"Lady Windermere: There is not a good woman in London who would not applaud me. We have been too lax. We must make an example, I propose to begin tonight. (Picking up fan) Yes, you gave me this fan today; it was your birthday present. If that woman crosses my threshold, I shall strike her across the face with it," Lady Windermere's Fan. A Play About a Good Woman, by Oscar Wilde
Way before emojis, in Victorian times, there were folding fans. Ladies would indeed use them not just as accessories to cool themselves, but as dramatic tools to send secret messages to friends, enemies and suitors.
French fan maker and leather goods manufacturer Duvelleroy, founded in Paris in 1827, produced magnificent and ornately embellished designs with sticks and guards made from precious wood, horn, mother of pearl, ivory or tortoise shell.
One of his sons, Jules Duvelleroy, published a leaflet to explain the secret code of fans (it was actually an expedient to sell more fans... and it worked).
Duvelleroy explained, for example, that a lady who carried the fan in the right hand in front of her face meant "follow me"; drawing the fan through the hand sent instead a harsh message, "I hate you", while drawing the fan across the cheek meant the opposite.
The code proved successful and secured Duvelleroy a prestigious deal as he became a supplier for Queen Victoria, while the secret language of fans became one of the protagonists of Oscar Wilde's 1892 play "Lady Windermere's Fan".
As the years passed, fans (that in earlier centuries in Ancient Egypt, China, Japan and India, were also used for ceremonial purposes), changed function: it is not rare to spot in museums fans designed for advertising purposes or to mark special events, including coronations, and there were also travelling fans, usually covered in maps.
Novelty fans printed with questions and answers on either side and with lists of signs and gestures to hold conversation at parties were used for the 18th-century party game called "Fanology" or "Speaking fan". Around the same time, "dance fans" covered with dance instructions also became popular.
The personal use of fans declined after the First World War (1914-18), but fans continued to appear during catwalk shows or, printed with logos of a specific fashion house, they were produced as advertising mediums for fashion designers and labels.
In more recent years, quite a few houses turned to the humble folding fan as a practical fashion show invitation, among the others Dior (View this photo), Ports 1961 (View this photo), Moschino (View this photo) and Issey Miyake.
In some cases, fashion also turned into iconic accessories for fashion designers: a pre-diet Karl Lagerfeld hid his double chin behind his fan, an accessory he abandoned once he was able to fit into his trademark razor-thin suits.
Beyond fashion and its more commercial purposes, the hand fan has also been used to send messages: an essential in some drag performances, fans added drama and hinted at a glamorous and bold attitude in the 1980s ballroom scene (think Angie Xtravaganza in "Paris is Burning") where they were used in a flirty way and in dance routines.
And there are other way to use fans as metaphors or to deliver a message: the late Italian designer Cinzia Ruggeri painted cute black ants on a red fan (an item that will be included in the exhibition "Cinzia says…" on from November at London's Goldsmiths CCA). In this case the designer may have referenced Dino Buzzati’s formiche mentali (mental ants) from his last book "The Miracles of Morel Valley" (View this photo).
In this brief tale, recounting a fictitious received grace by a saint nun, Buzzati wrote: "It would seem that actually in Longarone and in the Zoldo Valley, in the year 1871, there was a brief invasion of mental ants, apparently from the Balkan region. Tiny, almost imperceptible in their normal state, they grew dramatically once installed within the cerebral convolutions, which the insects reached through the ears (...) Mental ants, with their mere presence, loosen the ontological solidity of the everyday world, insinuating the doubt about the very existence of the infected person."
If this was the reference in this fan (and it may have been as Buzzati had written a presentation for an early exhibition of paintings by Ruggeri when she was just 18 years old), it was a subtle and ironic idea: a simple and banal fan could suddenly shake the solidity of the world.
If you'd like to discover more fans with metaphors and messages, head to GAM – Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan for "Moving in Space without Asking Permission" (until 18th December 2022), Andrea Bowers's first solo show in an Italian institution.
The event focuses on gender equality and women's emancipation, women's and workers' rights, immigration, and environmentalism through a variety of media.
The exhibition path winds through the five rooms on the ground floor of the GAM, with iconic works and new productions, including a documentary video filmed inside Villa Reale dedicated to "feminist combative self-awareness" and the artist's "Feminist Fans".
In this installation of brightly coloured sprayed fans, these humble accessories are not just your usual functional tools, but they are actually handy vehicles to spread ideas and slogans, such as "Trust Women", "It's okay to be angry", "Dead men don't grab pussies", "Hear me roar", "Resist to exist", "My outfit is not an invitation" and "Feminists are just women who don't want to be treated like shit".
Centuries have gone since Duvelleroy's secret language of the fan and, as the decades passed this accessory transformed, learning more codes, words and languages. Lady Windermere would be happy to hear that she wouldn't even have to use these fans to strike somebody across the face: the messages emblazoned on them would indeed be enough to throw a metaphorical punch in somebody's face.
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