{"title":"Ambivalences, tensions and questions of im/materiality in fashion and beauty","authors":"A. Smelik, S. Kaiser","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00052_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00052_2","url":null,"abstract":"Several cross-cutting themes run throughout fashion theory: ambivalence, tensions, and immateriality and materiality, within the larger framework of capitalism. In this introduction, we interlink these themes by arguing that immateriality is inextricably entangled with materiality. The material flows through capitalism require negotiated meanings in everyday social interactions, yet cannot resolve the underlying tensions involved. Pursued by some, resisted by others, capitalism’s profit motivation always involves tensions and ambivalences. While we emphasize the material ground of fashion and beauty practices, also in relation to the formation of identity in all its ambiguity, the digital realm invites and highlights immateriality. Yet, in the end, we maintain, materiality is and must remain stubborn.","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"144 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124391986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion, Elizabeth L. Block (2021)","authors":"E. L. Newman","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00058_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00058_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion, Elizabeth L. Block (2021)\u0000 Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 282 pp.,\u0000 ISBN 978-0-26204-584-1, h/bk, $34.95","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123537496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fashioning Masculinities: Critical reflections on curation and future directions in masculinity studies","authors":"S. Gilligan","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00056_3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00056_3","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear at the V&A Museum in London (19 March–6 November 2022) marked a significant curatorial and cultural moment. Curated by Claire Wilcox, Rosalind McKever and Marta Franceschini, the exhibition explored the shifting landscape of menswear by focusing on the intersections among fashion, art, time and gender. This review essay critically reflects on the curation of the Fashioning Masculinities exhibition and the accompanying two-day symposium (13–14 October 2022) co-convened by the V&A and the Masculinities Research Hub at London College of Fashion. It argues for the need for interdisciplinary research and curation on menswear and masculinity studies to explore a plurality of intersectional identities. Additionally, this article argues for the importance of engaging diverse audiences across the sector with rich stories of making, wearing and fashioning identities. There remains considerable scope to move beyond a focus upon historical dress and luxury designer items, to include the often invisible and untold narratives of ordinary and everyday dress.","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126569025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Grażyna Hase: The legend of socialist-era branding in Poland","authors":"Magdalena Idem","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00057_3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00057_3","url":null,"abstract":"This review essay discusses the exhibition Grażyna Hase: Always in Vogue on display at the Warsaw Museum in Poland from 28 April to 11 September 2022. The curator of the exhibition was Agnieszka Dąbrowska, art historian and curator of the museum’s fashion collection. The review outlines the main focus and elements of the exhibition as well as the achievements of one of the most important fashion designers in socialist Poland (1947–90): Grażyna Hase. I discuss the designer’s ambition to create her own fashion under the auspices of a state institution from the 1950s to the 1980s. In communist Poland, fashion design and production were connected to the political system. The fashion exhibition highlights that fashion design in those days was a field of struggle and frustration on many levels: design, production and consumption. Yet, in spite of this, Hase’s designs were very successful.","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131834590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Black Designers in American Fashion, Elizabeth Way (ed.) (2021)","authors":"Alexis Romano","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00049_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00049_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Black Designers in American Fashion, Elizabeth Way (ed.) (2021)\u0000 London and New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 267 pp.\u0000 ISBN 978-1-35013-847-6, p/bk, $34.95 / £24.99\u0000 ISBN 978-1-35013-850-6, online, $31.45 / £22.49\u0000 ISBN 978-1-35013-848-3, e-book, $31.45 / £22.49","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"17 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114492259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thierry Mugler, Couturissime, curated by Thierry-Maxime Loriot, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 30 September 2021–24 April 2022","authors":"Sandra Mathey García-Rada","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00050_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00050_5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127590549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Global Wardrobe, the Worldwide Fashion Connection, Kunstmuseum, The Hague, 9 October 2021–16 January 2022","authors":"M. V. van Tienhoven","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00044_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00044_5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128184188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Encounters: Fashion and beauty, fashion and art, fashion and social justice","authors":"S. Kaiser, A. Smelik","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00045_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00045_2","url":null,"abstract":"We propose a thought experiment to introduce the three articles in this volume, focusing specifically on fashion’s encounters with beauty, art and social justice, respectively. Using a both/and approach, we consider the ways in which ‘encounters’ encourage open questioning and debate, when one pairs fashion with beauty, fashion with art and fashion with social justice. Rather than framing the concepts in these pairs oppositionally, we argue that encounters become possible because they resonate or echo – conceptually, aesthetically or affectively – in ways that are nonbinary and nonlinear. As a result, new provocations and lines of inquiry can emerge.","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"112 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132338965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Slogan T-shirts: Liberalism, abolition and commodity activism in the Midwestern United States","authors":"Nancy Gebhart, Kelly L. Reddy-Best","doi":"10.1386/csfb_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"Wearing slogan T-shirts largely began in the United States in the mid-twentieth century with the rise of various social movements. Considering the persistence of slogan T-shirts as a component of commodity activism, we theoretically engage with the ways twenty-first century organizations produce slogan T-shirts within the fashion system, with heightened attention to white progressive politics. We examine two Midwestern organizations in the United States: Raygun, which approaches T-shirt activism as a for-profit business and For Everyone Co., which approaches T-shirt activism as a not-for-profit collective. We conduct a case study to examine the nuance of how and why these collective and for-profit businesses use T-shirt activism, drawing upon multiple theoretical concepts to critically interpret the production and distribution of these products within the fashion system and offering theoretical implications for future study. We conduct a close reading of T-shirt texts and images, the organizations’ biographical information, and their reported philanthropic actions to construct and interpret their public-facing narratives engaging with fashion and activism. Examining T-shirt activism, as both an ‘artivist’ practice and a commodity, requires a critical analysis of how organizations capitalize on consumers’ desire and instances wherein white progressive politics prioritize the appearance of equity and justice or ambiguous fashion activism, over meaningful social-action centred fashion. Our work offers implications for the production, distribution and consumption of these products within the fashion system.","PeriodicalId":194563,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131125489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}