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  5. Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Volume 14, Issue 1

Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Language: English
  • Introduction

      • Ambivalences, tensions and questions of im/materiality in fashion and beauty

        https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00052_2

        Several cross-cutting themes run throughout fashion theory: ambivalence, tensions, and immateriality and materiality, within the larger framework of capitalism. In this introduction, we interlink these themes by arguing that immateriality is inextricably entangled with materiality. The material flows through capitalism require negotiated meanings in everyday social interactions, yet cannot resolve the underlying tensions involved. Pursued by some, resisted by others, capitalism’s profit motivation always involves tensions and ambivalences. While we emphasize the material ground of fashion and beauty practices, also in relation to the formation of identity in all its ambiguity, the digital realm invites and highlights immateriality. Yet, in the end, we maintain, materiality is and must remain stubborn.

  • Articles

      • Zygmunt Bauman and the unbearable lightness of fashion

        https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00053_1

        The works of Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) are necessary and worthwhile to include in the fashion studies canon. Though Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid modernity’ is regularly cited by scholars in critical fashion studies, his broader works have yet to be explicated in the same way as other giants of thought such as Bourdieu and Barthes. I posit that Bauman has more to offer than a passing mention; his accessible writings provide a clear-eyed assessment of the perils of being human today, providing fashion studies scholars a critical lens through which fashion as commodity and concept can be assessed in our contemporary context. This explication offers an appraisal and reframing of Bauman through application in the scholarly domains of fashion systems analysis, fashion and identity studies and sustainable fashion discourses. I engage Bauman’s key contemporary works to broaden the limited reading of him in the field. I argue Bauman’s work and fashion studies have a potentially mutually beneficial relationship, each challenging and enhancing the other when engaged in the exploration of everyday life in the twenty-first century.

    • New femininities and self-making in contemporary Chinese beauty influencing

      https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00054_1

      With the rapid development of industrialized social media influencing, China’s beauty economy has spawned legions of beauty influencers. These influencers and their social media production have formed a complex and seemingly contradictory assemblage of beauty ideals in the contemporary Chinese social media landscape. Amidst this assemblage are circulating an array of emergent femininities, a wave of nationalism and a suspiciously neo-liberal-looking subjectivity. Through a qualitative analysis of 383 Weibo posts of the top Chinese beauty influencers, this article reveals that these influencers and their social media productions play a crucial role in producing new conceptualizations of beauty in China (and beyond). Their cultural creations seem to empower women through active beauty interventions and body makeovers, but essentially fall into the trap of neo-liberal capitalism and perpetuate problematic beauty notions in tandem with local patriarchal gender scripts.

    • Trans YouTubers and DIY undergarments: ‘Queer-and-trans-world-making-and-sharing’ within the fashion system’s informal economies

      https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00055_1

      In our research we explore how do-it-yourself (DIY) gender-affirming undergarments worn on the lower torso are made and distributed and the broader context of these objects in relation to influencer identity, trans experiences, activism and personal storytelling on YouTube in the twenty-first century. To engage in action-oriented research as part of our approach, we also developed a corresponding mounted fashion exhibition that we co-curated with three of the YouTubers featured in the research. To achieve our purpose, we drew upon multiple qualitative methods. We analysed YouTube videos using a comparative method, conducted oral histories with the YouTube content creators and engaged in a curatorial process to produce a co-curated fashion exhibition with the oral history interviewees. The trans YouTubers in our research engaged in what we refer to as . That is, there was an overarching emphasis on making DIY tutorial videos via YouTube and the actual garments for themselves, but then also creating and sharing this knowledge with others so they, too, could experience and access happiness and joy in how they fashion their identity through dress.

  • Review Essays

      • : Critical reflections on curation and future directions in masculinity studies

        https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00056_3

        at the V&A Museum in London (19 March–6 November 2022) marked a significant curatorial and cultural moment. Curated by Claire Wilcox, Rosalind McKever and Marta Franceschini, the exhibition explored the shifting landscape of menswear by focusing on the intersections among fashion, art, time and gender. This review essay critically reflects on the curation of the exhibition and the accompanying two-day symposium (13–14 October 2022) co-convened by the V&A and the Masculinities Research Hub at London College of Fashion. It argues for the need for interdisciplinary research and curation on menswear and masculinity studies to explore a plurality of intersectional identities. Additionally, this article argues for the importance of engaging diverse audiences across the sector with rich stories of making, wearing and fashioning identities. There remains considerable scope to move beyond a focus upon historical dress and luxury designer items, to include the often invisible and untold narratives of ordinary and everyday dress.

    • Grażyna Hase: The legend of socialist-era branding in Poland

      https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00057_3

      This review essay discusses the exhibition on display at the Warsaw Museum in Poland from 28 April to 11 September 2022. The curator of the exhibition was Agnieszka Dąbrowska, art historian and curator of the museum’s fashion collection. The review outlines the main focus and elements of the exhibition as well as the achievements of one of the most important fashion designers in socialist Poland (1947–90): Grażyna Hase. I discuss the designer’s ambition to create her own fashion under the auspices of a state institution from the 1950s to the 1980s. In communist Poland, fashion design and production were connected to the political system. The fashion exhibition highlights that fashion design in those days was a field of struggle and frustration on many levels: design, production and consumption. Yet, in spite of this, Hase’s designs were very successful.

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