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Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Online First

Online First articles will be assigned issues in due course.

1 - 20 of 51 results

    • When the clothes fit: Exploring the embodied transition to motherhood

      Available online: 29 September 2023

      Clothing practices can assist women in cultivating a particular body image and, thus, are sutured with details regarding how they manage their identity and appearance. Clothing can also help women cope with corporeal transitions, such as pregnancy. The relationship between clothing and one’s perception of their body shape changes during pregnancy as does how women feel about their clothes as they assume a new maternal identity. However, there is a lack of scholarly attention focused on exploring how postpartum mothers manage and relate to their bodies through clothing. Anchored in qualitative data collected from 128 in-depth, longitudinal interviews with 32 women at three, six, nine and twelve months postpartum, this article explores how postpartum body image, satisfaction and change are intricately linked with clothing across the first year after childbirth. Depicted through six women’s postpartum journeys, this article demonstrates that clothing becomes a barometer for bodily recovery following pregnancy and reveals details about maternal struggles, successes and spending patterns in the postpartum period.

    • Philadelphia Store-y: Nan Duskin (1927–65)

      Available online: 29 September 2023

      Ann Duskin Lincoln, the founder of the Philadelphia specialty shop Nan Duskin, dominated Philadelphia retail for decades and played a significant role in the development of American fashion. At its peak, Nan Duskin was one of the leaders of American retail, and its founder, Mrs Lincoln, was internationally recognized for her fashion instincts and was one of the most respected, feared, and loved retailers in the business. This article will focus on Mrs Lincoln and Nan Duskin from 1927 to 1965, a transformative period for American fashion. It will explore the unique social role of the women’s specialty shop in American retail during the first half of the twentieth century and the critical role they had in the promotion and development of American fashion. Exemplary in every aspect, Mrs Lincoln’s career is representative of the many independent female retailers that flourished in the first half of the twentieth century.

    • ‘The American Look’: The transformation of women’s sportswear in 1930s and 1940s America

      Available online: 07 September 2023

      This article will suggest that the American sportswear style reflects the unique historical and cultural influences on American dress from the birth of the new democratic nation in the eighteenth century to the dominance of New York City’s ready-to-wear industry in the 1950s. Focusing on the key decades of the 1930s and 1940s, this article will explore the marketing campaign of Dorothy Shaver, vice-president of the luxury retailer Lord & Taylor, who in 1932 coined the phrase ‘the American Look’ to promote American fashion designers’ collections. The legacy of sportswear designer Claire McCardell, arguably the best known of the New York-based ready-to-wear designers will be examined. McCardell’s combination of nostalgic American prairie style with the use of everyday workwear fabrics of cotton plaid, denim, wool and jersey created an unpretentious casual American style based on comfort, ease and flexibility, which is reflected today in the contemporary American ready-to-wear market. The article will maintain that the promotion of the American Look via photographic shoots, magazines, advertisements, visual merchandising, exhibition and film influenced the style and taste of dress that the female American body ought to ‘fit into’. This style, it will be argued, encouraged the development of a cultural memory of American dress by establishing a material link between national identity and clothing.

    • Determinants of a shift in consumer values towards minimalistic clothing consumption during global crises

      Available online: 07 September 2023

      The COVID-19 pandemic, as a global crisis, has affected the clothing consumption behaviour of consumers and it might create long-lasting changes in the fashion industry. Such behavioural shifts during global crises should be considered for sustainability-related marketing concepts and the way marketers promote sustainable clothing consumption during and after the crisis. This study explores the determinants of a shift in consumer values towards minimalistic clothing consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic in the under-researched country context of Iran. First, a literature review was conducted on topics including sustainable fashion consumption and the COVID-19 pandemic, the status of sustainable fashion consumption in Iran, as well as the influence of demographic characteristics on sustainable consumption behaviour. Second, a quantitative survey was administered to a sample of Iranian consumers ( = 382). The results reveal a value shift towards more minimalism and sufficiency in clothing consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country context of Iran. Moreover, the findings highlight that age and gender significantly influenced the extent of this shift in values, while surprisingly no significant value shift was found because of employment or income changes. This article makes a unique contribution by exploring the value shifts towards minimalistic clothing consumption during global crises. Furthermore, the results of the study shed some light on consumption behaviour in an under-researched middle eastern area.

    • DEI representation on Instagram: An analysis of two fast fashion retailers

      Available online: 07 September 2023

      As fashion retailers have started to emphasize their responsibility in society, the significance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the fashion industry has increased. This study explores the DEI commitments made by two fast fashion retailers (i.e. H&M and Zara) to examine whether they uphold and portray their DEI commitments through their Instagram postings by focusing on the following four DEI subcategories: people of colour, size inclusivity, LGBTQIA+ and physical disabilities. The study first analysed each retailer’s DEI statement to determine what claims each retailer makes regarding DEI. The data collection process comprised an examination of Instagram posts during the first week of every month from February 2021 to January 2022 utilizing the National Retail Federation (NRF) 4-5-4 calendar. Researchers collected qualitative/quantitative data and used content/comparative analysis to analyse the data. The findings indicated that representation might not be as equitable as their claims state. Based on the findings of this research, the study provides practical implications for enhancing DEI representation in retailers’ Instagram posts and marketing to facilitate more effective communication. Further, this study contributes to the existing literature on DEI commitments in the fashion industry by highlighting the practices of fast fashion retailers in their Instagram posts and marketing.

    • Costume design in film: Telling the story and creating Malcolm X’s character in Spike Lee’s (1992)

      Available online: 09 August 2023

      Costume designers collaborate with film directors to bring the characters in the script to life. Film costumes are a visual tool of a narrative nature with which costume designers meet the diegetic needs of each story. Through clothing, they make internal aspects of the characters visible, such as their transformations, their nature and styles, their passions, aspirations and suffering, as well as aspects of the spatial, temporal and social context in which the stories take place. This study explores costume design by Ruth E. Carter as a dramatic tool in the biopic (1992), directed by Spike Lee. To that end, the function of film costumes is assessed both as a visual and narrative tool that exceeds the aesthetic dimension and is essential to give meaning to any film production.

    • The ‘look’! Aesthetic labour, aesthetic norms and appearance-based recruitment in the runway modelling industry

      Available online: 25 July 2023

      Aesthetic labour in the runway modelling industry refers to the practice of recruitment of models-workers on the basis of desired corporeal and facial dispositions. Aesthetic labour theory foregrounds embodiment, which situates the value of physical appearance and aesthetic norms in the workplace context showcasing how the models-workers get recruited and stratified based on their looks. The study employs an explanatory sequential mixed-method design to investigate aesthetic norms including the desired corporeal and facial dispositions that are expected from models-workers in the runway modelling industry. The study included two phases, a quantitative phase and a qualitative phase. The main objective of the first, quantitative research phase, was to investigate the aesthetic norms among 609 international runway models who were recruited to perform in designer exclusive fashion shows during seven consecutive annual fashion week seasons from 2013 to 2020 in New York, Paris, London and/or Milan. The main objective of the second qualitative research phase was to qualify aesthetic norms through a visual content analysis, and in-depth exploration of 40 unretouched professional modelling snapshots (photographs of face and body) for the top new model talents in the 2019–20 fashion season. Model photos were extracted from the popular industry website, Models.com. The rationale for collecting both quantitative and qualitative data was to form a robust and comprehensive assessment of aesthetic norms in the runway modelling industry. The same level of comprehensiveness would not be obtained by using either type of data individually. This article advances academic research on aesthetic labour in the fashion and modelling industry by showcasing why appearance-based recruitment in this sector represents the practice of occupational segregation that creates social inequalities and negatively impacts the labour market.

    • Transformative live-action roleplay and Dagorhir costumes: Regulation, consumption and power dynamics, 1977 to the present

      Available online: 20 July 2023

      Dagorhir is one of the largest and oldest documented live-action roleplay groups. Dagorhir organizers have published multiple game regulations via handbooks with much emphasis on costumes since the 1970s. Dagorhir facilitates community building, identity negotiation and creative storytelling that expands beyond the game through transformative play. In our research, we examine how these costume regulations have influenced fantasy character and real-world identities, how the regulations have influenced perceived costume authenticity over time and how the handbook regulations have engaged with power dynamics related to intersectional identities. We analysed costume-related content in the three handbooks while drawing upon content analysis and historical methods. We found that as the regulations evolved since the 1970s, the rules increasingly centred costumes, indicating the prominence of costume in this escapist community. However, while these spaces centred on the costumed body, Dagorhir regulations reinforced oppressive intersectional norms. Our work has implications for society and business, that is, our findings can help individuals understand why people participate in live-action roleplay, which may reduce stigma surrounding this activity. Additionally, costume producers and retailers can make informed business decisions based upon our findings. Last, live-action roleplay communities can utilize our findings to reject oppressive written and unwritten regulations.

    • Muslim women consumers: Critical interpretations of US modest fashion brands entangled with the fashion-advocacy-capitalist-façade

      Available online: 08 June 2023

      Following 9/11, some young Muslim American women have been wearing hijabs to assert their Islamic identities. They are also seeking fashionable modest clothing, yet, despite their growing buying power, the US modest fashion market targeting Muslim women appears underserved. The purpose of this study was to critically examine how niche modest fashion brands in the United States target Muslim women while drawing upon theoretical concepts centring on oppression and agency related to the long history of gendered Islamophobia Muslims have experienced. We analysed eleven brands’ websites and social media applying the constant comparative method and identified four themes: empowering Muslim women, reclaiming modesty as modern and beautiful, meeting fashionable modest wear demand, and rejecting and perpetuating colourism. In our analysis of the digital discourses of US modest fashion brands, we revealed that these brands emerged to meet the demand of young Muslim woman in the United States who are embracing the hijab and modest clothing as a potent symbol of resistance against western ideologies, the fashion system’s oppressive acts towards Muslim women and traditional Islamic dress codes. Yet, their advocacy-centred messages – empowerment, reclaiming modesty as beautiful – operate within a profit-driven system, which we theorize as a . The fashion-advocacy-capitalist-façade concept helps explain the slippery slope that fashion brands are tiptoeing as they aim to empower Muslim women, offer trendy modest clothing, reject traditional Islamic dress codes for women and create space in the fashion market for this unmet demand. Although these brands aim to promote a positive sense of self for Muslim women, they cannot be withheld from critical examination and potential interpretations when operating within the capitalist-driven industry that is so often plagued with significant injustices.

    • Women’s dress and success in the Icelandic banking system

      Available online: 08 June 2023

      In this study on the power of dress in the Icelandic banking sector, we build on Nentwich and colleagues’ (2015) theoretical framework of change agency. We show that the framework bears relevance to changes occurring after the collapse of the Icelandic banking system in 2008. Our aim is to examine the role of dress in the process of change. The data are derived from ten semi-structured interviews with female bank employees, a group that has historically been marginalized within the Icelandic banking sector. Our findings reveal that visible changes in dress have signalled changes in societal norms and attitudes during and after the economic crisis. The disruption has created a window of opportunity for female bank employees to alter dressing norms. This alteration has subsequently increased their agency and visibility, thereby facilitating their upward mobility, mirroring with clients and representing confidence and trustworthiness. We find that changes in dress occur when ideas in society change, and that windows of opportunity are necessary for marginalized groups to expand their agency. Once these windows are created, dress can underline and bolster their agency.

    • Deplorable by proxy: Sartorial semiosis and the rendering of an underclass

      Available online: 08 June 2023

      In 2016, Donald Trump’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) – often displayed on a red cap – prompted myriad interpretations and reactions regarding the message itself and the hat it was displayed upon. Despite the hat’s polysemy, there has been no shortage of institutional attempts to codify the hat and, by extension, the wearers of the hat as racist or otherwise ‘deplorable’ (Clinton 2016). By tracing the functional lineage of the MAGA hat alongside a case study of the 2019 Covington Catholic incident, this article uses media discourse analysis to investigate dress as a factional sociopolitical player while interrogating how cultural institutions contribute to social meaning-making, which in turn can leverage dress’s power and unduly malign constituent wearers. Employing theories of sartorial embodiment, the MAGA hat’s enthymematic reading and a critical linguistic frame, this article critiques the pathology of marginal myopia and locates how pejorative ascriptions by proxy of the MAGA hat render Trumpian conservatives, primarily of the White male ilk, as marginal subjects.

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