Clothing Cultures - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2014

During the 1950s and 1960s, when the French couturiers Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy and Chanel dominated the fashion industry, the Italian community in Brisbane, Australia, was very active in the local industry through retail, dress-making and tailoring. Australia is geographically at the margins of the developed countries and has been dependent on European trends and taste. In the 1950s, communication was based on magazines and especially newsreels and film; each ethnic group dressed as they liked and according to their custom. Moreover, ‘Made in Italy’ was not yet the prestigious concept that revolutionized ready-to-wear design from the 1970s. However, Italian tailors and demi-couturiers brought to Brisbane their trans-national sense of elegance (the Italian style) and the taste in fashion that influenced new generations in England and elsewhere in Europe from the 1950s. They brought quality and workmanship, offering excellence through the use of quality fabrics from prestigious English and Italian brands. These tailors and dress-makers also contributed towards the local industry through passing on the skills that they brought from Italy. This article is based on a project that seeks to understand the connection between fashion, history and place. The area under examination is the Valley, short for Fortitude Valley, an area adjacent to the Brisbane CBD. Fundamental to this connection between place and fashion was the presence of many Italian migrants in the area. Through archival research and oral history, the aim of this ethnographic project is to bring to the fore an untold story about the economic and aesthetic contribution of Italian migrants to Queensland. Central to the understanding of this aesthetic change is the Italian suit. This research is innovative in that it opens a new area of study in Australian fashion history, connected to the history of migrants and their identity.

Analyses of sartorial vogues from the past and present have become increasingly cognizant of sociological paradigms, with the notable exception of Norbert Elias’ seminal theory of the civilizing process. This article argues for a greater awareness of the civilizing process in sartorial studies, particularly its discussion of the we–I balance, which elucidates changing patterns of self-perception within a continually evolving society. Felicitously, the diachronic approach adopted by civilizing process facilitates the incorporation of other, synchronic sociological models into sartorial analysis. Reference is made to the theories of Theodor Adorno, Michel de Certeau, Erving Goffman and Thorstein Veblen.

‘Can fashion start from zero?’ is a question that, as observed by theorists, historians and curators, ultimately haunts those radical sartorial projects embodying a ‘new’ vision of the world. In the experimental overalls designed at the beginning of the twentieth century by Thayaht in Italy and Stepanova, Rodchenko and Popova in Russia, it is possible to follow and progressively unfold the aspiration to a total renovation and reorganization of life. The differences between the artistic contexts to which these artists belong – Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism – have often induced critics to discuss their sartorial proposals separately, overlooking their points of convergence. Within this article, the overalls by Thayaht and the Russian Constructivists are instead analysed in relation to each other, as agents of change, or rather as instances of a ‘utilitarian outrage’. In examining their biographies, the article questions the newness of these creations, the rhetoric of the ‘new’ that accompanied them and their status as ‘anti-fashion’ projects. Combining material culture with cultural history, it argues that their iconoclasm and utopian potential resides precisely in their proposing a rationalization of clothing, and in ‘questioning the very fashion project itself’, in both its symbolic and tangible presence. Finally, on the basis of archival research and interviews conducted at the Thayaht-RAM Archive, Florence, the characterization of Thayaht’s tuta as a Futurist creation, which has often been taken for granted, is reconsidered and problematized further.

At any time of day or night, we can witness a ‘makeover’ segment on morning and afternoon television talk shows: programmes such as What Not to Wear (2003) or The Biggest Loser (2004); virtual salons and online makeover video games produced by cosmetic companies and networks (Mary Kay, Revlon, Lifetime, Oxygen). This article examined an important early player in the makeover game, the DuBarry Success Course, which operated on a mail-order basis beginning in 1940. What started as a beauty salon programme for debutantes was translated into a mail-order ‘course’ available for a fraction of the price. Advertisements featuring black and white photographs of clients ‘before’ and ‘after’ coupled with testimonial headlines and personal details appeared in Mademoiselle, Life, Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Day. Women who achieved remarkable weight loss participated in an ‘Achievement Award’ contest featuring an all-expenses paid trip to New York City, including a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, theatre and night clubs. During World War II, marketing materials directly appealed to improving appearance as a patriotic duty. It is estimated that more than 100,000 became Success Course students during an eight-year period. Although the language used in DuBarry advertisements and promotions may not resonate with, or offend, contemporary audiences, the ‘style’ may have changed, but the desire for a ‘makeover’ remains.

The commercial representation of men’s bodies is part of a longer history that has been particularly intensive in the post-war years and especially in the last two decades. Popular brands Jockey, Bonds, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, BVD (Bradley, Voorhees and Day) Munsingwear and Aussie Bum have internationally dominated fashion media over the last century with campaigns that have incorporated cultural ideals of men’s lifestyles using unclothed images and infusing them with branding messages, in effect communicating to male consumers expectations of how they should look. Through the context of market position, fashion promotion and using various visual techniques, the male body has become a product that has been marketed and objectified, and a hyperrealized image of global cultural proportions. This article reflects the cultural approach of the market position and brand management by tracing the representation of the male body in fashion brand promotions, fashion spreads and advertisements. By analysing the male body as a discursive effect created at the intersection of consumption, advertising and visual communication, the major goal of this article is to demonstrate how advertisers construct and represent the male torso to communicate culturally sanctioned meanings about desirable bodies and idealized masculine features to consumers.

Gender demarcation by the colours blue and pink in children’s clothing became too conspicuous to ignore during the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century in America. This article elucidates the correlation between the history of colour fixation for babies of each gender and the formation of gender identity during this period. The investigation into the colour assignment to babies of each gender from the late Victorian era to the post-war era will demonstrate the vying relations of both sexes that were represented by blue and pink and the evolving interrelationship between colour and social structure when the fear of homosexuality was particularly widespread in the Euro-American world.

Examining the beliefs in the fashion industry surrounding the obese is critical to understanding discrimination issues and the resultant fit and sizing issues for plus-size consumers. The fashion industry offers certain styles in limited sizing, which in turn structures our society in such a way that only certain sizes can participate in choosing and wearing fashionable clothing. Therefore, the need to examine the people’s beliefs who will work in this industry is critical to restructuring the sizing, fit and discriminatory issues experienced by fat consumers. Understanding these beliefs among student designers, or the ‘gatekeepers’ of the fashion industry, may explain why plus-size women repeatedly report feeling discriminated against by the fashion industry and have difficulty finding clothing in styles, colours and fits they desire. The results of the study indicate that fashion design and merchandising students have strong negative beliefs about obese people. This article investigates the reasoning for such disdain towards obese bodies in the fashion industry and hopes to rectify the situation by offering suggestions to normalize fat bodies and incorporate information about plus-size consumers into fashion design and apparel merchandising courses.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts opened the first American branch campus to be offered offshore in Doha, Qatar, in 1998. The challenges and opportunities were many and included language and cultural experiences and expectations. Now in its seventeenth year, the VCUQ campus is thriving and many of the early issues have been resolved.

Following in the tradition of the Vanity Fair ‘Impossible Interviews’ of the 1930s and the recent exhibition ‘Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations’, this creative work takes two real-life personages and places them together in an imagined context in conversation with each other. We do not know if Elsa Schiaparelli and Little Edie Beale ever met one another, but it is quite likely that they did, as they inhabited the same cultural and social spheres, and geographical locations at the same time in history. By directly quoting from their writings and recorded speech it is possible to construct a conversation between these two women that depicts them both reflecting upon similarities in their parallel fashion careers, personal achievements and regrets, and philosophizing upon truth, religion, men and war.

Fashion Thinking: Creative Approaches to the Design Process, F. Dieffenbacher (2013) London: AVA, 224 pp., ISBN: 9782940411719, p/bk, $79.99