Sustainable development and the aspirational male consumer: Tengri, making the case for sustainable luxury

Luxury is an industry that defines its value through the quality of its raw materials, which fosters creativity, elevates artisanship and relies on brand heritage and local production to underpin the provenance of its products and justify its pricing strategy and, as such, can be considered as embodying many of the practices of sustainability. Yet, despite public commitments and pledges for better business, both financial and cultural factors have contributed to a lack of progress in implementing the necessary system changes implied by slow fashion, sustainable development and the circular economy. Social enterprises use business to address social and environmental issues. In Tengri’s case, founder Nancy Johnston was inspired by her experiences travelling with Mongolia’s yak herders where she was confronted with the harshness of the nomadic way of life and threats to its continuing existence. She was driven to action when she juxtaposed these conditions with the promoted glamour of the luxury fashion industry, which relies on supplies of ingredients from just such workers. This article explores how Tengri combines social and environmental awareness with luxury product development incorporating the UN SDGs into a sustainable luxury menswear brand in a virtuous cycle of ethical fashion consumption and production.

Clothing and the oceanic identity in Melville’s Redburn

Herman Melville’s Redburn approaches the topic of corporeal coding via the outer layer of clothing. Throughout the novel, the young protagonist consciously uses clothing as a means of self-representation and expression, deploying fashion to create and position himself in different contexts; for example, taking pride in his ragged clothes amongst well-dressed ship passengers becomes a form of social protest. But Redburn is also used to comic effect because his choices are often based on incorrect assumptions of propriety, such as his notion of the way a sailor is supposed to dress not matching the onboard reality. The rules of appearance that construct and restrain an identity are paradoxically bolstered at the same time they are broken, which allows Melville the opportunity to explore rebellion alongside the performative aspect of the self as a body constituting both a visible sign and a living vehicle for the mores, beliefs and ideologies that shape a society.

No man is an island: The sustainability awareness effect of geography on hedonic fashion consumption and connection with nature – evidence from Galápagos and Hawaiʻi

The demand for ever-accelerating fast fashion is unprecedented, while its supply chain burdens environmental systems. Hedonic fashion consumption is generally unfettered by sustainability concerns, but evidence suggests that island geographies–with dense boundaries between the built and the natural environment–have a heightening effect on eco-consciousness. A framework based on the contemporary condition of hyperconsumption is proposed: island geography heightens sustainability awareness; consequently, fashion consumers located on islands trade-off perceived hedonic benefits of fashion consumption against perceived moral benefits of connection with nature. The framework is supported by visual evidence collected on the Galápagos island Santa Cruz, indicating that male fashion consumers express connection with nature by means of tattoos, slogans on clothing and choice of eco-friendly materials. Quantitative tests with survey data from the United States and Ecuador show that residents in Hawaiʻi and the Galápagos have higher levels of connection with nature compared to residents on the associated continental areas. This effect is mediated by decreased perceived rewards of hedonic fashion consumption, but the effect is overall weaker in Ecuador compared to the United States due to differences in purchasing power and attitudes towards consumerism. Because of the stereotype that eco-friendly is unmanly, men are generally less likely to embrace environmentally friendly products and the findings of this research point to avenues to overcome this barrier.

Highland haberdashery: Scottish kiltmaking in the twenty-first century

The Scottish kilt is one of the world’s most renowned cultural garments, and the Highland dress industry contributes £350 million annually to the Scottish apparel industry. However, outsourcing and deceptive marketing tactics have negatively impacted the kiltmaking industry. The purpose of this study was to investigate Scottish kiltmakers’ knowledge and experiences as a basis for industry protection. A qualitative, phenomenological method employed interviews, observations, video and artefact analysis and prototyping to understand participant’s (n=17) experiences with learning and practising kiltmaking. Findings indicated that: (1) kiltmakers’ experience life-long learning through scaffolding, (2) kilt customers are not well informed of quality differences between genuine Scottish kilts and imports, (3) gender plays a role in pay inequality, lack of respect and quality of life issues for female kiltmakers and (4) kiltmakers agree that protection is necessary, however, they are unsure of how it would be realized.

‘All Tee, No Shade’: A manifesto for a subtle critical practice negotiating queer, East Asian masculinities through T-shirts

‘All Tee, No Shade’ is a practice-led research project that explores the use of the men’s T-shirt to challenge and disrupt hegemonic subjectivities that contribute to the marginalization and discrimination of the queer Asian diaspora. Through an exploration of my pilot project of the same name, produced as part of the arts programme of Virgin Australian Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2020, I propose that norm-critical design methodologies exploring intersectional experiences of fashion and dress can produce material outcomes that challenge the discrimination and oppression associated with compounding conditions of race and sexuality. I use the notion of ‘subtle’ traits as a condition of the East Asian diasporic experience to reveal how race and sexuality might be expressed through fashion production to disrupt conceptions of ‘otherness’. This is achieved with T-shirts that have printed graphic configurations that align with contemporary streetwear but with ‘subtle’ signifiers embedded through the signs and lexicons of Asian and queer communities. Using an autoethnographic approach, the work is informed by my past fashion design industry experience and reflects on racial and queer marginalization and discrimination through styling and fit. The project contributes to broader discourses aimed at decentralizing dominant narratives in fashion practice and responds to a lack of academic research into diasporic Asian experiences of dress and, more specifically, queer diasporic Asian dress.

Reflections of Durbar in the Diaspora

This article questions if the propensity of Black men in globally dominant western countries to wear black or dark colours is an outcome of internalized subjugation and an adherence to westernized projections of masculinity. It uses the 2018 Akinola Davies Junior film Zazzau as its backdrop, drawing parallels with other examples of colourful clothing in the context of Black masculinity. Zazzau shows the annual festival of Durbar, a vibrant celebration at the end of Ramadan in Kaduna State, Nigeria, where the Emir of the region and his entourage use traditional dress and contemporary fabrics to demonstrate their sartorial elegance. The bold and flamboyant dress of the men is not only indicative of the pageantry of this procession but is reminiscent of the creative exuberance and stylishness of annual carnivals in the Caribbean. This article uses this comparison as a tool to discuss a reengagement with the creativity, styling and colour of Black men’s clothing, and demonstrates how an engagement with colourful design aesthetics maintains its sense of masculinity. ‘Reflections of Durbar in the Diaspora’ draws parallels between the robes of the Emir, men’s costumes at carnival and the tailoring of Abrantie the Gentleman to examine how social engagement, living culture and traditional fashion intersect to influence and impact the ways in which men’s style is understood in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Green your groin: Sustainability, men’s underwear and the wild

Men and the environment, it seems, have a tenuous relationship. This article considers the challenge of men’s underwear and sustainability by focusing on advertisements designed to sell ecologically friendly underwear. One of the challenges that I highlight is how we are to ‘read’ these advertisements. This article takes it as a given that images are polysemous. Drawing on queer theory, I propose a series of readings that align with Sedgwick’s practice of paranoid and reparative reading. In the case of the paranoid reading, I show how these advertisements might be read as indicative and proof of hybrid masculinity theory. From this vantage, I move to a reparative reading that imagines other possibilities, particularly around nature and the wild. The goal of these readings is not to have one dominate over the other, but to show the nuance and complexity of masculinities in/and nature.