The Ways in Which Music Sters Encourage the Consumption of Fashion - Essay Example

Discuss the ways in which music sters encourage the consumption of fashion with reference to at least 1 specific artist or group There is no doubt that Music Industry has always been taken care of the music sters it has created throughout generation after generations. No matter whatever be the negative influences of the sters on fashion, but it has encouraged fashion to be adopted through the vast influence of the media, which has sheerly influenced the society as a whole. Fashion when adopted by individuals of sters and groups has taken the form of valuable industries which has revolutionized various levels of consciousness among its consumers. Reggae Music – The Rastafari Group The developments of Reggae music initiated by the Reggae star Bob Marley, who on one hand created new and intriguing dilemmas for his ‘Rastafarian movement’, on the other hand was able to acquire youths attention thereby attaining international popularity throughout the European world. Bob Marley increased the visibility and popularity of the Rastafarian movement mainly through the most visible and prominent advertiser for the movement and was able to spread the Rastafarian gospel to the four corners of the globe, only on behalf of the exotic fashion trends he created. (Foster & King, 2002, p. 90) As the Rastafarian movement continued to reveal its increased fashion consciousness in popular music, Jamaican authorities responded with strategies to “control” the movement which influenced millions of fashion lovers. This control was mainly on the behalf of the spread of changing trends. Fashion Consumption through commitment, appearance and self Reggae music initiated a new sense of rhetoric of men’s fashion which took the form of a set of denials that include the following propositions: that there is no men’s fashion; that men dress for fit and comfort, rather than for style; that women dress men and buy clothes for men; that men who dress up are peculiar (one way or another); that men do not notice clothes; and that most men have not been duped into the endless pursuit of seasonal fads. In other words, Reggae music enhanced awareness among its fans with a concept that there is a tendency to underplay if not deny the phenomenon of men’s fashion. Yet, pushed a little, people hold very strong and diverse views about men and clothing: commonsense clichés about men’s fashions disguise passionate opinions. Reggae’s fashion relates to, but is distinct from, the codes of women’s fashion. Whereas contemporary codes of women’s fashion have revolved around achieving ‘a look’ as an image to be admired (spectacle), men’s appearance has been calculated to enhance their active roles (especially occupation and social status). (Craik, 1994, p. 176) This Reggae revival is explained in terms of changing power relations associated with gender relations, specifically in terms of challenges to male-dominated practices of post-industrial societies. As men’s power is questioned by women’s involvement in the workplace and in assuming responsibilities in the public sphere, men have adopted new codes of clothing conduct, modifying attributes of respectability and authority by incorporating frivolous and narcissistic elements. Not only is it possible to identify cycles in men’s fashions but they run parallel to those in women’s fashions. Arguably, from the Reggae Music, however, men’s fashions have offered fewer choices at any one moment and therefore acted to impose conformity on those adhering to fashion. Normative men have either resisted fashion or conformed to mainstream elements. Conversely, expressive (individualistic or idiosyncratic) male fashion has been confined to particular groups and ‘subcultures’, such as ‘gentlemen’, gays, popular entertainers, ethnic groups, and popular sub cultural groups. The Reggae implication is that these groups are not normative, but articulate non-mainstream forms of masculinity reflected by, and coded in, their choice of clothes. These other ‘masculinities’ have pivoted around heterosexuality but frequently have invoked parodies of mainstream male mores. As Pumphrey (1989) has argued, definitions of masculinity are coded through clothes and the associated politics of style, which Reggae initiated. He suggests that the Western (as history, novel and film) has offered one enduring style from which men’s fashions and group identities have derived. Underpinning Pumphrey’s argument is a sense of ambivalence towards the relation between male style and male sexual identity. Contemporary men struggle to articulate the image of male sexuality appropriate to their circumstances. For some, this has an overwhelming importance; for others, little at all-or so it seems. The very act of decorating and displaying the male body in Reggae’s medieval throughout Europe has been fraught with partially spoken-and often competing desires and fears. The myth of the ‘undecorated’ male effectively suppresses ambivalence about this process of forming the male social body. In industrialising Europe, men became consumed by modernity and fashion which could secure status and power. In a conscious move, men disassociated themselves with the idleness and extravagance of aristocratic codes of dress and behaviour. Men dressed to confirm their involvement in the new industrial order. While men competed in the tough world of politics and economics, women were allocated the role of decorating and complementing the public status of men through their clothes and demeanour. Through caricature and denunciations like these, the Reggaes were implicated in a style war between traditional elite arbiters of taste and new groups of cultural nationalists. The mercantile and bourgeois classes in Britain were in the process of consolidating their social identity and distinguishing it from what had gone before at the same time as the elite tried to insist on their superiority and assert their vestimentary distinction. Although there was not yet a clear sense of British civil fashion, the new groups preferred simplicity and drew on images of military, sport and country life (Craik, 1994, p. 34). Clearly, the antithesis between the ‘country’ associations of this code and the court associations of Reggae fashion was underpinned by deep-seated hostility. Yet despite the strident denunciations of the Reggaes’ aristocratic dress, there was also a desire to imitate certain aspects of it. The tensions between the desire to imitate and the impulse to reject aristocratic ways embodied the dominant themes of contemporary political, economic and moral life: “The fashion in men’s attire changed as more and more people came to perceive sober male dress as being a reflection of patriotism (versus aristocratic cosmopolitanism), liberty (versus tyranny), country and city (versus Court), Parliament and Constitution (versus Royal prerogative and corruption), virtue (versus libertinism), enterprise (versus gambling, frivolity, and dissipation), and manliness (versus a fribbling, degenerate exotic effeminacy)”. (Craik, 1994, p. 37) Central to the new possibilities opened up by consumerism was the manipulation of appearances. People had greater access to clothes, a new awareness of fashion and fads, and the possibility of buying the look they desired. Accordingly, appearance, complemented by ‘artifice and performance’, combined in new registers of social etiquette and measures of achievement: A new attention to appearance and calculated display heralded the emergence of conspicuous consumption organised around the body. For men, this involved restraint rather more than excess. Social success was predicated on respectability which was gauged by conveying an impression of a serious (business-like) demeanour created by wearing sombre clothes. Reggae music not only initiated as a fashion symbol with respect to clothing but it also enhanced people’s visions towards decorating the body, whether temporarily through paint, ornaments, or scents, or permanently through pierced ears, tattooing, scarification, or lip plugs, occurs in all cultures but practices are specific to particular relations between body and habitus. On the one hand, techniques of body decoration are compared and contrasted as techniques of composing the social body within different conducts of life. Body decoration is viewed, then, as historically specific, and culturally variable. On the other hand, body decoration is also considered in terms of explanations and interpretations proposed to account for such practices. This dual approach has been adopted because body decoration is almost exclusively considered as a process of inscribing meaning on the body, as a ‘semiotics’ of the body. Reggae developed a new sense of the interpretation of body decoration in western cultures in terms of signifying characteristics such as group membership, fertility, sexual availability, strength, religious affiliation, status and power. These characteristics relate to the collective nature of the social group, rather than to the individual projection of ‘identity’. Body decoration constitutes ‘the imposition of a second, social ‘skin’ of culturally standardised patterns’. In these terms, body decoration does not replace the old skin but sets up a play between the exterior public self (the decorated skin) and the relationship between the self and habitus. In other words, body decoration constitutes ‘the visible exterior of an invisible interior’. Exotic themes have become a leitmotif of new fashions through the incorporation of themes such as jungle or tropical imagery, ‘exotic’ peoples and cultures, elements of ‘folk’ and ‘ethnic’ costume, and recycled items from earlier fashions. Frequently, exotic motifs from Musical groups, destinations or from post-colonial cultures form the basis of fashion derivations. Reggae Music is bound up in place and in transformations of material spaces; increasingly this occurs through tourism and its promotion. Some tourist destinations have developed because music (or the performers themselves) had some connection with those places, but music is more subtly connected with tourism in other, more diverse ways. Music is a cultural resource bound up in how places are perceived, and how they are promoted. It is one means by which places can be represented in wider media scapes, shaping local or regional identities; and, by design or default, music influences the images that attract tourists. (Connell & Gibson, 2002, p. 221) High street designers are thus in the business of meeting the requirements of the magazine editors, the store buyers, fashion photographers and advertisers, and the practical circumstances of high street consumers. Although they follow the couture trends, their own collections are shaped by more pragmatic concerns. Above all, fashions must be wearable and suit lifestyles that involve active doing (work) rather than being (leisure). Consequently, successful high street designers must be attuned to the patterns of everyday life and stylistic trends among ordinary consumers. Musical expressions and events may only occupy spaces in ephemeral ways, as particular scenes are surpassed by new trends elsewhere. Hence, numerous attempts have been made both to revamp ‘musical landscapes’, through restoring heritage sites, and to construct buildings that represent and capitalise on cultural traditions, as in Nashville, Tam worth and Liverpool. Music tourism involves a range of practices where sites of music production and expression (whether in past or present ‘scenes’), become the points of attraction for tourists, central to strategies employed by the local state, tourist promotion boards and companies to market musical heritage. This is from where Reggae Group flourished as a fashion symbol. References & Bibliography Connell John & Gibson Chris, (2002) Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place: Routledge: London. Craik Jennifer, (1994) The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion: Routledge: New York. Foster Renee & King A. Stephen, (2002) Reggae, Rastafari and the Rhetoric of Social Control: University Press of Mississippi: Jackson, MS. Hebdige Dick, (1990) Cut ‘n’ Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music: Routledge: London. Lewin Olive, (2000) Rock It Come Over: The Folk Music of Jamaica.: University of the West Indies Press: Barbados. Shuker Roy, (2002) Popular Music: The Key Concepts: Routledge. London Read More