Interfacing the Divine - Silhouettes of the Soul

SECTION ONE INTERFACING THE DIVINE Otto von Busch and Jeanine Viau Scholars of fashion, body, and dress recurringly contemplate clothing as a “second skin.” This conceptual playfulness has analytical and metaphorical consequences, but it is also grounded in the everyday use of clothes: we change layers of clothing throughout the day, yet still, what remains underneath, the flesh of our self, remains the same. There is an immediate experience that clothes only touch the surface of life. Yet, simultaneously, we feel deeply about our clothes. Even the most confident or sartorially apathetic person may agonize about what to wear for a certain situation. We can get uncomfortable in our second skin, the context may not be right, and a stain or fray may be a nuisance. The image we see in the mirror is at friction with what we see inside. This membrane between “me” and the world does not do its job. It gets even more complicated when we think of what it is that is at work “inside” ourselves, of what it is we long to reveal. One aspect of dressing deeply is interfacing with something within, giving shape to an experience that is more than the ego or the self. This can take different forms and meanings across spiritual techniques. Some speak of the feeling of the eternal, a portal that opens beyond the self, a passage inward that may well open outward. Others call out for or are possessed by a specific divine presence, such as the Kumārī, young girls in Nepal who are incarnations of shakti as Liz Wilson describes in her chapter. Fashion plays a role in such interfacing, whether as a membrane between the inner and outer realms or as a mode of communion with divine powers. The texture of these connections is not necessarily smooth but made of tensions, folds, and wrinkles of concrete and mystical experience. Theologian Dorothee Soelle (2001: 27) posits, “mystical experience happens when the I steps forth from its self-imposed and imagined limits. The I leaves the everyday world and, at the same time, leaves itself as the being defined by that world.” Soelle draws parallels to the Sufi mystic Rumi’s strophe “Why, when God’s world is so big, / did you fall asleep in a prison / of all places?” (2001: 30) Soelle places Rumi’s words in relation to the individualization processes under the modern standardized economic order, with its limited scope of what it means to be human. Here we can think of mystical anthropotechnics toward the divine; how the divine opens itself to draw attention toward something more than the self, a breaking out of the prison we have fallen asleep in, a doorway opening to the deeper chambers of experience, or as Fiona Dieffenbacher explores in her chapter, a future ultimate reality. As in many faiths, this expedition is led by poetic language, in shrouds and robes of vagueness, as the map cannot be universal. In such poetics of inner wayfinding, we may also think of the mystical potential of fashion, where dress is so much more than communication and Silhouettes of the Soul.indb 15 20-11-2021 04:40:42 PM Silhouettes of the Soul conformity; it is a search for depth and meaning in a world of appearances. Deep dress is a quest to handle attire and adornment as vehicles, waymarkings, or the path itself on this inner odyssey or toward the infinite horizon. Here, fashion is the magic of glamour surfacing; as Elizabeth Wilson (2007:100) points out, glamour is sublime, it signifies the magic and allure of appearances, and it “depends on what is withheld, on secrecy, hints, and the hidden.” In everyday language, a wearer’s “style” connotes something deeper, more stringent, more truthful than the fluctuations of trends or dressing up for a specific occasion. Style is here a constant, an anchor held fast beneath the currents of the moment. Take, for example, Nicola Masciandaro’s study in this volume of the affective constancy and charm of Meher Baba’s silence. To reference someone’s style is a way to speak of a search for a steadfastness inwardness beyond the oscillations of the everyday. Life is continuous change, and to be human is to adapt, yet the pursuit for expressing “how I feel inside” echoes of a desire to keep one room as a source of stability, even if this darkness is in itself a process of metamorphosis. The chapters in this section explore how the divine I might use deep dress to move between the world of appearances and ultimate longings. Fiona Dieffenbacher makes a direct correlation between a relational Trinitarian theology and the tripart interplay between fashion-style-dress, a process of subject formation patterned after divine self-articulation. Her Cartesian I longs for the transfigured body promised in Christian scripture, completed in and by the resurrected Christ. Fashion-style-dress becomes a process by which the soul participates in imagining this future body as ultimate dress, lavishly wrought, the clothing of salvation. In counterpoint to the exuberance of Dieffenbacher’s ultimate dress, Nicola Masciandaro’s inquiry into the “avataric normcore” of Meher Baba notes the sage’s intent to blend into the multitude, a style amplified by silence, a clearly monistic utterance. Masciandaro presents an example of how divine incarnation is recognizable in the style of Meher Baba, and how paradoxically, the body is only another “clothing” of spiritual reality, as experientially rich, real, and multifaceted as all other forms of appearance. Appearances have the power to make divinity real, as with the Kumārī, young girls in Nepal who are vessels of divine presence on earth. In her examination of this phenomenon, Liz Wilson shows how surface mediums such as dress, makeup, comportment, and choice of colors manifest the goddess and signify the worthiness of her avatar beneath, showing the possibility of divine disclosure in all aspects of human character and charisma. Here, it is through the surface, through the medium of dress, that the onlooker gains access to the material embodiments of shakti, the divine force animating the world. Finally, for queer Buddhist monk Kodo Nishimura, makeup is part of spiritual practice and a service entangled with that of the spiritual guidance of the monk. Here, makeup on the body comes in alignment with the makeup for a deeper sense of self, or a makeup of the mind, the process of developing beauty for the appearance of a more true self. Beauty is more than just looks; it is people putting on god. It connotes Madison Moore’s (2018) notion of the eccentricity of being free from the limitations of selfhood to finally expand, to blossom as “fabulous.” Across these inquiries, the glamour of fashion 16 Silhouettes of the Soul.indb 16 20-11-2021 04:40:42 PM Section One: Interfacing the Divine is more than surface. It is a poetics that expands inward, and dressing gives both wearer and onlooker a glimpse of the divine within. References Moore, Madison (2018), Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Soelle, Dorothee (2001), The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, Minneapolis: Fortress. Wilson, Elizabeth (2007), “A Note on Glamour,” Fashion Theory, 11(1): 95–108. 17 Silhouettes of the Soul.indb 17 20-11-2021 04:40:42 PM