Critical Studies in Men's Fashion - Volume 2, Issue 2-3, 2015

Peirce’s thesis on abductive inference, which addresses the logic of inferential thinking, frames an interpretive study of a text of heated public arguments that surrounded sagging during its rise as a highly transgressive and controversial subculture appearance form. On the assumption that I could do so, I consciously reconstructed the logic of my inferences, framing these on Peirce’s premise that interpretation begins with an observation (the result) and proceeds to a conclusion regarding meaning (the case) by intuiting a relationship (a hypothesized rule) between the observation and what it appears to mean. The abductions reveal that my inferences were constructed on conventional rules derived from common clichés, principles drawn from scholarly works on the social-psychology of dress, and ordinary marketplace wisdom.

The period from c.1850 to 1900 was a turning point for boys’ clothing in Britain, with the introduction of short trousers as a garment that distinguished young boys from both older and younger males. This was also the period when mass manufacturers’ standardized garment sizes were defining the boundaries of age-related practices. This article will present an overview of changes in age-related clothing practice for boys in Britain between 1850 and 1900, and the ways in which these were understood by consumers. A comparison between documents from within the garment trades and documents addressed to consumers will provide a clearer understanding of the relationship between manufacturers’ provision of garments and consumers’ uptake of them in the period before 1900. The detailed analysis of documents from manufacturers and retailers will allow for an assessment of the importance of commercial interests in reflecting and shaping consumer behaviour.

While scholars have theorized about men’s motives for consuming fashion, few empirical studies have explored these theorizations against men’s lived experiences. A gap in knowledge exists between how scholars understand men’s fashion consumption and how men understand their fashion consumption. In this article, I examine men’s motives for consuming fashion based on individual interviews with 30 demographically diverse male consumers. Findings reveal that men are motivated to consume fashion because it provides benefits, including expressing identity, cultivating success and facilitating engagement. However, the pressures of body anxiety, exclusion and sartorial stress temper these positive outcomes. The common thread of hegemonic masculinity connect the various benefits and pressures that men experience when they engage in fashion. My research enhances knowledge about the operation of masculinity in consumer culture and the anxieties that men experience during the fashion consumption process. Menswear brands are advised to promote diverse masculine ideals in order to prevent negative business outcomes.

The purpose of this research was to explore why some American Civil War re-enactors will galvanize while others will not, and whether this dress behaviour is tied to their political beliefs or their purpose while re-enacting. Galvanize, a term used by re-enactors, refers to the act of changing from one uniform (i.e., Union) into another (i.e., Confederate). It is common at American Civil War re-enactments that the two sides are uneven and some re-enactors need to change sides, or galvanize, to create a balanced battle scene. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected via an online survey from 214 re-enactors regarding their stance on political issues, purpose while re-enacting and willingness to galvanize. The theoretical basis for this research is Symbolic Interaction Theory and Dress and the Public, Private, and Secret Self model. This research adds an empirical approach to previous literature and documents perspectives from both Northern and Southern re-enactors.

Throughout rock music’s history musicians have explored the boundaries of gendered dress and performed sexuality, but none have done it quite as fascinatingly as those of glam metal, a particular subgenre of heavy metal that became commercially popular in the United States in the mid-1980s. The stars of glam metal often appropriate exaggeratedly feminine modes of dressing, such as extensive and highly styled hair and make-up, yet still strive to communicate an traditionally masculine, even hyper-masculine, heterosexual persona designed to snare women through clothing, lifestyle and the presentation of both in popular media. As musicologist Robert Walser writes, metal is a cultural entity that offers lots of opportunities for doing identity work, and accomplishing gender is one form of identity work that merits particular focus. Using the visual and sartorial material contained within the metal pin-up or centrefold, this article takes upon itself the task of understanding how glam metal musicians accomplish gender, with particular emphasis on the way ideas about heterosexual masculinity are packaged and presented to the consumer of such imagery. The metal centrefold is compared to its more famous female counterpart, the Playboy centrefold, to illustrate the way clothing and body posturing influence our reading of gender and sexuality, and the rebellious cowboy imagery that defines musicians such as Bret Michaels of Poison is compared to the image of the cowboy as viewed in Marlboro advertisements, demonstrating glam metal’s emphasis on projecting a carefully calibrated sense of heterosexual masculinity to its audience.

Fascism defies an easy definition. However, scholars of fascism have long recognized the linkage between style and fascist politics as a starting point for historical investigation. Surprisingly, scholarship on fascism has, so far, largely ignored the use of uniforms as one of the most important similarities of fascists across Europe. To the general public and the trained historian alike, a cultural historical approach to the study of fascism focusing on fascist uniforms opens up routes of investigation that can lead to fascinating new insights into a historical field awash in a multitude of monographs and articles. Over the last decades political and social historians have described and analysed most major aspects of German fascism. Nevertheless, the picture cannot be considered complete. A focus on fascist uniforms, and thus cultural history, promises to round out the picture of the allure of German fascism. Drawing on theories established by scholars of fashion and uniforms, and employing historical evidence in the form of archival documentation regarding Nazi uniforms and public behaviour, this article proposes that, as the Nazis evolved from 1921 to 1933, they used their dress in the process of appearance management in order to influence their public perception as masculine and plebeian, yet also disciplined.

Though mainstream professional wrestling depends on and benefits from anglo-normative, Western hegemony, contemporary wrestling also subverts and parodies it. One character who can be read as white, Sami Zayn, undermines this hegemony through subtly asserting his Arabic and transnational identities. In wrestling, a character’s apparel functions as a metonym for the character, and with his tights Zayn counters mainstream Islamophobic discourse about Arabs post 9/11. Zayn’s tights are decorated with many national flags, Arabic characters and Roman letters to show he possesses a complex identity influenced by not only his ethnic heritage (Syrian) and country of birth (Canada), but every country he has visited and the cultures within them. His popularity and success allow a space within World Wrestling Entertainment for non-white characters to perform identities not limited to caricatures of their ethnic and racial backgrounds.

Man In Progress: 20 Años De Moda Masculina, 20 Años De GQ/20 Years Of Men’s Fashion, 20 Years Of GQ, Museo Del Traje, Madrid , 26 SEPTEMBER 2014–11 JANUARY 2015

David Bowie Is, Museum of Contemp orary Art Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 23 Sept emb er 2014–4 January 2015

Advertising Menswear: Masculinity and Fashion in the British Media Since 1945, Paul Jobling (2014) London: Bloomsbury, 254 pp. ISBN: 9781472533432, h/bk, £64.99/$112