{"title":"Effects of recreation of subcultures on social media on the subculture, inter-subculture community and intra-subculture community individuals","authors":"Rasika Bhoj, Riya Thapa, Aritrika Roy Chowdhury","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00147_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00147_1","url":null,"abstract":"In order to create their social identity, humans have a tendency to express their feelings and self in the form of views and opinions that they expect from their immediate society. In today’s tech-savvy world, social media has become the most important platform for expressing one’s feelings, experiences and creating self-identity. Subcultures based on these online identities have a direct or indirect effect on fashion, subculture, intercommunity (individuals within the subculture community) and intracommunity (individuals outside the subculture community) individuals. The rise in popularity of social media platforms has led to the recreation of such subculture communities as an online trend. The current article talks about the relation between fashion, social media and these online identities. Multiple identities that are shaped and expressed through fashion and style are created and enacted through social media. Multiple case studies were analysed for qualitative secondary research to understand the effects of recreation of multiple online subcultures, which was filtered down to the Cottagecore, E-girls and Dark Academia subcultures while keeping in mind the relevance on social media and availability of resources. These were taken as interviews from articles and blogs as secondary research pertaining to each subculture. The objective of the article is to understand the effects of recreation of online subcultures on the particular subcultures, its intercommunity, intracommunity individuals, as well as the fashion industry. Mixing and recreation of subcultures create different styles and aesthetics; thus, fashion keeps changing according to that, and trends keep coming up in the fashion industry.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79077698","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":"‘Putting on a dress means nothing’: Cross-dressing practice in men’s fashion","authors":"Marius Janusauskas","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00149_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00149_1","url":null,"abstract":"Male cross-dressing as a form of aesthetic expression by something or someone has been practised in fashion globally. This article aims to investigate what role cross-dressing plays in contemporary men’s fashion. Does it transform or confirm gender norms? In what ways can cross-dressing be used as a tool to produce visual politics? Cross-dressing or transvestism is a particular type of event affected by the multiple social, economic and cultural implications that continuously shift the meanings and objectives of the practice. I think of fashion in a broad sense, i.e., similar to a verb in that it focuses on the action or process of negotiating, differentiating and self-presenting in everyday life. My scholarly inquiry is situated in the context of the social, the cultural and the historical. This epistemological study applies an interdisciplinary approach that employs visual interpretative analysis and queer reflexivity. Cross-dressing practices in men’s fashion cannot be explained without an awareness of sociocultural context, narrative, gender performance and how clothing is selected and worn. I conclude by discussing the broader implications of understanding gender performance, sexuality and institutional power in men’s fashion.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87079410","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":"Digital fashion: Solutions and limitations for the LGBTQIA+ community","authors":"Sara Emilia Bernat, Doris Domoszlai-Lantner","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00146_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00146_1","url":null,"abstract":"As many LGBTQIA+ community members face gender dysphoria, aligning their sexual and gender identities through appearances can make a significant positive impact in their lives. But while many queer people find that fashion can be a power instrument to create, maintain and express their personal identity, ‘In Real Life’ (IRL) fashion has severe limitations, too. Off-the rack clothes can be a source of physical discomfort and frustration, as they tend to be designed for cisgender consumers. Dominant styles of the community at a given time and space can be limiting as well when it comes to experimentation across the spectrum, as they also tend to promote cuts, colours and garments that may be more reflective of the zeitgeist than of peoples’ personal preferences. Digital fashion may offer solutions for many of these problems, as designs can be entirely fitted and personalized for consumers. Furthermore, many digital garments have prices that are a fraction of their IRL counterparts, reducing financial barriers to entry and participation. Digital fashion taps into issues such as self-creation and expression, while also addressing issues in both social representation, diversity and inclusion. Moreover, because most digital fashion experiences occur in a private setting, participants are offered an element of emotional and physical protection, an important consideration for individuals from communities where their gender and sexual identities are accepted or stigmatized. Digital fashion may be used as a means to establish identity and social relationships, and as a facilitator to bridge communities. This article explores the possibilities, solutions and also limitations that digital fashion offers to the LGBTQIA+ community, while exploring the ethical considerations that creators of digital fashion should consider implementing.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90355514","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":"‘Clothes (don’t) make the man’: Fashioning the phallus in Sabine Bernardi’s Romeos","authors":"Thomas Piontek","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00150_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00150_1","url":null,"abstract":"German director Sabine Bernardi’s Romeos presents a progressive and more complete view of transgender experience than a previous generation of films on the subject. Skilfully avoiding outdated tropes in her representation of the female-to-male (FTM) trans man Lukas’s transition, the film instead places it in a cultural and sociopolitical context that shows him confronting ‘cultural cisgenderism’ and negotiating the medicalization of his ‘condition’ to obtain the mastectomy he wants. Romeos, however, does not posit surgical intervention as the central element in its protagonist’s transition but shows how gender identity and expression are conceived internally, independently of the individual’s embodiment. Thus, this article argues that the developing maleness and masculinity that Lukas exhibits demonstrates that there exists a significant difference between the penis and the phallus. Lukas is able to ‘fashion the phallus’ – what social psychologists have called a ‘cultural genital’ – with a combination of appearance (including his fashionable male attire), hormone therapy and a strict workout regime. Even though a male genital may not be present in a physical sense, the significance attributed to his cultural genital allows Lukas to express his psychic gender identity and to establish the trans man, in the words of one gender theorist, as ‘attractive, appealing, and gendered while simultaneously presenting a gender at odds with sex, a sense of self not derived from the body’. Still the discrepancy between his gender identity and his embodiment at times causes considerable problems for Lukas, especially when his love interest, the cisgender Fabio, accidentally finds out that Lukas is trans and questions his physical genital. That Lukas nonetheless manages to establish himself as a desiring subject capable of establishing a romantic relationship with Fabio and consummating it by having sex with him bespeaks the power of self-definition and the significant role that the cultural genital plays in this process.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72817419","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}
E. Li, Maffeo Ennead Chow, Wing-sun Liu, M. Lam, Ajnesh Prasad
{"title":"Queering consumption: The discursive construction of sexual identity among fashion gay consumers in Hong Kong","authors":"E. Li, Maffeo Ennead Chow, Wing-sun Liu, M. Lam, Ajnesh Prasad","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00144_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00144_1","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this study is to investigate how sexual identity is constructed among gay fashion consumers in Hong Kong through myriad consumption practices. We employed ethnographic research methods and conducted thirteen in-depth interviews with gay male consumers in Hong Kong to examine the relationship between identity and lifestyle consumption, as well as symbolic consumption and tribal behaviour, within a ‘gay’ community. The findings captured four stages of gay consumers’ identity construction, which began with (1) negotiating one’s sexual identity and changing their perception of gay identity, (2) tremendous identity change, (3) consumption behaviour change and eventually (4) full acceptance of one’s sexual identity. The construction and the expression of sexual identity among gay men in Hong Kong were found to be associated with Confucian-oriented social structures and various marketplace ideologies. This study contributes to the existing discussion of gay consumption literatures by offering a non-western context where the discursive construction of sexual identity – and the negotiations involved in its representation – reflects the multitude of tensions between Chinese culture, on the one hand, and ideas of modernity and cosmopolitanism, on the other.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85869231","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":"Digital fashion bodies between the conflicting priorities of media-technological innovations","authors":"Jacqueline Zauner","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00139_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00139_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents an insight into my ongoing Ph.D. project ‘New fashion bodies: Digital fashion bodies between the conflicting priorities of media-technological innovations’. The thesis considers how digital technologies have impacted the construction of gender as well as the cultural (body)practices and (body)enactments tied to it via fashion. The relationships and interactions between the body, fashion, media, gender and staging of queerness are at the core of interest. To elaborate and highlight the interdependencies of these categories and their intricate entanglements, this article studies the phenomenon of digital fashion influencers such as Miquela (@lil_miquela), Lil_wavi (@lil_wavi) and the digital fashion bodies created by the Institute of Digital Fashion (@institute_digital_fashion).","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76150823","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":"If you are in, you will understand: A new ‘dress code’ on TikTok is reframing lesbian teens’ safe space","authors":"L. Lin","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00145_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00145_1","url":null,"abstract":"I intend to offer in this article a visualized research of teenager lesbian style on TikTok and a discourse of queer safe spaces in networked contexts. Due to the influence of the queer feminist movement, the social acceptance of queerness has increased in most countries. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning groups are no longer limited by the gay ‘dress code’, which is historically used to protect queer identity from discrimination and violence. During my personal nomadic experience moving from China to the Netherlands, I noticed that it is hard to pick out someone who ‘looks gay’ in the street. The freedom of dressing and self-expression has gradually become universal in western countries. Whereas, without legalized same-sex marriage in mainland China, visibility in style is still a signification of sexuality and a way of communication. Beyond the diversity of style, a new form of lesbian ‘dress code’ on TikTok has triggered me to examine safe spaces for teenagers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fashion industry finds itself in a challenging condition, which is accelerating its digital transformation. An increasing number of fashion labels see potential in TikTok as a new public territory to practise self-exploration for numerous teens. By analysing the visual content and interviewing four TikTok creators, this article addresses the gap between public and insider prejudice around codes of dressing. It proposes not only to rethink the relation between fashion and identity but also to ruminate on queer safe space through researching ways of dressing.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90502448","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":"Self-fashioning Queer/Crip: Stretching and grappling with disability, gender and dress","authors":"Ben Barry, P. Nesbitt","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00140_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00140_1","url":null,"abstract":"The convergence of queer studies with disability studies has imagined new possibilities of sexuality, gender and the body, and developed Queer/Crip as a theoretical framework. Queer/Crip scholars map out connections between queer and crip theories by examining how compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness are entangled in the service of normativity. This article uses a Queer/Crip framework to explore how queer, disabled people use their everyday dress practices to construct their intersectional identities, as well as to stretch and navigate dominant systems of gender, sexuality and disability. Drawing from wardrobe interviews with 40 disability-identified men and masculine non-binary people, we present sartorial biographies of four queer, disabled participants from this larger sample. These participants come from diverse locations of both marginalization and privilege across races, gender identities, classes, disability embodiments and other social positions. Our analysis reveals that queer, disabled participants’ everyday dress practices dismantle dominant systems of gender, disability and fashion. However, participants also grapple with self-fashioning their disabled and queer identities based on the various ways in which they are intersectionally privileged and marginalized. This article contributes to research on queer fashion by demonstrating how applying a Queer/Crip framework and centring disability dress experiences opens-up understandings about queer embodiment and dress.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89681632","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":"Outskirt: The skirt as a queer object","authors":"Rachel Getz-Salomon","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00141_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00141_1","url":null,"abstract":"The queer thought supports identities that blur the boundaries between social categories, blending them through different hybrids. In this article, the queer involvement with the subject world is projected on the world of objects, focusing on clothing objects. Unlike the tight, western wardrobe organized in an upright logic, the skirt is an object with diverse, free and hybrid possibilities for cultural definition, calling upon a discussion for identity aspects. These are embodied in the possibilities for identity performance while presenting protection and concealment or as self-expression and exposure. In this article, the view on the skirt is paused, creating de-automatization in its regard; the article examines the skirt’s material qualities using ‘anthropology of the object’, in which the material aspects are examined while considering its history understanding its sociological and cultural role. The article claims that the skirt’s changing, contradictory and fluid characterizations mark it as a different, unusual dress in the modern wardrobe array. Therefore, it is a free and ‘other’ factor, the wardrobe’s queer. The article states that it is an object containing diverse, free and hybrid possibilities for cultural definition, gender fluidity and the ability to undermine the binary division of wearable objects.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75292127","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":"‘I just want a shirt that will fit me!’: An inductive approach to understanding transgender consumers’ shopping experiences","authors":"Domenique Jones, Jessica Strübel, Heejin Lim","doi":"10.1386/fspc_00143_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00143_1","url":null,"abstract":"Transgender consumers are often unable to express their identity or construct their appearance in the way they desire. Social realities inhibit realness, and it can be difficult or even impossible for them to externally realize their full identity (Gray 2009). The purpose of this research is to understand how transgender consumers’ gender identity influences their shopping experiences. Utilizing a lens of gender performativity theory, the research questions guiding the study include the following: (1) In what ways do transgender and gender non-conforming individuals experience the current retail apparel landscape? (2) How do transgender individuals navigate experience shopping for clothing and grooming products? (3) How does the shopping experience exacerbate or alleviate gender dysphoria? Ethnographic and survey methods were used to gain understanding into the shopping behaviours of these consumers. Additionally, the researchers identified × themes through thematic analysis and several rounds of coding (1) gendered and clothing, (2) positive experiences, (3) the body, fit and sizing and (4) accessibility to clothing and fashion.","PeriodicalId":41621,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Style & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88967828","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}