Charlotte
Little
Les Petites Mains: Positioning Craft Labour in the Field of Fashion.
Charlotte Little
Within Bourdieu’s field of cultural production, haute couture has historically occupied the position of the ‘high cultural’ product, as part of the subfield of restricted production (Rocamora 344). Within this subfield, the pursuit of financial profits is subordinate to the value of “art for art’s sake” (Rocamora 344). Haute couture garments are more akin to artworks than they are to everyday clothing items - something Bourdieu himself discusses in his 1993 chapter “Haute Couture and Haute Culture”, acknowledging the homology in studying luxury goods such as haute couture and fine art (132). Throughout the chapter, Bourdieu discusses the dominant position of the couture designer as a delineator of luxury, holding the “most specific” capital in the whole of the field of fashion (133). The subject of this essay, however, is not the couture designer, but the skilled craftspeople that bring the designer's vision to the physical realm, les petites mains.
Les petites mains is the name given to French couturier workers, for their dexterous, skillful hands. These workers will complete nearly every step of the couture garment production process stopping short of design, from draping to hand-embellishment to last minute alterations before exhibition. The video below (see fig. 1) depicts les petites main at Dior’s Paris atelier, preparing for their Autumn/Winter 2017 Haute Couture show.
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The role of les petites mains differs from the role of a traditional productive labourer in that they are actualizing a cultural good, rather than a mass-produced good. Their role is comparable to that of a film editor or colourist, or even more aptly, a visual artist’s studio assistant (see fig. 2). In his 2010 article “Craft Labour and Creative Industries”, Mark Banks labels this type of work as “craft labour”, describing it not just as traditional crafts but as the input of the industrial labour process in the wider creative industry (305). Given the cultural aspect of their work - and general rejection of profit motives in fine arts production - craft labourers may experience an additional, or totally separate, form of alienation than the typical Marxist economic sense in that they are alienated from cultural capital. Craftspeople differ from artists in that they lack creative autonomy, promise of consecration, and potential financial rewards (Banks 306); in other words: they don’t hold the same embodied, objectified, and institutionalized cultural capital as the artist, despite, as Banks states, their making up a majority of the labourious inputs to creative industries (317). In The Forms of Capital (1986), Bourdieu asserts that “profits in one area are necessarily paid for in another” (25), in the field of cultural production this may mean the greater the renown of the artist, the further their supporting workers may fall into cultural obscurity. The value differential in this case is most likely tied to the distinction between fine art and craft, a distinction that in itself denotes elitism (Markowitz 55).
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The line between art and craft is one that has been drawn and redrawn. Such delineation often follows aesthetic or semantic rationales, however a pattern remains in that what is made by the White man is art and what is made by everybody else is craft (Markowitz 55). Historically, high or fine art has been associated with the Western establishment, while craft has been associated with decorative arts, ‘outsider art’, and the work of colonial subjects. The objectified form of cultural capital is shown here as tied to the embodied capital of its creator. Additionally, the West has had a proclivity for “normative dualism” or valuing the mental over the physical, another factor in the hierarchy of art over craft (Markowitz 68). Given the biases in place when discussing the position of craft workers versus artists, a lens of intersectionality must be applied when considering the acquisition of cultural capital in each role. In the case of les petites mains, we must consider the demographic factors that contribute to their minimized status in conjunction with their proximity - and distance - to “high” culture. As asserted by de Vries (2015), social positions are multifaceted, contributing to both institutional and structural inequalities (23).
The figures below (see fig. 3, 4, 5) illustrate the often blurred lines between haute couture, fine art, and craft. Tracy Emin’s Hotel International and Viktor & Rolfs’ 2020 couture garment both take obvious inspiration from the crazy quilt, a historical craft often made from spare scraps of fabric at the end of the garment cycle. While the historical crazy quilt may have gained cultural status by means of becoming a rare artifact, through adoption into fine art and haute couture the form of the crazy quilt is further elevated to the status of high art - it is imbued with objective cultural capital by use from players that hold embodied cultural capital. What differentiates the hands of the Ladies Aid Society from the hands of Tracey Emin, or the hands of Viktor & Rolf’s petites mains? The Ladies Aid Society’s crazy quilt takes the form of craft and their labour is craft labour; Hotel International is elevated to fine art status because of Tracy Emin’s cultural capital as artist. The Viktor & Rolf dress lies somewhere between - it was created via craft labour but assumes the position of fine art because of the cultural and symbolic capital of the label. Bourdieu calls this process transubstantiation, in which the signature changes the social, rather than the material, nature of the object (1993: 137).This transubstantiation of essentially the same form, from craft to art to somewhere in between, reinforces the notion that the division of craft and art is subject to the forces of capital.
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In the previously shown Business of Fashion video, Dior’s petites mains discuss their careers at the atelier, detailing their passion for their work and decades-long commitment to the brand. A sense of collective is also mentioned, something that Banks explores in his 2010 article, positing the artist-craft workshop model as a utopian ideal (311). However, as utopian as the collectivity and creative autonomy of the workshop may be, the status differential between artist and craftsperson is unavoidable (Banks 311), highlighting the pertinence of cultural capital in addition to economic capital. Banks also mentions the abstract nature of craft labour - the craftsperson’s anonymity lends itself to replaceability (312). Bourdieu denotes the charisma and character associated with the haute couture designer that ensures their indispensability and therefore increases their cultural capital - the rarity of the producer supersedes the uniqueness of the object (1993:136-137). It is worth noting that the BoF video was sponsored by Dior, and therefore must be interpreted with caution - the brand gains authenticity and prestige in the eyes of consumers by presenting their employees’ expertise and dedication. This may serve as an example of the autonomy of les petites mains being usurped not only by the individual designer or creative director, but also by the symbolic capital of the brand.
Works Cited
Banks, M. “Craft labour and creative industries.” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 16(3), 2010, pp.305-321. DOI: 10.1080/1028663090305588
Bourdieu, Pierre. Sociology in Question. SAGE Publications Ltd, 1993. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=47887&site=ehost-live.
Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Forms of Capital." Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John Richardson, Westport, 1986, pp. 241–258.
De Vries, K. “Transgender people of color at the center: Conceptualizing a new intersectional model.” Ethnicities, 15(1), 2015, pp. 3-27.
Markowitz, Sally J. “The Distinction between Art and Craft.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 28(1), 1994, pp. 55–70. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3333159. Accessed 7 Feb. 2024.
Rocamora, A. “Fields of Fashion: Critical insights into Bourdieu’s sociology of culture.” Journal of Consumer Culture, 2002, 2(3), 341-362. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.torontomu.ca/10.1177/146954050200200303