During the latter part of the 2010s, many fashion brands – e.g., Gucci, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Dior – have been caught up with scandals and called out for racism, cultural appropriation and other types of insensitivity towards vulnerable groups. This article will unpack, through critical analysis of some of these examples, the changing landscape of the ‘fashion scandal’ in the late-2010s. We understand fashion scandals as the fuel of fashion. They are debated in social media and they are controversial actions, statements or events that cause strong emotional responses. Even though scandal has been proven effective in fashion marketing for decades, and despite it is still frequently used, there might be a change on the way. Our examples suggest that with the rise of social media and its so-called ‘citizen journalism’ the tactics of creating scandals may have lost their lustre and can easily turn against the brand. We will also discuss new tactics that brands have adopted to escape undesired scandals by establishing new roles such as the ‘diversity consultant’.
{"title":"The fashion scandal: Social media, identity and the globalization of fashion in the twenty-first century","authors":"Annamari Vänskä, O. Gurova","doi":"10.1386/infs_00045_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00045_1","url":null,"abstract":"During the latter part of the 2010s, many fashion brands – e.g., Gucci, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Dior – have been caught up with scandals and called out for racism, cultural appropriation and other types of insensitivity towards vulnerable groups. This article will unpack, through critical analysis of some of these examples, the changing landscape of the ‘fashion scandal’ in the late-2010s. We understand fashion scandals as the fuel of fashion. They are debated in social media and they are controversial actions, statements or events that cause strong emotional responses. Even though scandal has been proven effective in fashion marketing for decades, and despite it is still frequently used, there might be a change on the way. Our examples suggest that with the rise of social media and its so-called ‘citizen journalism’ the tactics of creating scandals may have lost their lustre and can easily turn against the brand. We will also discuss new tactics that brands have adopted to escape undesired scandals by establishing new roles such as the ‘diversity consultant’.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47947709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity and Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture, Sara Liao (2020) London: Pluto Press, 203 pp., ISBN 978-0-74534-069-2, h/bk, £75.00 ISBN 978-0-74534-070-8, p/bk, £29.99
{"title":"Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity and Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture, Sara Liao (2020)","authors":"Yating Jin","doi":"10.1386/INFS_00043_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/INFS_00043_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity and Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture, Sara Liao (2020)\u0000London: Pluto Press, 203 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-74534-069-2, h/bk, £75.00\u0000ISBN 978-0-74534-070-8, p/bk, £29.99","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"147-149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47268251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The visual politics of fashion has again become a topic of interest to scholars working both inside and outside the realm of fashion studies, although many, like this author, actually bow to Jennifer Craik’s ground-breaking study The Face of Fashion (1994). This article introduces the notion extended power dressing as a way to further the scholarly study of contemporary female executives’ brand of power dressing in the aftermath of John T. Molloy’s 1980s matrix for successful ‘wardrobe-engineering’. In line with previous studies of the sartorial dress code represented by women in power, this article features a pertinent example from yet another social arena, in the form of the unprecedented couture gowns worn by the late permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, at the Nobel Festivities in Stockholm between 2015 and 2018. The author suggests that these frocks are materialized visions of Danius’ intellectual wit and cultural taste, thus representing a visual articulation of her powerful rank. An important characteristic pertaining to Danius’ extended power dressing is therefore that her situated dress practice, while advocating different practices of resistance and counterconduct, refuted all sexualization of her as a female subject to the benefit of a selfauthored and self-reflecting enfashioning technology. By detailing the intellectual process behind Danius’ gowns, as well as their performance in society, this study shows how power is behaving and how it is structured when comparing the conduct of a certain dominant discourse (in this case cultural tradition and misogyny) to the author’s proposed counter-discourse (resistance and female agency). The author suggests that the visual politics emerging from this meeting represent a unique female subculture adding yet another layer to the visual politics of fashion.
时尚的视觉政治再次成为时尚研究领域内外学者感兴趣的话题,尽管许多人,如本文作者,实际上是向詹妮弗·克雷克(Jennifer Craik)的开创性研究《时尚的面孔》(1994)致敬。本文引入了“延伸权力着装”的概念,作为对当代女性高管权力着装品牌的进一步学术研究的一种方式,这种研究是在约翰·t·莫洛伊(John T. Molloy) 20世纪80年代成功的“衣柜工程”矩阵之后进行的。与之前对掌权女性所代表的着装规范的研究一致,本文以另一个社会领域的相关例子为例,即瑞典学院已故常任秘书萨拉·达尼乌斯(Sara Danius)在2015年至2018年斯德哥尔摩诺贝尔颁奖典礼上所穿的史无前例的高级定制礼服。作者认为,这些连衣裙是达尼乌斯的智慧和文化品味的物化视觉,因此代表了她强大的地位的视觉表达。因此,与Danius的延伸权力着装相关的一个重要特征是,她的情境着装实践,在倡导不同的抵抗和反行为实践的同时,驳斥了她作为女性主体的所有性别化,这得益于一种自我创作和自我反思的时尚技术。通过详细描述达尼乌斯的礼服背后的智力过程,以及它们在社会中的表现,本研究展示了在比较某种主导话语(在本例中是文化传统和厌女症)与作者提出的反话语(抵抗和女性代理)的行为时,权力是如何表现的,以及它是如何结构的。作者认为,从这次会面中产生的视觉政治代表了一种独特的女性亚文化,为时尚的视觉政治增添了一层。
{"title":"Genius and taste: Sara Danius’ couture gowns as extended power dressing","authors":"Boel Ulfsdotter","doi":"10.1386/infs_00047_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00047_1","url":null,"abstract":"The visual politics of fashion has again become a topic of interest to scholars working both inside and outside the realm of fashion studies, although many, like this author, actually bow to Jennifer Craik’s ground-breaking study The Face of Fashion (1994). This article introduces the notion extended power dressing as a way to further the scholarly study of contemporary female executives’ brand of power dressing in the aftermath of John T. Molloy’s 1980s matrix for successful ‘wardrobe-engineering’. In line with previous studies of the sartorial dress code represented by women in power, this article features a pertinent example from yet another social arena, in the form of the unprecedented couture gowns worn by the late permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, at the Nobel Festivities in Stockholm between 2015 and 2018. The author suggests that these frocks are materialized visions of Danius’ intellectual wit and cultural taste, thus representing a visual articulation of her powerful rank. An important characteristic pertaining to Danius’ extended power dressing is therefore that her situated dress practice, while advocating different practices of resistance and counterconduct, refuted all sexualization of her as a female subject to the benefit of a selfauthored and self-reflecting enfashioning technology. By detailing the intellectual process behind Danius’ gowns, as well as their performance in society, this study shows how power is behaving and how it is structured when comparing the conduct of a certain dominant discourse (in this case cultural tradition and misogyny) to the author’s proposed counter-discourse (resistance and female agency). The author suggests that the visual politics emerging from this meeting represent a unique female subculture adding yet another layer to the visual politics of fashion.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66717389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marks of Obsession: Appearance, Transformation, Pain, and the Abject Female Body","authors":"","doi":"10.38055/fs030203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.38055/fs030203","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74479507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Natural dyes from plants, insects, and fungi can be used to color yarns and textiles by craftspeople. Craft communities interested in natural dyes are using social media platforms such as Instagram to connect and share knowledge and to generate commerce for their products. #Naturaldye is a documentary film that explores the use of Instagram as a pedagogical, social, commercial, and creative space where dyers foster community and support businesses. Participants in the film discuss what types of information they find essential to articulate while also describing themselves as part of a community of other makers and artists. Theoretically, #Naturaldye is situated at the intersection of the circuit of style-fashion-dress (Kaiser, 2012) and imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). Social media platforms like Instagram enable articulation between fashion, textiles, commerce, and craftspeople where knowledge of natural dyes, dyers, and their work is conveyed to a wider array of individuals that become part of an imagined community through craft.
{"title":"#NaturalDye","authors":"Kelsie Doty, D. Green, Dehanza Rogers","doi":"10.38055/fs030107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.38055/fs030107","url":null,"abstract":"Natural dyes from plants, insects, and fungi can be used to color yarns and textiles by craftspeople. Craft communities interested in natural dyes are using social media platforms such as Instagram to connect and share knowledge and to generate commerce for their products. #Naturaldye is a documentary film that explores the use of Instagram as a pedagogical, social, commercial, and creative space where dyers foster community and support businesses. Participants in the film discuss what types of information they find essential to articulate while also describing themselves as part of a community of other makers and artists. Theoretically, #Naturaldye is situated at the intersection of the circuit of style-fashion-dress (Kaiser, 2012) and imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). Social media platforms like Instagram enable articulation between fashion, textiles, commerce, and craftspeople where knowledge of natural dyes, dyers, and their work is conveyed to a wider array of individuals that become part of an imagined community through craft.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74069209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“Affect and Sensation” brings together cyanotypes and text from the practice-based project “The Afterlives of Clothes” to explore the sensory and emotional effects of archival fashion research. Addressing the ways that imperfect garments make the absent bodies of those who used, made, and repaired them present for us, the works are a call to engage with the intricacies of wear, gesture, and trace. Initially developed during a fellowship at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and later a residency at Bard Graduate Centre, the broader project asks how, in a field where absent bodies and narratives are already understood as problematic, presenting the traces of use might re-contextualize objects which would otherwise be excluded from view. Focusing on accessories, objects which Jones and Stallybrass term “detachable parts” of the self (2001b: 116), the images and writing draw upon a methodology that combines archival research with auto-ethnographic writing, image, and filmmaking to explore the embodied and bodily experience of researching imperfect garments in museum archives. Presenting archives as repositories of affect, labour, emotion, and bodily trace, they ask how ideas of affect and containment might shed light on the encounter with archival garments. This project presents garments in archives as both containers and producers of affect — an affect that, in part, stems from the bodies that wore and made them, but also from the multiple meanings that they acquire through accession, storage, conservation, and display.
{"title":"Affect and Sensation","authors":"Ellen Sampson","doi":"10.38055/fs030103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.38055/fs030103","url":null,"abstract":"“Affect and Sensation” brings together cyanotypes and text from the practice-based project “The Afterlives of Clothes” to explore the sensory and emotional effects of archival fashion research. Addressing the ways that imperfect garments make the absent bodies of those who used, made, and repaired them present for us, the works are a call to engage with the intricacies of wear, gesture, and trace. Initially developed during a fellowship at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and later a residency at Bard Graduate Centre, the broader project asks how, in a field where absent bodies and narratives are already understood as problematic, presenting the traces of use might re-contextualize objects which would otherwise be excluded from view. Focusing on accessories, objects which Jones and Stallybrass term “detachable parts” of the self (2001b: 116), the images and writing draw upon a methodology that combines archival research with auto-ethnographic writing, image, and filmmaking to explore the embodied and bodily experience of researching imperfect garments in museum archives. Presenting archives as repositories of affect, labour, emotion, and bodily trace, they ask how ideas of affect and containment might shed light on the encounter with archival garments. This project presents garments in archives as both containers and producers of affect — an affect that, in part, stems from the bodies that wore and made them, but also from the multiple meanings that they acquire through accession, storage, conservation, and display.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89836092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines how the technical fit of a garment can affect an individual’s ability to fit in. It challenges the tool box used by practitioners working with anthropometric data (the surface measurements of the human body) and has produced new methods that are less reliant on published averages. Some of the article’s questions are: how does anthropometric data and the study of human anatomy influence notions of an ideal body? In what ways do anthropometric data and patternmaking principles include or exclude diverse body types? And what tools can be developed to assist designing for diverse bodies? The article takes a multi-method and multi-theory approach to the research and investigates concepts of fit through phenomenology, semiotics and anatomy. By exploring experimental methods in cut, it challenges the meaning of a key example of conservatism and uniformity in tailoring, the grey flannel suit, and reflects on the question, what is good fit?
{"title":"Missed Fit","authors":"P. Sparks","doi":"10.38055/fs030104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.38055/fs030104","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how the technical fit of a garment can affect an individual’s ability to fit in. It challenges the tool box used by practitioners working with anthropometric data (the surface measurements of the human body) and has produced new methods that are less reliant on published averages. Some of the article’s questions are: how does anthropometric data and the study of human anatomy influence notions of an ideal body? In what ways do anthropometric data and patternmaking principles include or exclude diverse body types? And what tools can be developed to assist designing for diverse bodies? The article takes a multi-method and multi-theory approach to the research and investigates concepts of fit through phenomenology, semiotics and anatomy. By exploring experimental methods in cut, it challenges the meaning of a key example of conservatism and uniformity in tailoring, the grey flannel suit, and reflects on the question, what is good fit?","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80969048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Ottmann, Ellen Sampson, Phil Sparks, C. Thompson
A panel discussion featuring four of our brilliant authors from this new issue: Shawkay Ottmann, Dr. Ellen Sampson, Philip Sparks, and Dr. Cheryl Thompson. This panel was moderated by the journal’s Co-Founders and Co-Editors, Dr. Ben Barry and Dr. Alison Matthews David, and includes a question and answer period with event guests.
{"title":"Fashion Studies Volume 3, Issue 1, Launch Panel Discussion","authors":"S. Ottmann, Ellen Sampson, Phil Sparks, C. Thompson","doi":"10.38055/fs030111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.38055/fs030111","url":null,"abstract":"A panel discussion featuring four of our brilliant authors from this new issue: Shawkay Ottmann, Dr. Ellen Sampson, Philip Sparks, and Dr. Cheryl Thompson. This panel was moderated by the journal’s Co-Founders and Co-Editors, Dr. Ben Barry and Dr. Alison Matthews David, and includes a question and answer period with event guests.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74788390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article builds on existing theories of self-presentation and self-identity through a study into the behaviour of fashion influencers who position themselves as Scottish on Instagram. Fourteen interviews were carried out with Scottish fashion influencers who were asked to reflect on their online identity. The interaction between the offline and online self is explored, where national identity and a sense of place are recognized as important attributes of self-identity in an offline setting and participants were sampled on the basis that they were projecting this as a key component of their online self. All were found to be seeking to convey an ideal identity on Instagram; this involved curating particular aspects of their offline style and showcasing these online. The issue of authenticity was complex, and a spectrum of identity evolution on Instagram is observed and reflected on. The most career-minded participants tended to portray themselves in a more one-sided manner and were most strongly influenced by a sense of their audience. In contrast, the participants who were less career-minded tended to explore more freely with their online self and were influenced most strongly by internal factors.
{"title":"Scottish fashion influencers: Constructing a style identity on Instagram","authors":"Madeleine Marcella-Hood","doi":"10.1386/INFS_00017_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/INFS_00017_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article builds on existing theories of self-presentation and self-identity through a study into the behaviour of fashion influencers who position themselves as Scottish on Instagram. Fourteen interviews were carried out with Scottish fashion influencers who were asked to reflect\u0000 on their online identity. The interaction between the offline and online self is explored, where national identity and a sense of place are recognized as important attributes of self-identity in an offline setting and participants were sampled on the basis that they were projecting this as\u0000 a key component of their online self. All were found to be seeking to convey an ideal identity on Instagram; this involved curating particular aspects of their offline style and showcasing these online. The issue of authenticity was complex, and a spectrum of identity evolution on Instagram\u0000 is observed and reflected on. The most career-minded participants tended to portray themselves in a more one-sided manner and were most strongly influenced by a sense of their audience. In contrast, the participants who were less career-minded tended to explore more freely with their online\u0000 self and were influenced most strongly by internal factors.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48663238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}