Clothing Cultures - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2024

In the dynamic scenario of luxury fashion, visual storytelling has become a crucial tool for brands to communicate their identity and connect with consumers emotionally. Fashion films (FFs) play a significant role in conveying brand narratives, aesthetics and values in an era where visual content dominates and consumer attention spans are limited. This study examines the intricate relationship between visual narrative elements, storytelling and the components of FFs within luxury fashion, using Storytailors’s Palindrome: Happiness Hunter collection as a case study. The research aims to understand how these elements contribute to brand storytelling and identity building, the integration of storytelling into FFs and the representation of happiness in luxury fashion. Employing a multi-phase, qualitative approach that includes secondary data analysis, aesthetic analysis and primary interviews, this study explores the aesthetic, visual and narrative strategies employed in the collection and their impact on consumer perceptions and behaviours. Findings suggest that visual narrative elements in the Palindrome: Happiness Hunter collection significantly enhance the brand’s storytelling and identity building. Furthermore, the integration of these storytelling elements in FFs fosters a deeper emotional connection with consumers, effectively presenting the relationship between happiness and luxury fashion. This study highlights the importance of visual storytelling in differentiating luxury fashion brands in a competitive market by creating emotionally resonant experiences that promote consumer loyalty.

This article explores contemporary mourning dress in the United Kingdom. There is considerable research about the decline of traditional mourning wear; however, there is much less material available on what is worn to funerals in the twenty-first century. What literature exists appears to suggest that contemporary funeral outfits are shaped by the intersecting influences of multiculturalism and personalization. The city of Leeds in the United Kingdom is home to over 160 nationalities representing many different faiths and cultural groups. It therefore seemed valuable to explore what people are currently wearing to funerals in the city as a case study. The research is based on a pilot study involving a focus group, which drew participants from diverse cultural clusters. All participants reported changes in the practices of their own group, but these did not appear to be solely the result of multiculturalism. It became apparent that the rise of individualism had also become associated with personalized and themed funerals, where mourners could be asked to wear bright colours or outfits with special relevance to the deceased. The article will discuss the results of this pilot study in relation to a literature review and an analysis of the cultural diversity of contemporary mourning dress. It addresses a significant gap in literature related to cultural diversity in mourning dress in the twenty-first-century United Kingdom and serves as a catalyst for new thinking and global research in this area.

Gender fluidity plays an increasing role in today’s fashion industry. This study focuses on the incorporation of the notion of gender fluidity in Gucci’s ‘Tian’ Suit from the Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection. Drawing from gender theory and philosophy, this study investigates how the Suit might challenge contemporary gender norms and their representation. Taking on an object-based study deriving from material culture, the study proposes three means to investigate a material object under restrictions and through which the material aspect can be included without touching the actual garment or artefact. The article aims to investigate the Gucci ‘Tian’ Suit regarding the concept of gender fluidity in order to shed light on the ways masculinities and gender fluidity are manifested in contemporary fashion, society and culture.

Knitting is an innovative textile design process, playing a key role in ground-breaking developments in apparel and textile manufacture. Despite this, however, knitting carries with it a certain stigma. Firmly embedded in narratives of femininity, domesticity and nostalgia, knitting often remains understood as a highly gendered practice with a specific and limited role in contemporary culture. Through the analysis of a key piece of knitwear worn by Sean Maguire, a therapist portrayed by Robin Williams in the film Good Will Hunting (1997), this article will explore the role of costume in upholding these narratives whilst simultaneously perpetuating gender ideals. Discourse analysis allows for the analysis of ideas, concepts and transactions that exist in between and around material things. It is therefore concerned with meaning-making processes and how and why meaning is formed. Michel Foucault, a key figure in the development of discourse analysis, suggests that objects have no meaning without discourse. In this way, discourses construct social reality. The more a particular reading is suggested, the more embedded it becomes in the public psyche and consequently a knitted garment’s location in contemporary society continues to be reinforced. As a methodology made up of a bricolage of methods, this article considers costume analysis as an informant of broader discourse analysis. By analysing the role of a knitted garment in the communication of identity on-screen, this article will highlight how a limited and specific narrative about knitting continues to endure. Ultimately, the article aims to suggest that the effects of such narratives permeate the public’s understanding of knitting as a creative discipline.

The primary objective of this article is to demonstrate that medieval Muslim jurisprudence exemplifies sociocultural evolution, marked by flexibility and not discontinuities. The article’s case study focuses on the purification of polluted clothing for prayer, examining the everyday domestic and public scenarios that result in clothing contamination, and the jurists’ resourceful methods for rendering it ritually pure through accessible, inexpensive cleaning practices. Through the lens of sociocultural evolution, the article will describe and analyse the daily, frequent, public and domestic situations that pollute clothing, and the creative ways of maintaining its use and purifying it for prayer by simple, domestic and inexpensive cleaning methods. Adopting the framework of sociocultural evolution allows for understanding the jurists’ flexibility which facilitated, encouraged and legitimized the use of stained clothing in rituals following a simple and accessible cleaning process. The intellectual work of addressing practical issues by proposing pragmatic and accessible solutions is the core of juristic function. Within a hierarchy scale of ritual impurity and purification practices, polluted clothing occupied a lower tier due to its commonality in daily life, necessitating practical tolerance and simple solutions. This case exemplifies sociocultural evolution by highlighting the preference for simple acts that purify clothing over strict, complex rules that are difficult to follow.