Bandeau of cashmere

Fashion enters in full force in Convolute A, before the actual section nominally on fashion, Convolute B. The first outline of the theme is perhaps at A5a,1 with the "bandeau of cashmere." This is a type of garment (in this case a blindfold) and we note that is has been "fashioned" by Love itself. It is an exotic (perhaps since it's from Tibet) covering of things like "proud innocence" (mentioned in A5 as something the arcades were constructed to protect), "carrying away" bookkeepers and burghers, "the stern prude and the frigid coquette." The material of fashion is a "magical talisman" and it is a symbol of the internalization of sovereignty referred to in other passages. "It braces the spirit and subjugates the heart." Finally this whole ontology is in the form of comedy, itself performed in an arcade and part of the historical record Benjamin motions toward objectively reporting. This thematic courses on through other passages, each time cashmere is mentioned, as with A6,1, finally as clothing products in one of the shops of the arcade, as well as in department stores. The idea and theme of commerce become interfused with notions of fashion, such that any time beauty and love are mentioned we immediately look for money. All of this is happening sub rosa in the text when we get to a short section like A7a,1: "The beautiful apotheosis of the 'marvel of the Indian shawl,' in the section on Indian art in Michelet's Bible de l'humanité (Paris, 1864)." (I want to say that I literarily randomly chose this passage to try to analyze, which is what provided the impetus for this post). Of course the Michelet—and we can note that the bibliographic information here is part of the "foreground" or main discursive line of this passage, not set off at the end or wholly in parenthesis—is a mirror image of Benjamin's Arcades Project, the great book of humanity with all of the implications of sacredness, so that through this citation the abyssal nature of text is again referred to or presented, or part of experience. But in terms of fashion, the "exotic" Indian shawl reminds us of the blindfold of Tibetan cashmere that is a stand-in for Love itself, an indication of how fashion and love work to obscure various components of experience, and then with this quote that material undergoes a transformation into a spiritual essence, so that the book (itself a reference to another book) functions to convey a history of art and fashion that confirms a kind of deification of the very act of displacement, covering, obfuscation. We know from the Arcades as well that as much as shawls, blindfolds, or other material worn on the body work to hide at the same time as reveal a certain beauty, it is text itself that is the first and final arbiter of the direct and indirect presentation of truth. Finally, Michelet's book itself is published in Paris in 1864, a date that indicates a certain stage in the evolution of the arcades, so that we can expect this particular brand of "apotheosis" to have situated origins and outcomes in that historical context.