Fashion Studies Volume 3, Issue 1, Launch Panel Discussion

A panel discussion featuring four of our brilliant authors from this new issue: Shawkay Ottmann, Dr. Ellen Sampson, Philip Sparks, and Dr. Cheryl Thompson. This panel was moderated by the journal’s Co-Founders and Co-Editors, Dr. Ben Barry and Dr. Alison Matthews David, and includes a question and answer period with event guests.

Body As Architecture: Designing the Stout Body in the Age of Standardization

This article explores the curious intersections of stoutwear design, Gestalt Psychology, and architectural discourse in early twentieth-century American fashion media. In doing so, it focuses principally on trade media, style guides and advertisements that grappled with the perceived flaws of the stout woman’s physique and how sophisticated design principles, if properly handled, could create the appearance of bodily slenderness. By moving beyond the biological determinism of contemporary obesity discourse, this article argues that ideas about stoutness and, more specifically, what constituted a stout body, were produced through attempts to contain, control, and correct the fat, female body in fashion design discourse. By further embedding this research within a broader consideration of the relationship between bodies, dress, architecture, and modernist design thinking, this article argues that the mediums and discourses of fashion can open up pathways for thinking about the body itself as “designed.”

You Aren’t What You Wear: An Exploration into Infinifat Identity Construction and Performance through Fashion

Through remote wardrobe interviews with five self-identified infinifat participants, this paper explores how those existing in a body larger than a US dress-size 32 access fashion. The majority of research that has occurred at the intersection of fat studies and fashion studies has focused on the fashion and dressing experiences of women who fit the conventional definition of “plus-size.” Commercially available, mass-produced fashion options drop off dramatically for women larger than a US dress-size 28 and become almost non-existent for those who are a size 32 or larger. By focusing on infinifat or superfat people who exist beyond a size 32 I draw attention to the impact that the lack of access to fashion has on the subjectivities infinifat people can perform. The findings in this paper build from existing literature on plus-size dressing that focuses on limitations in identity construction and performance experienced by those who are able to access commercially available plus-size fashion. Without readily available, situationally-appropriate clothing, infinifat and superfat people are limited in the subjectivities they can perform and are excluded from specific social spaces. This exclusion serves to remarginalize an already marginalized group and is felt most acutely by those who embody additional marginalized identity markers, such as those who are racialized or living in poverty. In this way, the findings presented in this paper further address the infinifat-sized gain existing literature on plus-size dressing and lay the foundation for future work that engages with the infinifatshion community.

#NaturalDye

Natural dyes from plants, insects, and fungi can be used to color yarns and textiles by craftspeople. Craft communities interested in natural dyes are using social media platforms such as Instagram to connect and share knowledge and to generate commerce for their products. #Naturaldye is a documentary film that explores the use of Instagram as a pedagogical, social, commercial, and creative space where dyers foster community and support businesses. Participants in the film discuss what types of information they find essential to articulate while also describing themselves as part of a community of other makers and artists. Theoretically, #Naturaldye is situated at the intersection of the circuit of style-fashion-dress (Kaiser, 2012) and imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). Social media platforms like Instagram enable articulation between fashion, textiles, commerce, and craftspeople where knowledge of natural dyes, dyers, and their work is conveyed to a wider array of individuals that become part of an imagined community through craft.

Fashioning the Academic and Private Self: The Clothing of Johanna Westerdijk in the Context of her Biography

This article aims to analyze the clothing of Dutch botanist Johanna Westerdijk (1883–1961) in connection with her biography, academic career, and character. A thorough analysis of changes and constants in her clothing reveals her personal style and approach to fashion, made possible due to the significant number of Westerdijk’s portraits — the primary source for this study. Her sartorial sense, as seen in these photographs, mirrors the manner in which Westerdijk defined herself, both as a woman and scholar. The variety of Westerdijk’s portraits allow us to analyze her clothing during official ceremonies, at work, in daily life situations, her travel outfits as well as her dressing-up and cross-dressing practices. This article indicates that these visual sources provide interesting insights into how Westerdijk fashioned herself. The purpose of the article is to investigate the extent to which research into biography and dress history can be mutually illuminating.

From Venus to “Black Venus”: Beyoncé’s I Have Three Hearts, Fashion, and the Limits of Visual Culture

In 2016, Lemonade was lauded as “Black girl magic” for the ways the hour-long HBO special (and subsequent album) celebrated Black women and the Southern gothic tradition. It also was the first hint of Beyoncé paying homage to West African Yoruba traditions. At the 2017 Grammys, her performance was both an invocation of the sacred in Western art history and further homage to Yoruba. The performance opened with poetry by Warsan Shire, and snapshots of her daughter, Blue Ivy, but the highlight was Beyoncé’s gold gown, and crown, and gold accessories, all of which symbolized the African goddess Osun. Released just before her Grammys performance, the I Have Three Hearts photo-series circulated as pregnancy images (she was pregnant with twins), but it also functioned as a repository of Beyoncé’s invocation of the sacred in Western culture, as embodied in Venus, and the African goddess, often labelled as “Black Venus.” This article is an examination of three images in the I Have Three Hearts series, taken by Awol Erizku, and the series’ accompanying poetry by Shire. I argue that it raises important questions about the role of visual culture in fashion and popular culture. Is Beyoncé the Venus of the twenty-first century? Does this photographic series remap Western visual culture to reimagine Black womanhood in the discourse on sexuality? Or, it is an example of pastiche in postmodern culture wherein truncated information is authorized, making everyone an expert without the demand for historical context?

Diagrammatic Manifestos: A Method for Studying the Fluidity of Gender in the Production of Fashion Photography

This sociological research studies how fashion editors, art directors, and photographers make the fluidity of gender more visible within an industry established on the binary womenswear/menswear. It addresses gender fluid practices as a questioning of the conditions in which relations between body and dress are made systematic. The research has identified some of the restrictions faced when producing gender fluid fashion imagery, and highlighted the alternative solutions that originate from these limitations. This paper proposes to apply live and inventive methodological approaches to fashion studies. The design of my methodology was concerned with its capacity to study a subject still mostly understood through a binary ontology. Consequently, the “Diagrammatic Manifestos” is a research method attentive to the conditions in which relations can be made different, rather than identical, to dominant gender ideals. Throughout the series of interviews, diagrams were operated as analytical devices to graphically reorganize transcripts into manifestos. The diagrams’ forms were made responsive to the differences in each participants’ narrative and reveal how their individual experiences of gender affect the images they produce.