This book begins with a medieval scandal, and shows us how stripes have become a symbol of taste (chic) and even status. Several months ago, an advertising campaign displayed on the walls of the Paris métro proclaimed "This summer, dare to be stylish in stripes" (cet été, osez le chic des rayures). If we believe this slogan, wearing striped clothing is neither neutral nor natural. It requires a certain audacity, even a transgression against the most common custom, which at least confers the most elegant distinction on the one who dares : he attains chic. Thus stripes remain ambiguous, disapproved as much as valued, and capable of reversing themselves, like any social code. Michel Pastoureau, a leading authority on medieval heraldry and professor of the history of colours and western symbols, tells us why.
This study is above all a study in social representations, from the Middle Ages until today, in which cloth and clothing are two mains themes. It shows how the medieval Western eye feels an aversion for all surfaces which are striped, checked, spotted, compartmentalized, in fact, any irregular surfaces which do not clearly distinguish the figure from the background, as striped ones do. The stripe is the opposite of the plain (which represents the "norm") and causes disorder and confusion. It often has to do with the polychromatic and the idea of diversity (diversitas, varius) which, for medieval culture, expresses something impure and transgressive. That is the reason why images in the Western world reserves a pejorative status for striped clothing. The traitor in the Scriptures (Cain, Judas), the criminals, the lepers, the insane, people employed in inferior occupations (valets, servants) or ignominious trades (jugglers, prostitutes, hangmen), Muslims, Jews and heretics : all these people transgress the social order and wear stripes. That is equally true for animals : the tiger, hyena, and wasp, for example, are creatures to fear. Even the zebra, "the most elegantly dressed quadruped" as Buffon said, passes for a dangerous animal at the end of the Middle Ages and is included in Satan's bestiary. To wear stripes means to be outside the social order. Scandal broke out in France in the middle of the thirteenth century, when Saint Louis returned to Paris after an unsuccessful crusade. The king brought with him a number of monks newly arrived in France and, among them, a few brother of the Carmelite Order, who wore striped cloaks. Like the Franciscans and the Dominicans, with whom they were classified, the Carmelites began to teach in the universities. But they were immediately the victims of mockery and abuse from the populace, and the scandal reached such proportions in urban areas that Pope Alexander IV ordered them to abandon their striped cloaks for plain ones. The conflict grew more bitter and prolonged till the end of the century. During the Middle Ages, the biblical prescription forbidding practices of mixing in clothing was often interpreted as an interdiction of garments made of two colors.
There is a model code which includes lines or bands which could be seen as "stripes" : the blazon. Appearing in the twelfth century to identify combatants on the battlefields and in tournaments, as to give marks of identity to the upper classes in feudal society, coats of arms are colored emblems belonging to an individual or a group of individuals. At the end of the Middle Ages, everybody can adopt the coat of arms of his choice, and even the literary heroes, biblical characters, mythological figures wear coats of arms. The blazon, like the tartan in Scotland, possesses a precise and multiple vocabulary for qualifying the coats of arms. As for stripes and striped figures, we find horizontal stripes (fascé), vertical stripes (palé), left to right diagonal stripes (bandé), and right to left diagonal stripes (barré). These "striped" coats of arms are not bad in every case. If literary texts confer them on traitorous knights and usurping princes, the kingdom of Aragon, for example, bears on its coat of arms vertical yellow and red stripes, a feudal banner which constitutes an emblem of prestige and not a disparaging symbol. And nowadays, the flags of the nations, a modern continuation of striped coats of arms, are clearly not pejorative in the eyes of those using them. In this case, the code has definitely broken off from its imaginary and negative aspect.
On the other hand, a few traces have survived in the system of livery and domestic clothing. These domestic stripes appear during the course of the eleventh century, when Western society provides itself with more and more taxonomic marks and when, before the development of heraldry, clothes become the privileged medium for registering most of these marks. In this context, the striped clothes emphasized an inferior condition (but not necessarily a pejorative or diabolical one) and were worn by the domestic staff of lords, for instance serfs, kitchen boys and table waiters. Later the striped clothes identified men of arms, a more and more diversified category. Finally the use of stripes extended to all those who fulfilled some charge at court or who lived off lordly generosity: cupbearers and chambermaids, clowns and musicians, hunters and heralds. Furthermore, a sort of equivalence came to be established between heraldic mi-parti dress (divided vertically in two colors) and striped clothing. The domestic stripe reaches its height at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and was often coupled with an exotic dimension, especially in Italy, where each court has its "black" slaves. In many representations of the Adoration of the Magi, for example, the black king is given striped clothing, which tends to become a fixed attribute. Even later, the domestic stripe was the specific attribute of valets and butlers in Victorian England and all over Europe as in the United States. Today, this use is quite outdated, but it remains prominent in films, cartoons and comic strips. Another continuation of this medieval stripe is found in military uniforms, those of the lansquenets, German mercenaries serving the great powers in the fifteenth century, as well as in the yellow and red striped uniform of the Swiss guard at the Vatican. Here again, stripes and heraldry joined to organize groups and to establish a hierarchy for the positions of individuals within these groups. Another example of "good" stripes appears in the second half of the eighteenth century, in the context of the American Revolution. The flag with the thirteen red and white stripes for the thirteen American colonies rebelling against the British crown, appears as the image of Liberty and the symbol of new ideas. Michel Pastoureau thinks that the revolutionaries choose a symbol of slavery (in 1770, the prisoners in Pennsylvania and Maryland penitentiaries wore striped clothes), to express the idea of the serf who breaks his chains, and to reverse the code of the stripe : how a sign of the loss of freedom becomes a sign of freedom gained.
The French Revolution made such a wide use of stripes that we can say "without stripes, no revolutionary atmosphere." The sansculotte, Robespierre, the peasant and the aristocrat: they all wear stripes, as the symbol of the new ideology. The stripes become fashionable, at the end of the XVIIIth century and even in the First Empire. Its use extends not only in clothing, but also in interior decoration, especially on wall-fabrics. Later, the discovering of sea bathing and the pleasures of the beach shifted the maritime stripe, previously attributed to sailors, from the great open sea to the shore. This was a new phenomenon and on the eve of World War I, there was no longer a beach in temperate Europe that hasn't become "a veritable theater for stripes." The sailor suit dear to little Proust has completely disappeared, of course, but as a general rule, to appear on the beach dressed in stripes often remained more or less "chic." Thereafter, the stripe became athletic. By using one kind of stripe rather than some other kind, the athlete is located within a team, and this team is attached to a club, a town, a country, etc. This use remains from the military uniforms and the medieval coats of arms as well: as the knight was dressed in his banner, the athlete is dressed in his flag. Michel Pastoureau then tells us how stripe, the "hygienic stripe", is important in our everyday word: striped shirts and underwear, striped bath towels, striped sheets, even a famous toothpaste (Signal), constitute a remarkable example of this use of stripes. Since the Middle Ages, Western man has never stopped marking with stripes anything bearing with disorder. But the stripe, as Michel Pastoureau shows us with these numerous examples, could be a means of restoring order as well: you will ever be able to tell a banker from a gangster. However, the author also lets us know that "too many stripes can finally drive you mad."