Cultural attributes
Cultural and linguistic (arguably part of culture) stigma connects jesters with quite negative attributes. This can already be seen by assessing some of the synonyms that speak for themselves more than the seemingly historical word "Jester": sap, fool, tomfool, mug, saphead, sucker, gull, fall guy, chump, patsy, motley fool, mark, muggins, soft touch. In a more contemporary concept, being a jester meant having to professionally allow others to mark a big "L" on their foreheads with their fingers.
But negative attributes are and have been quite popular in fashion. Being tough ranged from being an anti-mod, rocking rebel-without-a-cause-wannabe in the 1960s to wearing Westwoodian and Sex Pistols reinterpretation of traditional, nationalistically iconic Punk clothing in the 1970s to wearing chunky, platformed, dark shades schemed depressed, misanthropic goth glam in 2008. So, what is it that keeps the negativity in the Jester?
Physical attributes in contrast with emotional understanding
First thing I noticed was that the colors are always quite dark and metallic with only accents of color here and there, such as in the Punk's hair, if at all, and even then the content of the color ratio is quite black heavy. Jesters, on the other hand use bold prime colors - in blocks!
My theory is that the colorful jester, especially because of its negative cultural stigma, portrays a contrast of emotions that we are quite uncomfortable with. Dark colors: negativity, toughness, melancholia. That fits. Light, peachy colors: romantic, sweet, thoughtful. Also fits. Even the combination of both fits as a toughening up of a romantic figure.
When you see color used in fashion, it is usually as a foundation "season" color to mix with dark or light schemes as outlined before to create different impact and meaning, such as peachy orange in early 2009, purple in late 2009 and khaki in 2010. Note how these are usually certain shades of a prime color instead of the prime color itself, which is only used in accessories or detailing, including pattern detailing.
However, bold colorful schemes that include more than two prime colors are almost impossible to find. Since the introduction of the corset it has not really been physically endorsed to overly accentuate an unbalanced diamond shaped body. The tomboy figure and the apple shaped figure are as far away from the "ideal body" as fashion and cultural image manifestations have allowed fashion to openly support and accentuate, both for women and for men, for example with shift dresses or Grecian dresses a few years back. There is nothing wrong with having a diamond shaped body, but fashion does suggest to do everything you can do make "such a shape" at least appear tomboyish or apple-ish. I think that this is a big unconscious, or maybe quite conscious reason for the dislike of generally using diamond shapes, whether big or small.
I do have to say that there is an exception to this - the 1980s jumpsuits, which did in fact use diamond shapes! To quite horrific end results, as I'm sure most of you can remember. I can't really count this as an advantageous argument for the jester fashion and will try to quietly drop this stage in fashion records from my memory. Luckily these season's jumpsuits seem to learn from that and resemble long skirted summer dresses instead. I still personally suggest only tomboyish or pear body shapes to use it, as it suits them most. Busty, or hourglass shaped bodies are not underlining their positive features enough with a jumpsuit... But before trailing off into body theory, I come back to a designer who has effectively re-interpreted jester stigmas, a context which further underlines the cultural aspect of an anti-trend.
Manish Arora at the Indian Fashion week
Indian fashion intrinsically celebrates boldness, vibrance and colorfulness and is therefore naturally more receptive to the colorful interpretations of Jester influenced fashion. Manish Arora did a wonderful interpretation of motley fashion with contemporary touches that I personally highly approve of such as amazing shoes, appropriate cuts to contrast the distracting fabric and long, long legs.
However, what has to be said is that despite its motley pattern and contextually applied scary make-up and simplified and glamorised jester hats, all pieces apart from the circus model one could have been contextualised outside a jester influenced context - due to it's coloring, gradual shading and minifying and reshaping of the "unattractive" diamond shape.
In the end we can see that what really sets jester fashion apart from similarly categorisable fashion is the way in which colors and even shapes are used (negative - dark shading, colorful - small detailing, bold - off prime colors). However, the way we understand colors is impacted by cultural attachment. I will make sure to wear my jester dress anyway, just a point to remind myself that fashion is very, very strange, but never as strange as a jester inspired diamond dress.
