{"title":"Anti-Fashion Branding: Framing Technology in Uniqlo and Allbirds","authors":"M. Lascity","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2101587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2101587","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although technology has long been integral to the fashion system, executives from both Uniqlo and Allbirds are placing a renewed emphasis on it. In press interviews, company leaders argued that the clothing and shoemaker, respectively, are not fashion brands, but “technology” firms and their true competitors are the likes of Apple. Understanding that both fashion and branding are created from public discourse, this paper takes a critical discourse approach to the statements by executives, their related press coverage and their brand messaging. The paper argues that such statements discursively set the brands’ products outside of the fashion system and create their own sense of temporality. However, such statements play into contemporary discourse structures that prioritize technology as a “serious” endeavor, while concurrently degrading the associations with fashion and personal appearance. Moreover, this paper suggests that the use of framing within fashion discourses might be a productive future research endeavor.","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"881 - 898"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45235949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letter from the Editor","authors":"V. Steele","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2104430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2104430","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"555 - 557"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43784866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Fashion System as Sign Itself: Surprise, Seduction and the Wit of Viktor & Rolf","authors":"Dita Svelte","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2102856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2102856","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I have previously argued that aspects of fashion’s appeal and allure are bound up in a concept of wit. This wit is comprised of surprise—the sudden provision of an unexpected creative insight via a novel quip or image or—and seduction—pleasurable play, mutual challenge, and the desire to led astray from orthodox thinking in intriguing ways. However within fashion studies, the idea prevails that fashion is largely regarded as explicable in terms of a singular, integrated, commercially-oriented fashion system. I will examine Roland Barthes’ influential The Fashion System to explore how the idea of the “fashion system” functions as a sign of fashion itself. I will then analyze the oeuvre of Viktor & Rolf—couturiers who explicitly and persistently comment on the construction of the “fashion system”—to demonstrate how their work might critique and complement this system through a theoretical conception of wit.","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"27 1","pages":"383 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46429701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Boubou and Post-Colonial African Musical Performances: Ami Koïta, Bi Kidude, and Sibongile Khumalo","authors":"K. Mchunu","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2102857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2102857","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Fashion and music share a relationship as mediums used to project the identities of post- colonial female vocalists. When viewed from post-colonial African contexts, the boubou is an item used to express these identities. Using the performances of Ami Koïta, Bi Kidude, and Sibongile Khumalo between 1995 and 2013, this article analyzes their use of the boubou. My research shows that Koïta’s use of the boubou coincides with her innovative and controversial musical composition, argued herein, and works to express her “solo artist” status. Kidude’s garb demonstrates her attempt to show her Zanzibari and African artist identity. Khumalo’s garb expresses a South African and African musician identity and projects South Africa as a “new nation.” These findings suggest that when used in various locales, the boubou holds context- specific meanings that align with each country’s socio-cultural and socio-political contexts. While this clothing item has been affiliated with fashion designers and tailors and their contribution to the African fashion and clothing system, this article’s contribution is the role played by female vocalists. These women show their identities through fashion and music and cement the boubou’s position as an important item of the African clothing and fashion system.","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"27 1","pages":"411 - 441"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46645061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yves Saint Laurent aux Musées","authors":"Nancy J. Troy","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2090106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2090106","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"907 - 920"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59844099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Buildings in Belgium, Buildings in Oil, Buildings in Silk, A tableaux by Lucy McKenzie","authors":"Karen Van Godtsenhoven","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2077577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2077577","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"1149 - 1161"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49655982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Britain’s ‘Dark Factories’: Specters of Racial Capitalism Today","authors":"Anthony Sullivan","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2046861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2046861","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recent revelations about illegally low wages and abject working conditions in Leicester’s “dark” garment factories—endured by its vulnerable mainly global majority and migrant workforce—have once again highlighted British fashion’s benighted “other” and its reliance on cheapened and “expendable” “racialized” sweated labor. Forced to work on through the Covid pandemic to produce fast fashion for e-commerce brands, “British” fashion manufacture now reflects the wider plight of the global CMT (Cut, Make and Trim) army, who at considerable personal risk and cost, manufacture most of our fashion. Drawing on a set of theoretical innovations in Marxist and post-Marxist theory, notably Smith and Suwandi theory of labor “super-exploitation,” De Genova’s work on the disciplining of migrants through “border regimes and spectacles” and Gargi Bhattacharyya’s critical reading of Cedric Robinson’s thesis of “Racial Capitalism” (1983), this article explains how and why its specter still castes such a deep and troubling shadow over the production of fashion.","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"493 - 508"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46116962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transnational Fashion Sustainability: Between and Across the Gulf and the UK","authors":"K. Fletcher, Rawan Maki","doi":"10.1080/1362704X.2022.2046864","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2022.2046864","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this moment of ecological crisis, the consequences of crisis are unevenly distributed, with those with the least power impacted the most. The fashion industry’s growth, spurred in the past decades by fast fashion and a reliance on growth of petroleum-based fibers, is a contributor to this uneven distribution of ecological consequences. This paper explores fashion and ecology as interconnected transnational systems. It does this with reference to two contexts: the UK and the Gulf state of Bahrain. By exploring positions on environmentalism in the UK and Bahrain, questions around fibers, clothing care and waste, this paper underscores the political urgency and the relational effects of change that span nation states within the fashion sector. Decarbonizing the fashion system requires both localized action and methodologies in addition to political will to work between and across such themes. Transnational perspectives are central to cumulative whole-systems effects.","PeriodicalId":51687,"journal":{"name":"Fashion Theory-The Journal of Dress Body & Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":"509 - 524"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44482734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}