Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Online First

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.

The goal of this study is to identify the self-perception of cancer survivors’ body image distress and to illustrate fashion-oriented consumption as a coping mechanism. Retail therapy (RT) may be a promising intervention for cancer survivors to mitigate body image distress and promote positive health outcomes. The impact of cancer treatments on each survivor should be considered based on their body investment, cancer type, diagnosis, body weight and other demographic characteristics. Developing mitigation strategies using RT for cancer survivors with visible physical changes is crucial. Fashion-oriented shopping can give cancer survivors a sense of control and boost a positive self-image. Cancer survivors who are highly conscious of societally prescribed definitions of normal appearance may benefit significantly from RT.

The fashion system fundamentally changed during the Industrial Revolution when the industry pivoted away from traditional craft-based production and towards mechanization and mass production. The design process, manufacturing operations, retail practices and marketing tactics of mass production contributed over time to the current climate crisis. Globally, the fashion system is acknowledged as an environmental and social emergency. Thus, the fashion system needs to get with the times. Fashion as a reflection of modernity needs to align with globally recognized social and environmental goals. Societal attachment to materialism and fashion consumption should be reconsidered. In this article we consider these challenges to propose a paradigm that breaks the fashion cycle and provides a framework for the role fashion producers and consumers should play in the twenty-first century.

Ankara and lace fabrics have been in use for some years by many tribes in Nigeria. These two local fabrics are dynamic and unique to Africa in general. Despite the uniqueness of these two fabrics, there is a dearth of in-depth study on them. This study presents a comparative analysis of the physical structures of lace and Ankara fabrics through direct field research using a qualitative method to analyse the data with random sampling. This study was conducted with the aim of giving insight into the growth of the arts so as to preserve the designs and styles for future development through the understanding of the two fabrics. The study reveals that the fabrics are texturally good in the body and therefore widely used by the low, middle and high-class personalities in Nigeria.

The fur and fur patterns of African animals were part of the fashion industry’s exoticization of Africa during the 1920s. Avant-garde interest in African sculpture, African textiles and African jewellery blended with the popularity of jazz music played by African Americans to create a market for fashionable clothing inspired by Africa. Using fur from African animals, and textile prints and embroideries imitating fur patterns, reflected the most consistent interest in Africa. African safaris, world fairs and colonial expositions displaying African animals contributed to African exoticism. Books for children, textile designs illustrating African elephants and examples of fabric dyed colours called ‘lioness’ were some of the resulting consumer products. The graphic fur patterns of leopards, giraffes and zebras perfectly suited the bold geometric aesthetics of the Arts Modernes design style, while the fringe-like quality of monkey fur met the trend requirements for fringed evening wear. Zebra fur and patterns played a feminizing role in mediating the increasingly masculine dress and activities for women. The graphic black-and-white stripes linked the wearer to the exotics and adventure of Africa, while also reflecting contemporary design aesthetics and the hard-edged, chaotic American city. Because the zebra stripe originates on the fur of a peaceful prey animal, the pattern was perceived as graceful and feminine. For the modern women who wanted to participate in the adventures of the era, wearing zebra stripes tempered the interpretation of her wild life in the American urban jungle without compromising her femininity.

Obvious evidence does not exist linking the Italian Futurists’ conception of men’s fashion in the 1910s and 1920s with the tastes of the Mod subculture in London of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet the aesthetic behind both Futurist fashion and the Mod subculture is strikingly similar and suggests that ideas on style and lifestyle can cross-pollinate each other across decades and countries, given the right circumstances. Both Futurists and Mods wanted to be, as Giacomo Balla put it in a 1913 manifesto, ‘Dynamic/Aggressive/Shocking/Energetic/Violent … [with] Pattern changes […] available by pneumatic dispatch; in this way anyone may change his clothes according to the needs of mood’. London’s Mod subculture came from a directly coincident desire to abandon traditional aesthetics and methods of expression in favour of a constant turnover. The Futurists promoted an artistic movement as a lifestyle, declared in manifestos and acted out in the streets and in politics and that bled into fashion as a manifestation of their ideas, worn literally on their sleeves. The Mods promoted a lifestyle as an art, acted out on the streets, with fashion as the manifestation of their individuality, brought down to the level of the tapering of their pants legs. In both cases, the expression of their lifestyle and values was consciously manifested in the clothes one wore on an everyday basis and connected through the talents of Italian tailors for quick, inexpensive alterations. The similarity suggests an association between Futurism and the Mod subculture, in the appeal of Italian men’s fashion to both groups and demonstrating that certain avant-garde ideals in western art had filtered to the level of the average person over the course of five decades.

Popular culture, especially cinema, tends to view the world of fashion from a distance, often in admiration but mixed with feelings of incomprehension, perplexion and even derision. The current article will analyse the films Pret-à-Porter (Altman 1994), Zoolander (Stiller 2001) and The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel 2006) as expressions of general approaches to the fashion industry in the comedy film genre. As high profile films, they embody a pattern of representation endemic to film comedy at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s and emphasize a frivolous, ironic attitude to the superficial and exploitative nature of the fashion industry, reflecting a wider sense of postmodernist cultural critique in American cinema of the shallowness of commercialism and pop culture (while, ironically, being part of precisely the same system as the target of its critique). By conducting narrative analysis of these films, we will show how they use stereotyping as a mechanism to satirize the fashion industry, creating superficial flashes of ridiculous behaviour and excessiveness, while they reinforce these approaches themselves through the use of genre and aesthetic conventions. In doing so, the films highlight the idea that fashion, as a form of popular culture, functions as an exemplary locus of cultural critique to satirize hyper-consumption and hyper-commercialism. As these films evoke wider questions about the concept of irony within and towards fashion, the chapter is a part of a larger project on the theme of fashion irony that aims at defining it as a field of academic study.

This work presents a thesis on how fashion might reorganize and redefine its cultural presence and relevance by shifting its focus from material progress, expansion and profit to a re-emphasis on the more sacred principles that the author believes once defined its purpose. This discussion is particularly pertinent given the youth’s increasing cynicism with fashion as a capitalist concept and their disenchantment with the fashion system for its transparent commercial, superficial and socially irresponsible ethos. This research is in effect, presented as a retrospective and focuses on a particular era which for the author, represents an important, and final cultural moment where arguably fashion was oriented and underpinned by sacred principles. The cultural context to be explored is the 1990s. Within this context, three cultural moments (and intermediaries) are identified, each presented as a short case to illustrate the orienting presence of sacred principles within fashion at this time. It is felt that by reflecting on and analysing these contexts, similar principles can be reworked and reconfigured to address fashion’s current cultural malaise.

Research shows that clothing style can influence self-perception, cognition and behaviour. However, the concept of personal clothing style and how it is linked to self-concept from an individual and subjective perspective of the wearer has received limited empirical attention. This qualitative study aimed to explore women’s lived experiences and perceptions of personal clothing style. Using a homogeneous sample of seven female participants, data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis revealed that personal clothing style constitutes an embodiment of the true self, representation of the ideal self and expression of the creative self. More specifically, personal clothing style is predicated on self-knowledge, consistency and enduring sense of comfort. It is also perceived to actualize desired self-conceptions and one’s creative potential. Findings not only provide an empirically founded conceptualization of personal clothing style, but also identify its important psychological properties with implications for both psychology and fashion research.

The purpose of this study is to bridge the gap between sustainable fashion and customer purchase intentions by analysing the current trends and offering techniques to increase sustainable fashion awareness and overcome price consumption issues among Generation Z (Gen Z) consumers. A mixed methods approach was employed in this study consisting of online surveys and focus groups surrounding the topic of sustainable apparel consumption among the Gen Z age group. Focus groups served to lead to an online survey of questions to help better understand the phenomena on an exploratory scale. Three focus groups of eight to ten volunteers each aged 18–25 from a large Midwestern university took part in 60-minute discussions regarding their understanding of fast fashion and their purchase intentions/awareness of ethical issues within the apparel industry. Online surveys were conducted through the online platform Qualtrics consisting of 29 questions with a total of 445 participants ranging from 18 to 23 years old taking part in the online survey. Main themes found in the focus groups are the idea of shopping second hand, laziness among consumers and the quality of garments. Surveys found that this age group was willing to pay up to 25 per cent more for a sustainable apparel item and that uniqueness of the item was of utmost importance. Implications for brands and retailers as well as academics are presented.