a present-day political condition where fixed roles are being overturned, producing a hybrid population that is seemingly conflicted within – as it belongs to two opposing groups – servants and mistresses.

The resulting hybrid garment could be viewed, given that it is rooted in two uniforms, as a new one, echoing in the manner in which real-life domestic workers conceived of an inhomogeneous garment to express their allegiance to ‘Manyano’, a mother’s prayer union, which Shireen Ally (2009: 165) identifies as the means by which they were able to counter their invisibility and make ‘legible their positioning in particular as compromised mothers and dehumanized workers’. The Manyano uniform (and its rituals) with its white caps and blouses and pink ribbons was a subversion of the colonial missionary ones, echoing the religious aspect that formed the grounding of this culture. It was thus through the subversion or collapse of sartorial codes that domestic workers were able to visibly and psychically assert their independence from the roles their labour locked them into, activating a form of recovery (ibid: 180). This example provides a real-life model for what Sibande enacts via Sophie’s dress; the appropriation and subversion of a colonial uniform as the means of paradoxically recouping autonomy.

Sibande achieves this by disrupting the domestic worker’s uniform via a number of seemingly incongruent period details drawn from various eras, such as puffed sleeves – a feature of late Victorian dress. Another period feature of Sophie’s attire is evidenced in the silhouette of the lower half of the outfits; the long bell-shaped skirts with flounces, ruching and frills, given volume via a plethora of petticoats. These features recall those from the Victorian era, cited by Sibande as her source of inspiration, though she does not appear to draw her sartorial vocabulary from one particular historical period of European dress. Her interest in traditional British royal

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ceremonial attire sees her gravitating towards more ‘timeless’ dress ensembles that are used to establish the unchanging nature of societal customs or British tradition.

The domestic worker’s outfit could also be said to be an ‘unchanging’ garment in the sense that it similarly has been subject to little alteration over the decades. Its uniformity has been an important part of asserting the social and political relations set by the apartheid system. The fact that most middle-class homes required domestic workers to don a uniform to perform their tasks suggests an effort at entrenching the divisions between home and labour, black, white, servant, master. ‘By donning her uniform, the domestic turned herself from a woman living at the bottom of the garden into a worker … The dress declared her relationship to the property and implied her responsibilities and limitations there’ (Ginsberg 2011: 142).

These ‘unchanging’ garments are designed to maintain the status quo, making it appear natural and as such are two syntaxes that deny social mobility, though they may hail from the opposite ends of the social spectrum: aristocracy and servitude. Sibande implies that both are united by the fact that they are social institutions which individuals are born into. As a descendent of a long line of domestic workers, Sibande was, during apartheid, initially born into servitude so to speak, in much the same way as England’s new royal heir, Prince George, will automatically acquire royal status and all the privileges that it affords.

Her 2009 solo exhibition, ‘Dead Queen’, traced the lineage of domestic workers in her family line; from Sophie-Elsie, the artist’s maternal great-grandmother, to Sophie-Merica, her grandmother, to Sophie-Velucia, her mother. The last figure, Sophie-Ntombikayise, represents the artist. Undoubtedly, her great-grandmother (represented in Sophie-Elsie) appears as the ‘Queen’ referenced in the title of the show; her outfit is much more lavish and detailed than those belonging to her ‘heirs’. The Sophie prefix in the titles denotes the ‘English’ name given to Sibande’s grandmother by her white employer – ‘the name even appeared on her gravestone’ (Sibande 2010). The use of this prefix in the title and the uniform mannequin modelled on Sibande highlight the way in which this naming ingrained servitude into her family lineage, engendering it as an inescapable legacy.

‘Social mobility is approached from an inter-generational perspective, assessing the achieved social position of an individual with that of their parents’ (Council of Europe 2012: 27). Sibande addresses this by positioning herself as the subject that breaks this lineage – the mannequins are modelled on her and the outfits reflect a dated syntax that has been altered. The sartorial syntaxes of the domestic worker’s uniform and that of the aristocratic ceremonial outfit both exude a fixed social position, but when they are combined they cancel out or collapse the master–servant dichotomy, or at least the boundaries between the two (you could also argue that the dichotomy is maintained) have been blurred, thus allowing for the subject’s social mobility. Sophie is thus neither a domestic worker nor an aristocrat, but rather a

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figure we presume to be caught between the two identities as she reaches towards her unknown or imagined future – the ‘daydream’ that the clothing communicates.

This fusion of sartorial syntaxes of unchanging costumes outlines not only a transition state, but also the role clothing, fashion or consumption plays in enabling it. It appears as if aspirations for liberation from servitude can only be realised through dress, which allows Sophie to imagine herself as occupying the antithetical state/social position. This reiterates the idea that possession of the garment is only useful in as far as it satisfies ‘imaginative pleasure-seeking to which the product image lends itself’ (Gonzalez 2012: 10). It is the idea of freedom that this aspirational hybrid garment represents, rather than the reality of it.

Re-quoting elitism

In order to flourish, fashion may require a level of social mobility, but it also works at maintaining class boundaries. Historically, the fashion cycle turned because of these divisions:

For centuries the bourgeoisie would imitate the style of the aristocracy in order to acquire social privilege; the aristocracy would respond to this by introducing a different fashion in order to keep the distance between the classes. (Gonzalez 2012: 30)

It is in such contexts that the tension between mimicry and differentiation manifests as a form of excess. ‘In order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference,’ asserts Bhabha (1994: 122). It is in the slippage between mimicry and difference that power is accrued, because mimicry can only but emerge as a representation of difference that ‘is in itself a disavowal’ (ibid.). This slippage could be considered a form of ‘excess’. It thus follows that it is via sartorial excess that subjects assert their difference from past authorities. However, as Niti Patel (2001: xviii) warns, mimicry ‘both enables power and signals a loss of agency by simultaneously stabilizing and destabilising the position of power’.

At its core, dandyism is a citational system in which the vocabulary of dress is grounded in the quotation (or re-quotation) of styles, silhouettes, embellishments and dress codes (Miller 2009: 1). This is how designers arrive at most fashion garments. However, in the hands of the dandy these codes are typically derived from the dominant culture before they are reinterpreted.

In the context of Sibande’s Sophie series, where the sartorial markers of aristocracy and thus European ascendency are fused with the servitude of African subjects, she challenges the tradition(s) that maintain this historical social order by exposing its norms – a strategy of mimicry that disturbs colonial discourse (Bhabha 1994: 123). Distorting the sartorial codes results in garments that are simultaneously familiar yet incongruent and unfamiliar. This stabilises and destabilises the powerful

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authority – the colonial ‘master’ is present but has been usurped by the ‘servant’ and can only enjoy this authority if a subordinate exists or is present. This dynamic coincides with the intertextual nature of the dandy’s language, which is defined by two (sartorial) discourses: the everyday language of the dominant culture, and his/her own idiosyncratic interpretation of it, which relies on inverting the former so as to ‘echo it at a distance’ (Godfrey 1982: 28).

The quotation of elitism apparent in Sophie’s garments – the allusions to aristocratic ceremonial dress – is not only driven by a desire to deride or challenge it, but has been eclipsed by such an insatiable hunger to attain it, that it ironically impedes her liberation. As such Sibande not only adopts dandyism as a tool in her sartorial expression, but exposes the weaknesses inherent in the dandyist mode of self-invention, which is reliant on the syntax the wearer assumes to rally against.

The subversion of sartorial codes, playing with scale and fusing dress conventions linked to influence and subservience, may challenge the system (sartorial, ideological and political), but this act of mimicry is also in conflict with the good taste, modesty and restraint associated with royal attire – or even a domestic worker’s outfit, which is intended to render the wearer ‘invisible’. Consequently, Sophie’s drive to accrue influence and disrupt the order can never be fully realised, because she is constantly caught in a cheap imitation of it. Her gowns retain traces of her servitude – her apron a constant reminder of her history, legacy – and fashioned from cheap poly-cotton, the level of opulence she aspires to is always undercut by the stylistic codes of dress that are indexes of impoverishment or enslavement. Sophie is a conflicted persona, or at least her attire expresses her paradoxical position as the ‘queen’ in her domestic outfit. Like the dandy she is an anachronistic anomaly, an oddity that encapsulates the contradictions of her time, though she appears to hail from another era.

In her dreams, where she presumably could imagine herself beyond the limits of reality, she is unable to fully detach herself from it; the legacy of servitude remains ever present as does the colonial or white authorial figure; in this way she remains locked in the servant–madam dichotomy. Sophie’s desire to become a European colonial authority, while remaining a servant, presents a doubling, ‘a disassembling image of being at two places at once’ (Bhabha 1994: 64).

This prevents her fantasy of liberation from being realised, hence she dreams of larger dresses, pushing the scale of the gowns beyond how they would manifest in reality, so that they cannot be worn, for at least in that context she is able to revel in a form of excess associated with affluence and freedom, and one that uniquely belongs to her – she alone can claim ownership of the subversion of affluence.

Working from within the system, with the dominant dress syntax, is a perilous business. For the dandy immersion in it is necessary, it is where the language of his/her rebellion is rooted, but there is always the risk that s/he will derive pleasure from it – after all, this figure is wired to luxuriate in the aesthetics of dress. As with

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Sophie, this places the dandy in a conflicted or duplicitous position where they risk embodying the entity or condition they resist. For Sophie this would mean becoming the colonial authority or madam, whose power is derived through the domination of others.

However, this ‘echo’ of the dominant language of excess, articulated via stylistic nods to European royal attire, could function as a way of exposing how a new order, an emerging elite existing at the cusp of a society in transition, may be following in the footsteps of the colonial authority. Sophie’s hybrid garment implies she exists on this threshold, and as her dreams become grander and the scale of her dress expands beyond the limits of reality, eventually transmogrifying into abstract creatures that are rendered in photoshop and featured in photographic works such as The Terrible Beauty (2013).6 In this way her desire to escape servitude turns her into an almost monstrous character who is a hyper-version of the European authority.

The dandyist mode of ‘intertextual polyphony’ (Godfrey 1982: 28) allows the wearer (or in this case Sibande’s representation) to propose more fluid identities, while eliciting a ‘dialogue’ or reading between the language of elite and that which aims to upturn it. Or, put more precisely, the intertextual polyphony that defines Sophie’s sartorial expression uncovers the desire to possess the language (dress) of the elite, if perhaps only to free herself from it – this European figure evoked through the regal dress is the oppressor that perceivably would want to maintain the status quo.

This dream of the inversion of roles could also be read as a consequence of the colonial authority’s paranoia that the servant wishes to take her place (Bhabha 1994: 63).

Consumer dreams versus reality

Mannequins are a staple feature of retail display and as such operate as the carriers of idealised fantasies even though they are rendered with a degree of realism (Schneider 1997: 5). The realistic qualities of mannequins are present so as to make the fantasy tableau in which they are rooted appear real, while conversely extending the mise-en-scène ‘beyond realism gives the viewer an opportunity to become part of the picture’ (ibid: 18). Viewers or observers of window or store displays are encouraged to believe that access to this fantasy world or turning it into a reality can be achieved by consuming the products that are part of it.

Sibande takes this a step further by imagining herself as the mannequin too. This paves the way for an imaginative space that confers her with the unique ability to locate herself in the shoes of her relatives, elevating them, while reconciling with the ambiguous period of social and political transition that she occupies.

Despite this dream landscape she occupies, her fantasies are weighed down by reality. The title of the work, The wait seems to go on forever (2009), which pictures

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Sophie standing by a bus-stop, indicates that her fantasies might have taken flight because her liberation seemed unattainable. In reality, while domestic workers now enjoy rights which were previously denied them during the apartheid era, ‘broad ranging efforts to turn South African domestic “servants” into workers, the iconic apartheid live-in African woman “servant” attending to the lifestyles of white, middle-class suburbia remains a recalcitrant reality in contemporary South Africa’ (Ally 2009: 8).

This slippery interplay between reality and fantasy is a fundamental aspect of Sibande’s Sophie series; as she employs a mannequin modelled on herself, her fantasy is made to appear real and as the fantasies are concretised via garments that can be touched there is a sense that they have been attained, have become real. In this way, the garments make the ‘dream’ – liberation from servitude – seem real. Nevertheless, the mannequin’s eyes are closed, as are Sibande’s in the photographic works where she poses as the mannequin, positioning the subject in a dream state. She has become lost in her dreams and her aspirations that are enacted via her ensembles, which keep her suspended between times and societal positions. Her interior world is channelled through her exterior. This challenges the notion of dress as a superficial façade, for here it operates as a true reflection of an inner yearning or condition, contradicting Baudrillard’s (in Gonzalez 2012: 27) notion that the birth of the consumerist society heralded the ‘end of interiority’.

A pathology of excess

The titles of some of Sibande’s photographic works, I put a spell on me (2009) and Caught in a rapture (2009) confirm the escapist mode that Sophie has adopted. In the latter work, Sibande poses as the Sophie mannequin, and is pictured leaning back onto a large spider’s web. It is as if she has been caught in a trap of her own making. She has become enslaved by her aspirations, causing her to be embedded in another reality. Reflecting on the extreme realism that luxury can bring to the fore, Calefato (2014: 39) observes:

Those who live in luxury continue to enjoy such physical objects, luxury reveals the other side of its calm and sensual delight. It is as if two games are being played at two different tables; on one the pursuit of sensual harmony in and through luxury; on the other, the power and darkness of wasted energy, as the origins of luxury are boundless.

It is significant that Sophie’s garments become more elaborate over time. If you compare the first Sophie (2007), where opulence can only be traced in her layered skirt, or the quasi-superhero outfit in the 2008 photographic work, They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To, with works such as I Decline, I Refuse to Recline (2010), where the girth and length of Sophie’s dress are so exaggerated the garment could fill a room, it is clear Sophie’s aspirations are growing. She has come to understand

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the power of dreaming, pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and is revelling in her new aristocratic status – ostentation and waste are more typically associated with aristocracy than servitude (Cafelato 2014: 16).

In the latter work the over-the-top dress encompasses a psychoanalyst’s couch, a clear indication that Sophie’s fantasies have grown far beyond the boundaries of reality. This garment is no longer an everyday item; the proportions are so extreme that it would not even be fit for a royal ceremony. The garment has surpassed the original fantasy. The inclusion of a psychoanalyst’s couch embedded in the garment implies that the level of desire and aspiration that is mirrored in the fantasy garment has become a pathological condition that calls to be analysed.

The title, I Decline, I Refuse to Recline, however, infers that Sophie is resistant to lying on the couch and revealing her innermost thoughts. The elaborate, excessive dress hints at a concealed ‘depth’ – she is not this empty, vacuous slave to dress or consumerism.

The level of excess which came to define Sophie’s costume and later that of the new purple figure Sibande created for The Purple Shall Govern (2013) was designed to mirror the conspicuous display of wealth in the postapartheid era. ‘You see a lot of rich people in the township wearing a lot of bling. They have 10 rings on their fingers, wear the latest wigs. It’s excessive. It’s as if they don’t know how to stop making themselves more beautiful. You think the more you have the more you are getting there,’ observed Sibande (Corrigall 2010).

Sophie’s reluctance to lay bare her inner thoughts or motivation could be linked to her opposition to societal pressure to explain her behaviour, her excess, to be judged and to confront the drive for this endless need to maintain the ecstasy that this seemingly infinite abundance offers. That her garments have grown in scale as her narrative has progressed suggests her fantasies, her desires, have expanded to satiate this burgeoning ambition that increases in the moment it is met. This may be due to the fact that Sophie is only able to attain her desires through her subconscious – Sibande does, after all, present us with Sophie’s dreams, not her reality. Ownership of desired objects should establish a sense of ‘calm at a journey’s end’ (Cafelato 2014: 33). In contrast, a desire that has been unmet ‘shifts drives, the attainment of goals becomes feverish; it is an impassioned, imaginary journey toward the desired object, forever unattainable and sometimes even concealed’ (ibid.).

This brings to mind the restless search that Veblen (2013: 160) identifies as propelling the fashion cycle, where each new trend is eventually discarded and displaced by another, denying a form of stasis that would suggest that the need–desire dialectic had been resolved.

As Sibande’s status or her dream position can only be articulated via the multiplication of symbols of wealth, she becomes a slave not only to her fantasies but also to indexes of affluence. This interplay between the real and the imagined in

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Sibande’s work ensures that spectators cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. This highlights the manner in which dreams and desire eclipse reality, how blurred the boundaries are between the imagined and the real.

The slightly sinister aspect to Sophie’s liberation is acutely negotiated via Sibande’s new character, dubbed the Purple Figure7 due to her purple-coloured attire in the installation and photographic works. This figure is also modelled on Sibande, but she is part of the next generation (Sibande 2013). Significantly, she seems to have broken from the legacy of servitude: she does not carry the Sophie name – in fact, she has no name, nor does her outfit boast any details associated with a domestic worker’s uniform.

A white apron is loosely draped over each figure in the photographic works, A Terrible Beauty is Born (2013) and Terrible Beauty (2013), but these function as remnants from the past; they do not define this new figure’s existence, or, more importantly her identity, which is articulated via her dress. This clear separation between Sophie and her newly liberated progeny is enacted through a face-off between the two characters in the installation work A Reversed Retrogress, Scene 1 (2013). The work features mannequins depicting the two characters, who are only distinguished by their differing ensembles. As Thembinkosi Goniwe (2013: 32) observes, these figures are ‘not simply dancing together in celebration of their split or connection. They are in contestation for space.’

As such they seem locked in a battle, but their postures and configuration and physical features, which are identical, also imply that this confrontation is one with the self, as they are the mirror image of each other.

Her gowns remain elaborate and the overall silhouette recalls Sophie’s domestic-cum-Victorian wear; there is volume in the shoulder of the sleeves – in The Admiration for the Purple Figure (2013) multiple layers of shoulder wings sprout from the crown of the sleeves, and the skirt remains voluminous with layers of purple tulle and purple tendrils flowing from the waist and encroaching upon her body. The purple colour is the most recognisable nod to the garment’s regal provenance, and the colour choice is linked to Sibande’s (2013) perception of it as a marker of affluence and power. In other words, the quotation of elitism remains in place, but it is less self-consciously done and is not recognisably linked to a specific figure attached to affluence. This ‘new’ Sophie mannequin occupies an unfamiliar or unknown (psychic) space.

The stylistic features of her garment are drawn from a variety of sources (Sibande 2013) and are melded in such a way as to appear unfamiliar and detached from the past. In creating the visual characteristics to frame her, Sibande (2013) wanted to arrive at something ‘that no one had ever seen before’. This should announce Sophie’s liberation, or that of her progeny. Without the legacy of servitude and oppression compelling the desire to attain the position of the European authority responsible for colonialism (or apartheid), she should be free. Yet the mood in this

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new body is menacing. This is mostly due to the mass of purple creatures that the new purple figure’s fantasy has birthed – or, at least, her garment has generated. Like dormant alien spawn that have sprung to life, these fabric tendrils emanate from the character’s womb, spreading out and around her as they grow and multiply.

The element of excess previously associated with Sophie’s dress as an expression of her aspirations has become even more pronounced, to the extent that the garment/the dream has grown exponentially to the point where it is no longer under her control. Nor can she escape it: in A Terrible Beauty is Born (2013), the tentacles of the dress not only encroach on the background, but on her too. It is as if her dreams for the future have ‘turned on her’ and are gradually subsuming her, as they replicate and expand past the confines of her imagination.

Dress and social mobility

One of the most pertinent questions that Sibande’s new purple figure poses is whether Sophie’s progeny, her other self, has indeed been liberated; the motifs of the past – the allusion of royal colonial attire and a domestic worker’s outfit – have disappeared from the vocabulary of her dress. Given that she is entangled and colonised by her outfit, which has grown into and become her environment, is she now held prisoner by the symbols of affluence she desired or has she made her dreams come true? They are no longer limited to just her dress, but have encroached on her environment.

The ‘demand for social mobility frolics and loses itself in fashion, in the sudden and often cyclical changes of objects, clothes and ideas. And to the illusion of change is added the illusion of democracy,’ advances Baudrillard (1981: 78). This suggests that while individuals may surround themselves with objects that express their social success, it is not via objects that individuals achieve success or become mobile. As such, Baudrillard concludes that as objects support the idea of success at the very most they function as ‘frustrated social aspirations’, as the constant renewal of objects implies a disappointed ‘aspiration to cultural and social progress’.

In light of this, fashion may offer a range of identities for wearers to adopt but it similarly ensures that individuals remain in their ‘place’ (ibid.), thus restoring cultural inequality and social discrimination, while establishing it under the pretence of abolishing it. This is partly a consequence of fashion appearing to operate beyond ‘social logic’, such as an outfit inspired by colonial royal attire being within the reach of anyone. As with Sophie, her desire to wear such a garment is an expression of a form of ‘social inertia’ that Baudrillard identifies as a phenomenon of fashion. Hence Sophie dreams of a status which she cannot fully acquire because her desire to be free is not one that can be satiated via objects or garments, even if they extend beyond the body, transmogrifying into a world that surrounds and envelops her, thrives off her. The form of liberation she seeks is a psychic one, of which the garments are a symptom, offering temporary relief by feeding the illusion that she has broken from

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the past. This ties in with the idea implicit in Sibande’s work, that garments are an expression of a dream rather than a fact of reality. Whether in the purple figure’s garment with its spiralling extensions enveloping the mannequin of Sibande, or in the photographic works, the artist articulates this twisted relationship with objects that parade as proof that social transition has occurred.

Notes1 The 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition held in Paris presented a corridor lined

with mannequins decorated by different artists. 2 An iteration of the 2009 exhibition showed at the National Arts Festival in

Grahamstown in 2010. New works went on display at the Joburg Art Fair in 2010 and 2011, and the Space: Currencies in Contemporary Art exhibition, which showed at Museum Africa in 2010.

3 Nineteen building ‘wraps’ depicting Sibande’s work were placed in the city as part of the Johannesburg Art City Project.

4 Dandies became visible as early as the 1760s in England, but it would be George Beau Brummell who would gain notoriety for this figure in the late 1700s (Fillin-Yeh 2001: 8).

5 Sibande’s use of dress in her practice is ascribed to her thwarted efforts to become a fashion designer before she pursued art (Dodd 2010: 468).

6 The work was included in touring ‘The Purple Shall Govern’ exhibition of 2013–2014.

7 Sibande created this figure in 2013 for ‘The Purple Shall Govern’.

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