Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Fashion, Erotic and Photography, May 2021

This article examines the subject and visual representation of the English working-class lad as both an identification figure for young, modern-day fashion aficionados and a fantasy figure to a predominantly gay audience. It pays special attention to the character’s clothed and naked body, and its performance down the runway; in recent fashion editorials and British-made gay porn. The article investigates how mostly male British artists view and promote working-class male imagery and specifically how fashion photography of the past two decades frames, produces and articulates stories about social class and class difference in the context of masculinity and nudity, and what do these stories tell us about contemporary models of success, failure, struggle and aspiration in multiracial, present day Britain. By linking the current fashion industry’s fascination with working-class imagery with a similar cultural trend in 1960s Britain, the research aims to establish that today’s fashion image makers share similar tendencies with British Social Realist writers and filmmakers in romanticizing the working class, while sticking to a similar, fabricated aesthetic. This enduring fascination for working-class heroes and all things ‘street’ could become problematic when contextualized with industries and commercial ventures such as fashion, and the promotion of clothing and advertising.

Voyeurism and desire are drives linked ontologically to the identity of the photographic and fashion system. Photographing someone is always an act of voyeuristic possession of something that belongs to another, or at least to the surrounding reality that one seeks to – fetishistically – appropriate. But the voyeuristic exercise of photography lives and is nourished by stimulating the exhibitionism of what is in front of the machine’s lens, thus completing and giving meaning to each other. When the context being photographed is fashion, the conditions of insistent voyeurism and intense desire (of emulation, projection, appropriation) become one with the very meaning of the image. In fact, moving from behaviour to the object, most of fashion’s photographic tradition can be traced back to an atmosphere of soft winking and erotic fantasy of the look. In this article, we take into consideration two well-known events that are generically associated with voyeurism and eroticism of the photographic image and fashion, reading them as a parable of the history of the male gaze of women’s bodies: from the triumph of the stereotype in the modern age to its sudden upheaval in the postmodern age. The first case is that of the Countess of Castiglione, who from the mid-nineteenth century was already able to demonstrate how photography could solidify male erotic imagery and, in so doing, present fashion as the style and attitude of an era. In contrast, we find Helmut Newton, famous and acclaimed fashion photographer and exceptional interpreter of the excesses of the eighties, able to bring that male erotic imagery to such exaggerations in the use of codes to make it almost harmless, cooling it.

Re-touched is a collaborative project by collage artist Sarah Eyre and fashion photographer Xanthe Hutchinson. Both artists share an interest in the female body, particularly the notion of pleasure in display and gaze between women and the body. The body of work that forms Re-touched combines photographic and collage methods in order to embody a sense of sensuality through the opening up and enfolding of the female form, on set and through the process of collage. The artists position their work within a framework of feminist theory that questions the binary thinking around the gaze. They draw on the writing of Laura U. Marks to bring a haptic quality to their photographic and collage interventions to the image, and in inviting the viewer to be touched by their images. Through this series of photographic collages, they have established a visual and tactile approach that utilizes the body, is collaborative and re-figures the power structures between model, photographer and viewer. Their images offer a way of rethinking and reshaping representations of the female nude.

Fashion and photography are inter-related subjects within a pedagogical discourse incorporating sociological and psychoanalytical approaches. This article will focus on the radical work of Guy Bourdin, firstly considering the technical themes within his work. The article will then progress to reflect on gender and the fetish elements in the photography by thinking through Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. Elaborating on the concept of the fetish, I will then discuss modernity and analyse Bourdin’s images as a product of, and comment on modernity applying Walter Benjamin’s ideas on fashion to open wider considerations of Guy Bourdin within the disciplines of fashion, photography and beyond.

Boudoir photography is going through a renaissance. Having being rediscovered by whole new generation of amateur smartphone photographers and influencers, the genre has taken a new and exciting direction. The intimacy and erotic nature of this genre is now also injected with a dose of raw realism that further adds to the legitimacy of the image. This newly evolved aesthetic has been equally influential on fashion editorials and fashion ad campaigns from streetwear to luxury brands. In this series of photographs and the accompanying essay, the author/photographer aims to document such aesthetic by capturing the mood and fashion of the current times and analysis the background for such fashion editorial images.

For individuals who identify as queer, the concept of ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ clothing departments is often not ideal and does not align with their values, role or body image. This study explores transgender consumers’ experiences and needs when shopping for clothing and provides suggestions on how apparel retailers can promote a more inclusive apparel shopping experience. Four themes surfaced as participants in this study discussed their apparel shopping experiences: (a) inclusivity throughout store layout and interaction with retail sales staff, (b) gender-affirming clothes that positively influence role and self-esteem, (c) non-restrictive garment fit and compression, and (d) interest in inclusive androgynous styles and aesthetic qualities from queer artists to benefit the queer community. In this study, the concept of trans-inclusive is used as a way of welcoming and implementing the idea of apparel and fashion beyond cisnormative identities, and also as a way to advocate for inclusivity in all consumer markets. This research provides insights for the apparel industry on what is needed for this emerging market of queer individuals and promotes a more inclusive apparel shopping experience.

Postures, that appear arrogant, are typical for fashion photography in high-gloss magazines and within the scene of model photography. It is in trend to either look down upon the recipient, to show a sloppy posture, as if one would not care about the way one will be perceived by the recipient, or even to look angry as if one is annoyed to be photographed – three ways to communicate an arrogant attitude. But who would enjoy looking at such pictures? The article focuses on the recipient and traces various reasons why it can be gratifying to consume such photos, from a masochistic tendency to the search for authenticity and to connoisseurship articulated by it.

This article aims to explore the theatricality of the queered, costumed male body in drag in relation to domestic spaces. To achieve this aim, this exploration is done through the visual analysis of one case study as a methodological tool to examine imagery that presents the male body transformed into a hyperbolic manifestation of itself. The imagery examined in this article exposes the queered space of the costumed male body as a vessel in which it is read from a diversity of perspectives: the aesthetic body, the political body and the ethical one. This examination is guided by Alan Read’s notion of the theatricality of the everyday, Peter Boenisch’s concept of relational dramaturgy and Erving Goffman’s frame analysis as a methodological tool for the dramaturgical exploration of images posted online. Imagery posted online as part of the ambit of the mundane affects and interacts with immaterial spectatorship, other representational bodies and the performativity of the new scenographic space created by its presence online. The proposed immaterial queered, costumed body online becomes a space for theatricality that yields visual cues for viewers in this newly created theatrical space. The dramaturgical possibilities of the representational body facilitate an emblematic quality of the fabric of the mundane and transform it into a new point of reference from which to read theatricality.

The article examines Khloé Kardashian’s self-help book Strong Looks Better Naked from the perspective of representing a celebrity-based inspirational guide that extols the values of exercise and healthy living and in terms of key tenets of the autobiography. In this context, the article argues that the book represents an in-depth example of Sean Redmond’s concept of the ‘celebrity confessional’ in that it uses self-reflective disclosures to connect with readers. However, given the confessionals of bodily issues revealed in the book, the article explores how Khloé Kardashian’s narrative critically exhibits, drawing on the work of Bourdieu, a double sense of habitus. This is explored through her insider perspective that articulates the bodily norms and expectations associated with contemporary celebrity culture, and through her revealing of her own relationship with this culture, a factor significantly exacerbated through her membership of the Kardashian family and its extensively mediated celebrity brand.

Review of: MeXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment and Identity Construction, Alda Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú (eds) (2020)

Austin, TX: University of Texas Press

ISBN 978-1-47731-959-8, p/bk, $34.95

Review of: DisneyBound: Dress Disney and Make It Fashion, Leslie Kay (2020)

Glendale, CA: Disney Editions, 176 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-36805-042-5, p/bk, $17.99

Review of: La mode et ses enjeux, Frederic Monneyron (2010)

Paris: Klincksieck, 143 pp.,

ISBN 978-2-25203-793-5, p/bk, €16

Review of: Carnival to Catwalk: Global Reflections on Fancy Dress Costume, Benjamin Linley Wild (2020)

London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 206 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-35001-499-2, h/bk, £67.50

ISBN 978-1-35002-469-4, p/bk, £21.59

ISBN 978-1-35001-500-5, eBook, £17.27