Nominal constructs in fashion and costume: Names and Nouns as modifiers

The purpose of this paper was to investigate English terms and, more particularly, nominal constructs (Booij 2010) with Noun or Name as modifiers, in the changing history of fashion and costume. Starting on the assumption that proper Names and appellative Nouns form prototypical categories with fuzzy boundaries (van Langendonck 2007; Van Langendonck and van de Velde 2016), we have provided a qualitative investigation of a representative selection of terms that were manually gathered from encyclopaedic dictionaries, visual dictionaries, and landmark publications on the history of fashion. Interestingly, the analysis has shown that conceptual metonymy is an important determinant of the shift from the identifying and individualizing function of prototypical places and personal names to classifying uses as appellative nouns, also in reductions to simplexes (e.g. Ascot tie/Ascot/ascot tie). Additionally, considering the linking rule R in the composite structures under scrutiny, it seems reasonable to suggest that, firstly, the COMMEMORATIVE function (cf., e.g., Schlücker 2016) underlies CLASSIFY (Jackendoff 2010) in specifications of the Name-Noun schema, and, secondly, the shift to EPITHET (Breban 2017) and the TYPIFY function (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2013) can be motivated metonymically whenever associative/emotive meanings and complex descriptions enter into the picture, as in Kelly bag / Hermès Kelly / Kelly bag/Kelly. This allows for complex descriptions, which cannot boil down to individual attributive adjectives. Another question concerned the potential for certain constructs and iconic products to retain their ability to convey complex descriptions, which turns out to be a matter of extant cultural and encyclopaedic knowledge (knowledge of brand, brand products, and style icons).