On Fat Clothes: Unraveling Plus-Size Design Discourse

This article considers the possibilities and limitations of plus-size clothing— a subcategory of ready-to-wear that is deeply embedded in the history of dieting, exercise, standardized sizing, and the industrialization of clothing manufacturing in the United States. In doing so, it draws on fashion theory and disability theory in exposing how plus-size clothing functions as a normalizing mechanism, thereby inhibiting innovation in this sector. The article concludes with a counterexploration of the possibilities of “fat clothes” and the novel w ays of seeing and existing in the world that they might enable.

Integrated reporting: Much ado about nothing?

Integrated reporting, which helps companies to share their value creation pro-cesses with their stakeholders, has developed rapidly in recent years. Due to the increased attention paid to the International Integrated Reporting Framework is-sued by the International Integrated Reporting Council, the number of companies worldwide engaging in integrated reporting is continually rising, which is presuma-bly driven by the claimed benefits of this practice. Through recourse to legitimacy theory and management fashion theory, here we provide a preliminary assessment of the development of integrated reporting, alongside considering the potential in-fluence of academic research in its growth. We review the existing body of aca-demic literature on this topic, ultimately identifying 123 claims about the benefits of IR from 29 papers published in 15 journals between May 2011 and September 2016, before proceeding to analyse both the sources and the level of substantia-tion of these claims. Our findings suggest that only a few of the purported ad-vantages of integrated reporting are supported by actual empirical evidence, while most of the claims only cite a limited number of primary sources. Based on these results and our assessment of the development of the concept of IR, we propose a future research agenda.

The Problematic Of Fashion In Nazi Germany: Two Case Studies

Whilst very few scholars have paid attention to the role fashion played within Nazi Germany, the topic is highly relevant. As this Master Research Project (MRP) theorizes and documents, the totalitarian regime considered fashion as a tool to extend political control as well as pervasive disciplining of the body and ultimately to manipulate women. At the same time, we also see telling contradictions. Whilst propaganda officially displayed an ideal “Aryan” woman, with her simple peasant dress or traditional dirndl, the practices of the state’s leaders’ wives diverged from the official female images promoted through propaganda. Indeed, Magda Goebbels (married to the Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels) and Eva Braun (Adolf Hitler’s mistress) remained highly fashionable, sporting the latest Parisian trends in their respective public and private spheres, pointing to the inherent duplicity of Nazi ideology and the practice of its leaders. Using Michel Foucault’s theory of power, which posits that power is anchored in the body, along with critical theories of Nazi totalitarianism and fashion theory, this research unpacks a corpus of archival images to bring to light how these women used fashion in ways that helped in the implementation and running of the fascist and murderous state. Throughout the reign of the National Socialist party, fashion and glamour remained a gendered tool in increasing the state's power. Far from innocent, fashion was implicated in the construction of fascist identity.

The Problematic Of Fashion In Nazi Germany: Two Case Studies

Whilst very few scholars have paid attention to the role fashion played within Nazi Germany, the topic is highly relevant. As this Master Research Project (MRP) theorizes and documents, the totalitarian regime considered fashion as a tool to extend political control as well as pervasive disciplining of the body and ultimately to manipulate women. At the same time, we also see telling contradictions. Whilst propaganda officially displayed an ideal “Aryan” woman, with her simple peasant dress or traditional dirndl, the practices of the state’s leaders’ wives diverged from the official female images promoted through propaganda. Indeed, Magda Goebbels (married to the Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels) and Eva Braun (Adolf Hitler’s mistress) remained highly fashionable, sporting the latest Parisian trends in their respective public and private spheres, pointing to the inherent duplicity of Nazi ideology and the practice of its leaders. Using Michel Foucault’s theory of power, which posits that power is anchored in the body, along with critical theories of Nazi totalitarianism and fashion theory, this research unpacks a corpus of archival images to bring to light how these women used fashion in ways that helped in the implementation and running of the fascist and murderous state. Throughout the reign of the National Socialist party, fashion and glamour remained a gendered tool in increasing the state's power. Far from innocent, fashion was implicated in the construction of fascist identity.

The dual nature of the personal style blog: towards a new interpretation of fashion theory in the digital era

This research examines the personal style blog from a philosophical perspective in an attempt to understand its implications for fashion diffusion theory. Starting from an evaluation of Georg Simmel’s trickle-down theory of diffusion (1904), the paper goes on to dissect the rhetoric of democratization that has come to define fashion blogging in the media and previous scholarship, only to show that the success of bloggers both reaffirms and challenges the notion that fashion is elitist. Phenomenologist Martin Heidegger’s concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity are then used to gain a better grasp of how the personal style blog reflects the dual nature of fashion and of the Self. Tavi Gevinson’s The Style Rookie was selected as a case study to demonstrate the personal style blog’s potential to act as an authentic means of expression, while still being a part of the inauthentic media complex.

Beyond Lipstick: Expressions of Queer Femme Identity in Dress & New Media

This paper and its corresponding creative project beyondlipstick.ca, an online gallery of self-identified queer femmes, seek to examine queer femme-ininity through the lens of academic fashion theory. A call for submissions invited femmes to submit self-portraits and answer a questionnaire on the subject of femme identity and dress. Through the visual and content analysis of submitted self-portraits and questionnaire responses, I investigate visual signifiers of femme identity and position queer femme-ininity as self-aware, intentional and distinct from heteronormative femininity. Themes that emerged from the submissions include; excessive femininity, embracing femininity, empowered femininity, and femme as an identity rather than a style. The beyond lipstick.ca project engages queer femmeininity on three levels: first, as a visual articulation of queer identity; second, as a conscious appropriation of contemporary Western heteronormative femininity; and third, as an expression of femme visibility and community on an online platform.

Beyond Lipstick: Expressions of Queer Femme Identity in Dress & New Media

This paper and its corresponding creative project beyondlipstick.ca, an online gallery of self-identified queer femmes, seek to examine queer femme-ininity through the lens of academic fashion theory. A call for submissions invited femmes to submit self-portraits and answer a questionnaire on the subject of femme identity and dress. Through the visual and content analysis of submitted self-portraits and questionnaire responses, I investigate visual signifiers of femme identity and position queer femme-ininity as self-aware, intentional and distinct from heteronormative femininity. Themes that emerged from the submissions include; excessive femininity, embracing femininity, empowered femininity, and femme as an identity rather than a style. The beyond lipstick.ca project engages queer femmeininity on three levels: first, as a visual articulation of queer identity; second, as a conscious appropriation of contemporary Western heteronormative femininity; and third, as an expression of femme visibility and community on an online platform.

The dual nature of the personal style blog: towards a new interpretation of fashion theory in the digital era

This research examines the personal style blog from a philosophical perspective in an attempt to understand its implications for fashion diffusion theory. Starting from an evaluation of Georg Simmel’s trickle-down theory of diffusion (1904), the paper goes on to dissect the rhetoric of democratization that has come to define fashion blogging in the media and previous scholarship, only to show that the success of bloggers both reaffirms and challenges the notion that fashion is elitist. Phenomenologist Martin Heidegger’s concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity are then used to gain a better grasp of how the personal style blog reflects the dual nature of fashion and of the Self. Tavi Gevinson’s The Style Rookie was selected as a case study to demonstrate the personal style blog’s potential to act as an authentic means of expression, while still being a part of the inauthentic media complex.

Clothing of the medieval peasant: from everyday functionality to the definition of class affiliation. To the discussion about the origin of fashion

The article shows that there are a number of contradictory points of view on the question of the time and factors of the origin of the fashion. In fashion theory, there are a number of well-established concepts regarding the question of the origin of fashion. According to the first point of view, fashion originated at the dawn of the capitalist era, and it is directly related to the processes of trade, urbanization, the increase in the number of cities and the emergence of a mass democratic culture that formed certain attitudes, including fashion. According to another view, fashion successfully developed within the framework of traditional society, within the boundaries of palace culture, among the aristocracy and the nobility. There is also the third opinion, according to which fashion is identified with clothing in general, which allows talking about its origin at the dawn of the formation of humanity. The article argues that fashion could not have arisen in traditional society, especially in the peasant environment, which allows speaking of its origin only within the framework of industrialism.