Abstract
Following the publication of Fashion Cultures in 2000, Fashion Cultures Revisited (2013) offers readers an updated discussion of the ways in which fashion cultures operate in the contemporary world. With 26 newly commissioned chapters and three original texts provided with new forewords, this publication notes important changes in fashion production and consumption over the last 13 years, and is testament to fashion’s rising status as an area for academic inquiry.
Covering a wide range of fashion cultures, from fashion cities to fashion photography, cosmetic surgery, celebrity, and performances of masculinity and femininity, the publication brings together academics from Europe, Australia and the US to discuss the new and exciting ways in which fashion cultures have developed and changed. Advances in fashion, including the rise of internet bloggers, fast-fashion, fashion films, and new style icons, are evaluated in terms of cultural hybridity, identity and authenticity, and fashion’s role in the construction of social identities and power relations is explored in a variety of contexts.
More than simply providing a commentary on developments in the fashion industry, then, or on new forms of fashion imagery or communication, the collection offers the reader an analysis of fashion’s various roles within society. Using the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, Baudrillard and Barthes, the authors reflect on the pervasive nature of fashion in our everyday lives. They examine how fashion can work to reinforce particular understandings of our social world, how fashion has exploited advancements in technologies and globalisation, and how fashion can be used challenge the status quo. Yet, in doing so, the publication emphasises, to a large extent, the constant nature of fashion as well as fashion change. As Adam Briggs comments, there is a ‘startling continuity’ (p. 189) between the fashion of today and fashion history. Repeatedly the collection suggests that fashion is concerned both with individual personality and collective social identities, it demonstrates how fashion operates as a means of public display, and it highlights how fashion encourages the constant surveillance of others and of ourselves.
Good examples of this are provided by Chapter 8 ‘Personal Fashion Blogs’ by Agnés Rocamora and Chapter 23 ‘Hijab Stories’ by Reina Lewis, two chapters which, based on empirical research, are also arguably more sociological in nature than some of the other entries, which are more closely aligned to cultural studies. In ‘Personal Fashion Blogs’, Rocamora discusses how the blog is a space for self-constructing identity. A bricolage of old and new technologies, the blog brings together photos, fashion, and the screen, to document personal history and to construct a public persona. As such, it forms a new space of public display. It is a space where bloggers can conspicuously consume and encourage others to watch. For Rocamora, this has the potentially damaging consequence of making the blog a further space for surveillance, where one watches oneself and watches others, rendering it an instrument of control where women are subject to the ‘male gaze’. But, at the same time, she acknowledges that the blog can also be empowering; enabling those traditionally excluded from fashion media an opportunity to challenge fashion discourse. The blog then, although a new form of fashion communication, raises seemingly traditional arguments around conspicuous consumption, authenticity and artifice, the male gaze, and challenges to social structures.
In Reina Lewis’ ‘Hijab Stories’, she argues that fashion is about choice and constraint, for our choices are often limited by social factors such as age, gender and ethnicity. Here, Lewis explores the dimension of faith and the decision of young British Muslim women to wear the hijab. Her chapter offers an interesting account of veiling, outlining women’s reasons for adopting the veil and the impact it has on social relationships. Whilst again noting issues around surveillance, Lewis’ chapter also highlights how fashion is used to evaluate others, and in doing so works to unite and divide social groups.
Thus, it seems that, like fashion itself, fashion theory of the past ‘spools back into the present and reverberates in the future’ (Evans, p. 83). This publication offers readers a varied insight into the world of contemporary fashion, and an interesting introduction to more traditional debates in fashion theory. Its chapters span a rich palette of fashion cultures, although the issues of class and race are perhaps somewhat overlooked. Though acknowledged within wider discussions around identity, neither class nor race form the primary focus of any chapter and, as such, their relationships with fashion are not fully explored. Whilst class and race are sensitive and emotive concepts, both form an important part of fashion culture. Indeed, fashion is a key way in which class and race are mobilised. Their consideration in this collection would, therefore, have made an important contribution to an otherwise well-rounded discussion of fashion culture, and a significant addition to what is otherwise a very stimulating book.