Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Current Issue

Indigenous textile artisans have, for centuries, maintained traditional methods of textile making that is central to their livelihood and cultural identity. However, the increasing commodification of indigenous textiles around the world has threatened the preservation of traditional, eco-friendly methods of textile production, making it imperative to learn how indigenous groups that have successfully sustained their traditional textile art, have done so. This ethnographic study peers through the lens of indigenous Nongtluh women textile artisans belonging to the Ri-Bhoi district in the state of Meghalaya in the north-eastern region of India, with the aim of understanding how their traditional textile art has been sustained. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of in-depth interview, focus group, field observation and photographic data uncovered two overarching themes that represented internal and external factors that have contributed to the sustenance of the Nongtluh women’s traditional textile art. Internal factors signified the artisans’ deep love for their textile art through inheritance, passion, ingenuity and pride. External factors revealed the role of government, economic prospect and convenience in the sustenance of the traditional textile art in this region. An interpretive framework is presented, representing these factors through the tree of sustenance. Implications and limitations are discussed.

This article aims to understand why one cohort of Australian women choose to wear anachronistic clothing, in this case, 1950s inspired and styled clothing, and more so, why they choose to wear this style of clothing as part of their everyday lives. While some wearers of anachronistic clothing, such as civil war re-creators or Jane Austen enthusiasts, dress for particular social events and revert to ‘everyday’ clothing in their daily lives, this research seeks to examine why this cohort of 1950s fashion aficionados maintain this aesthetic in their everyday work and social lives. The research findings are based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 27 Australian women, aged from their 20s to their 60s, living in urban and regional locations. The purpose of the project was to uncover the psychological and sociological reasons for their sartorial everyday choices. In doing so a number of issues emerged notably interpretations of what constituted 1950s styled clothing. In the discussion of the findings, it was found that the reasons for this fashion choice were complex ranging from personal, psychological, sociological, gendered, nostalgic and political reasons for adopting this style.

This study was designed to provide empirical evidence of the internalization of sexualized female ideals influenced by media and to examine the effect of the internalization on body shame. An online questionnaire was created and a total of 302 women completed the questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was conducted to test the hypothesized causal relationships from media influence to the internalization of sexualized ideals (i.e. holding a narrow view of attractiveness and endorsing the notion that women should be sexually attractive) and, next, from the internalization of sexualized ideals to body shame. The results showed that the more women internalized media ideals, the more women (1) hold the narrow view of female attractiveness that equates physical attractiveness with sexual appeal and (2) endorsed the notion that women should be sexually attractive. The internalization of a narrow view of attractiveness was a significant mediator that led from media influence to body shame. Although women endorsed the notion that women should be sexually attractive, it did not necessarily lead to body shame.

In consumption culture, individuals need things to update their selves or to represent their identities. The more they update their belongings, the more they feel unsatisfied. In this cultural recycling, everyday objects become objects of desire, while the notion of design functions to create attraction. The problem originates in the disengagement of subjects–objects in which the capitalist economic system gets benefits sustaining the cycle of mass production-consumption. To get more benefit, this cycle is sped up along with discount shopping context. The study aims to produce a design discourse in discount shopping context in relevance of the issues of individuality and ethics. The method is a textual analysis with critical studies perspective and deconstructionist approach. The texts are the questionnaire transcripts written by fifteen women. Critical studies perspective clarifies power relations between capitalist economic system and consumer; and deconstructivist approach determines binary relations in relevance of individuality, and ethics and heterogeneity of the texts concerning to design. Along with these two approaches, textual analysis creates a discursive structure. The structure is used to generate a design discourse in which the meaning of design is situated. In this structure, design would be something in a specific heterogeneity and relations around the matters of individuality and ethics. The discursive structure is of importance that summarizes the method used and determines all coherencies around the definitions of design. This structure also could be a useful source for the production of other critical discourses on the relations of subjects–objects and the position of design in consumption culture.

The norms and systems of the fashion industry tend to support a small class of brands and designers creating fashion while the public takes on the role of passive consumer. The rise of digital fashion and a new sector of ‘digital-only’ fashion brands now provides unique ways for consumers to interact with fashion online, from buying wearables for digital gaming avatars, to wearing a digital dress on social media, to investing in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – digital assets based on blockchain technology, bought and sold online. Digital-only fashion brands are reimagining the hierarchical relationships between brand and consumer towards one of empowerment and mutual value via decentralized co-design platforms. Such endeavours allow brands to build community and challenge the ownership and authorship conventions in the fashion industry. Co-design has been widely used by fashion brands as a strategy that promotes involvement from the public/consumer in creating customized and made-to-order products and experiences. Using established theories of participatory art, an approach to making art which engages the public and communities in the creative process, this article explores how digital-only fashion brands are creating more participatory models of fashion co-design. To confirm and further explore this theory and to consider how a participatory model is achieved in practice, a qualitative case study was conducted on The Fabricant Studio, a collaborative digital fashion atelier. The findings reveal new methods of co-design used by digital fashion brands that allow consumers to design and monetize their craft while retaining creators’ ownership. The application of the theory also underscores the importance of creative control and decision-making in the fashion co-design process to ensure it is truly participatory vs. interactive. The Fabricant’s methods to educate users through accessible platforms contribute to the diversification of co-designers and digital fashion designers in general.

Since the start of his career, British fashion designer Richard Quinn has juxtaposed highly fetishistic imagery with bourgeois floral prints in his runway presentations. The interplay of Quinn’s masks, latex and whips with his choice of bold and bright florals is informed by the various and complex symbolic associations with flowers, which communicates both a delicate femininity and sexual danger. At the core of this is the idea of the hybridized image of the woman-as-flower, who embodies a beguiling combination of exaggerated feminine beauty and uncanny horror. To contextualize why Quinn’s fetish-chic fashion is so impactful, this article explores the fashionable representations of the ‘woman-flower’ through history and how Quinn co-opts imagery of bondage, discipline and sado-masochism (BDSM), and fetishwear to evoke the complex associations found within floral symbolism, its links to eroticism and sexuality, and how this is enacted on the runway within the discourses of plant horror and the monstrous-feminine.