You don't wear clothes that are made of two (fabrics). ("Leviticus" chapter nineteenth verse nineteen) "This summer, dare to call stripes popular", this ad slogan posted by an advertising company on the walls of the Paris Metro a few months ago is a bit sensational, and every word in it is very important, but I think the most The most important thing is the word "dare".It shows that ostentatiously wearing stripes is neither earthy nor natural, and that it takes courage, an overcoming of shame, and an unafraid to express yourself in order to wear them.But the brave will be compensated, he leads the trend, that is to say, will be free, dashing and elegant.This is often the case in our age: all social laws can be reversed, all laws, in order to be well practiced, have to be reversed, and what is initially defective or low will eventually be sublimated.

For historians, there is food for thought here.Spanning centuries, it's fascinating to draw the link between the audacity of modern stripes and the public outrage of mid-century stripes.Stripes have long been a problem, and clothing is the most intuitive vehicle for them. In the medieval West, many people—real or imaginary—were wrapped in striped garments by society, literature, or iconography.These are, for one reason or another, outcasts of society and outcasts of God, from Jews and pagans to clowns or charlatans, among them not only lepers, executioners or prostitutes, but also those who betray their masters in fiction. The Knights of the Round Table, the Madman or Judas in the Psalms.All of these people are somehow connected with the devil, trying to disrupt or overthrow the existing order.If it's easy to make a list of these striped-clad outlaws, it's easier to understand why such outfits were chosen to highlight their villains, since there's neither chance nor mystery; On the contrary, since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a large number of historical sources in various fields have written about the derogatory or outright devilish characteristics of stripes on clothing.

This involves cultural issues. Medieval Christianity inherited the previous value system and believed that the reasons for condemning striped clothing could be found in the Bible.In fact in Leviticus XIX, verse 19, the moral and cultural book that forbids mixing practices: Veste, quae ex duobus texta est, non indueris (Thou shalt not wear clothes made of two ).Just like the Greek translation of the "Bible? The Old Testament", the Latin version of the "Bible" is very vague.Perhaps there should be a noun after the word "duobus" specifying what nature it is forbidden to combine with clothing, which should be interpreted in light of the word "texta" and many other passages in the Old Testament: "Do not wear A garment made of two different materials", that is, a garment woven from wool (animal) and flax (vegetable). [1] Or should the noun "coloribus" be added after the adjective "duobus" to read: "Don't wear clothes consisting of two colors"?Modern interpretations of the Bible retain the first solution, faithful to the Hebrew version.Medieval biblical commentators and high clergy, however, sometimes preferred the second interpretation, referring to taboos concerning the decoration and color of fibers and clothing.

However, maybe this isn't (or isn't just) a biblical question, but a visual one?Medieval man seemed to have an aversion to all superficial structure, which, by indistinguishable distinction between form and essence, would confuse the eyewitness.Medieval eyes paid special attention to reading layer by layer.In his view, all images and surfaces are structures with thickness, that is to say, they can be cut into pages.It is built up of successive layers, and in order to read it one must—contrary to our modern habits—start at the background layer, pass through all the intermediate layers, and finally reach the topmost layer.However, as far as the stripes are concerned, this way of reading does not work: there is no background and pattern layers, background-color and pattern-color; there is only one layer, bicolor, consisting of many lines of alternating pairs of colours.In the case of stripes—like another image that touched the sensibilities of medieval man—the checkered square, the structure is the shape.Is this what caused the public outrage?

This book hopes to answer these questions.To answer these questions, however, the book is neither limited to the Middle Ages nor to clothing, but rather it advances the history of stripes and striped clothing all the way to the end of the 20th century, where we are now, and attempts to describe the ways in which the ages did not abandon previous customs. And how rules simultaneously make the divide between the tangible and symbolic worlds of stripes increasingly apparent.The Renaissance and Romantic eras popularized the "good" stripes (symbols of festiveness, exoticism, and freedom) without making the "bad" stripes disappear.The modern age is the amalgamation of all the customs and all the laws of the past, for it mixes the still devilish (a sign of shame for prisoners in a death camp) and dangerous (such as highway traffic signals) stripes with what has become hygienic with the times (sheets and underwear), gaming (children's world), sporting (casual and competitive clothing) or symbolic (uniforms, badges and flags) stripes coexist.

Medieval stripes are the cause of disorder and subversion.Modern stripes have gradually become a tool for establishing order.However, if the stripe organizes the world and society, it still seems to stand against any organization that is too strict or too limited. It not only functions on all vehicles, but it can also become its own vehicle.In becoming its own vehicle, it becomes elusive.A striped surface can also form part of another striped surface with a larger area, and so on, and the symbolic meaning of the strips is infinite. [2] That is why in the following chapters we are not talking about the meaning of semiotics, but about social history.The question of stripes actually leads to thinking about the relationship between the intuitive and the society in a particular society.Why is it that for a long time in the West social taxonomy mostly manifested itself as the principle of vision first, and is vision better than hearing or touch for classification?Look—it must be a classification?This is not true in all cultures or in the animal world.Likewise, why are pejorative signals—that is, symbols that draw attention to socially excluded persons, dangerous places, or negative effects—more prominent (and more visible) than positive ones?Why are historians more comfortable with data that refutes than that that praises?

I can only give succinct answers to these complex and profound questions.On the one hand, because this book is not intended to be a long treatise [3]; on the other hand, because stripes are such an active surface structure that they can only be glanced at, they do not wait, they do not stay.It is in a state of perpetual motion (for which artists are fascinated: painters, photographers, filmmakers), animating everything it touches, going on and on, as if riding the wind.In the Middle Ages, the goddess of fate who turned the wheel of human destiny often wore a striped robe.Schoolchildren in striped outfits are often more active than other children on playgrounds today.Also, on the sports field, striped shoes run faster than monochrome shoes. [4] Therefore, a book dealing with stripes should also reflect the characteristics of speed and quickness.