Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Volume 9, Issue 1-2, 2022

The centennial aloha shirt, an artefact in the collection of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, was manufactured by Paradise Sportswear in Honolulu and designed as a souvenir of a 1950s celebration of the 1850 landing of the first official LDS mission to the Sandwich Islands. The shirt is an archetypal example of garments manufactured in Hawai‘i as identity apparel. It is also an exemplary relic of the form, fabrication and cartoon-like printed designs characteristic of ‘golden age’ Hawaiian shirts – those manufactured between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s. I situate Paradise Sportswear in the context of developments in the garment industry and in aloha shirt production at that time, review characteristics associated with golden age aloha shirts and examine details in the Museum’s garment that reference its significance as a historic costume artefact as well as its value as LDS memorabilia.

This research explores lifestyle consumerism and inquires into a subcultural community’s use of a mainstream fashion object to express alternative values. The ‘X-rated Swatch Watch’ is extremely popular within straight edge, a clean-living punk offshoot in which participants abstain from alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. Swatch first released the watch in 1987 with a black band and white face featuring a large black ‘X’, a prominent symbol in the straight edge scene visible on clothing, in tattoos and drawn on hands. The limited-edition watch became highly collectable on the second-hand market and was re-released by Swatch in 2018 with design changes, including larger size and more colour options. The first and second incarnations of the watch, as well as knockoffs, indicate aesthetic trends in the fashion cycle, evolutions as well as stagnations in subcultural individual and community expression, and the complexities of a mass market item that has multiple cultural meanings within the same time period. In this article, we use qualitative mixed methods to explore the significance of the watch for United States straight edgers who own or express interest in the watch. Primary data collection included surveys, social media discussions, participant observation and archive visits. Results indicate that wearers utilize this watch to strengthen their straight edge identity and communal connections to similar individuals and to the historic lineage of their lifestyle. X Swatch consumers are not overly concerned with the duality of subcultural and mainstream meanings as they compartmentalize their community from wider society.

This research provides a comprehensive descriptive content analysis of empirical research focused on muscularity and published in refereed journals from 2000 through 2019. This article presents the first part of a two-part series. In this part, the research aims were to characterize the research on muscularity with respect to the methods of inquiry and participant demographics. Specific research questions were: what methods of inquiry (e.g. research strategy, data analyses, sampling, use of hypotheses) describe this research? And what demographics describe the participants in this research? Multiple databases were searched to locate relevant research. This search resulted in 176 empirical articles published in English that contained 203 studies. The descriptive content analysis revealed that researchers primarily conducted cross-sectional research using survey methodology and intermediate levels of statistical analysis. Research questions/hypotheses were often absent. About three times as many males participated as females. Participants were primarily college students of White/Caucasian ethnicity selected through nonprobability sampling. Although age, body mass index, ethnicity and sexuality are the types of demographic information known to be related to muscularity, body satisfaction and the cultural ideal of beauty, they were often not reported.

The purpose of this research was to provide a comprehensive descriptive content analysis of empirical research focused on muscularity and published in refereed journals in 2000 through 2019. This is the second part of a two-part series in which the research aims were to characterize the research on muscularity with respect to the theories employed, the measures of muscularity utilized, the extent to which researchers reported reliability and validity for measures of muscularity used, and to report on the journals that publish this type of research and the disciplines these journals represent. We present an overview of relevant theories and how they can be applied to understanding muscularity. This presentation is followed by a discussion of measurements of muscularity. To locate studies multiple available databases were searched resulting in a sample of 176 empirical articles which collectively contained 203 studies. Most studies did not report using theoretical guidance. Of those researchers that did report theories, most used theories from the body image literature; the tripartite model was used most frequently. In 181 studies at least one measure of muscularity was used. The most frequently employed measure was the drive for muscularity scale. A plurality of studies reported their own assessment of reliability as well as others’ reliabilities for the same measure. Most studies did not report validity for muscularity measures employed. Articles analysed came from a wide variety of journals primarily representing two major fields of inquiry: psychology and interdisciplinary.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of fast fashion in maternity apparel and to examine the wardrobe endeavours of women trying to dress fashionably during pregnancy. Maternity clothing trends have evolved to mirror fast fashion as a result of recent focus on pregnant celebrities in popular culture who are inspiring women to stylishly dress their baby bump. Conclusions were drawn from an online survey from 240 respondents which asked women to reflect on experiences with maternity apparel. Findings indicate that while consumers favoured wearing dresses, leggings, longer lengths and yoga pants, there was a strong desire for comfortable clothing options that did not look like maternity wear and could still be worn in a variety of settings including post-partum. These results suggest that pregnant women often navigate a compromise between a need for comfort and aspirations of style.

Social media aided in expanding apparel design strategies for this study, which evaluated ageing women’s clothing preferences by examining their fashion blogs. Fashion blogs provided a rich qualitative dataset that offered insight into how older bloggers made sense of their world. This research analysed written texts and images presented by twenty women to better understand how they felt about their clothing options. Four major themes emerged from the blog data: personal style, self concept, health and ability, and apparel preferences and garment characteristics. The data showed that bloggers were interested in clothing styles and fashion trends that they could modify to accommodate an ageing body without calling attention to disabilities. Clothing was a form of personal expression for many of the bloggers. The women in this study preferred comfort in their clothing styles, and they were generally unwilling to exchange garment comfort for style even when style was a high priority. The study fills a gap by using blogs to inform apparel design. The data from the blogs ultimately helped the researcher, an apparel designer, to better understand and identify possible options for inclusive apparel design for boomer women with a range of needs.

This article aims to evaluate age-related brand experience influencing the lingerie buying behaviours of Indian women consumers by using the brand experience scale developed by the authors. It categorizes brand experience using four dimensions: ‘sensory, affective, intellectual and behavioural’. In order to categorize and analyse the brand experience of Indian lingerie-buying consumers, a questionnaire based on the twelve-item brand experience scale developed by Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello was administered to a sample of 1392 women consumers aged between 18 and 44 years, educated to a minimum of Grade 12 level and residing in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas of India. The results were then tabulated to ascertain the most influential dimensions. The results showed that Indian lingerie-buying consumers can be divided into two groups aged 18–29 and 30–44 years, based on their lingerie-buying brand experiences. The two groups also showed that different experience dimensions influenced their lingerie-buying motivation and brand loyalty. Since the existing literature on lingerie studies focuses predominantly on fit and design issues, this study is of paramount importance to consumers, who will be able to identify dimensions other than functional factors influencing their purchase behaviour. Manufacturers, retailers and marketers will also benefit from the same by being able to create an optimum brand experience for women consumers via their products and offerings, leading to brand satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Culture-specific Chinese-styled branding as a rising trend in cultural and branding studies has provided new discourse for the discussion on the national identity of Chineseness or chinoiserie that has long existed, with further reflections on the Chinese fashion brand design known as ‘Guochao’, which has become an increasingly ubiquitous new conceptual identity in the past five years. Chinese fashion brands are changing their peripheral cultural status and impacting global fashion, transforming the global recognition of Chinese national identity and style in the field of fashion. This article investigates this emerging phenomenon in the global fashion system and theorizes ‘Guochao’ as a rising cultural identity that reconfigures and readdresses the national identity in Chinese fashion branding practices in terms of its connotations and industry applications. It shows that the ‘Guochao’ identity can be separated into two sub-connotations: one that addresses the connotations of ‘Guo’ that symbolize, rejuvenate and rematerialize Chinese historical and material culture, and one that emphasizes the ‘Chao’ discourse, featuring subtle Chinese symbolism that incorporates strong western street style and further blurs the boundaries in the West–East aesthetic binary system. Through case studies on the brand designs and campaigns of two Chinese designer brands that are paradigmatic of the ‘Guo’ identity, Angel Chen and MUKZIN, and two classic Chinese sportswear brands that are representatives of the ‘Chao’ identity, Li-Ning and Warrior Shanghai, the theoretical connotations of ‘Guochao’ as a rising cultural identity in Chinese-styled branding are discussed. This article theorizes ‘Guochao’ as a recreated representative cultural identity in global fashion that challenges the world’s understanding of chinoiserie in the field of fashion and further showcases the popularization of Chinese-styled branding in Chinese fashion.

Because Donald Trump’s language and rhetoric attract so much attention and comment, discussions about the role of fashion and style in the Trump presidency are often limited to outfits worn by the First Lady or his daughter, Ivanka. When Trump’s style is analysed in the press and on social media platforms, it is frequently derided. This article argues for the importance of Donald Trump’s sartorial choices as forms of visual (political) communication. It suggests that Trump, whose appearance and taste are often subject to ridicule in popular culture, has actually cultivated an image of himself as anti-elite. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s lesser-known theory of the corporeal hexis to discuss Trump’s self-presentation, this article shows how, as both candidate and president, he has used sartorial codes to communicate with the different constituencies that were vital to his election and remain central to his bid for re-election in 2020.

The novel coronavirus outbreak changed the world in 2020 as it rapidly spread from country to country, infecting millions of people across the globe. In response, United States policy-makers and public health officials mandated non-essential businesses to temporarily close to help curb the transmission of the disease. Significant economic strain ensued causing many Americans to lose their jobs and entire industries to suffer. With stores shuttered and fiscal uncertainty impeding consumer spending, retail has been one of the hardest-hit industries. Small businesses in particular have been forced to pivot and grapple with the rippling effects of the pandemic. This journal article features an interview with Nicole Carter, Adjunct Instructor at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, about her perspective on how the pandemic is impacting retail and small business. In addition to her work with Drexel, Nicole oversees operations at Benjamin Lovell Shoes, a Pennsylvania and New-Jersey-based shoe retailer, and shares her experience on how the business has adapted since the onset of the pandemic. The goal of this article is to help readers gain a deeper understanding of the current impact that COVID-19 has on small retail businesses, and how that will continue to shape the future of the industry as a whole.

Review of: Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men’s Fashion, Shaun Cole and Miles Lambert (2021)

New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 168 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-30025-413-6, h/bk, $35.00