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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Brill. I'm Lee Jung Racco, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. Today we're speaking with Jacqueline Fulton. She's a professor of sociology at the National University in San Diego.
She's a cultural critic, social theorist, and media expert across the fields of fashion and pop culture. And we're speaking with Laura Pedigan. She's an art historian and curator. Her research is centered in contemporary Italian art and fashion studies.
Their book is In Fashion, Culture, Commerce, Craft, and Identity. Thanks so much to you both. Thank you for having us. Great.
So first of all, just tell us what does it mean for the contributors of In Fashion to be, quote, In Fashion? That's a very good question, and the cover of the book, I think, reflects it. We chose an image that shows two women actually in fashion, standing in a lake, which is kind of a symbol or metaphor for what we're getting at. And for some, being in fashion is being one with a zeitgeist, one with the times.
Brothers, it's following the lead of fashion editors, celebrities, and local media trendsetters. And for still others, being in fashion is putting one's own stamp on one's look, mixing it up, combining the old and the new, high and the low. As one of my friends who's known for her striking personal style observes, any combination that suits my personality and body is fair game these days. So it's a wonderful time for fashion and for writing about fashion because we're living in a time of open fashion when there's pluralistic democratic aspect to the endless opportunities to make social, cultural, economic, political, and identity statements through fashion, or to make no statement at all.
Another aspect of being in fashion for our contributors to this book in fashion, Culture, Commerce, Craft, and Identity, is that they are engaging in fashion as academics. They're doing it from various disciplinary, professional, and creative perspectives. So for them, being in fashion is not only personal, it's being immersed in the presentation of self. It's also about defining how fashion is presented in the visual written and performing arts.
And also as well how fashion is in by being design, crafted, manufactured, packaged, marketed, and archived. While broadly defined, the theme in fashion threads its way through the book, which is divided into five sections. The part one is about fashioning representations. Part two is about being fashionable, shopping, luxury, and vintage.
Part three is about fashion materials, craft, industry, and innovation. And part four focuses on what's museum worthy, fashion in the archive. And part five is looking at fashion and cultural identities, which is case studies. That's really interesting to hear you talk about what it means to be in fashion, you talk about that sort of democratic element to it that we're seeing today, but also what it means to be fashionable.
It makes me think of something that the late New York Times photographer, Bill Cunningham used to talk about a lot, which was, he would photograph people who were stylish, expressing themselves in a unique way, but not necessarily people who were fashionable, you know, following the trends. So I'm curious, like, is there a difference between when someone is in fashion and when someone is stylish, like to be fashionable, does that mean you are following something, following some sort of rules, because that seems to go against what you mentioned, you know, that fashion has become more democratic. Very good question. I teach a course where we talk about fashion in terms of work done by Gare Zimol and Taurus and Beyblen and the course contemporary fashion theorist, and definitely make a distinction between having personal style and being like a fashion victim or the old word fashionista.
That's why, you know, I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that some people slavishly follow fashion and don't have any personal style and definitely Cunningham focused on people with personal style and street fashion has become very important and the democratic distribution of fashion. And that's why the street photographers and influencers focused on what's going on with people's personal style in the streets, influence so much what's happening with fashion designers now, who raid Instagram and other sites and actually hire these these influencers who specialize in personal or street fashion to influence what's going on in fashion. And now it's sort of crazy because Bill Cunningham was at the forefront, maybe of photographing people on the street and he was sort of one of the few people to do that and elevate regular people to a national level or, you know, even just the Manhattan level, which is huge in the fashion world. But now as you said, it's like everyone who was on Instagram can dictate what is happening at the highest levels of fashion, they can dictate what's happening on the runway, which is sort of strange.
It is, in fact, they said at the front seat rose with Anna winter now the traditional fashion arbitrators have arbiters have lost their position. And that's certainly shown by the decrease in magazine subscriptions and so on of the fashion Bibles. It's so interesting, a theorist, Jill Lipogetsky, a philosopher, sociologist from France was writing about this decades ago and he's the one who termed the concept of open fashion that fashion has become the rule of consumer culture, whether it's including or technology or kitchen design. Everything kind of goes we've never lived in a time where there's we have more options to express personal style, or to follow fashion trends or create track fashion trends, and you can do it from every continent.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's fashion influencers who are researchers in Antarctica now. So I mean everywhere every continent and you have instant access through the Internet, the Internet and social media have changed everything. I want to talk about something that really piqued my interest in this book and I'm sure will pique a lot of millennial women's interest. If they're reading this, you mentioned briefly the Gossip Girl novels, which more spawned the very famous UW series later on, which became in a way kind of its own fashion Bible, I think, in the 2000s, but I'm curious what role does the fashion model play in novels, particularly fiction aimed at young girls.
This is such an interesting chapter and why we chose it to open the book. Let me give a little background about fashion and fiction. Fascinatingly books aimed at girls and young women are historically connected to fairy tales, religious fiction and education, and are important in setting standards of behavior for girls and young women. And fashion has played an extremely important role within girls fiction over the past 150 years it's nothing new.
Since Louisa May Alcott's Little Women in Nancy Drew detected books, what girls wear and how they look are central aspects of the genre. This is certainly true in this chapter called Sarah Gay Model Girl, and the four novels that the author talks about, written in 1961 by Jamie Scott, but still followed very closely by people who collect the books and written about the fashion studies and literary scholar Erica Lending, who is from Sweden, provides a thought provoking look at the role of fashion modeling in in these novels, and discusses how fashion, beauty, gender, class, youth and achievement are imagined girls series books. I found this research so interesting because I learned a lot from it, and at the time of the publication of the Sarah Gay Model Girl series in the early 1960s, the fashion model was becoming a pop cultural phenomenon, consumer culture icon and role model girls culture. This is seen not only in the Sarah Gay Model Girl Novel series of four books, but in the rise of popularity of the Barbie doll, and a supermodel like Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, as part of the Carnegie Street youth culture swing 60s of the London.
Connected to the rise of the fashion model popular culture is the rise of fashion capital capitals like New York and London that challenge the hegemony of Paris, and it's all part of the youth culture. And these are featured in the novels, very interestingly, they're kind of a travel log of a young model going to the different fashion cities, London and Paris and New York. For me, a surprising aspect of girls fiction focused on fashion models is that fashion and careers are more important than romance in these novels and I don't want to emphasize that because that was really a striking finding of Erica Lending's research that romance, which many people would think, you know, boys and romance is what drives the girls fiction and young women's fiction. She found that fashion models and fashion and careers were very important.
Of course you could say well those attract boys and young men, but it was so interesting because fashion models are portrayed as career savvy, hardworking, self sufficient independent new women, who just happened to be beautiful and have glamorous careers, and more generally careers and fashion are presented as desirable aligned with feminism and as creatively satisfying and this is in 1961. So in 2022, whether in girls fiction advertising runways magazines reality TV or social media, the fashion model for better or worse remains a ubiquitous feature of global popular consumer celebrity fame culture no matter the controversy about the too often ugly aspects of the fashion model industry, particularly for teens and young women with eating disorders and so on. So I want to put that out there as something to think about, but the air heading geek girl series are extraordinary popular series books and they're focused on fashion models and young women girls looks and also you know cult TV series in terms of rich beautiful girls with model looks and wardrobes It's very striking, but again for me the major finding of this research besides inherent interest is that the models are presented more in terms of their careers in feminism than an independence and making career choices that make them independent rather than being focused on boys and romance and young men. And to that point I would sort of push back on the idea that fashion somehow attracts men I would almost argue that in a sense it repels men.
There was a very famous blog, The Man Repeller and the author, her entire point was that she wore weird clothes that would never be attractive to men. And she sort of like buried the news that she eventually got married, which I think is sort of funny in my ruin her brand, but I think about the designers that I liked and the looks that I liked designers like Alexander McQueen who made things that are sort of an away grotesque but beautiful but men would never find them attractive on women. Yeah, that's a good point. And it kind of goes along with what we're saying in this book and featuring this chapter is that it's more about expressive individuality and being stylish and having a career than focus on romance and fashion.
I mean, I'm sorry romance and boys and young men in these girls novels and that is like counterintuitive because I think a lot of people think that young women and girls fiction is focused around romance. At least I thought that and I talked with other people who got the same and it's not. But expressive individuality and self esteem through taking care of one's looks and all that somehow is part of the theme being emphasized here. And as to your point about men being repelled by fashion well I've done a lot of work in fashion and beauty and I have to say that isn't either or there are lots of men who love women with tons of makeup on and plastic surgery and follow every fashion trend and there's plenty of men who are just the opposite of women who say I like a natural women.
I don't want the plastic surgery I don't want someone who's only interested in their parents and being stylish and spending all this money on designer clothes of women and sweats is just fine. So, you know it's it's a it's highly variable there. Certainly the men I know in the kind of career I have don't emphasize that so much but you know people men and women respond to attractive people and also to people who know to put themselves together, particularly a style that is striking or just shows some self care and you know the aesthetics of the style, you know the way you put color together or know how to wear what clothes for your body type. Anyway, maybe has some more thoughts about that.
Yeah, the one thought that I had when you were talking about men preferring women who are natural is a quote from someone who's now I guess considered a fashion icon but friend Russia has a joke in the nanny where she's talking about all the money she's spending on make up and clothing and then she's saying to the effect of, oh, this natural look is really costing me. Well the natural look now what is natural right. And so much of what we see is two dimensional images and social media now which presented a style and fashion that's highly filtered. People don't even have plastic surgery now if they don't like their appearance, they can use filters to narrow their nose even out their skin tone and claim it's natural looking.
We're just living in a world where appearances matters so much. Laura I want to turn to you and talk about this trend of the customized fit when and how did this emerge and what do you think its future looks like in the fashion industry. Well, it's that's also a really good question because the idea of a customized fit is something that intersects with a lot of what Jacqueline just said with respect to the pluralism and democratic nature of the contemporary fashion industry. And the idea of customized fit intersects with an idea of inclusivity and broader participation with respect to the whole concept of the book and the first question in our discussion today related to what does it mean to be in fashion.
And, and just to add to Jacqueline's comments about the pluralistic and democratic nature of contemporary fashion scene and industry is that being in fashion means being able to participate and customize fit suggests that there's a broader level of participation for whoever wants to participate in fashion. So the idea of being in fashion is now less hierarchical than perhaps it used to be and the idea of being in simply means being able to participate on one's own customized so to speak terms. And so, and Tonya Gluxman who's one of the contributors to this volume in her study, called the future of customized garment fit. She talks about this very promising trend that continues to underpin the contemporary fashion industry related to customized fit.
And that notion of customized fit with respect to how it emerged, it's likely always been a central aspect of the historical garment industry. And so many customizations have always always existed alongside those opposing trends toward mass production which probably started back with the industrial revolution in Western Europe in the second half of the 19th century, and leading of course to the ready to wear industries that Gluxman describes in the 1950s. And so, the customization concepts have always occupied a central role in the market. However, tailored fit strategies continue to be challenged, perhaps even neglected or simply, you know, unviable by many industries and companies, due to their ongoing complexity in execution and delivery to the market or the consumer So what Antonio Gluxman points out to us is that in public surveys, customers tend to feel continuously dissatisfied to some degree with the fit of mass produced garments, which suggest to us that there is this ongoing and persistent demand for clothes that are tailored to the individual.
So what's referred to as MTM are made to measure. And this is a way for clothing companies to engage with this ongoing demand in an increasingly competitive and globalized market. So what we would have to consider with respect to the future of how it made to measure appears, or it's presented to the consumer And so that the challenges and opportunities that that the MTM garment industry are facing presenting in a presented in a historical context. She's suggesting to us suitable solutions which are derived from this recent research that she's conducted combining that research with a review of emergent technologies.
And so she outlines a successful new major measure protocol so to speak, which can be applied to the design and development, for example, a one piece sports where garment. So if we look at what Gluxman outlines for us it seems that the future of the customized customized fit presents a protocol that is cost and time effective with respect to the operations for the major measure industries. But it also requires a heightened level of quality in terms of customers actually experiencing a better and more accurate fit, a better performance of that garment, and overall better heightened customer satisfaction. And so also incorporated in that vision for the future of the customized fit industry is this need for very specific management strategies within small to medium sized enterprises.
And these will hopefully render the processes of production more efficient, more affordable, and this trend of customized fit for the masses is seen in, you know, we've seen it in the manufacturing of made to order jeans other garments like shirts, underwear lingerie and even perhaps as far as customizable fragrance and makeup and fabrics if you think of the way that mass cosmetics industries are tailoring, let's say the production of foundation and shades to match all different skin types. And so those strategies also implicate a specialized production process, along with enhanced customer service interfaces and very specialized staff knowledge and that's one of the most challenging aspects of the future of the major industry. And so the staff has to have the expertise and consistency over time to follow the different parts of the garment through that production process through completion to through to completion, using advanced labeling and bundling systems for example. So it sounds like this is not something that would exist within the fast fashion industry it sounds like it's sort of happening in parallel or going against the grain.
I don't think we're going to see Zara or she can get into customized fit. Correct. I would agree. And I think that it's something that there is always a niche demand for and interest in, it has always existed alongside the evolution in the fast fashion industries, but because of its difficulty in production and its high cost, it still remains a challenge for these fast fashion companies to incorporate in their overall corporate mandate and vision.
So fashion theorists Claire Rose who lectures at the Victorian Albert Museum in London explains that some of the key characteristics of the contemporary fashion industry are not new. Laura wondering if you can delve into this a little bit what are some examples of what we might think of as recent trends in the fashion industry and how far back do they actually go in history. Well, there are many things that I think we would like to give ourselves a pat on the back for for being so creative and innovative with the way that the fashion industry is adapting to new and different demands. But I think that a lot of a lot of these things can can be seen to have historical roots that reach back much further than we would think.
I would sort of like to identify perhaps four main branches of this historical legacy that continues to perhaps influence the way we all continue to experience fashion in a pluralistic democratic and increasingly inclusive manner. And so one of them is innovations with materials. Another is the creation of participatory experiences. The third one would be support networks and the fourth would be the evolution of vintage okay or recycling or up cycling.
So just to go back to the first point about materials innovations with materials. And to extend as far back as human beings have been making clothing from the available resources of the natural environment so we think back to the way animal skins were used and continue to be used plant materials, vegetable dies, the way that bodies have been adorned and modified using jewelry made with stones or bones or other natural materials etc. So if we look at the chapter written by Katrine Maria Caradata and Elisa Palamino they've written about this the study of the way that fish skin has been used as an historical material and assimilated in towards the innovative sustainable materials industry and fashion industry. And we also see new innovations throughout these industries with mushrooms with different forms of vegan leathers with the use of algae and seaweed.
The approaches toward using waste up cycling to create not only new types of materials for different garments but new experience for the way people consume and dispose of their fashion. And then with respect to the creation of participatory experiences this intersects with the way that the digital realm has affected the physical experience of brick and mortar spaces for shopping and the consumption of fashion. And so, stemming from, let's say the conscious creation of communal public spaces that were intended to mediate the growing urban centers which were at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and Western Europe in the 19th century. And then the industrial spaces were transformed into realms of commercialized consumption, leading to the conception of the department store and window shopping and the whole spectacle of modern life that was described by people like Baudelaire and Benjamin, and their observations of shopping and how they could be able to see that those public spaces engendered a conscious act of looking at each other and consuming each other as images.
So that's something that far predates the way that fashion companies and designer try to create sensory experiences in brick and mortar stores in their fashion shows, etc. We also can look at the essay written by Leonard Coos and he talks about the 19th century department store in France and about the fetish oriented consumption practices of consumers in that era as well. And the book talks about the conundrum of the luxury and social media and the effects of e-commerce on luxury brands and how they're responding to the digital world and on our challenge to perpetuate notions of exclusivity and aspirational fashion consumption. So we have, let's say, a well established background and legacy in history with the creation of participatory spaces on the part of designers and retailers which we see being echoed today.
And then support networks, this is something that has probably evolved since the middle of the 20th century, Hilda Heim, another contributor to the volume talks about the challenges and support needs of new fashion business models that are emerging on the margins of the fashion industry and she's talking about a couture bridal enterprise and how support networks are something that was perhaps established amongst different designers and atelier's but which has been rendered all the more let's say viable and user friendly with the digital age. And then finally the evolution of vintage Claire Eldred talks about the notion of object biography and its intersects with the practices of upcycling and recycling and how it's used to be is it for practical purposes and cost effectiveness to recycle clothing but also how an object or garment in this case can acquire different facets of identity, according to when it's used and who it's used by, and also how an individual's identity can be layered with historical references and the use of so called vintage or user upcycling recycled garments. So those are a few of the four sort of pillars that I would identify with respect to how the contemporary fashion industry is rooted in the past. And the discussion about vintage is really interesting something that I think about a lot and I know people have talked about on social media is how it seems like this concept of vintage has accelerated so much the things that we are seeing in a vintage store are not from 40 years ago or even 20 years ago but even 10 years old.
I mean, there are things that I wore in college maybe and are now considered vintage whereas when I was in college things that were considered vintage were from the 1940s or 1960s and maybe the 80s was considered vintage but you know even then that was at least 30 years old. But it seems like fast fashion and Instagram and different forms of social media are shortening the time for vintage I don't know if that's something that you've seen as well. And I also see different adjectives being used to describe clothing that is identifiably from past eras so it's not necessarily only vintage but it's historical or antique garments. And depending on these adjectives it seems that these garments acquire very distinct values connected to the historical era that they're identified with.
And I agree I've seen, for example, in the real real people recycling and upcycling objects and clothing and garments and jewelry that are just from a couple seasons ago, never mind a couple decades ago. And so yeah I think that's a really interesting recent evolution and also there's a fetishization of the notion of vintage that has contributed to, I would say, what is a distinct optic in price points of so called vintage clothing, and they are related to, I would say, a greater, more broad, democratic following for the designers that would have been, would have remained mostly aspirational in past times. And so you would see, let's say, a t-shirt with a particular company's logo on it from no more than five years ago and it's valued at a couple hundred dollars already. So yeah, it's an interesting evolution.
That's Jacqueline Fulton and Laura Peddigan their book is in fashion culture, commerce, craft and identity really enjoyed this conversation could talk about fashion all day but we'll have to say goodbye here. Thank you then to you both. Thank you very much for having us. You were listening to the Humanities Matter podcast.
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