International Journal of Fashion Studies - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2015

The study we are proposing here concerns the transition between clothes and the images that they convey. At the same time, we have given thought to the body and on the way in which it becomes incarnated in contemporary fashion. From a semiotic point of view, we are situated in a perspective which has been a little bit forgotten, by drawing on the category of Barthesian semblance and by questioning it in the light of new data. More precisely, our semiotic approach has been carried out by adopting other disciplines such as psychoanalysis, philosophy and Kabuki theatre (in this case, the character of onnagata). To do this, we have chosen to grasp what is at play concerning the body in present-day ready-to-wear clothes. To illustrate our remarks, we have based our work on a particular example, that being the universe of Yves Saint Laurent’s (YSL) house of fashion, more precisely their 2012 Men’s collection. In fact, these clothes reveal that what we see is within the realm of appearance, but, at the same time, they show that they are the appearance of the appearance. Indicating a radical dissociation between clothes and gender, YSL opens the enigma of One-body. This designer strips the gaze which refers less to the imaginary body and the gender comedy than the enigma of the real body defined in the psychoanalytic field.

One of the most important phenomena in fashion, which practically forced the researchers to rethink their former language, is deconstruction. Appearing almost in parallel with deconstruction in architecture it uncovered previously unseen fissure in the discourse used in constructing the object of research. Deconstruction is usually described as one of the many fast-changing trends in fashion, but fashion scholars rarely pay attention to the sources or consequences of this trend. This study constitutes an attempt to develop such a historical and theoretical take on deconstruction in fashion, to analyse its descriptions and conceptualizations. For this purpose, the author reconstructs the sources of this phenomenon in fashion, with particular attention being paid to two fashion houses: Maison Martin Margiela and Comme des Garçons. To situate deconstruction in a broader context, the article refers to this term in the philosophy as well as the architecture and the graphic design. The last part of the article is devoted to alternative theoretical perspectives – the conceptions of Michel de Certeau and John Fiske – which are used to look again at deconstruction in the context of youth subcultures and its importance in the contemporary fashion system.

This article analyses to what extent Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1956 censure of the fashion press affected the subsequent coverage of his creations in major fashion magazines. The study focuses on the models that wore Balenciaga’s designs as they were displayed in L’Officiel and American editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar from 1937, the date of Balenciaga’s first appearance in the fashion press, and 1968, the year the designer retired, and makes a comparative analysis of the models to determine if there was a change in the fashion coverage of Balenciaga after 1956. In order to assess any possible variation, the study takes into account the evolving context of modelling throughout the period being studied and the characteristics of the models working exclusively for Maison Balenciaga.

In the eighteenth century, education rather than childhood became a real challenge for the philosophers. The making of the ‘new man’ now came by way of childhood, at a time when the child is seen as an entirely separate being and an adult-to-be. The feeling of childhood, to recall the words of Philippe Ariés, is reflected in the printed textile. At the end of the eighteenth century, these representations evolved into the placing of the child at the centre of the family, reflecting the arrival of a middle-class society in which the child’s education became a real focus. Between the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, the presentation of childhood was changing, the fabric makers following the taste and motifs spread by the print process. Starting with the biggest French manufacturers between 1770 and 1840, we will see how the idea of childhood was spread via the fabrics designed to persuade the biggest number of buyers to choose them for their interiors. And we will see how, in the nineteenth century, these designs promoted a real dialogue centred on the child.

The rise of fashion businesses in mainland China and Hong Kong and the growth in their brands is attracting the attention of international fashion conglomerates. For this article recent case studies of socio-historical, economic and cultural influences in the Greater China region were revisited applying communication, media and cultural studies theories. Observation and interviews were conducted in an attempt to reveal the nuanced process of fashion communication in Hong Kong’s fashion industry. The primary research data were collected through participant observation at a Hong Kong fashion magazine in 2011 which involved interviews with sixteen senior Asia-Pacific fashion marketers. The interview responses demonstrate the complexity of the interplay with Asian socioeconomic and cultural factors, and confirm that fashion marketing in Hong Kong today involves the appropriation and creolization of cultural meanings through negotiation between global and regional/local fashion marketers. The Hong Kong-based regional fashion marketers now negotiate more often with the brands’ European or American headquarters about how to represent the brands as luxurious and stylish, but also about a more complex creolization of western and Chinese cultures while communicating fashion meanings. This unique ethnographic research provides original insight into the differing impact of globalization across Greater China.

In this article, the study of fashion is engaged in from a transdisciplinary perspective, at the crossroads of fashion and literature. In his novels, movies, essays and short stories, Pier Paolo Pasolini brought to the public’s attention the sub-proletarian bodies of the male youth of post-war Italy, and of Rome in particular. As yet, the Roman ragazzi had no figure in the readers’, or spectators’, minds, and this fact gave him the liberty to scrutinize their bodies, down to the very rags which covered them, without having to dispel preconceived expectations. Focalized, the gap between body and dress becomes with him an interzone, an in-between space where the porosity between dress, body and character is captured. More often than not, this compositional style resulted in an erotic accentuation of the character’s physicality, both in film and on the written page.

The sub-proletarian body’s final inscription in the canon of male beauty is sanctioned in our own days, when such conceptual designers as Raf Simons and Hedi Slimane, now busy in recovering the subcultural roots of their design, openly insert that body’s habit of being into the narrative of fashion. To our media-savvy eyes, not a small result.

The Song of Songs is a biblical text filled with the names of perfumes and, in terms of form, it is infused with ambiguity, vagueness and loose connections. The article suggests that perfume is an essential element in the biblical text. The image of perfume is not a mere diversion that is subordinate to a coherent plot, but is rather a means to undermine the plot and set the open and effervescent tone of the entire song. In the same spirit, the article does not attempt to offer a unified interpretation, but instead adapts to the expansive character of the ‘perfumed’ biblical text, inviting multiple readings. The present reading searches for the various appearances of the perfume motif in order to locate the mother figure. This marginal and almost hidden figure in the Song of Songs is related to the aspect of scent and is mysteriously juxtaposed with the figure of the lovers. The article claims that by sliding down the fragrant, yet obscure, path connecting the love between lovers to the love of a mother for her children, we discover that the mother proves to be the source of the bond between the lovers and a critical figure in the development of love.

Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy (From Sprezzatura to Satire), Eugenia Paulicelli (2014, first edition) Farnham: Ashgate, 261 pp., ISBN: 9781472411709, Hardback, £65.00

Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, Reina Lewis (ed.) (2013, first edition) London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 256 pp., ISBN: 9781780763828, Hardback, US$90.00; ISBN: 9781780763835, Paperback, US$28.00